 What’s a local business listing? Good question! A local business listing is an online profile that contains your business name, address, phone number and other important information. There are thousand of online directories that allow local business owners to create free listings. Yelp, Bing Places, Google+Local, Yahoo! Local - just to name a few.
Why is it so important to have a local business listing? By creating a listing, you allow your customers to find you on the internet. The more local business listings you create, the more likely you are to be found when searched for. When it comes to local business listings, there is one thing that can become tricky. Making sure all the information, on all directories is correct. Google themselves said “Google improves search results by aggregating information about your business from all over the web. Make sure information about your business on third-party sites is accurate”. If you ever change your business name, address or phone number, it is crucial that you contact and update all the directories you are listed in. That sounds like a daunting task, doesn’t it. It will take some time to update and correct directories if you ever experience a change in information. So, as a small business, stay one step ahead. Keep a list of all the online directories where you create a listing, along with usernames and passwords. Now, in five years when you move to a bigger office space or store front, you know exactly where to go to start updating your information online. As a small business, creating accurate local business listings could potentially set yourself apart from your competition. So take the time to help your customers find what they are looking for. Thanks so much for coming to us at LEVEL 11 Online Marketing to learn more about the awesome world of digital marketing! If you have questions, comment here or go to the contact tab. Resources: https://moz.com/learn/local/listings https://support.google.com/business/answer/4454429?hl=en  One of the biggest mistakes digital marketers make is not establishing analytics goals prior to the start of a campaign. This is extremely common even though one of the key advantages of digital marketing is the incredible target-ability that is unmatched by any other media available. Not fully understanding the ramifications of not targeting your audience effectively with clear analytics goals results in large amounts of unnecessary waste. I have seen shocking examples of digital ad waste (over 98 percent in one instance) and hate to see a business simply throwing money at online marketing as if it is like any other traditional media outlet.
In order to track the success of a digital marketing campaign, it is necessary to define goals (sales, form completions, calls, sign ups, etc.) and ensure that analytics tracking is properly set up for these goals. When it comes to tracking results of your goals, Google Analytics is your best friend. The best part is it is completely free! It takes a serious amount of time to master Adwords, but the time investment is totally worth it. Without key measurable objectives and goals, it is difficult to measure ROI or benefit of a campaign on the results of your business. This is why it is important to define and communicate objectives and to build insights from past campaigns into the planning process for future campaigns. Following through on this advice will help you minimize waste and maximize returns on your digital marketing efforts. Thanks so much for coming to us at LEVEL 11 Online Marketing to learn more about the awesome world of digital marketing! If you have questions, comment here or go to the contact tab. Success in Search Engine Marketing (SEM), otherwise known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, requires a great deal of knowledge and experience. That's not to say that it's impossible to figure it out if it isn't in your background, but it certainly isn't something you can pick up in a day. Here's a few things that you need to know about SEM that will help you to begin to understand it better:
1 – IT'S COMPLICATED The first thing to know about SEM/PPC is that it's no simple endeavor. There's some excellent study materials here, and of course our team here at Level 11 loves to help people learn about it, but honestly, there are many things that you'll need to know and understand in order to know how to make the most of your SEM efforts. 2 – IT'S A SCIENCE Knowing how to find AND interpret data is critical to SEM success. Any PPC campaign can have hundreds and even thousands of moving parts, and knowing how to make everything work together for your good requires a lot of work with numbers. Drilling down on the details will be the key to your PPC success. 3 – IT REQUIRES MAINTENANCE SEM is constantly evolving and requires babysitting. There is no "set it and forget it" solution. Not only is technology constantly evolving (there's constantly big news from Google and others about PPC and the tools involved), but even your PPC campaigns will require regular (weekly at the very least) maintenance in order to optimize the investment you have in SEM. This is a huge reason behind the management fees that are typical with running PPC campaigns - success requires constant upkeep. 4 – GOOGLE IS THE PLACE TO START In the world of search, Google is the elephant in the room, and so Google AdWords is the place to start. Reports vary, but Google has about 2/3 of the market share, and Bing is in second place with nearly 1/3 of the market. This means that if you need to do something somewhere, Google is almost always the answer. However, some search traffic does admittedly trend more heavily towards Bing, so as always, check the data before doing anything. 5 – NOT ALL MANAGERS REAP EQUAL RESULTS PPC management is not commoditizable. What this means is that if you were to give your budget to 10 different managers, you'd get 10 very different results. In taking over management for some clients, we've seen thousands of dollars in budget completely wasted on horrible targeting and irrelevant keywords, and we've seen click-thru-rates (CTR) that were far below the average across Google. For comparison, Level 11 often achieves a CTR for our clients that is about 500-800% higher than the average across Google. We really are quite good at what we do. 6 – IT BRINGS YOU NEW, QUALIFIED TRAFFIC A well-executed PPC campaign brings you traffic that likely wasn’t even looking for you specifically, and because you can establish parameters for qualification, you can know that the traffic coming to you already has a high likelihood of converting to paying customers. Would you rather spend your day talking with 100 random people in hopes that a handful will buy from you? Or is it more worthwhile to spend your day talking with 10 people that are vetted and ready to make a purchase? That's what effective PPC does for you. 7 – THE LITTLE THINGS MATTER As the saying goes, the devil is in the details. An Ad that you create on AdWords, for example, only has so many characters you can use and so many extensions you can use. Knowing exactly what you want to say and what you want prospective customers to do means you need to be very judicious with everything you say and do. Again, this is why we excel at Level 11 - we've established processes that ensure efficiency and maximize customer engagement, leading to more money for our clients. 8 – IT CAN BE INEXPENSIVE All different forms of online advertising come with very different costs. SEM can be an excellent way to dip your toe into the water and start figuring out what works. It certainly is possible to achieve measurable success from a PPC campaign using only a small budget. 9 – IT CAN BE EXPENSIVE All due respect to #8, but the primary objective of PPC is to make money, which means that if you perform well with a small budget, you'd be silly to not increase that budget. When you know you're netting significant income from a specific marketing effort, and it's all proportional, would you not be inclined to keep growing? You know you have a well-executed PPC campaign when you want to keep increasing your budget. 10 – INDEPENDENT THRID PARTY AUDITS HELP Just to ensure that everything is doing as well as it should, an audit can be very helpful. Having performed audits for many clients, we come across areas of potential improvement often. Similar to having an outside accounting firm audit your books, a PPC audit can be helpful in making sure that everything is in ship shape. 11 – IT IS CONSIDERED TO BE THE BEST FORM OF SEO Effective SEO takes time, as you can see here and here. That being said, many thought leaders in the industry have said that PPC is now the best form of SEO. Being trackable and extremely targetable, PPC has many strengths that can truly help you increase traffic to your site, and ultimately increase your revenues, immediately. Yes, SEM can be very complicated, but it can be a huge boost to your bottom line today. Luckily, we're RIGHT HERE ready to help you! About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns. If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!  If you've ever wanted to get into pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to drive traffic to your website, you've certainly heard about or used Google's PPC tools. There are two very different platforms that Google offers to manage PPC, so the question most ask themselves is often, "should I use Google Adwords or AdWords Express?"
What is AdWords Express? Google's AdWords Express platform is a stripped-down, simplified version of Google AdWords. In Google’s words, “AdWords Express is an advertising option for businesses that want to get started quickly. It’s ideal for business owners who don’t have a lot of time to manage their online advertising.” If you are strapped for time and money, as most business owners are, this probably sounds like a great deal. You quickly set up a few things and let Google handle the rest. Like anything else, though, there are some significant trade-offs. No Experience Necessary? When AdWords Express first came out, one of the key selling points was that businesses did not need any marketing experience to be successful. Google seems to have backed off that idea, instead now focusing on how quickly you can get your campaign up and running (kinda the same thing, though, huh). While you can certainly do just what Google promises - take only 15 minutes to set up AdWords Express and have an online advertising campaign - the real question is, does it actually work? If you had no understanding of investments and retirement strategy, managing your nest egg alone could cost you a fortune. If you don't know how to work on a car, yet try to overhaul your transmission, you're just going to end up with busted knuckles and an even more expensive repair. Gambling your advertising campaign on 15 minutes of setup can be just as costly and just as frustrating when the results are not what you expected. AdWords Express may be a quick way to get started - it's the EASY button of PPC - but your conversion rate will never be as high as it could be unless you invest the serious time it takes to gain an intimate understanding of the fundamentals of search engine marketing (which takes the same amount of time regardless of the platform you use). The Trade-Offs of Express Once you begin to understand how Google AdWords works, and the various factors that can dramatically affect your conversions, you will begin to realize the inherent limitations of the AdWords Express platform. The full version of AdWords allows you to create and manage your own keyword list, adjust your bids for individual keywords, organize your keywords and ads into tightly grouped themes, and create custom landing pages to maximize the number of leads and sales you generate from your ad campaign. Full AdWords also gives you more targeting options, retargeting capabilities, and multiple ad types. All of these factors work together to improve your conversion rate, so it is best to retain control of them rather than allowing Google to automate the process (more on this later). Conversion Tracking One of the most compelling reasons to choose AdWords rather than AdWords Express is analytics and conversion tracking. AdWords provides several tools to track conversions like phone calls, contact form submissions, and online sales. Conversion tracking is important because it allows you to calculate the return on investment from your advertising campaign (this is a capability that sets this type of advertising apart from all others - the most robust ROI tracking ever). Website traffic and ad impressions are important to measure, but knowing when a click is leading to a sale is invaluable knowledge. Not only does regular AdWords provide a ridiculous amount of feedback and data (so much so that it makes AdWords Express look embarrassing), but your AdWords account can be linked to your Google Analytics account, which provides even more data on the traffic you're generating. AdWords Express does not provide conversion tracking. It reports on ad clicks and ad impressions, but there is no way to determine how many of those clicks converted into leads or sales. That should be a deal breaker for any business owner, knowing just how precious a marketing budget can be. Campaign Migration It is tempting for time-strapped local business owners to begin with an AdWords Express campaign with plans to switch over to the full version of AdWords at a later time. There's a problem with this ideah, however: there isn't a way to change an existing AdWords Express campaign to an AdWords campaign (or vice versa). You can build a new AdWords campaign from the ground up, but you can't migrate any existing data. Rather than taking the time to set up and run an AdWords Express campaign, only to completely rebuild it using AdWords, it just seems logical to set up the campaign you actually want from the beginning. Optimizing for conversions with either of the two platforms really entails the same learning curve, and AdWords provides much more robust customization and tracking features. AdWords Express is not necessarily a bad product, but its limitations make it a poor choice for business owners who want to maximize their ROI. Do It Right The First Time We often are called on to consult new clients on their PPC efforts, generally after they gave it the old college try themselves, or after they went with the brother of a friend who builds websites in his spare time. In any instance, lack of an intimate understanding of PPC and AdWords has led to untold wasted dollars (here's a case study of $10,000 in wasted dollars). In the hundreds of accounts we have audited, there have literally only ever been TWO that didn't really have room for immediate improvement. Besides those two, every other one (including those being managed by so-called "PPC management agencies" that considered themselves the gurus of the industry) was mis-managed. A popular saying is "if you don't have time to do it right the first time, when will you have time to fix it right?" If you've got a feeling that PPC could be right for you (and it is easily the wisest place to start with marketing for the majority of businesses and organizations), we need to talk. Don't let yourself fall prey to the hazards of the DIY mentality. We're always glad to offer our expertise and skills in making your marketing budget do all it can for you (and if pinching pennies is what you do, just know that it's always way cheaper for us to manage it for you instead of hiring in-house PPC managers - just one more way to boost your ROI). About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns. If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today! In general, businesses that advertise through traditional methods (TV, radio, print, etc.) do so for a number of reasons - they have a very broad audience, it’s what the prior generations of business owners have done, they haven’t had time to learn/understand digital advertising, they're skeptical of digital advertising, etc.
Regardless of the reason, it’s important to know just how to evaluate where you are and what method(s) of advertising are going to be right for you. The purpose of this blog is to help you get started in evaluating whether it’s truly optimal for you to continue with traditional advertising methods, or if you should look to make a shift to digital. EVALUATING YOUR AUDIENCE We often encounter business owners who truly believe that “everyone” needs their product. The truth is, there is always an alternative to your product, even if that alternative is simply going without your product. Begin the process of analyzing your ideal audience by identifying the specific characteristics that can be attributed to your audience. If your most worthwhile customers have a net worth of over $100,000, that drastically shrinks potential audience. Sometimes you should be targeting families with children in elementary school. Again, we’ve shrunk your potential audience. Doing this over and over will help you to build what’s called your “buyer persona,” which is the person you need your marketing to reach most effectively. Throw assumptions out the window, because they may cause you to miss out on opportunities – for example, YouTube currently reaches more 18-49-year-olds than any cable network in the US on its mobile app alone, with an average viewing session of over 40 minutes… if you thought that running ads on ESPN would give you the best reach to those ages, you clearly shortchanged yourself and limited your reach. RECOMMENDATION: Digital Advertising is excellent for reaching an audience that’s well-defined. If your audience is active online, or if people seek your service on-demand (like a lawyer, a tow truck, or something else you Google), there’s no more budget friendly and ROI-optimized option than digital. YOU DON’T HAVE TIME TO LEARN It’s easy to understand why your business is still advertising like it’s 1999. Ultimately, you do what you are familiar with, and if you’ve always advertised on the radio, it can be really easy to just keep going with that. Sometimes, you’re just doing what you do because it’s how your parents or grandparents advertised when they were running the show, and you just don’t have time to figure out what else you could do with your marketing budget. First off, you need to account for all of your current marketing efforts. You can’t improve anything until you’ve effectively figured out what you’re actually doing. Once you have a full accounting of your current efforts, it’s time to actually take the time to learn. There’s no way to hack this – to improve your marketing, you need to invest some of your attention. It could be helpful to ask some of your peers what they do and why. Make sure you’re seeking advice from those people who clearly are with the times and have dabbled in modern advertising techniques (you don’t take money advice from people who are broke, so don’t take marketing advice from people who don’t know what’s out there today). There are numerous audiobooks that are full of wisdom that will help you get a better understanding about what you can do to grow your business today, and self-educating yourself will help you astronomically. RECOMMENDATION: A little shameless self-promotion here… We’re from a background of not only marketing, but business development consulting. We love to teach, and we clearly know a lot about online marketing. We also stay abreast of all the developments that are always happening in this field, so we are always current and have a good feel for what’s in store for the future. The FASTEST and EASIEST way for you to learn about digital advertising is by talking to us. Let us answer your questions and help you figure out what, if any, new methods of advertising could be wise for you to explore and utilize. YOU’RE SKEPTICAL A lot of people look at digital marketing as voodoo magic. You’ve maybe been burned in the past by snake oil salesmen making empty promises, or perhaps it makes so little sense that you can’t place any confidence in it. The thing is, YOU’RE RIGHT. Yes, there are oodles of so-called “experts” out there that are really as smart as a box of rocks, and they just happen to be good salesmen that have no idea how to actually deliver results for you. We’ve seen enough horror stories to know that not all digital marketers are created equally. And yes, if digital marketing doesn’t make sense, you certainly can never be confident in investing in it. The best way to overcome your skepticism is by learning. As detailed earlier, there are tons of ways you can gain a more in-depth knowledge of social media, digital video advertising, PPC/SEM, SEO, etc. The more you educate yourself, the better you’ll be able to evaluate potential marketing opportunities in the future. RECOMMENDATION: A huge difference between us and other digital marketers is that we employ no sleight of hand and strive to ensure you know what we’re doing. We want you to understand what we’re doing, so we teach you and answer every question to make sure you truly get it. We also are transparent in our efforts. You don’t have to rely on anecdotal evidence to know if things are working – we show you the data and show you everything we are doing. In a sense, we’re terrible poker players because you ALWAYS see the cards. You don’t even have to pay a dollar to know if we will work out for you – we will dig into the data before doing anything to see if and where opportunity exists, then explain what we’d do and what would be the likely result of our efforts. You can talk to our current and past clients to see what their experiences were like, and surely they’ll be raving fans too, because we go out of our way to ensure that every concern is addressed and every effort is optimized. We’re disrupting the field of digital marketing by telling our clients what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and what will come of it, from the very first moment we connect with them. No recommendation could be as strong as this: talk to us, and soon you’ll know more than you ever have and you’ll trust us so much that you’ll go out of your way to refer all of your acquaintances to us. About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns. If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!  Everybody loves a cautionary tale. This is a brief lesson to illustrate how AdWords Express works and how it can all go wrong.
In an ideal setting, AdWords Express is an excellent tool. As we explained here, Google created it to be an easy way to do PPC with little knowledge of the nuts and bolts of PPC. The trouble is that it relies on Google's ability to determine what your website is actually about, and by so doing, Google creates its own keyword list. The inherent problem with this is that most websites are not ready for this because 1) they're built/coded incorrectly so Google can't actually "read" the content of the site, and/or 2) the content of the site is irrelevant to the actual purpose of the site (yes that happens). A client of ours (for other services, not including PPC at the time), a new car dealer, created an AdWords Express campaign a few months before we met. Just like it's supposed to do, the AdWords Express machine skimmed the client's website and determined which keywords to target and where to serve ads to (geographically). This is where it all went wrong. As is typical, AdWords Express generated a list that had an OK percentage of truly relevant search terms, such as specific car models, etc. However, this list was totally bogged down by completely irrelevant search terms (keep in mind, we're selling NEW cars here) such as "big a** trucks," "RV hauler," "1954 Ford Truck Parts," and "military surplus." To make matters worse, this car dealer, located in northern Utah, was paying to serve these ads to areas completely outside of its market. We're talking to areas bordering Nebraska, Arizona, and Canada. The geography was grossly overextended. AdWords Express was working exactly as designed here, yet there were clear instances of waste. Upon auditing the campaign, we discovered that over 98% of the budget had been COMPLETELY wasted. For a small business, their budget had just bled out about $10,000 in precious marketing dollars. This highlights several important lessons about AdWords in general. First, an intimate understanding of the ins and outs of search engine marketing is critical to success and limited waste. Second, assuming that 15 minutes of work is enough to achieve the success of your business' marketing plan is a huge gamble. And third, there is no substitute for experience. After reporting the results of our audit, we were immediately tasked with fixing the hemmoraging AdWords problem. We instantly turned things around, and the results showed in the results: the client began setting monthly sales records, and the metrics of the PPC were outstanding (500-800% better click-thru-rates over what's average across ALL of Google's PPC ads). The $10,000 lesson was a significant one: sustainable success comes only when you surround yourself with people who are experts at what they do. Special Note: We are always happy to do a free, comprehensive audit of your PPC campaigns. Contact us and we'll dig into the data for you to show you exactly how you're doing. About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns. If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!  Marketing isn't just billboards and television anymore. The internet has become a part of daily life for people everywhere, and now serves as the primary source for gathering information and looking for products and services. We are here to help you turn the internet into the greatest asset you've ever had for lead generation and business growth. Here's 11 more amazing facts about Google AdWords:
CLICK HERE to learn more about our Search Engine Marketing services. About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns. If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today!  Search Engine Marketing is all about connecting you with people that are looking for you, even if they don't even know anything about you yet. You can spend every cent you have on your website, but it serves you no purpose if nobody knows your website is there. Search Engine Marketing is all about getting people to your site. The juggernaut of SEM is Google AdWords, and our teammembers are AdWords Certified and are incredibly successful at helping organizations of all sizes achieve tremendous ROI from their SEM investments. Here's 11 amazing facts about AdWords:
CLICK HERE to learn more about our Search Engine Marketing services. About us: Level 11 Online Marketing is a fast growing digital advertising agency that is becoming known for disrupting the status quo. We specialize in digital advertising, video production, SEO, SEM, advanced analytics, custom web solutions via website design & implementation, social media strategies and conversion optimization. Headquartered in Utah, you will find Level 11 team members in Utah, Washington, California, Idaho, and Colorado. We have the best creative minds in the industry backed up by the most talented software developers and video production teams which leads to powerful, efficient advertising campaigns. If you have questions, comment here or email us at info@level11.io today! CLICK HERE to learn more about our Search Engine Marketing services. |
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