What’s so Special About Search Marketing???

[thejenn]

Authored by: Scott Gardner

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/gardner/006414.html

A Snippet:

As high-speed Internet adoption continues to increase on American soil and as Google, Yahoo, MSN and others continue the race for international dominance, the value of search engines is destined to become greater for companies competing in the online marketplace.

[mouse_man]

A good article, and I do agree with much of what was said..

I have some acception to the yellow pages cost. The survey, I am pretty sure, was comparing the printed yellow pages not Internet on_line yellow pages.

The yellow page growth is tremendous and at a point will, in my opinion, be the vehicle of choice for businesses large and small. The reason is they are more effective tool for the consumer looking for a business in their location.

Short example: You decide on pizza for dinner. Do you do to Google or Yahoo and search for pizza in your town?

You would get much better results clicking on a yellow page search looking for "pizza".. the results would yield the closest location to your address and go as far as you want... most listings are complete with maps, phone number, email address, web address, and some are evening going to a rating service.

The same is true for anything you need local. On_line yellow pages wins hands down over the search engines.

Now it is true if you are doing “research” the search engines may be a better choice than the yellow pages, but for businesses give me the on_line yellow pages, and many national businesses and local businesses are recognizing this and finding it more effective with a better ROI.

For the small business there is no comparison between the two.. of course this is my opinion based on my personal experience.

A business can add their email and website at no additional cost (most on_line yellow pages).. then for the business that does not have a listing they can create one at no cost.

Then does a local business offering products and services want to compete for top listing for sporting goods in a search engine?? Now many listing are found in Google when searching for “sporting goods” in Dallas? (over 6 million), and most of the top listings are yellow pages not sporting goods businesses. Then throw in some “unrelated” listings that got there because of a good SEO effort.

Now do the same search using an on_line yellow page and you are given closest to your location, and a selection of categories to be more specific. This is where a business would have a better ROI on the traffic hitting their listing because it is specific to product/service and location.

I offer my comment because it was clear to me that the survey done by “Georgia Tech” does not understand the Internet Yellow Pages..

Anyway I hope my comments have helped… this is an interesting topic.

[Logan]

Good post!

For reference here are some of online local/yellow page advertising locations to get started -

Super Pages
https://my.superpages.com/spweb/port...geLabel=bp_all

-- free business listing
-- free business profile

InfoUSA
http://list.infousa.com/dbupdate.htm

YellowPages.com
http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/advertise/

Google Local
https://www.google.com/local/add/login?hl=en-US&gl=US

City Search
https://selfenroll.citysearch.com/

Local.com
http://www.local.com/bot.htm

[mouse_man]

The ones you menitioned are all good, and I would like to add my personal favorite.

http://www.411locate.com/add_list.htm

On this page there are options to ADD you listing to Superpages (#1 in my book), and also update/remove your personal residental listing in three of the major databases of the web.

Also you can add your site to the 411 Locate search engine network, and if the website is found relevant it is placed in the featured listings (top 5).

I think (dangerous) that SEO's should put more emphasis on the yellow pages with their clients, clients would more than likely pay them a fee to list for them. It is free of course just like most search engines, but there is a comfort factor in knowing a professional did it for you.

Additional thoughts

[St0n3y]

Short example: You decide on pizza for dinner. Do you do to Google or Yahoo and search for pizza in your town?

You would get much better results clicking on a yellow page search looking for "pizza".. the results would yield the closest location to your address and go as far as you want... most listings are complete with maps, phone number, email address, web address, and some are evening going to a rating service.

I'm more prone to use google local search or Yahoo local search than anything else.

[pirena]

I agreee with the article and most of it's content is true. Using a search engine nowadays is very popular when it comes to online marketing.


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[johntabita]

This might sound strange coming from someone in my profession, but there's nothing inherently "special" about search engine marketing. IMO, the author has taken some overall useful information and turned it into the typical hype that surrounds much of the "mystique" regarding web marketing. Quoting stats like "4 billion searches conducted each month" is completely meaningless. The real statistic to be concerned with is, "How many of those 4 billion+ searches each month are looking for someone like me?" If the answer is "zero," then there's absolutely nothing special about search engine marketing - at least not for your business.

The article concludes with, "Your customers are searching for you...are they finding you?" I certainly hope they're searching for you, but where are they searching for you? is the real question to ask. The bottom line is, you need to market in whatever medium the majority of your customers are using to look for you.

One of my clients spends 6 figures annually on their Yellow Page ads. A few years ago, they thought they might be able to reduce or eliminate that expense with a website and search engine marketing campaign. A few months into it, they seemed to lose their enthusiasm, and the project ground to a halt. I found out later that the VP of Marketing decided to test her assumptions. Her research revealed that 90 to 95 percent of their customers find them in the Yellow Pages, not online. Switching to online advertising would have been disastrous for them.

Comparing cost per new customer for search engine optimization ($8.50) to Yellow Pages ($20) and other forms of advertising is irrelevant. The issue is return on investment, not cost per new customer. My client is better off paying $20 per customer for a Yellow Page ad that yields 95 customers, than $8.50 for SEO that gets them 5 or less customers.

Also, don't confuse online Yellow Page ads with search engine marketing. You can place one of these ads without doing a search engine marketing campaign, and for a fraction of the cost.

Back in the Day, the general opinion was that the Internet will replace all of your print advertisment. This assumed there was a mass migration of people moving from looking for information in print to using the Internet instead. While it's true that there's a general migration taking place, the migration is far from complete. Just like email, cell phones, fax machines and pagers didn't replace the previous technology, we now have multiple ways to market. Whether the web will completely replace print - or whether there will always be computer-illiterate people who prefer to shop in the newspaper and Yellow Pages - remains to be seen. Until then, forget about the Internet being some kind of "silver bullet" and simply market wherever the majority of your customers are looking for you.

[Pete_Wailes]

I agree with the above post. SE marketing is great, but only if your customers are coming looking for you using that medium. You need to understand how you customer base thinks, and then tailor your marketing to them. It doesn't matter if you have a number 1 listing in Google, MSN and Yahoo! if your customers aren't looking for you on the engines.

Knowledge is key. Know how people are looking for you, and what they're looking for, you'll make money.

Pete W
PWB Solutions

[St0n3y]

Johntabita, while there is nothing necessarily incorrect about what you stated I would like to provide some additional clarifications.

Her research revealed that 90 to 95 percent of their customers find them in the Yellow Pages, not online. Switching to online advertising would have been disastrous for them.

This is quite possibly a very bad assumption. While it may be true that 95% find them via yellowpages, it's quite possible that less than 10% are finding them online simply because they have not yet invested advertising dollars there. I cold make a statement that I get 95% of my business online so it would be a mistake to advertise in the yellow pages, on the radio, on tv, etc. If I'm not in the yellow pages it makes sense that this is why I'm not getting any traffic from it.

I would not recommend anybody do an immediate switch from one form of marketing to another. It's always best to market in multiple places. If Yellow pages are working, great. Keep that and start marketing elsewhere and see how effective it really is. To simply shut one down in favor of another untested method (for them) is simply foolish.

Comparing cost per new customer for search engine optimization ($8.50) to Yellow Pages ($20) and other forms of advertising is irrelevant. The issue is return on investment, not cost per new customer. My client is better off paying $20 per customer for a Yellow Page ad that yields 95 customers, than $8.50 for SEO that gets them 5 or less customers.

Actually, the client gets a HIGHER return on investment if they pay $8.50 per customer over $20 per customer, regardless of how many customers are achieved. That's true ROI. But I believe your point is that it's better to pay the $20/per for many more than $8.50 per for only a few, on the basis that more customers is better for business. But what if you could pay $8.50/customer and get 1000 new customers over the 95 via yellow pages? Would that not be a better investment? Of course it would, but it all goes back to investing in search marketing first just to see what it yields. Do research and see how many people ARE looking for you or what you offer and use that to determine if it will drive enough traffic to the site and produce enough customers. It might not... but then it certainly might, which is what many are finding out.