Google recently rolled out its new “Google Instant” in the U.S. with more countries to come. How will this affect small businesses, especially those advertising online?
First, what is Instant Search? For awhile now, when you start a search at google.com they will add suggestions as you type in your search query. With Instant Search Google will actually start producing results as you type, supposedly saving 2-5 seconds on your search.
One of the main reasons for this launch may be because Google is expanding into mobile search. Any saving of time or typing can be a big advantage there.
But for small businesses, it appears that the first results that Google posts are for mostly major brands. Of course, they may show up at the top of the list after a complete entry, but Google Instant may be changing the behavior of the searchers.
iCrossing came up with a list of single letter results, like I for Ikea, J for Jet Blue, L for Lowes, etc. Your results may be different depending on your location and past search behavior, but here’s what I mean…
While Google says its final results will be the same, I’m worried that searchers will be clicking on major brands before the whole search phrase is completed. Why? Because Google is “predicting” what the user wants.
So, if you are doing business online, you may see some lessening in your organic click-throughs and even variations in your impressions if you are using Adwords, which Google talks about in more detail here.
Try Google Instant yourself and see what results you get. Keep an eye on your stats and see if I’m right..
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Today Google announced new features it will be adding to Google Analytics in the near future. Google Analytics is its tool for use with Adwords accounts to learn which online marketing initiatives are cost effective and see how visitors actually interact with your site.
The first is two new goals available for tracking – time on site and pages per visit. With more and more businesses trying to track “engagement” in addition to plain numbers of visits they try to make their sites more inviting to visitors.
Google is also expanding mobile reporting. Previously, Google was only able to track mobile devices using Javascript but now you’ll be able to track traffic to your mobile website from all web-enabled devices, whether or not the device runs JavaScript. Continue reading .
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In both Internet marketing and offline marketing, it’s best to limit the number of choices offered at the same time. This applies to both products and services.
In a recent article called Focus Your Marketing Plan the author was helping an entrepreneur who had been in business for 15 years.
…he showed me the company brochure, which listed ten different, unrelated services that his company provided.
He just thought the more services he offered his clients, the more business he would generate. Unfortunately, he just neglected to consider how trying to do too many things for too many different types of clients would dilute his efforts.
I remember an old story about Soviet Russian visitors coming to America and, when going to a grocery store, being flabbergasted at the number of choices offered. They were used to standing in line for one item, like shoes or beets. These people would spend hours shopping because they couldn’t make a decision.
It’s true. Go grocery shopping and you have lo-cal, lo-fat, sugar-free, low sodium, gluten free, fortified, all natural, organic, Fair Trade Certified, and that’s before you get to specific brands. Hell, look at the choices for chewing gum in the checkout lane.
Continue reading .
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The most common way of getting income through advertising is with Google Adsense, but it’s not one we recommend. A couple of years ago Google split its advertising fees (Google Adwords) between ‘search’ and ‘content’ advertising, the first for Google’s search page and the second for sites with Adsense.
The fees Google charges for Adsense ads have gone way down, meaning you have to have tons of traffic that click on Adsense ads to make any money – and I mean TONS of traffic. You would do better to charge fees to advertisers directly for space on your site or blog.
For example, let’s say you have a site on dog training with Google Adsense. Someone selling dog food can use content ads, even picking your specific site for their ads, and be charged 10 or 15 cents per click. Of that, you get less than a nickel per click.
That means to make $1000 you need 20,000 click-throughs, which at a relatively high click-throughs rate of 3% means you would make $1000 for every 666,666 visitors. A more realistic CTR of 2% means $1000 for every MILLION visitors.
As I said, we don’t recommend Google Adsense.
Another option is to solicit paid ads directly from online sellers. You can have them pay per ad or pay per lead (click-throughs). So, let’s say you charge $40/month for an ad on your site/blog and another $20/month for an ad in your weekly newsletter and you find 7 advertisers. That’s $420/month or around $5000/year from one site. It beats trying to get 5 million visitors a year through Google Adsense.
As your number of site visitors and mail list recipients increases you can charge more for advertising, and/or create more sites.
Advertising can work as a sideline to products, even affiliate products, on your site, but I’ve found that after all the work to get a visitor to one of my sites, I don’t want them clicking away from it unless I make more than a nickel..
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I’m often asked “What’s the difference between marketing and advertising?”. To put it simply advertising is a piece of your marketing strategy.
Marketing starts with your prospective customer – who they are, where they are and what they want. What problems do they have that need a solution?
Marketing includes:
- Market research, including
- Customer research
- Competition research
- Sales strategy
- Pricing
- Sales copy – add audio? video?
- Specials/discounts/coupons?
- Bonuses?
- Upsells
- Advertising
- Branding – promote corporate name
- Public/Media relations
- General ads – TV, radio, banner ads
- Targeted ads – search engine ads, mail list, other newsletters/ezines
- Testing/tracking
- Product distribution – collecting the money and shipping the product
- Customer feedback/support
For example, you’ve started an online business, done the research, found keywords that relate to your prospective customers and set up a Google Adwords account. Now you write a 3 line ad that brings people to your sales page.
Advertising is just a small part of your overall marketing plan. The great thing about online advertising is that you can target your ads. When a car company pays $100,000 to run a single ad on TV, 97% of the viewers aren’t interested in buying a new car.
When someone types “new car prices” into a search engine the odds are MUCH greater that they are looking to actually buy a car and you can have an advertisement in front of them for under $1.
That’s why Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research says their latest forecast shows digital advertising almost doubling in the next 5 years (2009-2014).
Sign up as a Home Office Small Business Member and we’ll show you how to set up your marketing strategy..
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A question arose on Google Adwords’ policy toward the URL you use in your paid ads. Does it have to link to your site or can you use an affiliate link? It used to be that you could use your link and have the visitor end up at an affiliate’s web site.
I tracked down the policy statement on Google’s blog.
Essentially, the link you use in your Adwords ad HAS to end up at that domain.
yourdomain.com/page.html
subdomain.yourdomain.com/page.html
yourdomain.com/directory/page.html
You can use a tracking link in between, but the visitor has to end up on the top level domain that’s used in your ad.
So, your ad can say keyword.yourdomain.com and end up at yourdomain.com/landingpage.html, as long as it’s the same top level domain.
But, in another example, if you are using a redirect for misspellings from say, mydomane.com to mydomain.com, mydomane.com in the ad is not allowed.
I recommend “preselling” the product with your own landing page rather than linking directly to the affiliate web site. A little work can make a big difference in conversions.
Plus, Google only allows one Adwords ad per search query to the same domain, so if the company you’re promoting is running ads or other affiliates are running ads, you may be out of luck with your directly linked affiliate ads.
Paul
Further Reading:
Google Adwords Linking Policy.
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