A Fifth Avenue Collection jeweller 'cheat sheet' for success with search engine marketing.

A Fifth Avenue Collection jeweller 'cheat sheet' for success with search engine marketing.

Are you telling me that 192 days have passed since the beginning of this year?

As if racing off for next year's cork popping celebration, 2005 is rapidly marching on, yet for may web entrepreneurs few visitors are marching over to see what's up. Are they marching to a different drummer or is it that your traffic generation strategy is just not keeping the beat?

Do you sell jewelry? Retailers expect fast growth in jewelry and luxury goods for 2005, up 31%. (Source: Shop.org/Forrester 05/2005) VeriSign said that online jewelry purchases have increased by 79 percent.

With 173 days remaining in 2005, imagine how much different your business would be if you could get a marketing plan implemented that dropped dozens of targeted prospects and visitors to your web doorstep each and every week.

If you're asking "Help, help, how do I do this?" Maybe a little internet advertising is in order? Seems that's what a lot of successful online marketers are doing. And of all the methods out there, nothing seems to beat setting up a little search engine listing under keywords matching your niche audience and pay on a "per click" basis as they arrive at your site.

Of funds budgeted for search engine marketing this year, marketers said they would spend 51% on paid search ads, 6% on paid inclusion, 10% on contextual ads, 12% on search marketing agency fees for paid search, 11% on search marketing agency fees for optimization, and 11% on other areas of search marketing. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)

From New York to L.A. you'll find stories and statistics that prove "it can be done". Yes, online sales are happening. Reports are continuing, sales are up, and the drum beats on.

51 percent of small business owners report that the Internet has improved their profitability, 58 percent said the internet has helped their businesses grow or expand. (ACNielsen, 2004)

But I'm A Fifth Avenue Collection jeweller, I think it's another story in my situation?

Maybe you are thinking that "some things" sell online but not your jewelry. Nothing could be further from the truth. In most cases, it is not the product or service that hinders a sale, it boils down to traffic, strategy and page presentation. Whether you advertise using Google's AdWords, or do pay-per-click at Overture, Yahoo or MSN search, it's the campaign strategy that's important.

In my previous blog entries (last week and the week prior) we started our series of PPC search engine tips. These tips will unquestionanly help your marketing campaign and hopefully put some of the statistics on your side. Ready or not, here they come. This weeks PPC tips to make you rich and famous (well perhaps that's stretching it a bit):

PPC Tips:

• Sometimes people type in web addresses in those search boxes! So bid on those if the search engine allows it: 'www.website.com', 'website.com', 'http://website.com' and every combination full or partial you think a searcher might actually type.
• Match up keywords with words in your ad copy. Even though a 'spa', a 'hot tub', and a 'whirlpool' might mean the same thing in your mind, if a searcher types in 'hot tub' and your listing says: "Relax and save in your new Spa", you will miss out on many interested customers.
• Think negative... yes, people search for herbs that can kill, plastic surgery pitfalls, mlm scams and sundry other peculiar things. Invite them to explore your related listing. Do you offer cosmetics or skin car as an alternative to plastic surgery? Is you mlm a beacon of light in a sea of seemingly dubious scams?
• Get creative with interest spikes in the news. 'Mad Cow' might be a great keyword for your all vegetarian product line. The 'SARS' outbreak might have generated millions of searches that your 'immunity booster' could have benefited from (just don't make any false claims). And where were all the bra ads when a gazillion people typed in 'Janet Jackson' after the 2004 Super Bowl surprise?

Check back over my last two blog posts for the first and second set in this series of PPC search engine tips.

In addition, I've written a many 'how-to' articles specifically to help get your internet marketing strategy on-track. You might find these internet marketing articles for Fifth Avenue Collection interesting or helpful.

To make certain you don't miss this series of PPC tips, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed.


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Fifth Avenue Collection | PPC | pay per click | AdWords | marketing | search | retail statistics | marketing statistics | sales statistics