A Weekenders USA coordinator tip sheet for search engine marketing.

A Weekenders USA coordinator tip sheet for search engine marketing.

Do you feel one day older than you felt back when champaign corks were flying, at the turn of this year. Can you account for where all the days have gone? Why heck, can you believe that 192 days have passed since the beginning of the 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 marketing drive is just not keeping the beat?

Do you market to women? It's important to note that the e-commerce gender gap appears to be widening, as more women opened their purse strings than men last quarter: the percentage of online purchases made by women reached 62 percent in the fourth quarter with men accounting for just 38 percent of transactions. (BizRate 2004)

With 173 days remaining in 2005, imagine how much different your business would be if you could get even a single "interested" visitor EVERY OTHER DAY to come to your site.

If you're asking "Tell me the secret? (because everything else I've tried has flopped)." 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 the pay per click road to traffic generation.

Search engine marketing will grow by 33% this year, with growth slowing to 10% annually by 2010, when spending will hit $11.6 billion. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)

In the U.S., Canada, UK or most any internet savvy country you'll discover 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 Weekenders USA coordinator, I think it's more challenging for people like me?

Maybe you are thinking that "some things" sell online but not your women's clothing. 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):

Tips for your PPC campaign:

• If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
• Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.
  
  Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
• Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.

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 Weekenders USA interesting or helpful.

Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips... Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


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Weekenders USA | PPC | pay per click | AdWords | marketing | search | retail statistics | marketing statistics | sales statistics