Getting New Customers in a Recession

It's safe to say that most businesses are always looking to do more with less... and during the current economic crisis, this couldn't be more true. Companies want to generate new leads with less money and one of the primary ways they're doing this is through the Internet. More specifically, paid search advertising and search engine optimization have been critical factors in obtaining new customers.

In a recent eMarketer article, they state that search engine marketing is more relevant than ever before.

"It makes sense when you think about it. As tough times force many customers to buy less—and to be pickier about what they do buy—search is becoming ever more important to marketers." - eMarketer

The article highlights four primary areas to focus on 1.) paid search 2.) contextual advertising 3.) paid inclusion and 4.) search engine optimization

So what are these?

Paid search is more commonly known as Pay Per Click Advertising. Simply put, you only pay when a visitor clicks on your ad in a search engine and visits your site. The process is slightly more complicated than that - but that's it in a nutshell. You bid on the keywords and phrases your potential customers are searching for and your ad shows up in the search engine listings. If a visitor sees your ad and clicks in to visit your site, you owe the search engine however much it was that you bid for that keyword/phrase - example: $1.50/click.

Contextual advertising is a targeted form of advertising. Contextual advertising systems scan the copy of a site and input relevant ads based upon the keywords/phrases built in to the text of that site. An example is probably the easiest way to understand this one. A lot of our sports websites use Google AdSense to generate revenue. This is Google's platform for contextual advertising. This is an example from BuckNuts.com - a site for Ohio State sports fans.

Paid inclusion isn't really what I would consider a paid search marketing technique - but I guess it could be. This is where a search engine charges a fee to have a website indexed within it. Indexing a site means that when someone searches for it, it appears in the search engine listings. Both Google and Yahoo have free site submissions. This is a must for search engine optimization. However, there are also paid inclusions. Here is some information on Yahoo's.
The only item open here to still explain is search engine optimization... and I'm tempted to leave that to another day. However, a brief overview goes like this: SEO is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a website through natural or organic search results. So, you don't have to pay for placement. Overtime, you utilize a variety of SEO techniques to be seen at the top of the search listings for your keywords/phrases. So, where are organic/natural listings and how can I tell the difference? Those can be found below the sponsored links and are not highlighted or designed as "sponsored."

Some traditional SEO techniques include ensuring meta tags are input properly, optimizing content, images and links, creating an xml sitemap, submitting to directories, enhancing one way links and more.

For more info on search engine marketing, contact WSI.