So, anything that can simplify a process without reducing its effectiveness too much should be considered, right? The questions below help you understand what kind of search engine marketing & advertising you need. For this discussion we will divide the options into two categories:

–Customized services provided by search engine marketing specialists
–Automated search packages re-sold by some credit card companies, conventional media companies, etc.

Disclosure: Topside Media is in the customized services category.

Here are questions to ask any provider of search engine related services

• Are they using an automated search platform for traffic?

If you don’t get a definitive “NO”, ask if they can:

• Let you experience the results month-to-month without having to sign a time based contract (This is a good question to ask all providers…)
• Provide you with written reports that clearly shows the percentage of clicks, conversions and cost of discovery searches (searchers who did not enter your company name and are looking for your type of service or products ) vs. recovery searches (people who searched for your company by name). If not, you may be buying your own goodwill and have no way to know how much. Note: there are some good reasons and best practices re: using your company name in keywords. You can learn more on this topic in our other blogs
• Tell you what percentage of your monthly budget purchased traffic to your website and what percentage was their commission, overhead, etc.
• Provide account structure, budget allocation, and reports that analyze your traffic and conversions by segments of your business (categories of your service or products, profit margins, geographic service areas or targets, etc.)
• Provide keyword and conversion data from PPC advertising that can be used to support your longer term SEO needs?
• Provide a breakdown of the quantity and quality of phone calls, including: duplicates from the same number, hang-ups, missed calls, length of call, recording of call, customized analysis
• Give a breakdown of how much traffic is search traffic from the major search engines and how much is contextual traffic or some other category
• If they are using contextual traffic, what kind of filters or controls are they using to see that your ads are appearing on websites that are a- appropriate for your company’s reputation and b- effective in producing online leads or purchases
• Provide customized geotargeting, such as areas other than DMAs or circle around one point.
• Increase, decrease, or pause your flow of traffic and monthly costs, based on your workflow and budget as they change
• Change the message or offers in your ads upon request. Examples: seasonal ads or different “dollars off” specials
• Include a phone number in your text ad. This works surprisingly well for some business categories

This is part 1 of a 2 (or more) part series. We will follow with questions to ask those who can create customized solutions.

Asking a caller how they learned about your company is often not reliable

There are two reasons: 1-Phone representatives often do not remember to do it for every call, especially when the next caller is holding. 2- Even if asked, many customers do not know the difference between an Internet search ad and an organic search result. The solution: tracking phone numbers that forward to your main telephone number.

How tracking telephone numbers work

Tracking numbers forward to the phone number you designate. During the forwarding process, tracking phone technology gathers useful marketing data. Tracking numbers come in both toll-free and local numbers that look similar to your phone number. With most tracking numbers, you have the option to record the conversation. Depending on the requirements of each state, one or more parties must be advised of the recording via an outgoing message.

Tracking phone numbers have long been used by some types of businesses, such as automobile dealers and in print advertising. They can also be coded or substituted dynamically into your website for tracking calls from multiple sources.

Clients need to know what happens to a tracking number when it is no longer actively used for advertising. It is useful to ask if the tracking number provider you are considering allows you the option to “port over” a phone number you have used. This simply means that you can “move” the tracking number to another phone service provider.

Tracking incoming calls to revenue

Your goal is more business and profits, not just more phone calls, right? Then you must understand the source and quality of incoming calls and how effectively your company is handling them. It’s that simple. Tracking calls combined with improved internal handling allows you to spend less to get the new customers and leads you need and at the time you need them. There are several ways to correlate incoming call data to customer acquisition and purchases. If the number of transactions is not too many, the comparison can be done manually with spreadsheets. If your business has many transactions monthly, you might need to aggregate leads into a lead management system or CRM. Having one system in which leads from all sources of conversions, such as online leads and off-line phone calls from your website, are collected has several time-saving advantages.

We look forward to your comments and questions.