Posts Tagged ‘search engine marketing’

American Express OPEN and Clickable Partner on Search Engine Marketing Tool for Local Businesses

Monday, June 28, 2010

Here’s an interesting story from last week that illustrates continued growth in the search engine marketing space, which is of increasing importance to local businesses across the country.

American Express OPEN is teaming up with Clickable, an online advertising solutions company, to introduce a simplified search engine advertising platform that provides local businesses with immediate, single point access to all major search engines—including Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft AdCenter—as well as Facebook Ads.

The tool, called SearchManager, allows businesses to more easily manage their search marketing campaigns across these leading search destinations in one centralized location. SearchManager will provide participating businesses with a dashboard summarizing key metrics and summary actions, with an analysis of results and advice on potential improvements.

This new partnership comes as Yellow Pages companies including The Berry Company and Yellow Pages Group introduce their own search marketing offerings for local businesses. I’m confident we can expect the announcement of additional services in the near future as more local businesses embrace opportunities to generate leads in the digital space.

More information on the new SearchManager offering is available here.

June 28, 2010 | Leave a Comment
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What’s the Goal – Brand Awareness or Sales?

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Greg Sterling talked this week on Search Engine Land about new SEMPO data on the state of search engine marketing.

I would agree with Greg’s take that one of the most interesting findings of the study was that respondents said “brand awareness” was the top goal of paid search. Last year, “sales” ranked first.

I would be interested to see how this varied by size of business among the 800 respondents.

I can understand where large companies might want to use search engine marketing to build brand awareness, but it almost seems counterintuitive that small businesses would rank branding more important than sales.

Branding is accomplished most effectively through mass media, not targeted media. And it’s something that’s usually of greater interest to larger size companies.

For small businesses, advertising strategy is generally centered on expanding sales and reaching motivated buyers. And in online advertising, the buzz is all about targeting based on location, demographics, or perceived interests of the user. That’s why our industry performs so well with small businesses, because we can reach highly targeted consumers online – consumers who are usually ready to buy.

April 15, 2009 | Leave a Comment
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