The Grand Rapids Press
announced in yesterday's edition that they are making employee cuts and possibly future cuts to delivery in the coming months due to the "current economic climate." Publisher Day Gaydou had been keeping this under wraps but had to come clean with readers after the Ann Arbor News and other Booth Newspapers announced their cutbacks yesterday. The Ann Arbor Press is shuttering it's entire print organization just weeks after the Seattle Post-Intelligencer did the same.
What does this mean? Further evidence that newspaper readership is declining, and if you are a marketer still using print advertisements as your primary marketing channel while ignoring local search, then you are missing the boat.
Take this opportunity to reassess the ROI from all your marketing channels. Ask yourself if traditional media is achieving the objectives needed to be profitable.
Internet Marketing, be it Paid Search, Organic Search, Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc) and web portal advertising should be a key part if not the cornerstone of your marketing mix.
SEO (search engine optimzation) is most important though. There are endless reasons why search engine optimization must be implemented into your marketing strategy before you are left in the dust of your competition. Here are the top 5:
- Absence of risk. In many cases, paid advertising is subject to click fraud risk and competitor's black techniques (such as using software that would click your ads thousands of times without any real profit to your site; however, you pay for each click to the search engine). High-tech pay-for-performance programs (such as Google AdWords) claim to have advanced protection against such behavior (and they do have), however the risk can never be reduced to zero. SEO is free of any risk. Unless you spam or make obvious mistakes, it cannot damage your business.
- Reliability. Banner ads or paid search engine placement work until the marketing budget depletes. Then, the site disappears from the listings, and your returning customers cannot find you any more (new visitors cannot find you either). SEO helps buffer this process, so you can gradually reduce the advertising budget as you're increasing your results obtained from organic search engine listings. Also consumers are more likely to purchase from a site ranked high in the search engine results than from an evidently placed advertisement
- Brand awareness. A web site having a high ranking means more people see the name of the company and become familiar with the company and its products, even if they haven't made a purchase. A surveys show that consumers are twice as likely to recognize businesses ranked in the top three in search engine results than those appearing in banner ads.
- Targeted traffic. Search engine optimization brings paying customers to your door step. The customers that SEO bring you are long for your products/services as they have entered your websites keywords/phrases into the search engines. SEO will further help you transform visitors into buyers by analyzing their behavior once they find your site. You will learn how to transform these visitors into buyers by utilizing the content of your website in the most effective manner possible.
- Affordability. In comparison to banner ads, which cost between $2500 to $35000 a month and outsourced SEO plan costs as little as $1000.
These are only 5 of the reasons which substantiate why SEO is the single best investment for all marketers.
Think about it. And don't forget to recycle!!
Labels: better marketing, SEO