Advertising Spend Continues To Move Online

More people are advertising online than ever before, representing a shift from traditional media.

According to a new report from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), revenues from digital advertising grew 15% to $8.4 billion.

Out of this increase, mobile grew the most, growing 149% to $1.6 billion. However, search still retained the top position, accounting for 46.5% of revenue, up from 44.7% two years ago.

The top driver of online advertising was the retail industry. Retail made up 22% of all online advertising dollars, compared to 21% a year ago. The second largest industry was the financial services industry, with a 13% share of all revenue, up from 12% in 2010.

These rising numbers show that you need to get started with a digital advertising campaign. You can’t afford to miss out on this growing opportunity to increase your revenue and sales.

Online advertising isn’t just for online businesses. Everyone starts their product search online, and you need to be there when they search.

Contact us today to get started with your campaign.


An Introduction to Search Retargeting

Site Retargeting and Search Engine Marketing are two staples of local digital advertising. Now, we have a third piece called Search Retargeting that compliments all your existing advertising campaigns.

Search Retargeting works by focusing on people who conduct searches for things related to your business, products or services. That way, even if they don’t click on your link, you can still advertise to them.

Every search represents someone trying to solve a problem. They might be looking for a new car, a pizza shop or the best way to tie a tie. Most of the time, consumers will research something without a specific business in mind. By focusing on their search intent, you can reach out to them as they research.

For example, if someone is searching for “valentine’s day flowers” or “flower bouquet,” you can be sure that they are trying to find a place to buy flowers for a loved one. Search Retargeting uses this intent to deliver banner advertisements to people who search for anything related to your business, products or services. Your ads will appear on millions of sites all over the Internet: social, news, entertainment and more.

Search Retargeting works because it allows you to target people who actually want to buy your product rather than focusing on a single demographic or geographic area.

You may have great SEO and search ads, but there is no way to guarantee that someone will click on your links. With Search Retargeting, you can deliver banner ads to anyone who is looking for companies like yours, regardless of whether they clicked your link or not.

This makes Search Retargeting a powerful piece to add into your existing advertising. You’ll be able to target a bigger audience than ever before, but still advertise only to people who are in the market for what you have to sell.

If you have questions about Search Retargeting or other digital advertising campaigns, contact us for a free consultation.


Clicks aren’t the only thing to look at in a display campaign

A lot of the time, people focus on the click-through rate of banner ads to measure how successful they are. This is a fine way to get the baseline statistics on how a display campaign is performing, but banner ads offer much more than just ways for people to get to your website.

One of the ways they help is with overall brand recognition. Your display advertisement could be the first time that someone hears about your brand, and even if they don’t click on it, they are still being exposed to your company.

A second way it helps is by bringing a lift to your search engine marketing campaign. Running a display ad campaign with a SEM campaign has proved to bring significant lift in sales volume. For example, Salesforce.com found that running a display campaign with their search campaign increased branded search and conversion volume by 80 percent.

You can also get a lift in your website conversions through Retargeting. Retargeting displays ads to all the people who have visited your website, keeping you top of mind throughout their researching cycle.

Display and search can combine to make your website a lead-generation machine. If you have questions, or want to get started with either search or display ads, contact us for a free consultation.


Local Internet Advertising Spending Expected to Pass Print Advertising in 2013

The Internet is about to claim another victim. First it was the postal service, then the classifieds, next it’s going to be print all together.

A new report from Borrell Associates said that online spending was up 21 percent in 2011, and will pass local print spending next year.

Despite the big increases, traditional media still holds the majority of all advertising dollars, but Internet spending is increasing, while traditional is decreasing or staying flat. That means that sooner or later, Internet advertising will surpass all traditional advertising, though who knows when that will be.

Borrell is predicting that the overall growth of local online advertising will be 18%, as it goes from $15.7 billion to $18.5 billion.

Also, if mobile is included as part of that projection, the number will jump to more than $26 billion by 2016.

Those are some huge numbers, and they really reflect the current changes in the advertising landscape, as more and more money is moved from traditional to online.

Curious about getting an online campaign of your own? Contact us today for a free consultation. We do mobile targeting, retargeting, search marketing and much more.


The Big Shift From Traditional to Digital Advertising

About three-quarters of enterprise decision makers have been shifting their budgets from traditional advertising to digital in the last year. In fact, about one-third of the marketing executives said they shifted more than half of their budget from traditional to digital.

According to a March 2012 report from DataXu, these numbers will continue next year as well, with 4 out of 5 who are shifting to digital saying that they will continue to do so for the next year.

The main reasons for the big switch is increased metastability. With a lot of traditional media, especially print, you can’t choose who sees your ads and how they see them. With digital advertising, you can choose how many people you target, what actions you are targeting them through, and you can interact with them directly after they take an action. With print media, you have to hope they respond, but you have no way of knowing if they do.

Are you doing any sort of digital advertising such as search engine marketing, retargeting or banner ads? If not, you need to get started. Internet marketing is here to stay, and can give you the best bang for your buck, while at the same time giving you more control over your campaigns than you ever thought possible.

Contact us for a free consultation.


Digital Politcal Ad Spend Increasing

It’s an election year, which means upcoming political candidates are spending a lot of advertising dollars are being spent to promote their campaigns.

According to new numbers from a report by Borrell Associates, online political ad spending is set to increase to $160 million this year – up from just $22 million in 2008. That marks a huge increase from how the digital advertising space was valued just four years ago.

Of that $160 million in online spending, 30% of it is expected to be targeted display advertising, such as retargeting and contextual targeting. Another 32.6% of the political budget will be spent on search targeting.

The only areas losing share for online spending are email, and streaming audio. Streaming video is expected to hold at 22%.

So the biggest names in politics are investing more and more into digital advertising, showing that online advertising is seen as more necessary than ever.

Are you stepping up your digital game for 2012? Digital advertising is growing across the board, and if you aren’t taking advantage of it, you need to.

Contact us today for your free digital consultation.


3 Marketing Trends You Need to Implement

A lot of business missed the boat on a few marketing trends over the last few years. Some missed out on websites, some on email marketing and others on mobile. Your business may have missed out on some or all of these trends, but I’m here to make sure you don’t miss out on these next three!


1. Mobile

Mobile is huge these days. Mobile search has already been exploding and mobile shopping is expected to increase substantially in the next few years.

2. Data
You need data to understand exactly why you’re doing something, and how you can make it better. The old model of creating a radio or TV commercial is gone. Now we have the ability to track, alter and optimize every ad campaign.

3. Branding
Your brand doesn’t just exist on your website anymore. You are on social places such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg, YouTube, etc. Your brand is more “out there” than ever, and your customers have more avenues than ever to contact you — you just need to give them reason to.

It’s a unique time to be a small business. Never before have you had the power to reach so many customers as easily as you can today. The world of digital marketing offers countless ways to interact with your customers, and using as many of them as possible can help bring you new business and more brand exposure.

If you are curious about any of these methods such as SMS targeting, search marketing, retargeting, behavioral targeting, mobile targeting and more, contact us today. We’ll help you wade through the field of digital marketing and advertising.


3 Ways to Increase Your Revenue By Marketing Across All Purchase Paths

Every customer you have ever landed came through a purchase path. Some of the paths are clear-cut, such as getting customers from your website, TV ad, driving by your store, or the customer’s smartphone. Others aren’t as clear. For example, someone might see your TV ad, go search for you online, then come to your store. Some might see your ad on Facebook, go to your website and fill out a form for more information, and wait to be contacted by a salesperson.

The point is, you might have an idea of how purchase paths are laid out, but the truth is they are usually more convoluted than they seem at first.

Because of this convolution, you have to be prepared to remarket your products or services to your customers in many different ways. It’s not enough to do some local TV ads and have a website, you need to be actively targeting and communicating with your customers in order to get them to convert.

There are several ways you can make sure that you are targeting your customers in the right way. The first of which is search engine marketing (SEM). SEM is important because it places your ads at the top of the search results for the keywords you’ve selected, giving you the ability to reach more customers.

Another reason this is important is because your customers may not remember exactly what your business is called, but they just know what type of product you provide. For example, if they heard your radio ad, or saw your business and couldn’t remember what the name was, but could only remember that you sold heaters and air conditioning, they could type “heating and air conditioning Seattle” (or whatever their city was) and your ad would pop up at the top.

A second way you can help promote across purchase paths is through retargeting. Retargeting places a cookie in the user’s web browser when they visit your site, this causes your display ads to be displayed to them after they leave. This brings increased mindshare and brand awareness during the customer’s shopping cycle, which will result in more revenue.

A third way to promote your business across purchase paths is by using your social networks. Chances are, you have a Facebook page, and studies have shown that users who buy something from a business after going through its social channels spend more money per transaction. Leverage your social networks to get users to make purchases. Offer discounts to Facebook fans, or plan a giveaway on your fan page.

If you want to be able to promote your business in today’s changing digital landscape, check out our website for more information on what we do. We are a full-service Seattle ad agency specializing in the digital realm.

We can help you get more from the Internet.


Turn Your Clicks Into Customers

Every time you get a website hit, that’s a potential lead. Aside from the people who accidentally click on your site, all your visitors are at least somewhat interested in your products or services.

So why do you get so much website traffic and so few leads? Because shoppers today go to Google and compare everything about your business with your competitor’s at the click of a button. That means you only have a few seconds to sway them in your direction, or just hope your website was memorable enough that they’ll re-visit it.

We’ve already written some posts on retargeting, but here’s a quick recap: First the user visits your website, and your website places a cookie in their browser. Next, they leave without converting. Then, the cookie in their browser tells the websites they visit to display your ad. Finally, they see the ads, are reminded of your website, and come back and make a purchase.

So what’s so great about retargeting? Well it follows-up with your prospects automatically. As they surf the Internet, your ads appear and remind them of your services. Also, to increase conversions, you can even promote a special deal for people who click on your ad.

As a full-service ad agency in Seattle, we have a retargeting program that delivers return traffic to your website, guaranteed.

Retargeting allows you to cater to website visitors no matter how far into the buying cycle they are. Whether they’re just doing preliminary research, or almost ready to make a purchase, retargeting works in the same way: it reminds them of you.

Let your web traffic bring you results. More than 98% of your website visitors leave and never come back – give them a reason to.


Retargeting: The Ultimate Lift For Website Traffic

We’ve talked about retargeting before, but for those of you who don’t know what it is, how it works, or how it fits in to your digital marketing strategy, here’s the short version: A user visits your website, a tracking cookie gets placed in their browser, your ads appear to them over the next month as they browse the web, and they are more likely to return to your website and take action.

Retargeting is great in that it follows up with your website customers automatically. 98 percent of your web traffic leaves without doing anything, but with retargeting, you get a much higher return rate. In a study from comScore, sites with retargeting got a 726 percent lift in site visitation after four weeks of ad exposure.

website traffic lift from retargeting

Retargeting also reflects positively on your branded search. Branded search is when someone searches for your business, such as “Moe’s Pizza,” instead of searching a broad category like “Pizza Seattle.” Branded searches are important because it means more and more people know about your business. In the same study, comScore noted that after four weeks of ad exposure, branded search increased 1,046 percent.

retargeting effects on branded search

This means that even if the retargeting ads themselves don’t have a high click-through rate, searchers are still looking for those businesses more often than ones they aren’t retargeted for.

After conducting its study, comScore concluded: “In building the model of branding effectiveness, one strategy clearly outperformed the rest – retargeting. This strategy works well in every scenario and should be considered for both direct response and longer term branding objectives.”

For more information on retargeting, contact us today for a free consultation, or ask a question in the comments.