AdsUpNow Sponsored the Boeing Classic

The Boeing Classic annual golf tournament draws large crowds throughout the Puget Sound Region and Washington State every August. The $2 million purse and $300,000 first place prize money bring out some of the best golfers on the PGA TOUR Champions Tour. To help promote this famous Washington State event, AdsUpNow sponsored the Boeing Classic with a full digital marketing package and mobile website. The end results were fantastic, as the various campaigns delivered more than 500,000 ad impressions and drove more than 1,000 people to the Boeing Classic Website. Over the next few days, I’ll take you through our campaign and what we did for each part.

The first part of the package was a Site Retargeting campaign. Site Retargeting allowed Boeing Classic to serve ads to everyone who expressed an interest in the Boeing Classic by visiting their website. This repeat exposure helped increase top of mind awareness as the event drew closer, and succeeded in bringing more than 600 people back to the website who otherwise wouldn’t have returned.

The Site Retargeting campaign was designed to grab the attention of Boeing Classic’s website visitors. It involved nine sets of creative, each one advertising different events that happened over the weeklong tournament. The campaign was hugely successful, and shows the power of following-up with your current website visitors.

Overall campaign stats were extremely impressive:  195,643 impressions, 606 clicks, and a CTR of .40%.


Small Business SEO Tips from Google

On Tuesday, Google released a video with some helpful SEO tips for small businesses.

One of Google’s tips is to make sure your content is readable for humans. If people can read it, Google can read it. They also said to make sure to link content in your site with strong anchor text. For example, instead of saying “For product specifications, click here.” You should say “For more information, look at our product specifications.”

Once you get your SEO all figured out, come talk to us at Conversion Logix. We specialize in bringing you more qualified traffic than any other form of advertising. You can watch the entire Google video below.

We’ll drive traffic to your website with Search Engine Marketing. Once you get traffic, we can capture leads with a Conversion Driver landing page and remarket to your website visitors with Retargeting.

The options are limited for small businesses that want to advertise online. Contact us today for your free consultation and we can help you get more from the Internet.


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.


Search Retargeting: Filling The Gaps In Your Marketing Strategy

It can be intimidating to try and figure out where to spend your money on digital advertising. With so many options to choose from, it can be difficult to find what’s really necessary.

A good place to start is with paid search advertising. We call it search targeting, and it gets your business listed at the top of the search results for everything relevant to your company. This is important because the Internet may be the first place your customers ever hear about you.

A second way to advertise is by using Site Retargeting. Every time you get a website hit, that’s a potential lead. Aside from the people who accidentally click on your site, all of your visitors are at least somewhat interested in your products or services. The sad truth is that 98% of your website visitors leave without taking any action.

Site Retargeting remedies this by delivering ad impressions to people after they leave your website. This allows you to effectively follow-up with every single person who visits your website.

So what happens if someone searches for you, sees your ad, but doesn’t click your links? The answer is Search Retargeting.

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.

This helps fill in the gaps left by your SEO and paid search efforts by advertising to people who intend to buy what you have to sell.

These three tactics give you the ability to target your advertising to the right person at the right time. First, Search Engine Marketing lets people with purchase intent find your website. Next, if they visit your site and don’t take an action, Site Retargeting will advertise to them, keeping your business top of mind. Finally, if they search for a business, product or service like you, Search Retargeting will allow you to advertise to them regardless if they visited your website or not.

Don’t waste your money on advertising products that don’t work and can’t be easily measured. Instead, deliver your message to a targeted prospect rather than an ambiguous group.

Contact us today if you’re interested in learning more about Search Retargeting and other forms of digital advertising.


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.


Paid Search Impressions and Clicks Increasing, Cost Decreasing

Paid search spending grew 30.3% year-over-year in the first quarter of 2012, representing the highest growth rate since the last quarter of 2010 (35%).

These numbers come from IgnitonOne, who tracked Internet marketing usage during this time period.

Mobile and tablet paid search also increased, with spending up 221.1% year-over-year, and impressions up 119.9%.

Despite the increased budget spending, cost-per-click didn’t increase, rising just 0.9% year-over-year. Clicks rose 32.5% and click-through rates were up 25.3%.

All these numbers mean good things for small businesses trying to use search marketing. Clicks and click-through rates are rising, and the cost per click isn’t changing at all. This means that businesses are getting more impression and clicks than ever before for the same price.

If you’re interested in getting started with search engine marketing, contact us today. We target and fine-tune all of our campaigns, giving you the best return possible on all your marketing efforts.


Top 5 Reasons An SMS Campaign Can Help Your Business

So you’ve seen SMS campaigns around, but never thought that they worked or figured they were too much trouble to implement. Well, I’m here to give you five reasons why an SMS campaign could work in the digital marketing strategy for your business.

1. You get access to everyone.
Not everyone has a smartphone, but basically everyone has a cell phone. SMS campaigns work no matter what kind of phone the person has.

2. You can monetize interactions through texting.
You can promote your texting program by telling people to text a has keyword to your number to get a coupon for whatever you want to promote. By offering an incentive for them to sign up, you can start building a mobile following.

3. Drive more sales.
You have the ability to reach all your mobile customers with a few clicks. You can send out a message when business is slow, or just offer deals to your mobile subscribers whenever you want to make a sale.

4. Reach consumers who might otherwise slip through the cracks.
When someone buys something at your store, they remain pretty anonymous. Unless you write down their information, they might leave and never come back. With an SMS campaign, you can remarket to them by offering them special deals for being an existing customer.

5. Acquire customers who don’t know you existed.
By promoting your texting campaign on your existing advertising, you bring something unique about your business to the table. By telling TV watchers or radio listeners to text you for exclusive deals, you can bring people to your business who wouldn’t have otherwise heard of you before.

These reasons only touch the iceberg of why an SMS campaign is good for your business. Being able to communicate with your customers at any time is a great business advantage.


4 Ways you can apply lessons from Superbowl commercials to your business

For those of you in Antartica last weekend (or non-sports fans), the Superbowl took place last Sunday, and the best football players competed with the best ad agencies for the limelight. You might think Superbowl ads don’t apply to your business because there’s no way you would ever be able to afford one, but all the ads had takeaways that can help with advertising and marketing for any budget.

1. Add a social layer.
If you noticed, almost every ad in the Superbowl had a social media element to it. Some had hashtags associated with them, such as Audi’s vampire commercial’s #SoLongVampires. Others, such as Bud Light’s commercial, encouraged watchers to go to Facebook for more content. While you don’t necessarily have to have a hashtag, promoting your specials on Facebook, or offering extra discounts to users who share your content can help add a social layer to any promotion you do.

Audi’s Vampire Commercial

2. Make it unique.
Every Superbowl commercial has a unique factor to it – usually humor. Do your ad spots say or show anything to separate your business from your competitors? Beware of bad jokes or going overboard, however. Your commercial may go viral for the wrong reasons.

3. Don’t just sell your product.
Not many people want to hear numbers about how your car has 6hp more than the other guys’, or why the hot tub you sell has jets that deliver 26psi more than your competitors’. Instead, focus on the lifestyle aspect of your product. VW’s commercial showed a dog getting in shape so he could chase a New Beetle, and became one of the most watched TV spots because of it’s unique approach.

VW’s Dog Commercial

4. Don’t jab at the competition
Chevy learned that lesson the hard way this year with their Superbowl ad that said Ford drivers didn’t make it through the Mayan apocalypse, but Chevy drivers did. While it generated some buzz, it didn’t do anything to help the brand at all, and Ford released a statement taking offense to the ad as well.

Let us know of any other Superbowl commercials you enjoyed in the comments.