Originally published in Construction Digital, March 2010.
Thanks to an array of online marketing tools, you no longer have to broadcast your message and hope the right people see it. You can position your company and services based on your capabilities and have people find you—at a cost far more affordable than traditional media. Unlike advertising with newspapers, magazine, TV or radio, which “broadcast” to whomever is listening, a search marketing strategy allows people to find your product or services when they need them, making sales easier and more timely.
Using search marketing, you are targeting people who are looking for the service you have to offer–when they need it. Every month there are billions of searches conducted–people looking for contractors, masons, heavy machinery, you name it. If you could get your company in front of these people when they needed your services, what would it be worth? Enter search marketing.
The goal with search marketing is to be found. Sounds simple, but think about the power of it from the sales side. If someone finds your site when they’re looking to make a purchase, the number of leads will increase, the sales cycle will be shorter, and the likelihood of making that sale increases exponentially.
Below is a review of the two most popular search marketing tactics.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
This process helps to get your site listed in the “organic” positions on the search engine results pages–the non-paid listings that the search engine has determined is the best match for the phrase someone searches on. Search engines consider several factors when ranking results. They look at the text used, the navigation, title tags and other information to help them categorize your site.
So it’s critical that your site includes terms that your customer will use to find your service, as the search engines will associate your site with those terms. Focus on specific two- to three-word phrases instead of vague one-word terms. For example, “Michigan commercial construction” will produce better results than “construction” or “commercial construction.” These phrases should be used on the site, in your title tags and, where possible, in the domain name and page names.
Still, creating key terms for your site (onsite optimization) represents only about 15% of the job. The other 85% of your Web site ranking comes from information on other sites. External information is linked from other relevant sites that point to your site as a resource for a specific term. For example, if your site has 12 links coming into it for “green building design” and one of your competitors has 45 links pointing to their site for the same term, the search engines are going to consider the other site a better resource.
Before you go out and just generate a bunch of links (through firms that offer this service) remember that the links must be relevant. Search engines look at the content and other factors of the referring site to see how relevant that site is to your site or industry. For example, a link from a site on residential construction trends will probably be far more relevant to your target audience than a link from a site on home computer parts.
Search Engine Optimization Pros
- Long-term benefits: Once your site is ranked well, it’s difficult for a competitor to out-rank you if you keep up your efforts.
- Not paying for each click: You don’t pay for people who find your site in the “organic” results, so the higher you rank, the more traffic you’ll get for free.
- Specific terms: With a niche business, you can rank high because there is typically less competition.
Search Engine Optimization Cons
- Relatively slow results: It can take several months to see results.
- Too much competition: Depending on your market, you could be competing with others nationwide or even worldwide, some of which may have an optimization campaign
- Tough with general terms: If your key messages are expressed in general terms, results can be difficult to achieve.
- Need to maintain campaign: If you stop SEO efforts, your site can quickly lose ground with the competition.
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
This tool puts your ad in the sponsored section of the search engine results pages. You purchase ads on a pay-per-click basis and are charged only when someone clicks on it. You establish a monthly budget that affects how often your ads will appear. Or, if you want to generate a high volume of traffic quickly, you can utilize your budget as soon as possible. You can also establish other rules for each of your campaigns, designating precisely which days and times the ad will run or what cities or states it should appear in.
Most of our clients spend from $1,000 to $5,000 per month on their PPC campaigns, and some large corporations spend millions of dollars a year on it. While seemingly more costly than SEO, PPC is often a more practical solution. One reason is that PPC can be geo-targeted to certain geographic boundaries where your ads will show. This is important for smaller companies like a western Pennsylvania contractor who doesn’t want to waste money promoting a message to say the southwest or other distant regions.
Another advantage of a PPC campaign is that it can be launched within a few hours once the account is funded. Plus, it’s flexible, allowing you to set up a campaign with hundreds of keywords—which is impractical with SEO—and then only pay for the traffic that comes to your site from those keywords.
When setting up a PPC campaign, consider that Google (with its AdWords tool, the most popular PPC vehicle) views the content of your ad and your site to determine how relevant they are to each other. So consider setting up specific landing pages or deep-link to sub-pages on your site that are specific to the terms people are searching on.
Pros
- Quick results: Campaigns can usually be set up in several hours.
- Geo-targeting: Focuses on specific regions where you conduct business.
- Flexibility: Easily change the budget, keywords, ads and landing pages.
- Targeted: Utilize words that you wouldn’t be able to optimize for your Web site.
Cons
- Paying per click: You pay for each visitor to your site that comes throughout the campaign, regardless if they turn into a lead.
- Positioning: Your link appears in the “sponsored links” section, which, according to some, isn’t seen that much. (This can be proven otherwise. Just ask Google stockholders!)
- Timing: Once you stop your campaign, traffic also stops.
If you want to put together a more advanced strategy, consider targeting people at different phases of the buying cycle. Offer different content based on where they are in their decision making process and then capture them every step of the way.
Search engine marketing is a very cost-effective marketing tool—but you need a well-orchestrated strategy to make it work. Decide whether you can design and execute a strategy in-house of it you need to outsource the marketing to an outside company. Consider the time you’re willing to commit over the long term, your comfort level with the technology and other factors. Whatever you decide, be prepared to spend some time developing the all-important strategy, either in-house or working with a consultant.
