Becoming #1 on Google sounds like a dream, right? With Image Management's help, we can make it happen for your city and surrounding cities!
Online marketing is booming. With the growth of the internet, marketing is now categorized in two forms: online and offline. Surprisingly enough, online marketing has recently become the top dog for advertising dollars, at 35% of advertising budgets in 2018.
All offline marketing tactics trail behind. TV is at 34%, while radio (9%), magazines (8%), newspapers (8%), billboards (5%), and cinema advertising (3%) are shrinking by the day.
For the next few years at least, the best possible business outcome results from a combination of both online and offline marketing, but with youngsters struggling to take their eyes off their WIFI-induced smartphones, it doesn’t look like offline marketing will be making much of a comeback in the fight for more advertising dollars over online marketing… ever again.
Television is being overtaken by Netflix and Hulu, radio is being overtaken by Pandora/Spotify/Sirius XM, magazines are becoming obsolete and increasingly expensive, newspapers are going bankrupt right and left, less people see billboards because passengers are on their phones, and there’s a reason you don’t see any new cinemas being built. Long story short, online marketing deserves the majority of seats at the table of where to spend marketing capital.
Google advertising in particular, depending on the industry, should receive more of the budget than all else.
Google is sweeping the world by storm at 70% of searches, as more and more people are using Google for guidance on the whos, whats, and wheres of life. When “Where should I…” is typed into Google, the first three recommended searches to pop up are as follows:
- Where should I live?
- Where should I work?
- Where should I go to college?
If people are searching for answers as life-changing as those, it’s no shocker they’re Googling answers for the smaller questions in life that may include your industry:
- Where should I order take-out?
- Where should I get a gym membership?
- Where should I buy a new tie?
With 5 BILLION searches a day, Google rules the roost (trailed by Bing, Yahoo, and others at 30% combined), and it's up to both small and large business owners to make sure they've cornered the market in their field, meaning they should be on the first page of their industry in their area.
Google ranks businesses using two priorities: search engine optimization, known as SEO, and search engine marketing, known as SEM.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, refers to the online visibility of a website in a search engine's unpaid results—often referred to as "natural", "organic", or "earned" results.
Search engine marketing, or SEM, refers to the promotion of websites by increasing their visibility in search engine results through paid advertising.
In a nutshell, you don’t pay for SEO, you do pay for SEM. Both are crucial, and 99% of uber-successful companies excel using both
Search engine optimization, although free, is not always easy. It requires both technical and creative elements in order to improve rankings, drive traffic, and increase awareness in search engines. Some of the tips of SEO include sprinkling ‘keywords’ (words often Googled by the market in your industry) throughout the verbiage on your website.
The way to determine the right keywords to use throughout a website is to figure out what someone would Google to find you. If someone was searching for a bakery or a wedding cake, they would type “wedding cake” or “bakery.” And, bingo - those are the words to use. SEO helps organic rankings and doesn’t cost a thing.
Search engine marketing, SEM, DOES cost money. Google Ads, the most recognized category of SEM, requires three main components: budget, location, keywords.
The monthly budget, whether $500 or $500,000, determines HOW OFTEN the ad will show up at the top of Google. The location determines WHERE the advertisement will show up (broken up into zip codes, cities, states, or countries). The keywords determine WHAT terms trigger the advertisement (usually 10-15 for a one-service business are fine).
The advertisement itself looks just like a normal Google listing, apart from the small, adjacent “ad” sticker that often goes unnoticed. And they get clicked just as often as organic listings because many can’t tell the difference (especially on a mobile phone).
SEO and SEM combo's have helped many of our clients reach the top.
Are you taking advantage of Google marketing? Contact us to start today!
Published on August 22, 2018