Web Advertising Exceeds Print Newpaper Advertising for 2010

In an article published by eMarketer.com advertisers spent more advertising online then advertising in print newspaper for 2010.

Spending on print newspapers alone will fall more steeply to $22.8 billion. Meanwhile, a rise of 13.9% will push US online ad spending up to $25.8 billion by year’s end.

Retailers and other businesses should re-think their marketing strategies for 2011. With so many consumers today using the Internet to shop and explore their purchasing options there is a great opportunity to find new customers, and most retailers as well as manufacturers are missing out. Your competitors could be capturing your customers while you sit still on the sidelines.

I find most businesses are afraid to do online advertising because they don't understand how it works and so they continue to put all their advertising dollars in off-line print advertising. With today's web tools search engine advertising can be done very cost-effectively and highly targeted to any geographic area. Results can be monitored and measured and you can stop it at any minute of the day or night.

Click here to see the full article on eMarketer.com. Feel free to email me (john@webstreamdynamics.com) if you want more advice or guidance.

How can I tell if my website visitors are in my service area?

For most retailers and small businesses all they are interested in is their local targeted audience. People visiting their website from outside their service area are not really important to them. So how can a business tell where their website audience is coming from? First off, people using high speed Internet access almost always leave what we call a foot print. With Google Analytics we can use this foot print to determine the approximate region/city the website visitors are accessing the Internet from. This is close enough for us to use to learn about our website traffics' general location.

With Google Analytics whether we are looking at our "direct traffic", "referrer traffic", or "search engine traffic" we can include in the report listing the region or city the visitors access the Internet from. In some cases this will be off because of their Internet Service Provider (ISP), but generally it will really help us understand if the majority of our audience is within our selling area. See how to select the region/city below:

Click the image for a larger view

Note: In Google Analytics you can also select the "Service Provider". In some cases the web visitor is coming from a company with their own static IP address and you will see the actual company name by selecting the Service Provider.

So how can we use this information? For example, if your retail business is in New Jersey and you see in Google Analytics the majority of your daily audience is not coming from New Jersey then you need to make some website search engine optimization adjustments. Remember, just because you get a lot of visitors doesn't mean they will turn into sales leads, especially if they are not in your service area.

Below is a screenshot of a few of MarketingYourStore.com's "referring" website visitors including the City they accessed the Internet from...

Click the image for a larger view

Who is sending you online customers?

This is a great time of the year to analyze your website and where your website traffic is really coming from. A great tool to do this is Google Analytics, which is a FREE web tool from Google to help you monitor your website performance. It will also tell you what websites are sending potential customers to your website.  This is commonly called: Referrers or Referring websites.

With Google Analytics we can see all the other websites, by name, who have sent us traffic over a given time period. This can help you understand not only where your referring traffic is coming from but also help you when working with suppliers and online advertising agencies. Instead of taking their word for how much traffic they say they are sending to your website, now you can see the actual results yourself. For example, you can see how many people came from your various suppliers' store locators. Or, if you have an advertising program with AT&T or Superpages online you can determine if you are getting your monies worth by how many users are actually coming from there to your website. (You can also see if they are coming from Facebook or Twitter to your website too.) Below is an example of what the report looks like.

If you don't have Google Analytics I would recommend signing up for it and have it installed on all pages of your website. Remember it is FREE!

For those with supplier templated websites you should sign up for Google Analytics and tell them you want the Google code snippet inserted into your website so you can see for yourself how your website is performing. Most templated websites use a MasterPage so it only needs to be inserted in one page to monitor all the pages within your website. Since you are paying for the website they should be happy to do this for you.

Another way to view what websites your web visitors are coming from in Google Analytics is by going to Top Content in the menu.  Then select a page from the top content page listing, probably your home page. From there go to the Analyze drop down box and select "Entrance Sources".  This will give you a complete listing of websites that people came from to that web page on your website. It can be very eye-opening and is a great way to see who is sending you traffic over a specific time period. See the screenshot below for how it will look.

Click on the image for larger image

2010 Monthly Search Traffic Estimates For Some Top Flooring Brands

Since we are nearing the end of 2010 I thought it would be interesting to see how some of the various flooring brand names stack up using Google Adwords' Traffic Estimator Tool. I decided to limit the keyword phrases to a few top carpet, fiber, buying groups and big box brand names. In the case of the big box stores (Home Depot and Lowes) I appended "carpet" to the end of their name to help refine the estimates to a more targeted search user. Also, for some keyword phrases I included both the singular and plural versions.

My spreadsheet also includes the Estimated Average Cost-Per-Click (Est. Avg.CPC). Notice some keyword phrases go for as low as $0.05 and as high as $7.09 for estimated Cost-Per-Click!!

Click on the above image to see it full size

Note: The monthly search estimates are based on each keyword phrase using the Google AdWords Traffic Estimator Tool.

Local Retailers Need to Understand Google Places

Google recently rolled out their new "Place Search". They have now combined their local and general search algorithms into Google.com's search results. When Google detects that the user is searching for some location they blend into the results Google Places local listings. It is obvious that Google sees a big upsurge of people using the search engines to find locations and local businesses.

The best way to demonstrate the change is through an example using two screen shots. The first screen shot I took a while ago using the search term "Green Bay plumber". Notice the Google Places 7 local listings all bundled together with 10 organic listings underneath them.

Now look at a screen shot for the same keyword search phrase (Green Bay plumber) taken today on Google. Notice the Google Place listings dominant the page area and the map is pushed to the upper right corner and can scroll down over sponsored listings. The 7 Google Places local listings are spread out more and may contain more information including links to reviews, as well as some 3rd party links to websites like Yelp, Insiderpages, Citysearch, TripAdvisor and more. Plus, now you see less Organic listings which are based on the web.

What is really important for local retailers to understand is the Google's local listings are not based off of your website, they are a result of Google Places. Organic listings are based off the web and your website. Optimizing your website has no impact on getting better placement in the Google Places.

The other thing to note is: Google Places weights very heavily the city or town your business is located in. So if you do business in surrounding areas but you don't have a location there you probably will not show up in the 7 Google Places listings. You best option is then turn to Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising, bidding on the other local geographic areas you service. Although many small businesses have stopped most of their Yellow Page print advertising and put that money into their website I see in the near future retailers may be putting that money into Pay-Per-Click advertising for their surrounding service areas.

To learn more about Google Places and to claim your Google Local Business listing go here... http://www.google.com/lbc