Last week the federal government swooped in to shut down hundreds of companies using PPC advertising on the web. The question is if this is out of a real concern for consumer safety or perhaps to promote their own toll free numbers and interests. More importantly could your business and PPC advertising be targeted next?
5 Types Of Marketing You Should Never Use Without Toll Free Numbers
1. Article Marketing
Article marketing has emerged in the last couple of years as one of the most powerful additions to a great online advertising strategy. Not only can article marketing be used to position you as an expert in your industry, but it can drive in lots of new traffic to your website and improve your website rankings with the search engines.
2. PPC Advertising
While there have been many new forms of Internet marketing emerging in the last year or two, PPC advertising should remain a part of your core advertising strategy. Done right, it can offer one of the most efficient and effective forms of online marketing and can provide instant results. It should include image and text ads for major search engines as well as through popular social media sites.
3. Press Releases
Press releases distributed across the web as part of your Internet advertising strategy can also be incredibly effective, create a buzz, and get your business noticed. Using sites like PRWeb and PRNewsWire, you can benefit from the viral capabilities of the Internet and boost brand visibility.
4. Blogging
While blogging is hardly new, it should not be overlooked as one of the best ways to drive masses of new traffic to your web assets and increase retention rates. When you look at the incredible volume a good blog can drive in, it is clear it should remain one of the most important elements of your online advertising strategy.
5. Email Marketing
A few years ago, email marketing suffered from overuse and lost a lot of its impact. But the cycle has come full circle now, and when done properly, it can prove to be one of the most inexpensive parts of your advertising strategy. With testing and incorporating links to social media and even video marketing, many companies are now seeing response rates between 10-50 percent compared with as little as 1-2 percent three to five years ago.
6. Mobile Marketing
Any company serious about being successful and staying ahead of the competition must be at least researching how it can incorporate mobile marketing into its overall advertising strategy. Mobile marketing will definitely be a differentiating factor between those who become leaders in their industries and those who fall by the wayside in the next couple of years.
The first step in building a profitable affiliate network is getting the word out and letting people know that you offer an affiliate program. If they don’t know about it, they can’t sign up and bring you new business. Those actively seeking affiliate programs in your industry may know to click on small links in the fine print at the bottom of your web pages where most companies place theirs. But that type of placement could mean missing out on far too many opportunities. Consider adding an affiliate program link to your main navigation page and even including affiliate opportunity information in regular autoresponders or email newsletters that go out to your opt in list.
However, there is a huge difference between adding a lot of affiliates to your network and actually creating a profitable affiliate network. A poor network of channel partners can do much more damage to your business than good. Some affiliates, especially those new to affiliate marketing, can take up so much of your time without producing results that they cost you money. Instead of signing up everyone who has a pulse, be a little more selective or go after "super affiliates" who do this full time.
What should you consider when approving affiliates?
How profitable your affiliate network is also relies on how organized you are. You must automate the process as much as possible to reduce the time needed to manage affiliates. Ensure that you have effective tracking so you are not paying out double commissions or paying for fraudulent transactions. The best way to avoid these issues is to join a high quality affiliate network platform and utilize their affiliate software.
Finally in order to maximize the results from your affiliate network, you need to give your affiliates the tools and education needed to help them effectively promote your product or service. The more marketing materials you provide them, the more likely they are to use them and actually produce results.
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1. Missed Branding Opportunities
Whatever type of marketing campaign you are launching, a vanity number offers instant branding. Even if your prospects do not take immediate action, an easy to remember vanity number will stick in their minds until when they do need your product or service. This truth applies to PPC advertising, direct mail, email marketing, and display ads.
2. Increased Response Rates
It has been proven time and time again that toll free vanity numbers consistently provide significantly higher response rates. So, considering the small investment it takes to get a winning vanity number, why anyone would ever dream of running an ad campaign without one is a mystery. Otherwise, you are not just throwing away money but handing those prospects over to your competition.
3. Improved Closing Ratios
Vanity numbers not only help increase the response rates to your advertising, but more importantly, they also improve the actual closing ratios from your campaigns. That is where you really put profits back into your pocket. Ask yourself how much a closed deal is worth, not only now but also in terms of the value of a lifelong customer and the referrals you will receive. Easily in the tens of thousands. So with some shared use, vanity numbers are available for as little at $19 a month. That small amount can provide at least two or three times the closed deals from a campaign. It is really a no brainer.
4. Tracking & Testing
Toll free numbers offer the ability to track and test easily all types of metrics and variables involved in your marketing. Those tools mean the ability to identify easily what is working well and what you can improve on so you can hone your marketing into a well oiled money making machine.
5. Maximizing Marketing ROI
These compounding factors of increased advertising effectiveness through better brand recognition, higher response and closing ratios, and well-tested campaigns means being able to see the maximum return on investment from your marketing budget. What you do with the extra profit is entirely up to you, whether it is expanding your marketing efforts, handing out bonuses, donating it to charity, improving your products or services, or just treating yourself to a well-deserved vacation in the sun. Going to the market without a vanity number is the equivalent of handing over large slices of market share to your competitors. Win or lose - it is all up to you.
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Many companies delude themselves into thinking they are getting “good value” from their current Internet advertising initiatives. But is that really the case? There are many things to look into – the most basic of which is the conversion rate. The conversion is not only translated into actual revenue, but it actually depends on the goal of the website. For example, conversion can come in the form of leads, subscriptions, sales, and even referrals.
Internet advertising is also linked to pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. There are three main players in this industry including Google Adwords, Microsoft Ad Center, and Yahoo! Search Marketing. Let’s look deeper into these options below:
Google Adwords – The value of your money depends on the “quality score” of your ad groupings. Since Google is the most dominant search engine among English-speaking countries, ads can gain maximum exposure through this medium. But take note that popular keywords here can cost heaps so choose carefully.
Microsoft Ad Center – This site gets a decent amount of users. Because there is less competition, you can get more targeted clicks from your Internet advertising campaign here. The interface has limited features, but overall, it provides good value for your money.
Yahoo! Search Marketing – Although Yahoo! certainly doesn’t get as much traffic as Google, Internet advertising here can still contribute to your bottom line. The tool provides in-depth keyword reports, but the minimum bid is quite high. Conduct thorough testing first before going full blast with your campaign.
1. Unifies Branding
A good toll free number should unify your branding. That means having a vanity number that matches with your business name and Internet domain name. Checking the availability of all three before you reserve any is important.
2. Keyword Search Tools
At least one of the leading toll free number providers now offers a keyword search tool for looking up toll free numbers based on keywords in your branding, whether it is your business name, Internet domain name, product, or service.
3. Check Out The Competition
See what the competition is doing. What is working for them? What companies are dominating your industry and is it because of their toll free numbers?
4. Differentiate
Once you have researched your competitors, analyze what you can do differently. What niches are being left under-served or what direction can you go in to become more appealing to consumers?
5. Reverse Lookups
If there is a toll free number already in use that is ideal for your organization, you may wish to perform a reverse lookup to discover who owns the number in question. You may still be able to acquire this number, although it may be wiser to employ the services of a third party to negotiate the best deal for you.
6. Shared Usage
Shared usage of toll free numbers can be a great way to get use of a premium vanity number at a fraction of the cost. This option is perfect for businesses that are operating in only a few select areas as opposed to nationwide or globally. For example, you could possibly reserve a premium vanity number like 800-MORTGAGE or 800-HOMELOAN for use just within the one or two states where you are licensed to do business.
7. Testing
If you are still having a hard time deciding on which toll free number is best for your business, perhaps you will want to test out several. You can test by simply bouncing the ideas off of different focus groups or polling. Or you could even try out different toll free numbers in PPC ads, and different pieces in direct mail campaigns to see which pulls in the highest response and closing ratios.
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Surely you already know that using a vanity phone number for your direct response marketing can provide dramatically higher response rates and even closing ratios, but the benefits of having a vanity phone number for your bottom line don’t end there.
Vanity phone numbers can actually improve the advertising effectiveness of all of your marketing campaigns from your website to your PPC advertising. Clearly, maximizing your marketing ROI is going to give you higher profit margins and will not only enable you to rocket your business to success faster, but it will have an immediate positive impact on your bottom line.
Many advantages derive from having a vanity phone number, but you must remember that if you do not put it to its highest and best use, you are not going to realize all of the power it truly offers. That not only means making sure you include your toll free number on all of your communications including emails and business cards, but also making sure you are utilizing the best in toll free number management. Choosing an Independent Resporg for managing your vanity phone number means you can be confident that your business phone lines are being routed correctly, and you can take advantage of the best routing and toll free forwarding options. This advantage in turn will allow you to streamline your business processes so you can benefit from lower labor costs and improved customer service as well as shortening your business cycle. The results can add thousands of dollars, if not much more, to your bottom line every month.
What you do with the savings and increased revenues you realize from using your vanity phone number to its maximum potential is up to you. You can amass reserves to build a stronger business, take a nice bonus to travel and escape reality for a while, or use the extra capital to invest in more marketing to grow your business even further.
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Testing before you launch any advertising campaign is essential, and it is especially essential for PPC advertising. In fact, PPC advertising is ideal for testing the viability of the launch of almost all new services and products even if you intend to branch out into other forms of marketing later.
So how should you be testing your PPC advertising? PPC advertising systems like Google Adwords let you find ideal keywords in seconds. However, the real testing is what you put together for your text and image ads. Start by using at least three to four variations of your ad. For text ads, you should be testing your headline, ad copy, and even your Internet domain name. Note that you can use several web domain names, and if you haven’t yet acquired a domain name that includes your toll free vanity number, you may find that having one offers much more volume. When it comes to PPC advertising with image ads, you can also try out different shapes and sizes from animated squares to static or flash banner ads. Try testing different colors in addition to the items above.
A good place to start before even trying to create your PPC ads is to look at other ads that come up for your search terms and see which ones you think are most attractive for customers and how you can differentiate yourself from the competition. You can easily create your own ads in a few minutes in almost any PPC advertising platform, whether it is Google, Yahoo, YouTube, or Facebook advertising, or you can use inexpensive programs like Banner Designer Pro for ads you can use anywhere on the web. Or if you are working with an established company that offers an affiliate program, you may find they have winning ads already created for you to use. You can even take a lesson from one New York Times best selling author and hold a competition that involves having others send your their ad ideas in exchange for providing some sort of free marketing back to the person or company that comes up with your best performing ad. Run your ads for a week, axe the ones that are not producing, and replace them with new ideas. Keep repeating until you have an arsenal of extremely powerful and productive ads that produce big results.
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