SEO Provides Better Value Than PPC

A growing body of evidence has made it clear that websites should be search engine optimized to substantially increase the chance that a web page is discovered by a search engine user. Search engine optimization (SEO) requires 1) an investment of time as the media being optimized must be setup and maintained a very particular way and 2) patience as it takes time for the benefits of this effort to trickle down into the search engine results. However, compared to price per click (PPC) advertising (think Google Adwords as an example), SEO relatively inexpensive. As a result, we have argued that these factors make SEO a good marketing tactic for any company on a tight budget. That said, let me amend that argument - as data now suggests that SEO provides a greater return on investment than PPC, all businesses should consider setting up SEO marketing campaigns.

The behavior behind online content sharing

Dan Zarrela conducted a fascinating survey that lends tremendous insight into the behavior of online content sharing internet users. If you are conducting a viral or word of mouth marketing campaign, his analysis is a must read. We’ll cover summarize the study and findings here for your convenience.

The study:

Dan issued a survey to 420 internet users and queried their sharing habits, resources and reasons. In particular, Dan evaluated the behavior of users of various social web technology resources (blogs, social news, email, twitter, facebook, etc.). Of specific focus were the following points:

Enhancing your Business Blog with Customer Comments: Trends

One of the great business benefits of writing a blog is its ability to establish a repertoire with consumers. While the relationships is typically one sided with most consumers simply reading the content, many will participate in a community dialog by leaving comments. Comments are valuable in such that they garner insight into your customer-base and create a sense of community: many viewers will respond to comments left by others. As a result, people keep coming back to your site to interact with like minded consumers.

Given the value comments can add to a blog-based marketing platform, it is worthwhile to consider why people leave comments and how commenting can be encouraged. While we’ll delve into specific tactics that yield customer comments in a future post, Nick Halstead of fav.or.it aggregated some interesting comment related statistics that speak volumes about commenter behavior.

The Balancing Act of Direct Email Contact Frequency

As a recipient of several companies’ direct email marketing campaigns, I find that some contact me too frequently, which annoys me, while others wait too long to deliver information, thus I forget about them. Is this typical customer behavior and, if so, how can this knowledge be used to make email marketing more efficient? A recent study by Dreze and Bonfrer in the Journal of Marketing (April 21, 2008) investigates this question with empirically derived data. By tracking the results of a permission based email marketing campaign, the authors were able to measure the effect of contact frequency on email opens, email link click-throughs and customer retention.

Loyalty programs: The bottom line

Many companies create loyalty programs designed to inspire repeat transactions. Airline miles, credit card points, even coffee shop cards have been devised in an attempt to capitalize on a simple aspect of consumer behavior: once invested in the program, they’ll keep coming back to reap the reward (who would turn down a free cup of coffee?). We’ve written previously about the work by Yuping Liu which demonstrates how loyalty programs can, in the long run, yield significantly increased repeat purchases. However, it’s worth taking a step back and asking a fundamental question: is customer loyalty, as assumed by these loyalty programs, simply the sum of the transactions made with a company?

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