Moving Towards an Even More Mobile Future

People are continually spending more and more time on the internet. It isn’t because they are spending more time at home on their PC’s. It’s because people are increasingly using their mobile phones to access the internet on the go.

Having constant access to the internet is no strange thing. Anyone who has a smart phone is constantly connected. Most people never let their phone leave their side.  In fact, “over 70 percent of U.S. adults keep their smart phones within five feet of them at all times.” One study has even gone as far as to say that, “Nearly 1 in 10 Americans use smart phones during sex.” Read about it here. And how could they not? All of their emails, social media updates and text messages can be viewed and responded to in an instant, giving a person ultimate efficiency. Even sex can’t stop our productivity these days.

So needless to say, people love their mobile devices. And those who don’t love them so much are well on their way to loving them more. And those who don’t have a smartphone or tablet will have one soon and they too, will love it so. Mobile is heating up. Mobile Warming is real.

I can’t see the world getting less mobile, so it must be that we will only be getting more mobile. A company who does not take advantage of this fact needs to wake up and get to it.

A few reasons why mobile is awesome.

1. Social Networking is all about mobile.
2. It gives more accurate and localized geo tracking.
3. It gives people more of an opportunity to interact with your company.

With mobile, social networking sites can be checked easily, frequently, and for however long they want. A user can benefit from mobile social networking because no matter how long they spend on their site, they will regardless get satisfaction in having goner there. Most sites do not need to be checked regularly and are most likely looked at from the comfort of home with a laptop. Social media however never stops. It can always be interacted with. Companies need to be sure to keep their social media pages up to date with interesting content. The greater amount of time people spend on social media sites means more opportunities for your business to get followers to interact with your page.

Sometimes, interaction isn’t all about posting Facebook comments and retweeting tweets. It can also be a multidimensional experience that can get people to interact with you in the digital world and then lead to an interaction in the real world. Starbucks is a great example of this thinking.

“Grabbing a cup of joe got a whole lot easier this year. In January, Starbucks began accepting mobile payments via the Starbucks Card Mobile iPhone and BlackBerry applications at 6,800 company-operated stores. Today, the company revealed that more than 3 million people have paid using Starbucks Card Mobile…Starbucks now owns the largest mobile payment network.” Read the full article here.

Starbucks is awesome proof that having a customer centric attitude works. Starbucks knows how valuable their customers’ time is. Many of their clients need to get to meetings or be about their hustle and bustle busy day as soon as possible. Starbucks gave their customers an innovative way to do that. They did it by asking what their customers needs and problems were and then gave them something to use that is just as much a part of their daily lives as their routine cup of coffee, their mobile phones. Now all a customer of Starbucks has to do is check their mobile phone (which they do anyway), get the latest deal or suggestion of the day from Starbucks, and then bring with them their mobile phones which they were just using to check which kind of coffee they want, to pay for that same coffee. Not only that, but a customer will also receive reward points for their purchase. As soon as they have enough points for a free cup off coffee, you can bet your dollar that Starbucks will be sending an alert to that customer so that they can come in and use that very same phone to pay for it.

Starbucks is one example of many who utilize mobile to capture customers. Through the use of GPS in cell phones, there is no reason why every single business on the block shouldn’t be interacting with customers as they are strolling by.

For instance, what if every time a person was near your shop, they instantly received a text message highlighting their deal of the day. All it would take is for the customer to sign up their mobile phone number and agree to receive instant texts from your business. If you are a late night restaurant catering to college students, this type of interaction may be especially helpful.

Mobile presents great opportunities for businesses to further interact with their customers. To make their interactions effective, they must only make them so that the customer is wiling and able to seek you out, not the other way around. Your mobile experience must be fun and interactive to work. No one likes spam, and everyone already has enough email to check. Make your interactions meaningful and correctly timed. Realize that the way of mobile is only up. Get on the boat now while there aren’t many aboard to clutter and take up space on deck.

But please, stay out of the bedroom.

We the Consumer

I have been having some problems lately. The worst, my internet sucks. It sucks right now, it sucked in the past, and it would have continued to have sucked well into the future.

Why would I pay Comcast $50 a month to have a consistently inconsistent, spotty internet connection? It doesn’t seem right to me.

In the past, I would have let it go, not spoken out about my problems because of fear that Comcast had some kind of power over me. That they were such a big company that any complaint I would have would simply be lost in the confusion of robotic voices and endless touch pad tones to nowhere that get nothing solved.

So instead of doing that. I decided that I would take action, demand service, and settle for nothing less than I think I deserve. Heres what I learned from the experience.

1. You, the consumer, have the power.

2. Threatening to switch service providers is a great way to assert your customer dominance and get the compensation you deserve.

3. If you ask the right questions, and have the right attitude, companies will do things to help you out.

I used to think I was stuck. That experiencing a fairly low level of customer service from a large company was just the way it was. Someday it would change. But not now. I was just gonna have to deal with it I guess. There is no way that such a big company like Comcast would ever listen or help me out unless I was able to talk to some of the bigger dogs of the company.

Well, this thinking was wrong. In my pursuit for justice I discovered a better understanding of a company’s thinking in regards to the way they handle customer service. I am also better able to clearly see the distinction between companies who have alright customer service, and those who obviously have great customer service.

Over the course of my Monday afternoon, I spoke with both Comcast and Wells Fargo with customer service related issues.

The first came with a call to Comcast. As I told you before, my internet sucks, has sucked, and would have forever sucked had I not picked up the phone and called with the intention to demand better service and compensation.

My call began just as any other generic internet problem call to Comcast would. What’s always the first and at many times the only step you take with Comcast when trying to fix your internet issues? Unplug router, wait, replug router, Comcast will send a “power signal” to the router, and your problem should be solved. Sure this method works sometimes, but I already went through this process. Twice.

So I told the comcast rep that no, I would not be unplugging and replugging my router and waiting for you power poop signal because I have already been through that. It won’t work.

And here my friends is where I, the consumer, took the power back. Because it was the right thing to do.

I pay money for internet, and thats what I should get. I pay money for internet that works, and that is what I should get. Every second I have to spend and have had to spend figuring out problems has cost me. My time is valuable. You, Comcast, know I feel this way. You, Comcast know that I dont have to take these problems bent over. That there are other isp’s I could switch to and never lose a wink of sleep at night knowing that I will most likely never give your company money again. My future family and our kids neither.

So Comcast. Now that you know I am fed up and that I deserve some real help from you guys, what are you going to do?

Oh, you’re gonna upgrade my internet speed from a max of 20mbps to 50? Cool, you’re gonna give me cable tv too? Sweet, I’m still gonna pay $50 a month? Awesome. My router won’t come in the mail until Nov. 10th? nuh ahw.

(Btw check out speedtest.net to check your own internet connection’s speed.)

I need internet right now. School depends on it. Work depends on it. Other people depend on me. This problems should not even be happening in the first place.What can you do for me Comcast?

Oh, you can get the modem to me on the 6th now? Well that was magical. You should have said so in the first place. But guess what? That’s not good enough. I need it now. Response?

“Well sir, you could drive out to one of our offices and pick it up today.”

ORLY?! Thanks for letting me know, I would have absolutely done so in the first place if you would have told me!

To make the rest of the story short, I picked up my equipment, hooked it up, it works, and now I have blazing fast internet and can watch the Seahawks on Sunday if I so feel inclined.

When I could have just let the problem persist and continued to believe that nothing I would do could change it.

It wasn’t hard. All I had to realized was that I have the power, not Comcast. I had to remember that they need us, not the other way around.

And I got all this free stuff for doing so. Pretty cool.

I really appreciate the way I was received and talked to service reps of Comcast. They were all nice and all very understanding. But I am upset that to get what I deserved I had to jump through unnecessary hoops and waste unnecessary time. If I would have been given the upgrades off the bat as compensation for the horrible performance I had been receiving, I wouldn’t be writing this today. In order to not get put off and queued into the Comcast line of waiting eternity I had to act tough. Like I was the bad guy. Like I was doing something out of the ordinary by asking for good service. This is troubling because it tells me that Comcast is being tricky on purpose. It tells me that if they can, they would rather hope to have a customer talk to a machine and forget about their problems rather than deal with them head on from the get go, fix their problem, and then allow both sides to be on their merry way.

Good customer service isn’t just about options and mediums of contact (Check out Comcast’s variety of contact methods here ). It is simply a mindset in which all of the correct solutions to solving customer service problems will follow. When you truly care about giving customers a quality product from the best of your ability, you will have minimal customer service issues and you will save time and money. Where you will lose money is when you lose lifelong customers because your company is trying to cut corners and focus on the business rather than what is really important, the customer.

Count on SQL to Hook You Up With the Right Dat(e)a

I can hardly image being able to keep up with data in the older days when computers weren’t around. Even when their use began to emerge, input of data into a computer was strenuous and results were limited. Database management today has become not only easier, but more effective because we are able to store an exponentially greater amount data.

But a bunch of data won’t do anyone any good if they can’t make any sense of what it means and how they can use it to make their business more effective. That is why researchers use SQL (server query language) to ask their database a specific question about the contents of their data so that they can narrow down the types of people or things they are looking for. You should be able to imagine how helpful it would be to a large company if they were able to easily search through a list of a hundred thousand people or whatever else the company wants to keep track of.

Take Nike for instance. Say they want to sell a new shoe that is targeted at middle aged women who live in hot, sunny areas. Using SQL, Nike could ask their large database of customer information to show a list of relevant customers names, addresses, email addresses, gender, geographic location, and more that would fit the profile of this type of person. With this list, Nike will be able to target their marketing to places on the net and analog life where these people reside.

Another great example of a company that uses SQL for their data base is Ford Motor Co., or any automobile company really. Companies in the auto industry have a huge distribution chain of car parts to manage. They need to know what types of parts they have in stock, how many of each they have, when the current order is scheduled to run out, when the next order will be coming in, etc. Auto companies have all of that information available in their database. Using SQL they can actually find specific parts of it. SQL allows a company to ask the right question to give them the right data while filtering out what they don’t need.

It is very easy for me to see the benefits of learning SQL; whether you are in a large multinational company or not. Even having as many as 50 clients or customers would be enough for a person to want to organize and extract info in an easy and effective manner. If you don’t know how to ask the right questions, you better find someone who does, or you’re gonna be in a world of hurt and wasted time.

This is why it would be important for any marketer to learn at least a basic level of SQL. Even if you are not the person who will be running the queries, it is important that everyone involved in the process of doing one know what types of results can be achieved and what level of work will go in to achieving them. As a marketer with this knowledge, you would much more effectively be able to communicate to your team what type of information you need and how you may be able to attain it.

Specialists are generalists are both important in their own respects. But if you want to be a leader who gets work done efficiently, you need to have both a breadth and depth of knowledge in multiple areas. It seems our only solution to achieve this is to never stop learning and never stop pursuing passion, wherever it may lie.

Want to learn more about SQL and which companies use it? Check out mySQL at: http://www.mysql.com/customers/

How Simple A,B Testing Will Convert More Customers

We all wish there was something we could do to get more people to interact with our site. And by this, I mean getting people to click on the all mighty,”submit your email address here!” button.

But how do we do that?

Could we maybe change the background color from green to blue to get people in a more serene and easy going mood? Would it help if we made our “sign up form” sequence shorter? Or maybe of we increased the font on our headings?

We could of course, make these changes, wait a couple of weeks and then see if we get more traffic and emails on our website because of it. But how do we know which change we made had the specific positive or negative effect? Or even more so, which changes had more positive effects than others? Just because we change something on our website and then happen to be getting more traffic a week down the road does not mean that we are getting those results because of our changes. There are a number of other factors that could have been the cause of the increased traffic such as: promo codes you have offered, increased marketing efforts, the change of seasons, etc.

So how can we go about testing changes on our website and figure out if they are actually working? The answer is a method called A/B testing.

With A/B testing, you will set up two web pages which are exactly similar except for the change you want to test. An embedded piece of java script to your page will automatically and randomly send a web browser to either your original or modified page. After enough data is recorded, (usually about 2 weeks) you can look at your data and see whether you have achieved a positive, negative, or neutral result. If you see a significantly positive change in web traffic, then make your test page your new one for all customers to see! Since you performed an A/B test, you can be confident that your changes will continue to generate positive results.

“An A/B test can have only three outcomes: no result, a negative
result or a positive result. The key to optimizing conversion rates is to do a ton of A/B
tests, so that all positive results add up to a huge boost to your sales and achieved
goals.”¹

Assuming you get good test results, you can be confident in their accuracy, but you should never be completely sure or convinced that it is the absolute best way to get people to interact with your website. The key is to keep testing. The more you test different elements of your page, the more data you will have about what works and what doesn’t. A significant amount of A/B testing on different aspects of your web page will be sure to generate an overall jump in traffic and positive interaction.

¹ Chopra, Paras: “The Ultimate Guide to A/B testing”. June 24th 2010. Smashing Magazine.

Everyone Should Be A Coder

I have always wanted to learn html and how to build a website, but the learning curve has appeared rather steep and timely. Until today, my future days of being a coder sat patiently on the back burner.

10 minutes into the Codecademy html and web page building tutorial I saw doors open that I had never before seriously considered. For some reason, everything clicked. Even this simple amount of language I had just learned had more meaning to me now than it ever had in the past.

Here’s a little somethin’ I was working on a couple of hours in.

It feels so exciting to know that my vision of having the “total package” as a marketer is closer than ever.

With extensive knowledge of coding, I will be able to have near complete control over the way I want to do marketing right at my fingertips. Web design, inbound, content, email, social…everything I could hope to want to be able to do well.

The idea of learning to code with html had always before seemed like a far off accomplishment, but for now, I feel more confident than ever that I can learn this stuff and make the use out of it I have always wanted to.

Check out this video of why everyone should be a coder. In the meantime, I’m gonna get back to Codecademy.

See ya! #lockedin

The Death of Paid Advertising

The problem with paid media.

It isn’t taken seriously. It is untrusted. It is forced upon us. In general, we do not like it. It is seen as an interruption rather than an invitation. It is seen as “not for me” instead of “just what I was looking for.” No one wants to be told what to do.

But give a person a reason and a will to join you, and you will then have more than just a customer, but a you will have a friend. A friend who won’t be afraid to be honest with you because he realizes that there are plenty of other good friends out there that he could go hang out with if you don’t treat him right. Honesty is the best policy. Good content, once seen, will not be ignored or forgotten. Every good bit you share helps. The better the content you produce and share, the more authority you will have, and the higher the likelihood you will have to fuel organic sharing of it.

People don’t see and hear about Redbull everyday because of their television and print advertisements. They hear about them because they put out kick ass videos, on the daily, that are informative, entertaining, and inspiring. The people in their videos aren’t drinking Red Bull, but Red Bull represents the lifestyle of the people. Being friends with Red Bull is like being a kid with the most awesome older brother who does the coolest things and one day you want to be able to do cool things like him and see the world a little more like he sees it so you go and drink a Red Bell every morning before you take on the world like your cool older bro does. People don’t buy what you make, they buy why you make it.

Check out what Red Bull has put out in anticipation for their 1 year anniversary of the Stratos project.

Paid media is like a fishing reel reaching out trying to sneakily lure in a sea of customers with some “too good to be true” bait, whereas your owned and earned media are like the happy light at the end of the tunnel that leads to endless possibilities.

Red Bull paid millions of dollars to allow Felix Baumgartner to step off that platform from the far reaches of the stratosphere. Every step of the way, Red Bull used social media as a main channel of communication to followers of the project. Doing so gave people awesome content so good that many of them will buy the documentary that has come out. And they have been drinking Red Bull up to and ever since. All of their advertising through social media was made available for free. You don’t need to pay to get someone to see your advertisement. You just need to make it good enough and visible enough for people to find it themselves. That is what gives your brand loyalty. That is what gives you real power.

Give and You Shall Receive: The Power of Authority and Free Content

Everyone wants to help the world. And everyone has their own vision of how they can best use what they know to do so. The reality is, we all have something to offer and we can all learn from one another.

In the competitive world of business, we all have equal opportunity and we all have the ability to “win” at success. Yet even though we all have passion and we will all work hard to reach those we can, making your organization visible and legitimate on the internet is no easy task.

The reason is that people don’t just want help from anyone. They’re not gonna take the time to listen to every nut on the internet who says that what they have to offer is more unique and effective than everyone else. The only way you can convince people to use your product is to allow them to trust you. To allow people to trust you, you need gain authority.

Authority gives you power and legitimacy in the eyes of consumers. It will be your key tool to converting a specific email audience to customers and clients that will financially support you.

From “The Business Case for Content Marketing” written by Brian Clark, founder of Copyblogger Media, “The key to becoming an authority in any area is to learn all you can, and share all you can. Then you make money by selling something related to your authority, and even by re-packaging the content you’ve already created.”

The idea with authority is that you, similar to people like you, are seeking information on a certain subject that they are interested in. But the difference between you and most any other person seeking that information is that you have seeked and found so much quality content on your particular subject of interest that you have decided to share with others what you have found in a helpful way. To create a business out of the valuable information you have acquired, you can repackage it into your own program, service, or product and then convince others to buy it based on your authority.

Again from Brian Clark, “The key to becoming an authority in any area is to learn all you can, and share all you can. Then you make money by selling something related to your authority, and even by re-packaging the content you’ve already created.”

Your level of authority is all based on the quality and quantity of content you provide.

You can provide effective content in three ways:

1. Share on your site useful content that others have produced.

2. Produce your own content in the form of an informational blog post, photo, or video.

3. Make sure your content is up to date and relevant.

The more you share, the more reputable you will be and the more authority you will have. The more you help others, the more they will help you (assuming you share good content of course) because you are a good company with a good idea, and all good companies with good ideas can be successful with enough thought and enough ability to provide as many people as possible with enjoyable and insightful content.

In the world of the web, content rules.

Your job, is to simply do what you like doing.

Research, find good content (or generate it yourself), and then share it with others, FOR FREE. Once you gain enough authority that you become more legitimate than everyone else on the market, charge a fee for your most well detailed and self compiled information. For no one else can give what you give, and your product truly is, one of a kind.

The Importance of Social Care through Social Media

SOCIAL CARE

“Social Care is transforming customer service. Social media has emerged as an important channel for customer service, with nearly half of U.S. consumers reaching out directly to brands and service providers to voice their satisfaction or complaints, or simply to ask questions. In fact, one in three social media users say they prefer to use social media rather than the phone for customer service issues.”

Social care is now becoming one of the best ways to help your customers get questions answered and comments responded to about your products or business practice. One of the main reasons is the increased level of acceptability that social media provides between the customer and the client. The ability to feel comfort in numbers by presence or validation of comments puts us in the “social media mindset” that gives up the opportunity to communicate with a company just like we would any other friend.

When we post to a company Facebook page or Twitter feed, we are not alone. On any companies social media pages, we can easily see hundreds or thousands of others who have ranted, raved, and asked all sorts of different things about a number of different subjects relating to their company. Not feeling like we are alone in commenting to a company gives us all the more reason to feel comfortable doing so. Not only do we see through social media that other people have similar rants, raves, and suggestions like we do, but we are also encouraged by these people to express our own opinions because of their validation. One comment that we make will be seen by a potentially large number of people so that if our comment is a good one, and catches on to others thoughts, we will know so because of how many “likes” our comment has received. The ability to act in numbers has given the consumer a much greater level of power for change and service than in the days before social media. It is no longer the small, single customer against the one big company, it is now the large group of customers against the single small company.

Luckily, company interaction with large numbers of customers is just as much a good thing as it can be bad. The more questions that are asked by customers and answered by companies, the better. This is because future customers will continually have more and more data to search through from social media sites and forums to get their personal questions effectively answered. Rather than needing to post a complaint or suggestion to a company in the dark, over the phone, with no idea of if your issue will or already has been addressed, can use social media to more quickly and happily get their questions answered. Customer generated content is much more powerful and effective than company generated. A company vouching for their own credibility won’t take nearly as much weight as a recommendation from a friend or peer will.

However, as my experience with the internet has grown stronger, I have began to notice that I am able to trust companies on the internet more and more…The ones that are trying to help me out that it. But sometimes it is hard to tell if a company online actually has your interests in theirs.

Thinking about this though, I realized something. I realized that I am no longer afraid to connect with people on the internet.

I have been searching for good social media and marketing blogs lately and came across one I particularly liked called socialmouths.com.. After reading an article there, I found myself wanting to hear more from what this place and what they had to say.

At first, I felt hesitant to take the steps necessary to do so. For example, the “full access to the Mini-course for building Facebook Tabs for FREE!” sounded pretty awesome, all you have to do is give them your email address. Yet even at this small and seemingly harmless request, my initial feelings toward giving it up turned dark. My mind became flooded with bubbling and fiery emotions implanted by the past deceit of scammers virus implanters. How could I trust someone offering something for free? What was their angle? Does this free course even exist? This type of thinking was common place for many people during the early realms of advertising on the internet. It was hard to distinguish the genuine entrepreneurs from the shortcut scammers.

But times have changed. Credibility on the internet is rising and trust between online identities has grown stronger. I took a second to step back from my anxiety of connecting with this blog and who was behind it to then realize that they are just like me. They want to educate the world. They want to give their knowledge and passion for the enjoyment of others. Of course they need to make money and will try to persuade me to give them some by first baiting me with free content and then asking if I want to pay for the really good stuff… but thats ok. Any type of high quality service worth paying for should be paid for. They need to make money, we all do. And to make their good ideas stand out, they need to. Instead of thinking about their idea of monetary incentive with disgust, I became appreciative of it. If this website was not trying to make money, there would be no content on their page for me to enjoy and learn from. I trust the people at socialmouths.com because they have set up their personality for me to do so. And as Rachel Botsman says: “The currency of the new economy is trust.”

How Great Companies Inspire Action Through Inbound Marketing

Some business do not believe or truly understand the power of inbound marketing.Those who don’t may say, “inbound marketing tactics are sound too expensive, it would be much cheaper for my business to keep sending out direct mail.” What these companies don’t realize is that inbound marketing strategies may be more expensive upfront, but will ultimately give you a much higher ROI in your tactics. “Twice as many marketers say inbound marketing delivers below average cost per leads versus outbound strategies. Our survey found that 34% of all the leads generated in 2013 come from inbound marketing sources. In fact, inbound delivers 54% more leads into the marketing funnel than traditional outbound leads.”1

“It’s about creating marketing people love: inbound marketing.”2 I really like this statement from Hubspot’s 2013 inbound marketing annual report. Connecting with your customers should not be an annoying experience for them. It should be one that is welcomed. A customer should want to approach what you have to offer because they see a part of themselves in what you create and provide.

        

Having the customer come to you through inbound marketing is ideally what the idea of marketing is all about. And that is to build real relationships with people. Relationships are of the utmost importance to a business because ones that are well kept will lead your followers to continue doing business with you. And they should want to do business with you not only because you provide something they need or want, but because the values you show and the content you put out personally resonates with them.

(The title of the email says: “‘Into the Mind’ wins Film of the Year; now available o iTunes and more”)

The content of this email from Freeskier magazine is a great example of inbound marketing. Freeskier magazine is a ski magazine very similar to other popular ones like “Powder”, “Ski”, and “Skiing”. Even though almost all of Freeskier’s revenue comes from magazine sales, this email they sent me is highlighting a new ski movie in which has come out recently, I would probably enjoy, and that they are unaffiliated with other than the fact that both parties are in the ski industry. So, while Freeskier will not gain any direct revenue by me being interested in this film, they know that by informing me of it, they will better be able to build a relationship with me through common interest. Since I am appreciative of Freeskier doing this for me, I will be much more likely in the future to support their magazine either by buying it in a store or subscribing to it from their website.

“What’s exciting to all of us at HubSpot is that marketers today understand that inbound is not just a set of tactics but an ideology and framework for how businesses will find customers in the next decade.” To me, this statement says, business’ should no longer attempt to trick or inconveniently trap customers in order to get business. We instead need to shift our marketing ideals so that we are the good guys people want to hang out with, not just the guys people go to because they need something in which after they get it, may or may not call upon you again. From the wise words of Simon Sinek, a author best known for popularizing the idea of the “Golden Circle”,  “People don’t buy what you make, they buy why you make it.”

Let the Spiders Crawl with Good SEM

As search engine algorithms become better and better at finding specific answers to customers’ queries, a web designer must be able to know what information the search engine will be looking for and where it will be looking for it when it browses through relevant data on your site to potentially post up as a result to a query.

As more information becomes available on the internet, relevant data available for any type of query increases. So if you happened to be the only ice cream shop in Bellingham, and someone were to search “ice cream in Bellingham”, more likely than not, your business would come up as the first listing on the results page. But if someone else were to open an ice cream shop in Bellingham, and their website was optimized better than yours to tell a search engine that they sell ice cream in Bellingham, say because they have the words “ice cream” and “Bellingham” both at the very top of their page, that company’s website is going to be ranked higher than yours. Because of this, when someone searches “”ice cream in Bellingham”, they are going to be much more likely to go to your competitors shop to buy ice cream possibly regardless of quality or location (say, for a tourist, or someone who was not already heavily invested into the already established ice cream shop).

Especially in the case of sold goods that have no striking differences in quality or appearance, SEM is key. “The top listing in Google’s organic search results receives 33 percent of the traffic, compared to 18 percent for the second position, and the traffic only degrades from there.”1

The high percentage of people who click on the first or second links of a results page shows the importance of making sure that your business’ website comes up highly ranked and visible when relevant.

However being able to be found on the internet is only half the battle when it comes to effective SEM. The increase of people realizing the importance of community in business is driving businesses to provide great content on their sites. “People want to know whom they are dealing with. Your customers are checking for your website, location, map or directions, social media links, contact information, hours and even a photo of the owner or staff. Your customers want to see who they are doing business with. They want to be able to visit your business location even before they step foot through your door.”2 Customers are demanding more. They want more information, and they want to be able to find what is relevant to them more easily. If a business wants to continue to be successful, they must give the customer what they want, and SEM has just the tools to make that happen.

There is no doubt that growth in SEM will continue. As more people use the internet to find intimate information, businesses will need to make sure that theirs is available. The websites with the most relevant and revealed information will win customers. And as long as business want to attract more customers, SEM will be a most useful idea.

Sources:

1http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2276184/No.-1-Position-in-Google-Gets-33-of-Search-Traffic-Study

2http://www.newwindmarketing.com/why-is-search-engine-marketing-important/