LionShark Digital Marketing Blog

Marketing Lessons from DIY Project Failures

7/31/2014

When it comes to DIY projects around the house or arts and crafts I have had my fair share of failures. Of course, I have had successes as well, but it’s the failures that I have learned from the most. The blunders have taught me a number of lessons that are important to remember whenever I embark upon new DIY projects, and they are definitely also applicable to online marketing.

As the owner of a Michigan online marketing company, sometimes business owners that I know will pick my brain to learn more about online marketing so that they can do it themselves. So, if you will, let me give you some marketing execution pointers while regaling you with tales of my DIY failures.

SEO: The Pesto of Online Marketing

7/29/2014

Maybe I’m a visionary or maybe I’m just hungry, but today I couldn’t help but think about how SEO is kind of like pesto. Pesto is a funny thing – it’s simple and delicious (not to mention perfect for a light summertime meal), and somehow it enjoys a mass appeal that many foods could only dream of despite its odd appearance. So how is SEO like this green goodness? Well, I’ll tell you.

No One Hates It
No one hates pesto. There, I said it. Some people love pesto, some like it and others just tolerate it, but no one really actually hates it. I believe that this is due to pesto’s subtle integration to the American food landscape. While a lot of people don’t actually sit down to a full-on pesto pasta dinner, many eat small amounts of pesto in other things like as a spread on sandwiches, topping on a flatbread or marinade on chicken. SEO is kind of the same – all business owners have heard of it and know they need it and have done something that qualifies as SEO even if they don’t have a full-out SEO strategy or dedicated SEO roles. While people might gripe about how often SEO changes or how they don’t think it’s actually working, no one ever actually decides to ignore the world of SEO and just go it alone without Google.

Quality Ingredients Matter
Pesto only contains a few fresh ingredients, so if you skimp on any of those, it won’t be nearly as delicious. Using old wilted basil or cheap olive oil can really bring down the flavor of your pesto. In the same way, SEO is very much a product of what you put into it. So, if you’re just going through the motions and not investing any real time or effort into doing quality SEO work that will stand the test of time, your SEO is going to suffer. SEO gets a bad rap because it can be really time consuming (or if you’re paying a digital marketing agency, it can be quite expensive), but the time investment is worth it in the end!

It’s Intimidating, but It Shouldn’t Be
When you look at a pesto recipe it’s hard to believe that so few ingredients that are so basic will combine to produce something so great, but it’s true! Restaurant-quality or rave-worthy pesto can seem intimidating to try to pull off, but it just relies on some simple ingredients and a little love. SEO is often really overwhelming for small business owners, but it shouldn’t be because good SEO is basically just the culmination of implementing some best practices and focusing on what’s going to be good for the user.

Of course, the prepared foods in your grocery store are there for those times when you don’t have the time or desire to make something scrumptious. Similarly, if you’re intimidated by SEO, there are plenty of reputable online marketing companies that can provide SEO services to help you out!

Okay, well, I’m sufficiently famished now! … I think you know what I’ll be whipping up to eat!

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

Making a Strong First Impression at a Networking Event

7/24/2014

Networking is a great way to make connections within your industry and meet potential clients, but it can also be very difficult for some people. As the owner of a digital marketing company, I try to get out as much as possible to meet other professionals. If you avoid networking events like the plague or get awkward at those types of things, these tips can help you not only get through it, but also succeed at actually connecting with other people!

Dress the Part
Everyone has seen that guy at a networking event that shows up in shorts looking like he just came from the gym or the beach. People won’t take you seriously if you don’t take yourself seriously. Wear the proper business or professional attire to make a good impression. Bring plenty of business cards and stow them away in a pocket or someplace else that will be easily accessible during the networking event so that you aren’t digging and searching for the business cards when someone asks you for one.

Really Listen
It’s obvious when you’re talking to someone and they aren’t listening to you, so when you interact with someone at a networking event, really listen to what they’re saying. You may be surprised what you learn and the true connection that you can make.

Know Your Pitch
Be ready when someone asks you what you do! Have a short pitch prepared so that you exude confidence when talking about your profession and your specific role. Be prepared for follow up questions as well, because you’re likely to get some. The more local networking events you go to, the more prepared you’ll be because you’ll start to notice patterns in the types of questions people ask. You can even tweak your pitch to preemptively answer some of these questions, just don’t make your pitch too long – you don’t want to spend too much time talking about yourself.

Make Contact
I think the hardest thing about a networking event is actually just walking up to someone and starting to talk to them because people are rarely alone, so you end up having to assimilate into a group that’s already talking. However, this is also the most important part of networking! When I’m at networking events, I just remind myself that everyone is there for the same reason, so there’s no reason to be anxious or embarrassed by walking up to a new person and starting a conversation. This also gets easier as you attend more networking events!

Remember Names
I’m terrible with names, but that just isn’t okay at a networking event! When I first started going to professional marketing networking events, I would struggle to remember people’s names and never make any lasting connections. But then I discovered a trick… People are usually wearing nametags, so I try to use those to really reinforce names in my mind. As someone is talking to me I repeat their name over and over I my head and then when I’m done talking to them I use their name to end the conversation (ex. “It was great talking to you Bob!”) to make it really stick.

Ask for a Card
Getting a business card is the most important thing to remember, because without that you won’t have any way of staying in touch with the person that you've met. Ask for a business card and take the time to look at it for a second before sticking it in your pocket so that if you get a bunch of business cards, then you’ll know who belongs to which card the next day.

Follow Up After
The best way to make a good impression is to follow up after the event with an email letting the person know that you enjoyed meeting them. If you can incorporate some personal details into your follow up, that will help them to remember you. Mention something you discussed or something that stuck out to you about their business or role. You’re much more likely to establish a lasting impression if you demonstrate that your meeting had an impression on you and wasn’t just some casual meeting in passing at an event.

There are a lot of great local events no matter where you are, so use these tips to build your confidence and get out there and network!

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

4 Fail-Proof PPC Strategies

7/22/2014

People say that there are no real guarantees in online marketing, and while that might technically be true (since no one can force the world to love your business and buy your products), there are a few PPC strategies that are guaranteed to set you up for success. Whether or not you end up going on to be successful is determined by your subsequent execution, but that's a different topic for a different day. But to get back on track… there are four PPC strategies that are as fail-proof as they come:

1. Go Long-Tail
Using keywords that are too broad (too short and too general) has sunk many a PPC effort by blowing the budget on untargeted clicks, but no one has ever been sunk by going “too long-tail.” The worst thing that can happen is that your targeting ends up being too narrow and then you have to open it up from there. In the scope of potential problems that you may face while managing your PPC, that is a great problem to have because it means that you didn’t waste any money and you can already use the effort you put in to quickly adapt your efforts.

For instance, if you create an ad group around “custom wooden diploma frames” and then find that there’s no search volume for those types of terms, you can always modify the ad group to include less specific keyword variations like “custom diploma frames” or spin off slightly broader keywords like “wooden diploma frames” into their own ad group to test. Then, you’re back in business!

2. Group and Organize
Grouping and organizing your PPC account properly is a must-have for a successful PPC account!
Creating ad groups around tightly organized themes gives them the best chance of succeeding because it lets you create very targeted ads. Grouping and organizing keywords into ad groups and ad groups into campaigns will also help you keep your sanity because it’s much easier to evaluate data and make changes to your account down the road if you have taken the time initially to organize your account.

Some people may argue that dumping all of your keywords and ads into one ad group under one campaign is easier because it requires less planning and is a lot faster to set up, but anyone who has tried to manage this in the weeks, months and years to follow knows that this is a terrible idea. You’ll be able to spot those people pretty easily – they’re likely bald from pulling all their hair out in frustration.

3. Data Mine
Using good data to make decisions will always be a more successful strategy than just winging it. Discovering insights and uncovering trends is key to ensuring that you are making changes to optimize your account and not just making changes for the sake of making changes. When mining data, always focus on whatever metrics make the most sense for your business goals, and then lean on the data to justify decisions.

4. Test, Re-Test and Test Again
There’s one thing that every successful PPC account has in common, I’m sure of it! To be successful, you have to test everything that you do – keywords, ad text, settings, bids, etc. Successful PPC accounts are full of past tests that have since been paused or deleted in favor of their more successful counterparts.

Are there any other PPC strategies that you or your digital marketing agency swear by? We’d love to hear them, so please share!

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

6 Ways Marketing is Like Dieting

7/17/2014

I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I’ve noticed a lot of parallels between marketing and dieting. The most striking similarity is that people have a love-hate relationship with dieting because if you do it and fail, then you end up abhorring it and if you do it and succeed, then you’ve achieved the ultimate prize and are supremely happy. Marketing is much the same (and just as painful for some people). In these six ways, online marketing borrows life lessons from dieting:

1. Everyone Thinks they Can Do It
Our society is obsessed with dieting! If you ask the average adult they are likely to say that they are on some sort of diet, health fad or healthy eating kick – or about to start one ;-). This is because everyone just assumes they can do it. People think, “If I just eat less I’ll lose weight – I can do that!” But the reality of the matter is that it’s much more than that. It’s what you eat and when you eat it and how you exercise and how much sleep you get. Losing weight and being healthy is not something that everyone can just do on their own. This is why gyms stay in business and personal trainers and nutritionists exist.

Marketing is exactly the same. People think, “I’ll just open some social media accounts for my business and people will buy what I’m selling” or “I’ll put some text on my site and Google will find it and the shoppers will come in droves” but it’s not that easy. Having the right marketing strategy is incredibly complicated and no one person knows how to execute everything needed to properly market your business and achieve the results you’re looking for (that’s why marketing agencies exist).

2. Opinions are Always Changing
When it comes to dieting and the body, opinions are always changing. Things that were once considered harmless or even beneficial are now being cautioned against. Even some of the most well-established truths in dieting are now being challenged. For instance, I just read the other day that a recent study out of the University of Alabama at Birmingham didn’t find any correlation between eating breakfast and weight loss. Apparently, building a balanced breakfast into your daily routine to help you shed the pounds may just be a myth (or a fabrication of the cereal and granola industry)!

Marketing has even more examples of this. Back in the day, keyword stuffing was a common practice by websites, but now it’s basically a cardinal sin in SEO. Digital marketing is a fast moving field and as fast and strategies can be developed to game the system, Google can make changes to shut them down and penalize sites. For this reason, it’s very important to stay on top of the curve.

3. It’s Easy to Get Swept Up in the Latest Fads
From juice cleanses and the caveman diet to the gluten-free fad, there is a lot of bad information out there when it comes to dieting. Just a few years ago people were only eating green grapes for 3 days at a time because they wanted to detoxify and look slimmer by Monday morning! It seems like every year a few new crazy diets pop up claiming some sort of scientific basis, but it’s all just hub bub. If you can imagine it, it’ll probably be a diet someday (I’m just waiting for the all ice cream diet!).

In marketing there’s a lot of hub bub too. Self-proclaimed marketing experts (usually with titles that include words like “guru” or “ninja”) spout garbage about how they have revolutionary new marketing ideas and tactics that no one else is using yet and can help get your business instant stardom. These are the people that give legitimate marketing agencies and professionals a bad name.

4. There are No Shortcuts
Sure, there are drugs and supplements that you can take to “melt the pounds away,” “shred belly fat,” and give you a “perfect bikini body,” but we all know that those aren’t without potentially serious side effects and most of them don’t work at all. When it comes to weight loss, there’s no single safe magic pill that’s going to give you a tight, toned, slim body and keep the rest of you safe. You’re going to have to put down the pie and pick up the barbells, it’s not fun and it’s not pretty, but it’ll give you results.

This is basically the battle cry of marketing! When it comes to marketing, no one single thing is going to be your magic ticket to success and it won’t be easy. It might be tough and tiring and you may have no idea if what you’re doing it going to work in the long-run, but you have to put in the time. True results in marketing come from the day-to-day efforts of a well-rounded marketing strategy!

5. Using the Right Measuring Stick is Essential
A lot of people just step on the scale and measure their results from there, but dieting or getting healthy is not just about weight loss. It’s about overall health and fitness! Building muscle, increasing stamina for daily activities like playing with your kids, keeping your heart healthy, and all the other beneficial things that come with leading a healthier life.

In marketing, people want often develop laser vision for a particular metric and then miss out on the bigger picture. Yes, looking at site traffic is important, but what is that site traffic doing once you’ve got it? If it’s just leaving, then you likely have issues on your site that you need to deal with, or perhaps you have to tweak your business plan. Make sure that you are looking at the whole picture of what’s going on as you engage in different marketing activities to truly get the pulse of your marketing efforts.

6. You Need to Keep It Up To See Results
In a year or five years or ten years, no one is going to be able to tell that you ate really healthy for a month or that you ran a 5K once, and your body will have forgotten about this bliss as well. Your body will regress if you don’t keep pushing it. The only way to get lasting results is to keep with it!

Marketing is exactly the same! If you run a PPC campaign for a month or do a one-time SEO audit of your site, it won’t have the lasting effects that you want. You have to keep up your marketing efforts month after month and season after season. Taking a break from marketing means that your business can get left in the dust as competitors keep up their efforts and push towards success.

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

45 Ideas to Shake up Your Business

7/15/2014

Stuck in a rut? If your business is just chugging along on the boring train or you’re seeing a slump in site traffic or sales, why not try one of these 45 ideas to shake up your business? Hopefully you’ll find an idea here that you can use for your business (or at least an idea that will help you think of an idea that you can use for your business)!

1. Redesign your website
2. Change your call-to-action buttons
3. Open an AdWords account and try running some PPC ads
4. Replace your Facebook or Twitter header image
5. Update your About Us page
6. Make a video of your office or employees and post it online
7. Create a monthly newsletter to send to customers
8. Offer a free gift with every purchase for the week or month
9. Check Google Analytics for business insights
10. Write a testimonial for a business partner
11. Ask employees to post why they love working for your company on Glassdoor
12. Develop a loyalty/rewards program
13. Volunteer in your local community and then tell the world about it
14. Add social media icons to your website
15. Optimize your homepage content with relevant keywords
16. Celebrate a local hero
17. Start a LinkedIn business page
18. Attend a local networking event
19. Create a contest to engage your audience
20. Rewrite your title tags
21. Feature a guest blogger on your blog
22. A/B test the images on your website
23. Pair up with a local business to host an event
24. Read up on recent industry news
25. Celebrate an obscure holiday with an unexpected promotion
26. Create unique product descriptions
27. Open a Pinterest account and start pinning
28. Rewrite meta descriptions
29. Create a profile for your ideal consumer
30. Get certified in something that’s relevant to your business
31. Ask a colleague to critique the layout of your site
32. Invite followers to share your page with their friends
33. Publish a press release if there’s something exciting going on with your business
34. Join an online forum where your target audience gathers
35. Apply for an award for your business
36. Make an infographic your audience will love
37. Redesign your blog
38. Attend a conference
39. Add applicable trust seals to your website (SSL, BBB, etc.)
40. Verify your business details are up to date on your Contact Us page
41. Spotlight current clients using your products on your site
42. Look for ways to pair your offerings with other products or services
43. Commit to running a themed blog series
44. Hire an intern for the summer
45. Conduct a mini focus group to get feedback about your products

We want to hear from you! Are you planning on using any of these ideas?

If you’ve already tried one of these ideas and want to update us on your progress, we’d love to hear about the results (and we might even feature you for a separate blog post down the road)!

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

How to Clean Up Your PPC Account in 20 Minutes

7/10/2014

Managing PPC ads requires ongoing effort to ensure that your ad spend continues to generate a positive ROI. If you don’t have much time to work on your PPC account, and aren't using a digital marketing agency to manage your PPC, there are a few tricks you can use to spruce up your account quickly.

1. Pause Keywords that Aren’t Converting
Any keywords with nonexistent or low conversion rates need to be purged first. Pause those underperformers to avoid ad spend waste. You can always revisit these keywords later when you have more time to sit down and look at everything. It may be that these keywords need to be spun off into their own ad group for use with more targeted ads or that you need to add some negative keywords to improve their performance, but all of that takes time. For now just pause keywords that aren’t converting and move on to step two.

2. Add Search Queries that Converted
Looking at search queries is a great way to generate more keywords to add to your keyword list and also to identify negative keyword opportunities. If you’re pressed for time, just add any search queries that converted so that you can make sure that your ads are showing up for the terms that are already bringing in sales.

3. Bump Up Bids
If your bids are too low, your ads won’t show up when someone does a search because they will be edged out by your competition. Addressing bids that are below the first page estimated minimum is very important in order to make sure that your ads have a fighting chance, otherwise there’s no point in spending time working on your PPC ads. Bump up any bids that are too low so that your ads can get increased exposure.

4. Look at Ad Conversion Rates
Just like keywords, any ads with low conversion rate values should be paused. In their place, create new ads to test against better performing ads. Keeping a constant rotation of ads will give your PPC efforts a better chance at succeeding. Before pausing the ads, just be sure that there’s enough data to evaluate the performance of the ads. Depending on how you have your settings configured, your lower performing ads may not be shown as often and consequently not accumulate data as quickly.

Now that you have a game plan, get out there and work on your PPC account! If you have any PPC-related questions, let us know. We’d love to help!

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

6 Reasons Your PPC Flopped

7/8/2014

PPC is a great way for businesses of all sizes to increase traffic to their sites and boost conversions, but just like any other marketing, there are a number of pitfalls along the way that can trip you up if you’re not sure what you’re doing. If you’ve tried PPC in the past and didn’t see the results you were looking for, there’s a strong possibility that it was as a result of one or more of these six most common PPC mistakes:

1. Using Overly Broad Keywords
Your PPC efforts are only as good as the keywords that you use; so, if you’re using the wrong keywords, your PPC can be domed from the start. In an attempt to get as much exposure as possible, many new advertisers will use keywords that are too broad. Overly broad keywords mean that you’ll be paying for a lot of unqualified traffic to your site. This budget buster can spell disaster!

2. Creating Blah Ads
If ads aren’t compelling enough, all of the time investment of time that you’ve put into creating campaigns and ad groups will be wasted because no one will be clicking on your ads. Without creating ads that stand out from your competitors, you won’t get the traffic you’re hoping to attract with your PPC efforts.

3. Selecting the Wrong Landing Pages
So you’ve nailed the keywords and the ads, but if you send traffic to the wrong place on your site, searchers may leave before converting (making a purchase, filling out a lead form, etc.). Selecting the right landing page is very important to ensuring the success of your PPC. Always land searchers on the page that is most relevant to their search so that they don’t have to do the work themselves to find what they’re looking for.

4. Having Low Quality Scores
A low quality score means that your campaign performance can suffer and you may end up having to pay more to get your ads the exposure you want. Improving things like landing page quality and keyword relevance to your ad text can increase your quality score.

5. Installing Conversion Tracking Incorrectly
Conversion tracking will only help you make the right decisions for your PPC account if it’s installed correctly. Owning a digital marketing agency, I’ve seen both sides of the coin – business owners who discontinued efforts that were actually producing a solid ROI because they thought they weren’t working and also business owners who kept poorly performing efforts running because they thought they were doing better than they actually were.

6. Setting It and Forgetting It
PPC requires ongoing maintenance, so if you just set it up and then let it run unmonitored, your results will likely be less impressive than if you kept up with it regularly.

Hopefully now you have a better sense of where your PPC may have gone off track. If you’re interested in getting back into the PPC game, contact us.

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

Digital Marketing for First Graders

7/3/2014

So your child asked about online marketing and now you’re struggling to find a way to explain the intricacies without going way over their head? Okay, so we both know that didn’t happen! But, if you find yourself needing a way to describe digital marketing to someone who is completely new to the concept, this article will help you out considerably.

SEO and PPC professionals go through this all the time when talking to family members, acquaintances and sometimes even clients – you start talking about your profession and people’s eyes glaze over or faces scrunch and you can tell they have no idea what you’re talking about. One time I was at a networking event and a man I met asked me what I did for a living. I said “I own a digital marketing company” and he responded “Huh?!” So I replied “You know, online marketing” to which he replied “Wait, what do you mean?” I proceeded to explain (in what I thought was the simplest possible terms) what digital marketing was. I explained that when people do a search online the page that comes up has organic listings and paid listings consisting of different sites and I deal with the different methods used to get these sites more visibility so that they can be found when people are searching for the products or services that those businesses offer. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, he said in a disapproving tone “That already exists – it’s called The Yellow Pages.” Want to avoid that at your next networking event or holiday party? Read on my friend!

It probably doesn’t make sense for me to “first grade-itize” every digital marketing specialty because there are a lot of different roles you might be involved, so I’ll just use PPC as an example because that’s my specialty so that’s what I end up talking about the most.
First, start with an explanation of what you do as you would say it to a colleague:
“I’m an AdWords certified PPC professional with over 6 years of experience managing paid search ads.”
Now, drop any certifications or abbreviations (outsiders don’t care and won’t understand this jargon):
“I’m a Pay-Per-Click professional with over 6 years of experience managing paid search ads.”
Now use descriptive words to explain your title:
“I’m an online marketing professional with over 6 years of experience managing paid search ads.”
Now clarify exactly what it is you do:
“I’m an online marketing professional with over 6 years of experience creating and running online advertisements for businesses.”
Now make it sound more conversational and less like a resume:
“I’m in online marketing, so basically I create and run online ads for businesses.”

By simplifying things you can get people to buy into hearing more about what you do and pique their interest. Remember, keeping the conversation going is the key to selling. Once you’ve gotten them to bite, you can use this same method to describe more about your industry with something like, “When someone goes online to look for a product or service or even just information about a particular product, they do a search and the results that come up are either organic (or natural search results) and paid search results. The organic search results appear in the middle of the page and the websites that appear there were chosen by Google because they are considered to be relevant to the search that was done. The paid search results are along the top and the right side and were placed there by advertisers who created those ads and bid on keywords used in the search. I deal with both of those placements depending on the goals and budget of each of my clients.” Easy, huh?

I want to hear from you! What’s the funniest situation you’ve ever encountered while trying to tell someone what you do or sell them on your products/services? You don’t have to work in digital marketing either, every industry has examples like this!

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

SEO, PPC, SEM, SoMe, Oh My!

7/1/2014

Navigating the waters of search marketing can feel a little bit like alphabet soup because there are SO MANY abbreviations! It’s likely that you’ve heard at least some of these acronyms before, but knowing what they mean and when to use each is important when talking to your digital marketing agency, colleagues, CEO and partners. So let’s dig right in!

SEO
SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization and is a term that covers all tactics used to try to increase a site’s relevancy to a searcher’s query. In laymen’s terms, SEO is everything you do to try to get your site to show up when someone searchers for something related to your site. A trick to remembering the definition of SEO is to associate the “O” in SEO with “organic search.”

Technically, SEO is “free” because it deals with getting your site visibility in the organic (or natural) search results, which means that you don’t have to pay to get your site placed anywhere. However, doing SEO right is quite labor intensive, so it’s often quite expensive to have an agency or professional do it for you.

PPC
PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click and describes the practice of creating ads to lead searchers to your site and then bidding on keywords to have those ads appear for a searcher’s query. PPC ads can be either text ads or image ads. With PPC, advertisers can pay to place their site’s ads in the results that come up when someone does a search.
Google’s advertising platform (called AdWords) is more widely used than any other search advertising platform, causing PPC to sometimes be referred to as AdWords. Think about it like this, facial tissues are sometimes collectively called Kleenex even if they are a different brand. However, unlike tissues, where there is little variation between different types, there is definitely a difference between Google AdWords and other advertising platforms like Microsoft AdCenter. So don’t make this mistake and call all PPC “AdWords” because AdWords is PPC on Google specifically.

SEM
SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. Now, it gets kind of confusing here because most of the time SEM is used as just a fancy way of saying PPC, but some people use it as an umbrella term over both SEO and PPC. This results from the fact that some people consider SEO to be a form of marketing, whereas others consider it to be a set of best practices. If you hear someone say SEM, clarify whether they are talking about just PPC or PPC and SEO so that there’s no confusion.

SoMe
SoMe is a common acronym for social media, along with “SM” or “Soc Med.” That was easy, wasn’t it?! Some lesser known abbreviations include “Social,” “S-Med” and “S Media.” Social media encompasses popular platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine, Pinterest and more that keep popping up every day.

If you run across any other abbreviations that you need help understanding, let us know! The digital marketing industry is always changing, which means we’re always learning, and we’d love to help you!

By Kate Pierce. Kate Pierce is the owner of LionShark Digital Marketing LLC, a West Michigan internet marketing company. Her areas of expertise include Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Web Consulting for small businesses, Copywriting and Local Online Marketing. She lives in the Grand Rapids area with her husband and enjoys cooking, watching sports and spending time outdoors. Like a true digital marketing expert (i.e. geek), she loves talking about marketing theory and SEM trends… so don’t say you weren’t warned!

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