Online Marketing: Are You Wasting Your Marketing Budget?

Writing by Nick Stamoulis Tweet

By Jori Ford (www.chicagoseopro.com), Chicago SEO Strategist/Consultant

Where Are You Spending Your Marketing Dollars?

The question that comes to mind for many business owners in 2009 is whether or not to cut their advertising and marketing budget. Typically, in the past years, this is what top CFOs in the country recommended in order for a business to survive, the “rough times” ahead.

In 2009 however, cutting that marketing budget could mean the end of your business. Savvy business owners and executives will shift the budget to a place where metrics are tracked for pennies on the dollar, conversions are capable of being comprehensively analyzed, and market visibility tends to be quadrupled. The best part is the ROI is considerably higher because the ability to target your market and improve your product and/or service is remarkable.

Where does the ever growing mystical market exist? The World Wide Web!

Market Visibility

Many business owners have stated that their industry or market just hasn’t made it to the internet just yet. In November 2008 comScore provided that in the United States alone, 146,941 unique visitors searched the internet using Google. Multiply that number by 12 and that is a possible 1,763,292 unique visitors a year. Do a Google search on just about any subject and the likeliness of getting over 100,000 results is extremely high. It’s safe to say in 2009, every market is visible online, and if it’s not, isn’t it about time that it got a share of the approximate 1.8 million potential customers.

What does this mean as far as market visibility?

Well in July 2008, Google announced on its very own blog, that it has seen that there are more than 1 trillion web page urls out there and counting. Google however works diligently to provide searchers with the most relevant results, hence the reason the index is forever growing and changing. Needless to say, not all pages are worth indexing.

If you build it, they might come… but only after a search engine (preferably one of the major 3) indexes the web page and efforts are made to ensure that the millions of eager internet users can find it.

Why Shift Marketing Funds?

Due to the low overhead of launching and funding a natural search engine optimization campaign, shifting those funds can drastically change the value of a conversion as the ad to spend ratio is typically ½ that of traditional marketing efforts.

How can this be true? Because traditional marketing efforts are difficult to track and the conversions are primarily based on feedback that is optional to consumers. Online efforts can be strategically tracked using free and paid tools, to help you better optimize and analyze your marketing efforts; increasing efficiency and productivity, all the while, saving you and your business money.

Make the switch. Learn more about targeting your market and improving ROI using PPC and SEO (search engine optimization) with useful tips from the Search Engine Optimization Journal.

ABOUT JORI FORD
Jori Ford is a seasoned SEO Strategist/Consultant, based in Chicago, Il. Ford currently works as the Internal SEO Director for Cyber Technology, LLC. Her 6+ years of combined experience in search marketing, web development and web design, have helped her earn titles such as Sr. SEO Analyst (Netconcepts, LLC.), SEO Specialist (The Usman Group) and other positions which speak to her abilities.