Is newspaper advertising finished? - Unknown Secrets of SEO E-Webstyle Number 16

Hi, and welcome to the Unknown Secrets of SEO podcast. Hi, thanks for joining us for another fun-filled edition of our SEO podcast. My name's Chris Burris. I'm owner of eWebStyle. And this is Paul Hanson, sales manager of eWebStyle. All right, so you ready for our subject of the week? What's our subject today? It is Swine Flu Podcast. Great. We are hoping that no one out there gets the swine flu. We understand that's a very serious issue. But actually, Paul was, you know, hey, flu, I've survived it. What's the big deal? And we did a little bit of research and pulled up the pandemic, the influenza pandemic. 18, 19, 1918. 19, 1918, 275,000 people in the United States died at that time. So that's why some people are taking it seriously. That's why some countries seem to be taking it a little more serious than us. I think there was some country that ordered the slaughter of all pigs. Oh, India? It may have been India. I think it was, I did hear about that. No, no, no, it was Turkey, I think. Okay. Maybe it was Turkey. Anyway, there's a fundamental problem with the slaughter of all pigs, and that would be there's no way to get more pigs. Yeah. There's no more bacon burgers. Come on. We're going to put McDonald's out of business. Tell me about it. That, the Jack Burger is nothing without a whole slab of bacon on it. Slab of bacon on it. What about ribs? Gosh. Come on. This is not right. So, yes, we kind of highlight a hot news topic. And again, hopefully nobody out there gets the swine flu. Hopefully we get this thing under control pretty quickly. The magic of the pharmaceuticals comes out with an actual solution that actually solves the problem in every case. Yeah. And then there's a lawsuit two years later. Because people have uncontrollable sneezing for the next five years. But they're alive and they're still complaining. A little bit about last time. So, I think we wrapped up last

time our competitive analysis series, which I think turned out to be about two podcasts. The last podcast covered backlinks in terms of competitive analysis. And we mentioned some software. So, go back and check that out. Also, send us emails. You can email us at podcast at e-webstyle.com. We enjoy your comments. We're always looking for something maybe we left out. We'd be happy to bring that back in. And, of course, any questions that we can address here on the podcast, we would love to do that. Here's one quick thing. If you send us an email, because I got an email from another SEO company. So, let's make sure you're not pitching SEO services to an SEO company. You never email me back. Because I email them like, you know we're an SEO company, right? I forgot to tell you about that. I thought it was pretty funny. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of, and we talked about outsourcing, right? There's a lot of companies in lower wage countries, if you will, that are heavily pursuing any opportunities that may be available. And the U.S. has just such a high dollar value in terms of marketplace. I'm sure they're going after Europe as well. If they've got any French speakers on staff or any Italian or Spanish speakers, they're going after Spain and France. And I think this guy just had a, and I emailed him back, like I think he just had a bot that was pulling off. Emails. I was like, you know we're an SEO company, right? And I don't, he just didn't respond. And the robot didn't know how to respond to it. But thanks. You know, I'd love to, you know, chat with you, maybe get some ideas from you, but. Yeah, steal anything that we possibly could. Yeah, so backlinks. Go ahead and check our last podcast backlinks. Very important. You want to understand what the competition is doing. I, in some of my research this week, you know, Paul and I are always pulling up new information, looking at new

stuff for search engine optimization, for actually social media marketing. We've been talking about Twitter, things that we're going to start doing with Twitter, things that we're doing with, by the way, I got to stop right here. Stop. I got a Touch Pro, an HTC Touch Pro. Awesome. And Paul was here to hear me complain incessantly, I'm sure, about the interface and, you know, the iPod has done such a, you know, the iPod, the iPhone, actually, the iPhone came out like two years ago. Phenomenal phone. And it's, the interface is awesome. You know, there are people who complain out there. But, you know, the people who are complaining, they're nitpicking. They're, they're like down to the details, which is the item, the, the, the, the, the iPhone is not perfect. Okay. With the operating system that Microsoft provides for the Touch Pro, we are talking, we're not in the realm of perfect. We're just in the realm of reasonable. Yeah. And I complained for like two days about, okay, this should work this way. This doesn't work this way. This is just stupid. Yeah. Unbelievable. And, and I'm a programmer, um, in background. And so, I understand interfaces can be challenging when you're coming up with them for the first time. But as soon as you see the goal, and let's be honest, the iPhone is the goal. The iPhone is definitely, that's the gold standard. Right? Of, of. As soon as you see that, then you start programming it. That's the easy part. Making it as well. It's supposed to be the easy part, but apparently Microsoft has a problem with it. I have to say, I haven't rebooted nearly as much as I had to with my old phone. I had the old, um, PPC 6700 or 6800. Um, it's, it's the identical phone. This is the HTC Touch Pro. It's just the new version of it. Anyway, I got a, uh, I got a, a new kind of wrapper, if you will. It's put out by SPB, um, a company called SPB. They

make a lot of software for PPC, which is like personal, private computer or something like that. Um, and it's awesome. It's got 3D effects. It actually works the way you're expecting it to. You can Facebook. Oh, well, now, I think Facebook is standard in Touch Pro. I think. I'm not. Yeah, because it's, it's a, yeah, it is a mine as well. Yeah, and that's pretty hot. And that's, that's another thing that really got us talking and buzzing about, okay, now that Facebook is to the point where it's actually on these, you know, on these mobile devices, Twitter's soon to follow, I'm sure. This is just another opportunity for marketing. And when you really get down to it, SEO is a branch of SEM, SEM is search engine marketing. And we're really looking for, you know, any way we can market, really, it's going to come down to not just search engine marketing, but web marketing or electronic marketing or whatever it is. So we're always, you know, we have our pulse on the, uh, heartbeat of America. Oh, yeah. Or something like that. Of the search engine marketing. Yes. The ones without swine flu. Yeah. So, uh, I had to say that. I love that phone. It's really awesome. I love the, what SPV did, uh, on that interface. I highly recommend it. And maybe we should get to our podcast. Yes. Yeah, you think that's a good idea. All right. Um, what are we going to cover today? Well, I had an interesting conversation this week and, uh, with a gentleman who was pitching me, he was pitching me videos and he, um, he, um, he said, uh, he said, he was surprised the, the way that what we have in common is we have a cold calling program here and we outsource some of our cold calling and he uses the same cold calling company. And when we spoke, he was really surprised that an SEO company is using cold calling. His perspective was, okay, where should I put my dollars? What should

I do with my dollars? And, uh, and, and so he was starting to ask me, so, you know, are you finding cold calling effective? Should I do cold calling? He's in New York and, you know, the buzz in New York is that cold calling is dead and ineffective and dah, dah, dah. And I said, well, you know, you can talk to a hundred people and a hundred people can tell you or a thousand or a million and they can tell you cold calling is dead. Tell me what results are you getting? Oh, I double my money. So I spend a thousand on cold calling. I get $2,000 worth of business and or profit. I'll assume profit because that's really what, what we're after. Um, and I said, so would you say cold calling is dead? No, I mean, that's, that's not a bad return. You doubled your money. And the point could be, maybe it is dead. Maybe in the heyday, his return on his money would have been four times or 10 times or whatever. But the reality is it's making money. I'll, I'll double my money any day. I give you a hundred, you give me two hundred. I'll do that all day. So if you have a limited budget and cold calling is doubling your money, um, and SEO, you start working with SEO, you start getting good search engine placement and you start getting some ROI from your search engine optimization, then you start weighing, okay, where should I throw more money? Um, but what you really should do is you should be maxing out any marketing or advertising area that, um, that, um, that makes your money. Yeah. I mean, what's, why would you not invest, you know, as much as you can spend on cold calling if you're doubling your money? Because if I, if I can double a thousand, then I should be able to double 2000. I should be able to double 3000. And there's some point at which the doubling probably stops. There's some point at

which, um, it's not as effective or, you know, your 50% drops to 10%. So then you start saying, okay, you know what? I can't spend a hundred thousand dollars a month on cold calling because I'm only getting a hundred and ten thousand dollars in return. That's not, that's not an intelligent decision. 10% return on your money. Um, the, uh, the, you know, the, the, so what do you do? You want to max that out. The converse is, okay, let's, let's talk specifically SEM. And remember in SEM search engine marketing, there are a couple of facets that we usually attribute to SEM. That's pay per click. And that's, yep. And SEO, which is search engine optimization. Um, which you guys probably know because you're here listening to this podcast. Great on you. Um, so if you're spending money on pay per click and you're watching your ROI on pay per click, now remember we've talked about this before. People tend to take that little lump of moist, sticky cash, throw it against the wall and see what sticks. There's just, just completely a blind approach to doing any kind of marketing, any kind of marketing. Exactly. And, and we do not recommend that you do that because if you don't have an organized plan, you're not going to come out with an organized solution. You're not going to come out with a positive solution. So if you don't know your ROI, if you're doing pay per click and you don't know your ROI, um, you need to figure it out. You need to spend some time because you could be throwing money away or you could possibly not be spending enough money. You know, if it's doubling your money, if it's tripling your money, but you're not spending as much as possible. Now you got that, that gets into a very nefarious, uh, how much money could I possibly spend? Well, you could broaden your search terms and spend as much as you want, but the same as with the cold calling example that I just

gave, if you're spending a hundred thousand dollars on pay per click and there are lots of companies that do that and you're only getting a hundred and ten thousand dollars worth of profit out of that, then again, you're getting a 10% return on your money. You may or may, you know, depending on what your goal is and your margins, you want to debate, is that what's right for me? Maybe if you trim that down and you spend $50,000 and you get a hundred thousand dollars, then, you know, it makes a whole lot more sense to stop at $50,000. So, it is pretty nefarious to say, um, spend as much as you can on pay per click because if you broaden your terms, you can spend as much as you have. Yeah, oh yes. Trust me. You can spend every dime. Every dime. As many different ways as there are to market, uh, or many different keywords that apply to every industry. Just, I mean, keywords that apply to just the search engine marketing industry. I mean, there's so many different things you could go after, um, that you would spend everything you had. And Google will take your money. Oh, in this, they sure will. They'll be happy. And don't forget the other major search engines, they'll take your money as well. Yeah, you could spend all you had on the other search engines and that's only, you know, attacking if you, if you choose one of them, 10, 15% of the market. So, um, if you're going to spend all your money, use Google. Yeah. Well, I'd say if you're going to spend all your money, call us. Yeah. We'll take it. We'll help you. Yeah. Really though. We'll take it. We'll put it to good use. Um, you know, sometimes people ask about our, our pay-per-click campaigns. We run, we run $400 to manage those pay-per-click campaigns. People are like, well, my budget's $500. A properly managed pay-per-click campaign can get 10 times the results of an improperly managed campaign. So, with a,

with the, with the properly managing it, spending $400, properly managing your $500 campaign can turn it into effectively a $5,000 campaign because you're getting more exposure, you're getting the right exposure, you're getting, it's optimized for cost. So, you know, that's why we charge that fee and it doesn't matter what your budget is. Uh, if, you know, if you've got a $1,000 budget and you don't really have the time or expertise to be managing that budget, again, throwing money at the wall. Well, rein that back, spend $400 in a company who's going to monitor that on a day-to-day basis and, and get significantly more value actually out of the $600 that's left over in our case than the full $1,000 of improperly managed pay-per-click campaign. And I also think that an improperly managed campaign can not only waste money, but time. And I, I could, my time to me is my most valuable asset. And if you don't know what really what you're doing, you can spend two, three hours more or twice the amount of time that a professional company would spend. You know, we, search engine optimization and pay-per-click is an hour a day. You, you spend an hour a day. Where are your words at? What are your competitors doing? And what's the bid going and what kind of action are these particular words getting? If we spend an hour a day and you don't know what you're doing, you can easily spend three, four hours a day. Yeah. Or, or even if you just, you know, okay, I'm going to block out this hour. If you don't know what you're doing, you're, you're effectively wasting an hour. And what's your time worth? You know, everyone knows, is, is cognizant of using expertise where expertise needs to be used. So if you're a business owner, we know we're small business owners right now. Soon to be big business owners. We're small business owners. We know that, you know, you do everything. You know, sometimes you're vacuuming the carpet. Sometimes you're taking your own

garbage out. Sometimes you're, you know, answering emails. Sometimes you're signing big deals. You get to the point as you want to grow your company where you need to be spending your time on the things that generate the most value. And, you know, so eventually you hire a cleaning crew. So you're not vacuuming the carpet so that you're not putting the trash away because that's 10, 15, 20 minutes, whatever it is, that you could be spent on working another deal, making another deal happen, researching your industry, understanding how to work your industry, meeting with clients, making clients incredibly happy, providing world-class customer service. Those things are the things that you should be spending time on. And I know right now we're using a cold calling company that is priced incredibly competitively. And one of the challenges is, you know, people say you get what you pay for. I think you get what you work for. And so right now we're in the process, Paul's spending a lot of time working with that cold calling company and tweaking them so that the results that they're providing to us are of significantly greater value. Yes. So it's an investment in Paul's time. Their pricing's right. We'll get them to the point where their pricing's the same and Paul's spending less time. And all of a sudden it'll be, you know, one of the best decisions we ever made to work with that cold calling company. So back to, so I, we, wow, we got back to cold calling. That's actually pretty cool. And to answer his question, why, you know, should an SEO company do cold calling? If it works, you bet. Yeah. Of course. Why not? I mean, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to market, to, to go after business. Cold calling is one of them. And if it works, do it, go at it. Absolutely do it. And, and whether or not you should do cold calling begs the question, you know, should I be news, doing newspaper advertising? Should I be doing,

you know, Craigslist advertising, depending on the size or, or product or service that you're selling? Should I be doing radio ads? Should I be doing TV? You know, Google has now the ability to take your radio ads and, and syndicate them, market them to different radio stations with different. I did not know that. Profiles across. Yeah. What don't, what doesn't Google do? I mean, come on. One day it's going to be like, well, you know what? You need a new oven. Google's got this new conventional oven that it's just phenomenal. I mean, come on. You can control it from home. Yeah. Log on to your computer at home. It'll grab the turkey out of the fridge. Google, I mean, they're in everything. That's awesome. And they're good at it. They're just, I mean, they're good at it. That is, that is phenomenal. I really didn't know that they, that they were, Google was doing that. Yeah. And basically they, you know, they're a marketing company. That's what they're, you know, they're a market, really kind of a tools marketing company, if you will. And so they've just provided this tool where you can, you know, upload, put your ad out there and, and we'll do that at some point because, because I think there's a lot of value in, you know, at some point your company gets to a place where you're not just working on marketing. You're also working on branding. You know, what is the company brand? And we have this understanding that, yeah, branding, branding is as much internal as it is external. So internally, it's, it's kind of about culture. It's kind of about generating, you know, all of your literature has a cohesive, coherent message and it's the same message. And, and any, any time you're interacting with the outside world, outside of the company, that interaction is predicated on this brand. You know, this is what eWebStyle, eWebStyle is world-class customer service. We are world-class experts in what we do. And that's what our brand is going to evolve

into. And then as we go out into the world and we want to brand on a bigger basis, then we'll end up needing to use radio ads. We need to use TV ads. We need to use every marketing venue that we can. We'll be at conventions. We'll be at, maybe we'll even be at local fairs with our, you know, with our logo and provide the internet net kiosk for a local fair. Um, even though it's not, uh, you know, the, the, the, the exact target market, um, it's about branding and it's about people recognizing and bumping into us and going, wow. Yeah. That's the web stuff. I mean, why does, why does Macy's run a full page ad? I think, is it Thanksgiving day or something or, or every year they, I read this, they run like a full page ad in the New York times, like every major newspaper, uh, like New York, LA, Houston. And just, and it costs them some just ridiculous amount of money. But, and Hey, and it's got like their name, their logo and like happy Thanksgiving. It, it's, it's nothing, but that helps them brand, it keeps Macy's on your mind. Well, they also have that parade thing. Oh yeah. I gotta forget about that. So I think that probably costs them a little money. Oh yeah. And I don't know how much money that do even make any money off of that, but everybody knows Macy's Thanksgiving. Macy's Thanksgiving parade. Everybody knows that. In your PJs, drinking your eggnog. Yeah. Well, maybe that was the night before. I don't know. Recovering from your eggnog. Um, you know, and I, and I talked to a guy who, and I, this was, he was very eye opening to me. He was a company that invests in newspaper advertising and, you know, I felt like newspapers are dying media. Um, but he invested, he told me last year, I invested $100,000 in a local newspaper in Dallas, Texas, which apparently has some pretty high rates. He told me. And I

was like, what's $100,000 in the newspaper. Now, apparently he's a real estate agent. And you, you, he says, Hey, you net, you have to be in this particular market. You have to be here because that's what brings ROI. And, you know, before I talked to him, I would have said, man, why, why would you do newspaper in, and he answered that question because it works. Yep. And I was like, okay, that's, that's pretty eye opening. I learned something new today for his particular industry. It works. Now, will it always work? I, when the, I guess that, that remains to be seen, um, but as, as technologies change. And that was why we were talking because he needed SEO. Um, and I, you know, recommended that he maybe start transferring some of that to his online marketing because he did not market his website at all, period. And I do, you know, I'm, I'm a young guy. When I search for houses, I search online. Yep. I still pick up the paper every so often, but, you know, I search online. And you're searching online even anymore. You're searching almost directly for the property. Yes. Right? Yes. So if there's any way with pay-per-click or with, you know, proper management of, of, um, banner ads or whatever to get them in front of people exactly when they're looking at houses, then that's, that's what you need to do. Uh, and again, I'm, I'm with you, Paul. If you're looking for a rental apartment or a house, you're online. Yes. You know, this, this next generation is online. They're not picking up the newspaper. Yes. Um, maybe his market is, and this is just a theory, maybe his market is kind of the higher end homes. They are. Which is usually people who are older, which is usually people who are less internet savvy. So those people are still hitting the, the, the newspapers. And you're exactly right. If he doesn't start transitioning to web-based, then he's going to miss the next wave of affluent people who

don't use the newspaper. Yes, of course. And then there's so much, and I was trying to explain to him, there's so much more you can do with a, showing a home with a website. You can take pictures, put them in a newspaper, but then you can't take pictures of, you can't put 12, 15, 25 pictures in a newspaper unless you're going to have a full page ad, which is going to, you know, cost you a lot, a significant amount of money. And you can actually market this home, you can have videos of the home. There's so much more you can do by, um, marketing it through your website. And a lot of real estate companies have taken advantage of that. If you've, I'm sure everyone's been, uh, a virtual home tour is, someone has seen that before online. And I tried to help him understand that. Um, but you know how your newspaper works for him? You know, keep doing it. Congratulations. It's the same as the cold calling question. And it also goes back, you know, in newspaper in general, it also goes back to Yellow Pages, right? I mean, Paul, you came from the Yellow Pages environment. You, on our phone call, which kind of started our partnership, um, you know, you talked about Yellow Pages being a dying business while you were at the Yellow Pages. It was like, I think it was like 5.30 or 6 o'clock, everybody was gone. Because I would have got fired from that conversation. And, um, but we still advertise on the Yellow Pages. And we'll, we're going to do it again next year because we get some phone calls from it. It returns the money that we spend on it. Um, so we'll, we'll, we'll keep doing that. And I, you know what, I think that, you know, there's a lot of different ways to market. Search engine marketing is definitely one of those ways. But if there's anything, I always hear that XYZ marketing method is dying. Search engine marketing is growing exponentially. And

I think everyone understands that television, radio, newspaper, you can just open up the newspaper. You can read articles that all these different mediums are dying. Well, a newspaper will not print an article that a newspaper medium is dying. But you can read it. Everything else seems to be kind of dying out. And everyone is taking that money and transferring it to the internet, to their website. Because people recognize, people search, people shop for goods and services online. And that's where you should be. And one of the beauties of the internet, I mean, you can, you can put together a nice ad and, and that's good. That gives some kind of indication how much money can you spend on, on an ad in a newspaper. But you can come to a company like ours and you can get a five-page brochure type website. So it's not, you know, it's not tied to a database and you're not dynamically creating, you know, images and, and text and everything. But it's an, it's a powerful five-page piece. There are people, we're partners in another company called SES Research. It is a small company and we go to different symposiums for, for carbon nanomaterials. That's what they manufacture. And people understand that that company is a 10, 15, 20, maybe even 50 man company. And it's not. And why is it? It's because the quality of the website. So for a reasonable investment, you can create the appearance. You know, this is what I like to say. I think, you know, when I'm, when I'm talking with people or pitching people, I like to say your website should reflect the value and quality of the products and services that you give to your customers. In fact, your website should reflect better quality and better services, better quality than the services and products you give. So that people have the impression when they see your website that you provide an incredibly valuable product and service. And you can do that. It doesn't cost that much to do it. So you

need to do it. Once you do it, you need to be on the first page. You need people to see it. Of course. And I like, the SES example is, is perfect. And I talk to people, as a matter of fact, the realtor that I was speaking with, we were going through the Google listings and he's saying, I know that guy. I know that guy. He is a one man show. She's a one man show. He's real small. She's real small. And these were his competitors that were on the first page for keywords related to him. And I said, you know, the great thing about that is, no one knows that but you. No one knows how big or small they are. They have a great listing. They have a great positioning for their listing, which provides, to me, instant credibility. Yep. And they had awesome websites. And I said, hey, on the internet, you can be anybody. You can be as big or as small as you want to be. You can be the leader of your industry. When people see a professionally designed website, they instantly give you credibility. They instantly feel safe about doing business with you. When I see a terrible website, I lose some credibility in that company. I think, you know, they didn't really take the time to invest in their website. You know, what kind of work do they do? And, you know, that is a prejudgment on my part. But that is how a lot of people operate. And they could be the best. That could be the company you should be working with. They could be the guys who care the most about their customers. They could be the guys who are focused on, you know, world-class customer service and haven't spent time on their website. But the reality is, and somebody once told me this, and I love this statement, the perception is the reality. Yes. Yes. I've heard that that was like a big thing in a marketing class when I was in college.

Perception is reality. And if I perceive your business to be small or dysfunctional or... Then it is to me. And you can't change that, you know, no one's going to be able to change that. Unless you change your website. Yeah. And your first, they say first impressions, or what is that, first impressions, I don't know, mean a lot. You only get one chance for a first impression. Because they're so important. And these days, your website is probably the first thing that anybody sees about your company. When I'm on the phone or someone calls and pitches, well, what's your website? I'm typing in their website, and I'm immediately going there, and that is the first impression that I have of them. And I'm going to, you know, at least make a decision whether I'm even willing to listen to someone or move forward by looking at their website. Or pitch them a website. Yeah. Before we go anywhere, let me help you fix this website, because it sucks. It's in desperate need. And so, like you said, I think it's great. Invest in your website. It's one of the first things that anyone will ever see about you. Don't be afraid to invest in it and make it good. It needs to be rock solid. And, you know, if you do a job right, you know, your investment can last a year. We recommend you change on a regular basis. But if you're just not in that position, and invest in that. Here's a great example. We've all seen, been driving down the freeway, and we see these huge signs. And, you know, these signs cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. And you see the parking lot of that little tiny business that's probably, they probably live in the back of that business, and the business is rocking. And those guys made that investment in their business to grow their business, and it paid off substantially. So, if you are a company out there that, you know, feels like your website may be lacking, feels like

your search engine optimization may not be exactly what it should be. So, your search engine placement, you're not on the first page of Google for some of your terms, or any of your terms, or even your own name. We bump into people like that all the time. Give us a call. You know, make that investment. Make that big sign investment that converts your business, and is the thing that, you know, three months from now, six months from now, you're looking back and thinking, wow, I'm really glad I invested in that, because people have this amazing perception of my business right now. That is the end of our podcast. My name is Chris Burris, owner of eWebStyle. And this is Paul Hanson, sales manager. Catch us next time. Thanks for joining us. Bye-bye.