Joining Industry Specific Organizations Has Many BenefitsWritten by Janice D. Byer, MVA
Recently, while providing an up-and-coming Virtual Assistant (VA) and small business owner with some start-up information, she asked me a very interesting question, “Why do you and other VA’s join organizations?”I guess I take for granted reasons why I belong to several industry specific organizations. But, to those that are new to any industry, joining an organization made up of your competitors is a valid concern. Some organizations have members that are from a variety of walks of life (i.e. small business organizations, etc.) while others are more specified and include only members from a specific industry (i.e. VA organizations). I think consensus among members of any organization is that benefits of being involved with others in your industry are numerous. So, why should you join industry specific organizations? Here are some of best reasons: 1.Networking. This is one of main reasons for joining any organization and is actually part in parcel with all other reasons I will list here. Networking with anyone and everyone is essential to growth of any business, especially networking with those in your industry. Some industries are still fairly young and by networking with your peers you can all work together to increase exposure of your specific industry, thus increasing visibility of each individual member’s businesses. 2.The opportunity to work with fellow members. With increased exposure of various industries, many veteran members may be finding their workloads are getting to a point where they have to outsource some of their projects. If they don’t know about you they won’t even have chance to consider sending you some of their overflow. Not to mention, most members may specialize in certain procedures and, should a task come up for a client that is not one of their specialties, they may need to subcontract project.
| | Managing a Responsible Pay-Per-Click CampaignWritten by Scott Buresh
OVERVIEW What is PPC? Pay-Per-Click is a paid form of advertising, popularized mostly by "search engine" GoTo (now called Overture). The concept is fairly simple. Businesses bid to be placed at or near top of search results for particular keyword phrases. The bidding is done on a "per-click" basis, meaning that a company pays a specific amount every time engine sends them a visitor. In addition, top results on Overture also show up in results of many of popular search engines (usually listed as "sponsored" or "featured" results). Google has also recently come up with a similar version of PPC (AdWords Select) that has taken over some of engines that used to display Overture results (most notably AOL Search). Advantages Pay-Per-Click campaigns have some advantages over traditional search engine optimization. First of all, they require no changes to a current site's content or look to obtain top positions, just a willingness to pay. Also, implementation of a pay-per-click campaign is relatively quick- it can take just a few minutes to start getting targeted traffic, versus sometimes months for standard SEO campaigns. Finally, unlike search engine optimization, implementation of a PPC campaign is relatively easy and does not necessarily require any specialized knowledge (although experience with search engine marketing and keyword research is a definite advantage). Limitations Of course, there are limitations to this type of advertising. New bids can lower positions of other firms, and many will react by raising their bid to regain a previous ranking. Monitoring of positions becomes crucial. These campaigns can also become prohibitively expensive, depending on competitiveness of keyword phrases and aggressiveness of competition. In addition, many of "savvier" search engine users have learned to recognize PPC results as paid advertising and bypass them without consideration. THE PROCESS Determining Visitor Worth Determining how much each website visitor is worth is vital to success of a pay-per-click campaign. If it costs $50 in click-throughs to make a $40 sale, campaign has failed. The formula is relatively simple, but some specific historical data is necessary. In most rudimentary form, it is profit from website over a given period divided by number of total visitors for same period. If a site netted $1000 in profits from goods or services in a given period, and there were 2,000 visitors during same period, each would theoretically be worth 50 cents (profit divided by visitors). But this is only breakeven point. Depending on desired profit margin, optimal price to pay per click would probably be something much less than 50 cents. Popular keyword phrases can often run more than this, so it then makes sense to bid less money on less popular terms to pay an acceptable amount per visitor. Selecting Keyphrases: As with typical search engine optimization, keyword research is critical to success of a PPC campaign. Unlike typical search engine optimization, there aren't practical limits on number of phrases to target. Usually, there is no extra cost to add as many keyword phrases as possible. This makes keyword selection process easier, since there is not a good deal of resources committed to optimizing a site for a particular keyword set. Under-performing keywords, while still an annoyance, do not cost extra (except for time involved in setting up account). To help identify keyword phrases, Overture has a tool on their site that allows advertisers to see how often particular search terms are actually typed in their engine. It also gives out popular suggestions based upon terms you enter.
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