Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing Benefits Local Service Companies

Colorado Roofing and Exteriors is a great example of how some local service companies are leveraging Search and Social Media marketing to help local consumers easily find their website and contact information.  Local service businesses may be the best suited group to leverage search marketing because their potential consumers are located in a specific geography and the businesses are not competing with Fortune 500 companies that have large budgets and professional PPC managers. In other words, you’re only competing with other local businesses in the same service niche  for Google placement and traffic. Ranking for “Denver Roofing” for example is  easier than trying to rank nationally for a phrase such as “Weight Loss” or “HDTV”.

Being able to define an advertising radius with a system to measure the price per call and ROI has unlocked huge growth in many small innovative service companies across the country. I am often asked what the best strategy is for online marketing. My reply is always the same, anything you can precisely measure and test cheaply. A combination of campaigns on FaceBook, MSN, Google Adwords, and Ask.com may make sense if each campaign is delivering calls cheap enough to leave you with profit after the job is finished.  Without tools to precisely measure your return on every penny spent, you are destined to fail.

Google has a great self serve platform with tutorials that allow businesses to get started within a few hours.  Consider a few hours of consulting from a reputable ppc management company before you move beyond the test phase. Many agencies will manage your entire account and tie together all the reporting (# clicks, web form submits, calls, etc) for 20-30% of your ad budget.

Indy 500 Fans and Drivers Race to Twitter

It doesn’t matter if you’re at the track, in your car, or at home, you can keep up with all the happenings at the Indy 500 this weekend by following the Official Indianapolis Motor Speedway Twitter Feed, drivers, and other fans at the track from your PC or mobile device.  I expect Sunday will bring high volumes of twitter activity around the track and from the drivers and teams.  I will be adding to the chaos from my BlackBerry (follow me @jaytoddmartin).

Twitter is also being used by teams and organizations to update followers on events as they unfold in the infield.   To optimally track all of these conversations you should look into various free twitter aggregators.  Desktop applications such as TweetDeck allow surfers to search for usernames or #hashtags to monitor and sort tweets from specific teams and drivers during the race.

IndyCar Drivers On Twitter:

@danicapatrick

@tagliani

@RyanHunterReay

@stantonbarrett

@danwheldon

@alex_lloyd

@h3lio

@GrahamRahal

@SarahFisher67

@mariomoraesindy

@tomasscheckter

@scottdixon9

@bobbydracing

@Andretti26

@DaveyHamilton

@TonyKanaan

Patrick Swayze Dead at 57, or Not?

Does the list of Trending Keywords hurt or devalue Twitter overall?

Twitter has became the ultimate game of “telephone”.  Now that Twitter has redesigned user’s homepages with a toplist of trending topics spammers and misfits are immediately able to figure out how to target massive amounts of users. The resulting pyroclastic flow of posts on almost all new trending topic is overwhelming. If the news is true, it’s amazing that twitter users broke the news 10+ minutes before it was carried anywhere else.

Twitter is being flooded with headlines such as:

“Florida-based radio station KissFM reports that Patrick Swayze has reportedly died. BNO News is working to get more info”

and

“Link doesn’t work for me, so can’t confirm, but might be for real: RT @1txsage1957Patrick Swayze is dead at 57 http://bit.ly/BFcY4 ”

I hope these posts are not true for Patrick’s sake,  but in many ways I hope they are true for Twitter’s Reputation.  We will know soon.