Sunday, February 28, 2010

Web Marketing Now and Into the Future

After years of snail mail and newspaper advertising, Ryan Staffing is now fully engaged in online marketing.

It started with our e-mail newsletters in January 2008. We took the leap into Twitter and Facebook this past year. We have been blogging for almost two years now. We started using Google Ads this past two months and we plan on launching a Facebook and YouTube advertising campaigns in the next couple months. We also use Craigs List and Indeed.com to post our job openings.

Because of all this, I am very interested in Twitter's upcoming advertising plan.

But we won't spend our money on it just yet.

Peter Kafka of Media Memo wrote about Twitter's potential advertising plan this past week. From what Kafka wrote, it seems like Twitter will look to mimic Google Ads.

But do people use Twitter's search like Google? Kafka wrote:

The caveats: Everyone I’ve talked to cautions that the plans are evolving and that there are plenty of details to work out. Including a launch date, though it seems as if the first half of this year is a very safe bet.

But at first blush, this seems like a relatively straightforward way for Twitter to get into advertising, without upsetting its growing user base: You won’t see the ads unless you use Twitter to search for something, and Twitter’s advertisers will have at least a vague idea of what you’re interested in.

There are lots of gritty details that Twitter either hasn’t worked out or hasn’t disclosed to the people I’ve talked to. For instance:
  • How will advertisers buy and price the ads? Will they use a Google-like cost-per-click model or something else?
  • Twitter searches are popular, but very crude. Can Twitter refine them to make them more useful to users?


Twitter's search engine sucks, for lack of a better term. And until that gets fixed, there's no use paying for it.

Instead, we plan on launching a Facebook Ad campaign in May, just when college students will be looking for jobs during their summer breaks.

In doing so, we will probably cut back our Google Ad campaign in order to fund the endeavor.

Since Jan. 1, our ad has been displayed on 6,000 Google user's pages per day. That has generated about 10 clicks to our Web site per day for a $6 cost per day.

We are still working on determining if this has resulted in an increase in qualified job applicants or not. But regardless of those findings, it can be said without question that during that time span, we have had job openings and we have filled them.

Google allows us to advertise on the search pages of people who are searching words related to unemployment, job placement and open positions. We can also advertise strictly to people with IP addresses located within a 55 mile radius of Warren.

With Facebook ads, we will be able to reach an even more targeted audience (though at an increased price). Google Ads determine who is at a search result page by what the search. So it can be inferred that someone searching the words "manufacturing job" from an IP address in Akron is an experienced manufacturing worker, currently unemployed living in Akron.

Facebook incorporates profile pages, which you may or may not know. The site then uses that information as ideal market profile sheets, matching advertisers with the ideal market groups.

As Facebook expands its reach with more business and organization "Fan" pages, it may be able to form a search competitor to Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Marketing in the wireless/paperless era will never be as simple as the snail mail/newspaper ad days of old. But with all this competition and with the efficiency capabilities of the Internet, its the best way to bust your budget.

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