Retargeting is one of the most innovative (and some would say creepy) ways of getting more traffic to your site. You’ve probably seen it before and didn’t know how it worked. Here’s how:

1. You visit a site, say a travel site. You search for flights to Chicago.
2. You don’t end up buying a flight to Chicago.
3. A couple of days later, you are on another website and see a banner ad that says, “All flights to Chicago, now on sale!”
4. You think to yourself, “That’s great! I’m looking for a cheaper flight to Chicago.”
5. You click the link and (hopefully, for the site) you buy a ticket to Chicago.

What you just experienced was retargeting. This is an advertising technique that allows websites to follow you around the web. It works pretty simply for the advertiser:

1. The advertiser places a small piece of code on their website that puts a cookie on your computer.
2. That cookie is linked to an advertising network.
3. When that advertising network sees the cookie on your computer, it triggers an ad to appear on the page.
4. When you end up making the purchase, there is a piece of code that shows up on the website that deletes that cookie and makes sure the advertiser doesn’t advertise to you again.

The first thing that people think is, “Wow! That’s creepy!” But let me assure you, the advertiser has no idea who you are. The advertiser anonymously installs that cookie and never knows who they are advertising to.

This is a great way to reach your customers. Most people that visit a website don’t make a purchase on their first visit. Having a constant reminder follow the user around the web is a great way for customers to come back to your website — not to mention it is a much more targeted technique than blanketing the internet with your ads.

Continue reading: Tips to Drive Traffic to Your Website with Facebook
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

People have been saying for years that mobile is the future. It is no longer the future, it is the present. In fact, more Americans own a Smartphone than a "dumb phone". On top of that, there are more cell phones than people in the U.S.

How can you reach all of these customers? Easy -- mobile advertising. Mobile advertising makes the most sense for companies that have specific locations, but it can also be valuable for overall branding.

Let's take the example of a store that sells shoes. There are a couple of ways that the store could choose to advertise: 

Mobile Search Advertising

Most cell phone users use a search engine (like Google or Bing) to make purchasing decisions on the fly. Within Google AdWords, you can target mobile devices and geographic locations -- allowing you to hit your target at the time (and place) they are searching for a place to buy shoes.

Mobile Display Advertising

Just as there are both search and display advertising on the desktop -- there are also both on mobile. Most free games and apps are supported by display ads. Depending upon the advertising network, you can target based upon contextual information (for example, showing restaurants in an app like Yelp) and location. This will reach customers that aren't necessarily searching for your product or service -- but still be targeted. 

App Sponsorship

Another possibility is to sponsor an application. That's exactly what The North Face has done with their Snow Report application. Obviously, the app is very connected to their brand -- but the key is that it provides something useful to their customers.

It's essential that the page that the ad leads to is mobile friendly. Some advertisers simply don't have the budget to create a mobile website -- but it's simple to create a one-page landing pages that will work on a mobile phone. This means that the site can not use flash and be formatted, so you don't have to zoom in on the site to read the content.

With mobile use growing at a very quick rate, maybe it's time you start advertising on mobile devices.

Continue reading: How to Drive Traffic to Your Website: Facebook Ads
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Search Engine Optimization. SEO. First of all, what exactly is search engine optimization? It simply means Google (and Bing and Yahoo) can find your website.

Over the years, it has turned into a snake-oil business full of smoke and mirrors. But I’ll let you in on our secret SEO strategy: produce great stuff. While that sounds incredibly simple, it’s incredibly difficult.

A lot of companies that provide SEO services outsource a lot of “link building” to Third World countries and, for all intents and purposes, spam unrelated websites. We are working with a client that hired an SEO firm to help them, and we found they had posted the link on over 2,000 other sites that had no relationship to our client. They were garbage sites full of other links. These SEO firms will also try and repeat the keywords you are trying to rank for all over the site - most of the time, it looks sloppy and doesn’t make any sense.

Google is getting smarter than that. It is now able to separate the wheat from the chaff.

So, how do we use SEO for our clients? It all starts with research. The first thing we do is use Google Keyword Tool to find out what people are searching in relationship to our client’s product or service. Then we compare it to Google Analytics to see how people are currently finding their website. We then compare the two to see where we could add content to match what users are searching for.

For example, let’s say we are working with a candle company. We notice in Analytics that users find the site by searching for things like “best candles” and “apple scented candles.” That’s great. When we look in the Google Keyword Tool, we realize that people are searching a lot for “How to get rid of dog odors” and “Best candles for setting the mood.” Those are a great fit with our client, so we write a blog post or create a page that talks about each of those two topics. We also make sure to include links to the candles that would be the best fit for the post and make the post factual and even entertaining (if we can). Then we link to the posts from Facebook and Twitter and we might even post the articles to StumbleUpon or Reddit if we think it’s relevant.

Providing solutions to the problems your customers search for is a much more valuable strategy than loading up your site (and others) with irrelevant links and spam. 

It’s also important to build your site correctly. If your site is not built correctly, all of the above work can go down the drain. Keep these technical tips in mind:

• Make sure the site is not built completely in Flash - Google can’t read Flash. Google is a robot, not a real person.
• Google also can’t read the text in images, so use images for photos and illustrations, not text. There are plenty of fancy-text alternatives (http://www.google.com/webfonts) to avoid using text in an image.
• Put your company name in plain text (not an image) in several places on the homepage. We have had several clients that weren’t even ranking for their company name because there was only a photo logo on the homepage.
• Have search-friendly URLs. For example, Google can read http://balcomagency.com/blog/the-best-article-about-seo-ever better than http://balcomagency.com/storyid=123423221.
• Use alternate text (alt-text) wherever possible. Google can see the alternate text of images, which helps.
• Install Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to make sure you can measure how people are coming to your website.

While this is not a definitive guide to SEO, it should serve as a great primer to get more traffic to your website by using search engine optimization.

Continue reading: Using Ad & Video Networks to Drive Website Traffic
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Buying ads on a search engine is one of the most common ways to drive traffic to your website. Google and Bing are the most common search engines.

The search below shows a Google search for “car insurance.” You might not know this, but the listings in yellow and on the right-hand side are ads. The companies (GEICO, Progressive) pay to be listed when people search for car insurance.

Search engine marketing is a huge business -- in fact, advertising makes up 96 percent of Google’s $37.9 billion in revenue last year.

Search engine marketing is a great idea because it allows you to be right in front of the customer when they are searching for information about you, or your product, service or competition. If you are doing research for car insurance, for example, you’re going to go to Google and search for things like “best car insurance” or “car insurance reviews.” There’s a good chance you aren’t looking for a specific brand, but looking for solutions to your problems.

While it could take years to rank up in natural search engine results, search engine marketing allows you to pay for a higher listing.

Search engine marketing is also a complicated business. There are entire books devoted to search engine marketing, but here’s the quick version of how Google Ads work:

• The advertisers decides to run ads on Google. The advertiser will decide what keywords (or search terms) they want to advertise for. While this seems simple, there can be thousands of keywords that an advertiser buys (think of all the products that Amazon sells).
• The advertiser pays for each click on the ad. If a Google searcher sees an ad and does not click on it, the advertiser is not charged.
• If the user clicks on an ad, the advertiser is charged. The cost per click (CPC) is based upon several factors - the biggest being competiton. The more competitive the keyword, the higher the price.
  - For example, “car insurance” is very expensive (about $38 a click). “Fort Worth Advertising Agency” is about $5 a click. There’s obviously more competition for car insurance than ad agencies in Fort Worth.
• The advertiser can target the ads in many ways:
  - Geographically (down to the city level)
  - By Price
  - According to a user’s device (Mobile Phone, Tablet, Computer)

Search engine marketing isn’t without its drawbacks. It’s complicated and needs to be continually optimized. We’ve talked to many clients that started a campaign and didn’t have the time or resources to continually monitor it. The results reflected the effort. Monitoring an online campaign is crucial to success. Prices change, new competitors pop up and the way people search changes.

Search Engine Marketing is a great way to drive guaranteed traffic to your site. Just remember you pay for it, so it pays to monitor and optimize it.

Continue reading: How to Drive Traffic to Your Website: Retargeting
View all: "Driving More Traffic to Your Website" blog series

Millions tuned in this week to watch a new AMC series, "The Pitch," which shows the inner-workings of an advertising agency’s pitch to a potential client. The premise is simple: Two or three agencies are briefed on an advertising assignment and given a week to come back with their best ideas. The client (so far, the clients have been Subway and Waste Management) picks their favorite and awards the business to the agency.

I'm sure many that watched are wondering, "Is ‘The Pitch’ really what an advertising agency is like?"

Simple: yes and no.

There are parts of the show that hit the nail on the head, but there are other parts that made me want to cry and lie in the fetal position with an ADDY (think Oscars for ad folks) because they were so incorrect. 

Here's what is real:

• Advertising is a cut-throat business. It's tough. There's no denying it.
• A good idea is tough to come by. In the show, you see people staying up late, putting items on whiteboard and pulling out their hair. That's real. Sometimes a great idea comes out of nowhere, but it's never easy.
• There are competing personalities. Luckily, at Balcom, we don't have the extremes of last night's SK+G's co-creative directors. Like any family, there are disagreements, but we tend to work ours out like civilized human beings.
• Some agencies are stuck in the past. Take last night's The Ad Store. The creative director's idea of success was a great TV spot — not results for their clients. I thought The Ad Store's idea was better ("Trash Can." vs. "Turning Waste Into Wow.") — but they stopped at the idea. SK+G proved how they integrate into social media and thought way beyond TV.
• The actual pitches are very close to everything we've experienced at Balcom. For most new business pitches we don't create what is called "spec work" (work that is created in hopes of getting the client). However, some pitches require this we evaluate on a case-by-case basis.
• It takes a lot of people to make advertising happen. People forget how involved advertising has become — online ads, social media, media buying, production, design, copywriting, video, the list goes on and on.
• Advertising isn't as glamorous as you think. It sometimes involves traveling to non-exotic locations, sleeping in crappy hotels and working late hours.

Here’s what is wrong:

• Ad agencies rarely know who they are pitching against, let alone get the briefing at the same time. AMC is using that for tension.
• You don't need black-rimmed glasses to work in advertising.
• A week turnaround time is a crazy-quick time to come up with a campaign for any client — let alone someone like Subway or Waste Management.
• We rarely know if we won a client in the same day. It usually takes weeks of negotiating and Q&As before the agency is notified.
• Some ad agencies are slave shops where everyone works late nights and early mornings. Granted, that happens sometimes at every agency, but (at least at Balcom) we try and make this the exception instead of the norm. We never want someone to not see their kids for five nights straight because of work. That's not healthy for anyone.
• All of the agencies talk about how they want to "stand out." Obviously, no agency wants to blend in. Some agencies (mostly WDCW in the first episode) put standing out before delivering results for their clients.
• Not all creative directors are jerks. At Balcom, I've never heard someone's idea be cussed out, mocked, or ridiculed. That doesn't help anyone. We listen and if it's not the right idea, we move on. 

Other notes:

• A lot of agencies declined to be on “The Pitch”. The main reason? It didn't fit within their "Process" and people would see behind the curtain. Most of the time, there is no process — it’s just another sales tool for the agency.
• The Ad Store shows how far behind they are on their Facebook page. It only has 146 likes and doesn't even have a cover photo. Any company with national exposure for an hour in prime time TV should capitalize on the opportunity.
• SK+G, on the other hand, shows how smart they are. Google "The Ad Store" and SK+G has purchased an ad in Google whenever you searched for The Ad Store. Very smart move by SK+G.
• WDCW's founder wrote an amazing post after they lost the Subway Pitch, "Being on AMC's ‘The Pitch’: When a Loss Is Not A Loss." Do yourself a favor and read it.

Overall, it’s interesting for people to see the world I live and breathe in every day. However, you need to remember that “The Pitch” is reality TV and doesn’t tell the whole story.

Santa’s judgement isn’t only reserved for little boys and girls, rumor has it he’s moved on to websites. Let’s take a look at a couple of things that can make your website land on the naughty or nice list.

Naughty

• Having a website to simply “build awareness.” Even Santa would put coal in your stocking for putting this as your top priority when building a website. What do you want to build awareness for? Your non-profit? Then your goal should be raise money or cause people to take a specific action. What about your business? Then you, obviously, would want to sell more.
• Heavy Flash animations: Most of the time Flash isn’t needed. Always ask yourself, “Does this help the customer make a purchasing decision?” If not, scrap it. Flash slows down your computer, can’t be viewed on many mobile devices, and most of all, isn’t necessary.
• Never changing your website. Your website should be growing and changing all the time. After all, your customers are. You should always be testing new ways to reach your customers and tell your story better.
• Focus on the “experience.” You hardly ever want to have an experience on the web, you usually want to get to the information as quickly as possible. While your website should match your brand, the experience should be about your product or service and not about your website. If a visitor to your site can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll jump off - no matter how good the “experience” is.
• Make all of your ads point to the homepage. If you have someone clicking an ad about “Red Socks” (maybe Santa is shopping), send them to a page with red socks - not the homepage. You already know what the customer is searching for, give them that information.

Nice

• Use open-source tools. No one should be tied to a “proprietary” anything if your goals can be accomplished without them. There is an open-source solution for almost anything. Since no one owns open-source (hence the “open” part), you don’t have to worry about the company going belly-up or deciding to increase their prices.
• Have an awesome Q&A/FAQ section. Think about the way you would make a purchase and the common questions that your customer service people receive. Those questions should be on the website, and be easy to find.
• Focus on your content. The design of the website is great, but most people forget to focus on the content - after all, that’s the meat of why people visit your site. Amazon.com is one of the ugliest sites ever, but its sales top billions of dollars a year - because they focus on the content.
• Use analytics. There is no excuse for not having analytics on your website (Google Analytics is even free). This will give you more information than you could possibly imagine about the visitors to your website.
• Find a way to keep in touch with your customers. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter or email, you should give customers a way to keep in touch with your company. This will allow you to communicate with them about new products, offerings and discounts.

Reuters just published an article that interviewed "old school" advertising and media big-wigs. They proclaimed that they understood Twitter and Facebook, but didn't have time for it. 

Maurice Levy, chief executive of advertising group Publicis, said, "I hate the idea that I would have to share things which are not for sharing or which are superficial." Evidently, he's never looked at Twitter before.

Levy also said "I understand how to wash dishes. I don't do it regularly." He's right. But housekeeping isn't his job. Selling products is.

Martin Sorrell, of WPP (who owns companies like Ogilvy and JWT), said, "I have enough to do answering your emails...I'm 66 years old. I'm almost in the glue factory."

Saying that you understand Twitter but don't have time for it, is like saying you understand sleeping but you don't have time for it - you will eventually die. Like sleep, to truly appreciate Twitter, you need to experience it.

Do these executives need to be on Twitter 24/7? No, but they at least need to understand that it is more than sharing who you're eating with, as Hearst Magazines president David Carey thinks Twitter was all about. He wouldn't think that way if he spent any time on Twitter.

It's no surprise that old media company's stocks, like Publicis are down about 45% from 10 years ago. It takes mergers and acquisitions for this companies to innovate, not from within.

It's a stark contrast to companies like VaynerMedia, headed by business hustler Gary Vaynerchuck. Gary is actively engaging with his audience on Twitter, take a look at his stream. VaynerMedia has landed client like the New York Jets and Pepsi.

So, do you you really understand social media? Or do you just think you do?

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I love great advertising. Sometimes great ads are touching, like "Hair." Some ads get your attention, like the Ikea ad. Others, like the biker stunt, are just brilliant.

Which ad is your favorite?

Sure, the internet is used for amazing, society-changing movements like #OccupyWallstreet and the Egyptian revolution. But I'm just as thankful for all of the other great aspects of the internet. Particularly, I'm thankful for internet memes. 

Don't know what a meme is? Urban dictionary describes it as the following: In blogspeak, an idea that is spread from blog to blog OR an internet information generator, especially of random or contentless information.

You know what a meme is, even if you've never heard of the phrase. Heard of planking? That's a meme. Heard of Rick-Rolling? Another meme.

A couple recent meme's have popped-up that I absolutely love. One of the most recent is Tebowing. The official description is: to get down on a knee and start praying, even if everyone else around you is doing something completely different (obviously, a play off of controversial quarterback Tim Tebow). There's even a whole website dedicated people Tebowing.

Another internet meme I love is "#FirstWorldProblems." As you might guess, the official description is: First World Problems are frustrations and complaints that are only experienced by privileged individuals in wealthy countries. It is typically used as a tongue-in-cheek comedic device to make light of trivial inconveniences. 

It is typically described as a problem, then followed by the hashtag on Twitter. Here are some of my favorites:

Chipotle charges a whole $1.80 extra for guacamole. #FirstWorldProblems

The first day it snows, and the seat warmers in my Lexus go out on me. #FirstWorldProblems

You get the idea…

Why do I love these? Because life if tough, work is hard and sometimes you need a little break. I like to laugh, a lot (as my  co-workers can atest to) and the internet helps. 

That's what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving: internet memes.

The world is now one great, big small town.

If you've ever been east or west of DFW, you'll likely run into some of these small towns that the world has become. Everyone knows everyone's business. There are no secrets.

The world of social media has made the whole world a huge small town.

In Gary Vaynerchuck's book, The Thank You Economy, he lays out this idea. Before Wal-Marts and Targets, there could two butcher shops in a small town. If Joe the Butcher screwed something up (maybe he promised you meat at a certain price, and then when you showed up, he insisted on charging you more). Soon, everyone in the town would know that Joe was dishonest and the people in the town would no longer go to Joe the Butcher. Everyone would go to Bob the Butcher. The old equation was caring = business.

Even though we don't have butcher shops anymore, where everyone knows your name, we now have the amazing power of social media.

Before, I didn't subscribe to the "Corporations don't care about me" idea. That all changed today. Long story, short, I had a terrible experience with American Airlines customer service (both on the phone and Twitter). The telephone representative said, "There's nothing I can do. Sorry." I said, "Well, thanks for nothing." He said, "You're welcome," and hung up before he completed the world "welcome."

Is that how we really treat customers? We should be so grateful for our customers and bend over backwards to help them. First of all, because we (as companies) care. But secondly, in today's small world of social media, we'll talk about these bad experiences. I'm not a celebrity, but I tweeted out the message to my around 2,000 Twitter followers and 1,000 or so Facebook fans. Some people replied, some liked it on Facebook. Everyone didn't read it, but would you want something bad going around about your company? If you owned a small business, wouldn't you reach out to make everything right?

What if American Airlines went the other way and offered me some help? Or even said, "We can't help you today, our hands are tied, but next time you fly with us, here's a pass to the Admiral's Club." How different would the experience be? I probably would be writing a post talking about how they did a great job, instead of a lackluster job.

Gary's company, Wine Library, does an incredible job at practicing what he preaches. They call people just to thank them for their order. No upsells, no cheesy surveys, just a "Thank You." When's the last time a company did that for you? I bet many of those customers are customers for life, simply because of a "Thank you." There's your ROI.

If you haven't already, pick up a copy of The Thank You Economy. It will (hopefully) change the way you look at your customers. We have a lot to be thankful for, especially our customers.

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