Thinking of Content As Part of Your Ad Mix

For businesses, recession is a scary proposition.  It is a time filled with speculation, uncertainty and reactionary behavior.  There is a tendency to run and hide, tightening budgets and reducing spending footprints.  Much like battening down the hatches, pulling your sail and hoping to ride out the rough seas buffeting bottom-lines, we retreat to our core business propositions, feeling like expansion is too risky and would potentially have our hard won market position stripped away.  But this isn't a rough sea, and businesses aren't small sailboats adrift in a unforgiving sea, they are mobile vehicles that thrive on creative solutions to all the problems that arise from contingent market conditions.  Online businesses are especially dependent on maintaining connectivity and visibility.  In a time of lightening fast trends and constantly shifting landscapes, standing still is just not an option.

Don't wallow in your money, spend and make more!

When identifying growth opportunities during a recession, you can find direction from decisions made by predecessors who weathered other great economic storms. During the great depression of the 1920s a study of 200 companies showed the power of driving against the impulses of caution and parsimony.  Of the companies surveyed it was clear that the greatest gains made during this calamitous time were made by companies that in fact increased their advertising budgets.  This finding was born out again during recessionary period stretching between 1949 to 1961, where it was empirically clear that when companies cut their ad budgets to try to stem expenditures their sales fell most dramatically, while those that maintained or even increased the amount they spent on maintaining visibility in the various media spaces not only outperformed during the recession, but gained even greater ground once the economy recovered. This lesson's efficacy has continued to be proven true even through the late 70s and early 80s.

In the nineties when the economy was hurting and most beer companies, an industry traditionally seen as having a relatively inelastic demand curve, (i.e., when pressures on income don't necessarily reduce the demand for a particular product), slashed their budgets, Coors and Bud Light increased their advertising spending and saw large sales increases.  During the same period a report that looked at the success some fast food restaurants with increasing ad budgets, leading to increased sales and effectively reducing McDonald's sales by 28%, had the following conclusion to best practices during a recession: "The best strategy for coping with a recession is balanced exploitation of ad spending for long-term consumer motivation, plus promotion for short term sales boosts."

So what are the big guns doing this current time of uncertainty?  Well, as reason dictates, based on past experience we can see that some of the largest players in the current global marketplace are hunkering down, while the least timid are pressing onwards, trusting the logic of market positioning during a time of reduced consumer spending.  Of a 175 Chief Marketing Officers, 63% said that they were increasing their online ad budgets.

To continue with this logic, if ad spending is important to maintain or increase during this time, and online marketing is the best place to invest in your business's future then making sure a healthy portion of that budget is reserved for content is essential.  Content gives you all the necessary components to implement and maintain visibility plans using search engines, the primary portal for internet marketing.

Make sure you know what your message is, don't skimp on spending to get that message across and remember that advertising and market presence is about consistency and continuity. Sticking with it even when the short term gains aren't there, is of the utmost importance.

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Why do we keep hearing the term 'Unique Content' both on our site and whenever you encounter SEO expert trying to explain some of the key components of developing your online business?  Because 'unique content' is what the search engines want.  But why do they want it?  Its actually quite simple.

Stand out from the crowd!

Search engines like unique content because it ensures that the results they provide their users will not just be a series of results that lead to a body of text that has been republished over and over again across a wide array of sites.  Who would want to search for, let's say, dog grooming tips, and then have the top ten results yield the same article?  It wouldn't feel like you were getting a very good diversity of information, and would decrease the usefulness of that search engine.  As information gatherers, humans like to have some level of corroboration or contradictions to help them assign value to the particular pieces of knowledge they are processing.  For example:  If each time you searched for hotel reviews and you found the same set of snippets about the same hotel, then you would unlikely to give much stock to that review.  But give us fifty different reviews from alternative sources and we feel capable of making a judgment based on the overall tenor of the reviews.  This is the experience that the search engines want us to have.

"But," you say warily, "people still take good articles and post them on larger sites that get more eyeballs and provide more link backs, so unless I'm a big player online what's the point of buying or producing good content, when someone else will just take it and use it?"  Don't worry, the search engines have thought about this as well, and are very good at identifying original content and its source, regardless of how small they are.  When a big site republishes your blog entry or your article, you still get the credit.  They don't want only the large sites with their voluminous traffic and high visibility to be getting all the credit, while small and unique sites have no incentive to keep producing the niche content that is so valuable to the consumer and search engines.

Here are the three types of content you can produce that will help to develop your site:

Editorial: This is anything human created.  It includes all content you buy on a site like constant-content, or write yourself. This is some of the highest value content out there since you can make sure that it is unique and informational.  It is also easier for the search engines to see if it conforms to their quality parameters.

Machine Built: This is content that is the result of data that has been complied and produced, often as reports and analysis.  It is becoming a bigger part of the SEO mix and the search engines have been working hard to create appendages to their algorithm that can discern unique data-content and copied data-content, since it is easier to mix it up and rework it so that it LOOKs unique.

User Generated: This is some of the best content you can get out there.  As Wikipedia demonstrates, search engines give lots of weight and value to content that is created by a base of users as opposed to business owners.  This reason for this is actually fairly common sense.  Search engines assume that users are likely to generate less compromised content since they usually have less of a stake in pushing a particular point of view.  UGC is more difficult to attract though because you need a build a large user base, so to get to UGC you probably need to spend some serious time with your editorial content base to attract interested and engaged users.

Diversity is the name of the game kids!  It's in high demand o you should make sure that you are throwing your hat into the ring of unique content.

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If you have millions of visitors to your site, hundreds of pages of content, a sophisticated monitoring system for all your site's analytics and a bustling adwords campaign, this article isn't for you, you already know as much about this subject as we do.  But if you, like millions of small to medium sized business owners across the world, have a website, know how to write an article or two for your blog, have your contact info posted along with a snappy logo across the top of your home page, then we are here to help map the first steps toward using the internet to your advantage.

Bet on your Business!

First off, in a day and age where over a billion people have some form of online life, it is integral to start viewing your website as an essential component of your real world business; one that needs attention.  The internet is no longer a novelty, so get ready to spend money on your website the same way you spend money on keeping your carpets clean, printing business cards or painting the walls from time to time.  In fact a website can be one of your business's biggest and most important assets, if managed and fostered properly.

But don't panic, you are not going to have to learn how to program, code, or use inscrutable acronyms.  After reading this article our hope is that you understand how simply adding good, useful, authoritative content to your website can fundamentally alter the market that you are able to access.

Small Business Case Study

Obviously a lot of you are nodding graciously, "yeah, sure, spend money on a website.  My business is doing fine, my website is just as important as my yellow pages ad, pay for it once a year and let it do its work."  Well in fact you are close to be 100% right, closer than you may actually realize.

A web page is like yellow pages ad, and when you flip through it to find a service or a product, your mind acts like the search engine.  It organizes where you think the thing you are looking will be listed.  You choose which keywords will define your search, and then once you find the general area, you use key indicators, like ad size, exactness to your specific purchasing needs, or proximity to your location, all to help rank which vendor you will end up choosing.

The problem with the web is that there are zillions of other vendors out there, making it impossible to choose a seller without a good filter.  So we have to help the search engines, whose job it is to provide search results that are as accurate to their client's (your potential clients) needs as possible.  In this case, just posting your website and leaving it, isn't enough.

To illustrate lets briefly turn to a real world case.

In 2007 Kim Larson had been managing her photography business for three years.  It was a success, and she had plenty of business, primarily driven by word of mouth from old clients.  With the pressure of more Photographers sprouting up in her area, she realized that to grow she needed a new source of business.  She took this opportunity to look at her website, and using google analytics she noted a number of interesting facts.  First was that it showed 80% of her site's visitors came from typing in her URL, 10% came from typing her name into a search engine, and only 10% total came from people finding her by searching for photography related keywords.  This meant that her website was serving as portal through which customers that had already found her, could enter, but was not generating any new business.  This was a problem.

Her first step was to abandon her flash based website, which she had read search engines had trouble reading and thus listing.  She had it redesigned as an HTML-based site, which was more visible for the search engines.  She then put together a group of keywords, and keyword phrases that she wanted to rank for when people searched around.

By carefully building the site assets necessary for Google to rank her keywords, links, Google Adwords and most importantly articles and content about each of the services she offered, within a month her phone was ringing off the hook.

From Her Article on Rising.blackstar.com, a photography website.

"I cannot stress enough how important it is to invest in your Web site — especially if your business relies on new clients finding you...I would not think twice about spending thousands of dollars on a website."

Welcome to the Future!

Our goal at Constant Content is to work closely with you and our writers to demystify the SEO process and make it as simple for businesses as possible.  We know that not everyone has the time or the inclination to become and internet expert, but that shouldn't stop you from taking advantage of the opportunities that web can provide your business.  Please don't hesitate to email us with questions, comments or suggestions on how you think the site could work better on your behalf.

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