I wrote an article several years ago on advertising vacation rentals and figured it was time to update it. But instead of rewriting that one, I figured I’d write a new, more meaty one here. Plus, like having more than one vacation rental listing, having two articles on vacation rental advertising is better than just having one.

Why should you listen to my advice?

I have offered a free vacation rental advertising service in my local market that makes hundreds of second homeowners tens of thousands of dollars in income every year for the last 10 years. Literally millions of dollars in the last decade have been made by second home owners from this free local service.

I have promoted all of the big “paid” vacation rental listing sites as an affiliate for years on several of my other websites, where I get paid for each vacationer inquiry. From my affiliations with these vacation rental listing websites, I know what vacation rental websites work for property owners and which websites don’t produce bookings.

I get paid real money from paying clients to give them the same kind of advice that I am going to give away for free in this article. So if you want to learn how to market your vacation rental property online, read on.

The Basics

Much of this is internet marketing 101, but since most vacation property owners are not internet marketing pros, we’ll cover some basic principals here to give you a good overview of how to go about marketing your vacation rental listings the right way.

Be aggressive

Seek out all the places where you can advertise your vacation property. There are numerous websites, both free and paid, where you can advertise your vacation property, gain some bookings and make some money. The most important thing about your listings (both paid and free) is that they show up in Google and other search engines.

Pro tips for advertising your vacation property

• When you add your property to different websites, or make your own vacation rental website, don’t be lazy. Vary the text and descriptions you use to describe your property from site to site and listing to listing. Make them all unique.
• Do not use the exact same title and descriptions on each site.
• If the site gives you multiple fields to fill out, take advantage of it. The more information you provide the better off you’ll be.
• The more descriptive text you use, and the more unique that text is across your various listings and websites, the more weeks you will book. This is the single most important thing you can do and is really a very simple way of increasing your online exposure.
• When adding pictures, use images that portray a nice, clean, welcoming property. Also, take your pictures in nice weather. There’s nothing worse than a picture of a rental property under a gloomy, grey sky. Remember, the people you are trying to get to rent your property will be hoping for nice weather on their vacation. Make your property look bright and sunny, both inside and outside.

Creating the content for your listings

Take some time to gather your ideas for these unique property descriptions before jumping in to add your property. Use a text editor like notepad or Word and write different titles and descriptions to use on all the different sites. Also write some good keyword rich paragraphs that mention amenities and nearby attractions to use in your property descriptions.

Mentioning nearby attractions will include these keywords in your text which is great for obtaining visitors from internet search engines via keywords such as “vacation rental near nearby attraction“. Use location specific keywords in your property descriptions.

Detailing your property’s amenities is also a source of great keywords for your property descriptions. Keywords like bbq grill, hot tub, swimming pool, internet access, wifi, deck, walk to beach, outside shower, private yard, quiet neighborhood, close to golf course,  swimming pool, kid friendly, pet friendly, etc… Many vacationers will include these keywords when searching for their ideal rental property.

How to properly manage your vacation property listings

While adding your property to each site, make a note of the sites URL (link) and any login information you will need to edit your listings later on. It may also be handy to jot down the length of time the ad or listing will run for each website, so you can stay on top of your renewals. You can easily set up a simple spreadsheet to keep track of this information.

Notice how the editing functions work as you enter your information and create your listings. Make a few notes for each site. This will come in handy later on when you need to edit your property information or update your availability calendar on the various rental listing sites.

Where to list your vacation rental property

Build your own vacation rental websites

You should also set up several personal websites for your vacation rental. You could go ahead and buy a domain name and get a real website for your property, but if you aren’t into that, you can get a free webpage or a blog at Blogger or WordPress to host your personal vacation rental site.

Free blogs are great to use as a personal vacation rental website because they are simple to manage. You can upload your property descriptions, pictures, visitor testimonials, etc… very easily to a free blog site. This will allow you to show as much information and as as many pictures as you want to, since some of the paid listing services limit the amount of pictures you can use.

Other places where you can setup free personal vacation rental webpages include Google Sites, Weebly.com, Yola.com, Wix.com, Tumblr.com, etc… Your internet access provider may also offer a free personal site with your monthly subscription as well.

If possible, link some of your listings together. The more links you can get to your listings the better your online exposure will be. Many of the paid services will allow you to link to a personal website from your paid vacation rental listing. On your personal website, you can link to all of your paid listings, where potential renters can see all your listings and guest reviews, etc… Indicating that your property is listed on several different websites will give your vacation property instant credibility.

Think of it this way, every webpage you set up about your property is another doorway for potential vacationers to enter. Not that you need to have hundreds of websites for your rental property, but there are literally thousands of places you could set up free websites for a vacation rental property.

Paid Vacation Rental Listing Services

You’ll need to first establish your advertising budget and select paid services which have a good reputation for “return on advertising investment”. One important thing to remember is, the longer you keep your paid listings running the more visitors you will get from Google and other search engines. Your vacation rental page on these websites will age and with age comes authority and more visits.

The paid services below all have a strong search engine presence and a large visitor base, which is very important for getting your vacation property seen by vacationers on the internet. I have been an affiliate of these services for years, and can recommend all of them as places that you should definitely list your vacation property. A few of them offer free trials so you can test them out first and see how it goes.

Homeaway

Perhaps the most widely known and trafficked vacation rental website, HomeAway has delivered millions of inquiries to owners, and receives over 85 million traveler visits each year.  Homeaway also offers a risk-free “No Booking, No Fee Guarantee”. “Your subscription is completely risk-free on HomeAway.com. We are so confident that you’ll receive bookings from our site, we guarantee your success. When you list your property for one year, we guarantee that you will receive at least one booking, or you will be eligible for a full refund.”

HomeAway

Vacation Home Rentals

Vacationhomerentals.com boasts that they get the most visitors per listing in the industry. Vacation Home Rentals listings include unlimited photos, availability calendar, hit counter, currency converter and optional link to personal site. Vacation Home Rentals also offers a free 30 day trial, so you can try it out for 30 days with no risk of obligation.

Vacation Home Rentals

VRBO

VRBO is one of the original online vacation rental listing websites. More than 95 million travelers visit VRBO each year and members receive an average of 90 inquiries per listing per year. “VRBO.com guarantees that during the first year of your first VRBO one-year membership, you will receive paid rental bookings from your Vacation Rentals by Owner listing equal to at least 10 times the cost of membership. If you do not receive bookings equal to 10 times your membership fee from your first one year of membership, notify VRBO.com, and your membership will be EXTENDED six months FOR FREE.”

VRBO – Vacation Rentals by Owner

Tripadvisor (FlipKey)

FlipKey is the exclusive provider of vacation rentals on TripAdvisor, which receives over 25 million visitors each month. Showcase your property with unlimited photos, link to your website, complete property description, guest reviews, and much more. The average homeowner property listing on Flipkey is currently receiving more than 75 inquiries annually. With access to Tripadvisor’s member base, Flipkey boasts the most genuine vacation rental reviews through their guest review platform. Try it free for 60 days.

Tripadvisor (Flipkey)

Local and regional listing services

There are numerous other local and regional vacation rental listing services and websites that may be worth getting listed on as well, but that’s well beyond the scope of this article. You may be able to ask your neighbors who they list with locally and whether they have had success with local listing services. Local real estate and rental agencies can also be a good source of vacation rental bookings, but be prepared to pay commissions of 10%, 15% or more to get your property booked through them.

Free classifieds

There are many places to advertise your vacation rental for free. Websites like CraigsList, OLX and Kijiji can be very effective and if you are aggressive and crafty enough with your listings they can often outperform paid services.

Some free listings may only run for a short period of time and may require re-listing often, or periodic editing to keep your ad up on the site. All of these sites will show up for Google searches, but the majority of free listings will  expire quickly without letting you reuse the same URL (web address). If you have specific openings, specify those in your classified ads.

Dealing with last minute cancellations

The best time to take advantage of free classifieds sites is when you get stuck with last minute cancellations. The listing churn on most free classifieds sites is high, meaning that your listing will get buried after a day or two, so it is best to list timely offers.

Sites like Craigslist have been good venues for those last minute bookings, like when you have somebody cancel a couple weeks out. Keep this in mind in case you get stuck with some last minute weeks due to cancellations.

If you are trying to book a cancelled week or a last minute opening, make sure you create your ad using the specific time slot in the title of the ad, this will grab the attention of people that are looking for that particular vacation week in the sea of other vacation rental classified listings.

Other vacation property advertising sources

Pay Per Click advertising

You can also drive potential vacationers to your online listings by purchasing Pay-Per-Click advertising from Google Adwords or other similar services. If you are going to use PPC ads, send the visitors to your personal website and not a paid listing. You don’t want to pay for clicks and then send the visitor to a site with numerous listings similar to yours.

The thing to remember here is to refine the keywords that you target. Don’t just bid on “city vacation rental”. That search is much too broad, it will cost you alot of money and you will not get the right targeted visitors.

You are better off choosing keywords like “town/village name rental”, “nearby attraction rentals”, “rental close to nearby beach”, etc… Also target the specific weeks that you have available with keywords. Something like “city rental week July 4th”, “city rental second week of August” is much more targeted to a visitor’s specific criteria.

You may not get as many clicks and visits as “city vacation rentals” but the visitors will be much more likely to rent because they will be much more targeted to your property and the weeks or time slots you have available.

There are two things to remember here: It will cost much less to use highly targeted long tail keywords and phrases rather than simple broad range keywords and the competition will be less for keywords that specify certain weeks or time slots.

Offline advertising

As far as advertising your property in guidebooks, newspapers, etc… Don’t waste your money. This has been a loser for many folks I have talked with. Usually the person picking up a guidebook is “already there” and likely has a place to stay already. They might look for a restaurant, or maybe a hotel room, but not a weekly vacation rental. There is the chance that the guidebook may be brought back home and referenced at a later time, but don’t count on it.

Good luck with your vacation rental season. May all your weeks be booked up solid.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

How to Advertise & Market a Vacation Rental Property is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

Try it Local Cape Cod

To answer the rising popularity and the growing need for a local Cape Cod group deals or social coupon site like Groupon and Living Social, the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce launched a group coupon site with Try It Local Cape Cod. Are local group deals a good idea and will it pan out for local Cape Cod businesses? Read on to find out.

With the growing popularity of social coupons or group deal sites like Groupon and Living Social, the Cape Cod chamber is hoping to get on the group coupon train with their Try It Local Cape Cod offering. The chamber chose TryItLocal for their local deals program. Try It Local is a company based out of Louisville, KY that runs group coupon websites for local and regional chambers of commerce.

Try It Local Cape Cod

Below are a few notable comments and some details from the Cape Cod chamber on the announcement:

As group coupon websites like Living Social and Groupon have soared in popularity over the past year, Kristen Mitchell noticed a worrying trend.

“It always bothered me personally to see people going off-Cape to redeem the vouchers,” said Mitchell, the vice president of tourism marketing for the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. — Cape Cod Times

I have to agree with the strategy here. While you can get group coupon deals for big brand stuff like Red Box movie rentals or national chain restaurants around here, most of the local deals offered by the large group deal sites like Groupon and Living Social are only redeemable up around the Boston area. So there is a void on the hyperlocal, Cape Cod, MA area level.

“Try It Local is an innovative way to explore new businesses and experiences on Cape Cod, while at the same time supporting the local economy and Cape Cod companies,” said Wendy Northcross, Chief Executive Officer of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce. “The Try It Local program not only supports local retailers themselves, but the work of the chamber as well.”

The first deal will arrive on Wednesday, March 23, and a new deal will be released every Wednesday thereafter, featuring businesses like 586 Bistro & Bar, emBargo Restaurant and Alberto’s Ristorante, all located in Hyannis; The Riverway Lobster House in South Yarmouth; and Wimpy’s Seafood Café in Osterville. There is no cost to businesses to participate as a featured deal. The company keeps 70 percent of the day’s total sales and is responsible only for determining the deal and meeting the increased demand for its product or service. — Cape & Plymouth Business

The timing of the Try It Local Cape Cod offering by the Cape Cod chamber is spot on since as I noted above there is a group coupon void to fill in our local area.

The key here is going to be marketing. Right now as I search for “Try It Local Cape Cod” I don’t see the tryitlocal.com/CapeCod/ website or the chamber website anywhere, not even in a paid advertisement. Somebody needs to up their seo and online marketing game if this is going to work.

Try it Local

I spent some time clicking around on the tryitlocal.com website and I’m a bit disappointed. Once you get off the tryitlocal.com/CapeCod page it it loses the local chamber branding. The tryitlocal.com website should probably be set up on subdomains like capecod.tryitlocal.com so the local branding could be consistent throughout each local “site”.

The website’s search engine optimization is lacking to say the least, so it’s really going to be up to the chamber to get traffic to the tryitlocal.com/CapeCod site and make sure it gets found in the search engines. I would encourage them to click here for help.

Local Group Coupon and Social Deals Competition

It would be very easy for Groupon or Living Social to ramp up they’re hyperlocal deals game. With the Groupon IPO estimated at over $25 billion, which is more than Google’s IPO, going hyperlocal is very likely to happen for Groupon, and soon.

Facebook just made a move into the group coupon, or in this case the social deals space with Facebook Deals which just launched recently. With over 1.7 million people (age of 30+) in the Cape Cod and Southeastern MA area, Facebook has a big advantage on the hyperlocal social coupon game out of the gate. Facebook also has a huge small business base already, with most local businesses already using Facebook pages to market their offerings on Facebook pages.

Are Group Coupon Deals Good For Local Businesses?

Of course the group coupon sites themselves are full of local business success stories, but are sites like Groupon good for local small businesses? There are mixed signals and not all are good. There are stories of small local businesses getting hammered and studies of local business that used group coupon sites show less than stellar results. In a hyperlocal market such as Cape Cod, group buying deals may work better for local businesses because of the smaller scale. Some of the small business Groupon horror stories I have seen resulted from the small business being overrun with the volume of group coupon customers.

What Kind of Customers Do Group Coupon Deals Bring In?

Another thing for local businesses to be aware of is what kind of customers will you get from social deals? While you might get some new loyal customers out of the deal, the following passage is a sentiment that I have seen in a few different places.

The truth is that people who use Groupon-type deals are the last kind of customer your business wants. They are coupon chasers, running around their respective cities with no loyalties and no long-term business value. They rarely return to YOUR business. They just go after the next best deal. And why shouldn’t they? Groupon offers them a staggering discount on almost anything. — source

Conclusion

With all the different players vying for position and the jury still out on whether group coupons will be good for local small businesses on Cape Cod, it will be interesting to see how the hyperlocal group buying and social couponing space unfolds here locally.

I think the Cape Cod chamber is making a bold move here with Try It Local Cape Cod and by executing the right marketing plan it should work for them and for the local businesses that get on board with local group buying coupon deals.

Try It Local Cape Cod & Group Coupon Deals is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

The only problem with that is, well it’s CraigsList. By that I mean there is no vetting process or requirement of qualifications to place an ad on sites like CL. The problem with that is, these kinds of sites attract people that may be scammers, or really just aren’t qualified to do the services they are offering.

Now there are two ways to approach hiring a service providers off CraigsList:

Wrong way: You can browse or search ads in the relevant services category and reply to these ads blindly. Which opens you up to any person you reply to. Not smart.

Right way: Place an anonymous services wanted ad and let the providers that reply open themselves up to you instead. Isn’t that the way it should be? Why put yourself out there by replying to unknown people who place ads on CraigsList?

By following the tips below you can begin to protect yourself from scammers and unqualified service providers.

1. Place a services wanted ad in the appropriate section.

2. Use the anonymous email feature and do not put your real email address or your phone number anywhere in the ad.

3. Describe exactly what you are looking for and if applicable include a budget for your service needs.

4. Submit the ad and wait for replies.

By having the service providers reply to you, you are putting the shoe on the other foot which gives you the upper hand. Any professional service provider should reply with their contact information which should include their name or business name and phone numbers.

Now you can research them anonymously before you decide to reply back to them. Start by giving them a good Googleing. Search for the business name and person’s name. Search the phone number and even the email address. If there is something you need to know about that person or business, Google should find it for you. Make sure to search for each piece of information independently, this will give you the most thorough results.

Things you might find through researching

Reviews about the business or service provider, both good and bad. Any complaints or other business or personal associations should show up as well.

You might find other classified ads this person has posted. Things like stuff for sale ads and other things may or may not be an indicator of their character or financial situation.

Use the information you gather from your research to perform your own vetting process and narrow your list of who to respond back to. This will ensure you have the upper hand when hiring a service provider off CraigsList or any other classified website.

The bottom line is, do not tip your hand until you have to…

The inspiration for this post came from Cape Cod Home Improvement’s Consumer Guide to Hiring. If you need to hire someone on Cape Cod for home related services, check it out.

Hire Service Providers Using CraigsList the Smart Way is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

A very simple hyperlocal Google Adwords example

Let’s say we own a widget rental business in the Mid Cape Cod area and want to run paid advertising on Google Adwords. Here’s one part of a campaign we might use:

We would setup the campaign to run with very long list of “exact match keywords” like:

Mid Cape Cod widget rental ad

• “widget rental”
• “widget rentals”
• “where can i rent a widget”
• “where can we rent widgets”
• “rent widgets”
• “cape cod widget rental”
• “widget rentals cape cod”
• and many, many, many more …

Now since we are only renting widgets to people in the Mid Cape area, we use the geotargeting settings to target people that search for the above keywords within 10 miles of our business location.

Hyperlocal Online Ad Targeting

Notice how we also specified in the ad copy above that we rent widgets in the Mid Cape Cod area only?

This will discourage clicks from people who might be inside the target area, but want the widget delivered outside of our service area.

This ad copy strategy also gives the people who are in our service area a sense of exclusivity and let’s them know that we are the place to call for widgets in the Mid Cape area.

In addition, we would also use negative keywords to eliminate showing up for non relevant searches.

We would also run an additional campaign that had no geotargeting but included only exact match location based searches in our service area  like “widget rental yarmouth ma”, “dennis ma widget rentals”, etc…

Misspellings would be added to all campaign keyword lists along with a few other tactics to round out a complete widget rental Adwords campaign.

Since the targeting is extremely tight (a 10 mile area) and widgets are not super popular rental items, the budget here is going to be relatively low. However, this ad campaign should convert extremely well for us which means more of the right widget rental customers.

Hyperlocal Adwords Targeting Example is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

Like/Share Combo

Here’s a quick tip to get some more mileage out of your Facebook advertising dollars.

If you are advertising on Facebook and sending people to a custom landing page use a Like/Share Combo on the landing page.

Place it above the fold right where people coming from your FB ads will see it.
Put it right in their face.

This has converted really well on landing pages for me. The image above is from the landing page for the campaign stats below. If you take away “my like” I got 33 likes/shares out of 312 clicks which means better than 10% of those 312 people liked or shared the landing page with all their friends. Plus, since this landing page was part of an actual website, I did see the like/shares increase on some of the other pages on that site as well.

Facebook Ad Stats

This brings lots of residual traffic during and after the campaign and will stretch your FB ad dollars.

No Faces

I don’t use the code that shows people’s “faces”. I think it creeps people out off of Facebook and I think the likes/shares convert alot better without showing faces. Without the people’s faces, it seems more anonymous to me and I think the average FB user thinks so as well.

Here’s the code for a simple Like/Share combo:
<iframe src="http://www.facebook.com/plugins/like.php?href=THE_LANDING_PAGE_URL&amp;layout=button&amp;show_faces=false&amp;width=250&amp;action=like&amp;colorscheme=light" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" allowTransparency="true" style="border:none; overflow:hidden; width:250px; height:30px"></iframe>
<br />
<a name="fb_share" type="button_count" href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php">Share</a><script src="http://static.ak.fbcdn.net/connect.php/js/FB.Share" type="text/javascript"></script>

The only catch is that you must be advertising something that people will want to share with their Facebook friends.

If you are advertising colon cleanse, this tactic may not work out so well for you.

Like Share Combo for Facebook Landing Pages is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

With Google Adwords (if you are doing it right), your ads should be seen by people that are almost ready to buy or ready to buy your product or service.

Facebook’s users are at the other end of the buying cycle or “the pre-buying cycle.”

People on Facebook are playing games and chatting with friends, they are not there looking for your product or service. If you go into Facebook advertising thinking you are targeting the same people you do with Adwords, you will fail.

Assume that every Facebook user is a “tire kicker” and try to leverage interest targeting that will get people into the buying cycle.

Target Facebook users with interests that cause a pain that your product or service can cure.

The interest group on Facebook that you think is a slam dunk for your product or service may not yield the results you expect.

You may have to rethink who your customer really is to generate interest with Facebook ads. Forget everything you know from Adwords and think outside the box.

Facebook Advertising is a Different Animal is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

If you are considering advertising on both networks, here’s what you need to know. Adwords and Facebook Ads both offer geotargeting, which makes both networks a good choice for local advertisers. Apart from geographic targeting, each network is very different in how you target the right users for your niche and you must keep this in mind as you plan your ad campaigns.

Advertising: Google vs. Facebook

The combined reach of Google and Facebook is staggering, even in local markets. If you advertise on both of these networks and do it right, you can hit just about every single internet user that is a potential buyer of your products or services.

Online Buying Cycle

Before we get into the difference in targeting on these two networks, let’s go over the typical online buying cycle with some “golf keyword” examples:

Attention

This is the first stage of the buying cycle where the buyer’s attention is first focused on a new product or service (they are a “tire kicker”). ex. “new golf equipment”

Interest

At this point the buyer is researching information about the product or service and forming their impressions on whether they think it is right for them. ex. “golf club reviews”

Desire

By now the buyer has decided they want the product or service and knows what they want or need. “callaway diablo golf clubs”

Action

The buyer is ready to buy the product or service. ex. “callaway diablo driver price”

Targeting

Google Adwords

Adwords targets Google searchers via keywords, so you can tailor your keywords to specifically reach customers that are in certain stages of the buying cycle.

Depending on your product or service, you may have a need to target people in different stages of the buying cycle. For example, if you have a golf clubs review website you might want to target people earlier in the buying cycle than if you are a merchant who sells only Callaway Diablo drivers.

With the average search being something like four and five words long, building good keyword lists and creating ads with effective ROI will take knowledge, experience and testing to build a solid, successful Adwords campaign.

Facebook Advertising

Facebook is altogether different. You can target users by sex, age, sexual preference, marital status, education level, workplace, interests and language, but there is no “search keyword” targeting. When it comes to the buying cycle, you have to assume that everyone on Facebook is a “tire kicker”.

The Facebook targeting that is available and can be spot on depending on your niche. For instance if you run a dating service and target single people of a certain age or sexual preference you can get right in front of the right audience rather easily.

For most advertisers this is not the case. On Facebook your ad needs to create interest in your product or service and get people in to the buying cycle.

Just because someone lists gardening as an interest you can’t assume that they are interested in buying a greenhouse. Whereas on Google if you are targeting keywords like “where to buy a greenhouse” or “greenhouse prices” you will be targeting users further along in the buying cycle.

For Facebook you need to think outside the box, this is a totally different audience.

Finding the right customer on Facebook is much harder than on Adwords. You need to find the angle that will work for your niche.

You might think, I can just run an ad for my business and target everyone in my area. Here is what’s going to happen. Your ad will run for several thousand impressions (a couple hours locally) and Facebook will stop showing it if no one is clicking on it.

They will only run ads that people click on, that’s how they make money and if no one is interested in your ads you’re dead in the water.

Several different ads and targeting profiles will need to be run before you find the ones that will work for your product or service. These campaigns and ad groups can all be run simultaneously and on Facebook there is huge ad volume, so you can often tell whether an ad and it’s associated targeting profile is going to work or not within a couple of hours.

Ad Spend

I’ll give you an example from a recent campaign that ran simultaneously on both networks in the same local geographic area so you can see the difference. These campaigns were run for a merchant that sells items that run from about $1,500 to over $10,000.

The Facebook campaign started with five different ads and was boiled down to two ads after some testing and targeting users with a few different interest categories.

Adwords:

Average cost per click $1.18

Ad impressions: 17,059

Facebook:

Average cost per click: $0.24

Ad impressions:  353,700

We spent twice the total money on Adwords that we did on Facebook for this campaign. The Adwords users were way further along in the buying cycle, but the leads and interest that was generated by the Facebook campaign was phenominal and shows the potential that’s available with the right approach.

I would love to give more details about this campaign, show the ads we used and explain what demographic and user interests we targeted and why, but this campaign is slated to run in other local markets so I can’t do that.

No one had this client’s products listed as an interest (that would have been way too easy), so we had to think outside the box.

This particular Facebook campaign also only ended up targeting two very narrow niches that aren’t directly related to the client’s products, but its success showed us the potential for exploring other niches and gave us more ideas for future campaigns.

Advertising on Facebook has serious potential for your business, but you need to find the right combination of targeting and ad creatives to pull it off.

Facebook Advertising vs. Google Adwords Overview is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

Do you know what it costs you to acquire a new customer? If you said no, how do you expect to measure the return on your advertising dollars?

If you are serious about growing your business, you need to start tracking your ad response rates.

This will enable you to judge which advertising dollars are being well spent and which part of your advertising budget you are just pissing away.

It’s all about generating leads for your business and turning them into paying customers. The only way you can figure out your cost per lead is by tracking your ad response rates. Then to get your customer acquisition cost, you figure out how many of those leads closed or turned into a sale.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say we spend $300 on an advertisement and we get 15 responses that we track and know are from this specific ad.

Ad spend ($300) divided by the number of responses (15) = Lead cost, CPL or cost per lead ($20)

$300 / 15 = $20 cost per lead

Your close rate or how well you convert these lead to sales is what matters now. For this example, let’s say we made 8 sales from the 15 leads we tracked at $20 each. 8 sales from 15 leads is a close rate of better than 50%. This could be a pretty good percentage depending on what you are selling.

The ad spend ($300) divided by the number of sales (8) = ($37.50) Customer acquisition cost or cost per sale, CPS

$300 spend / 8 sales = cost $37.50 per sale

Now to figure out if this campaign was profitable, we would need to know how much profit we made on these 8 sales and minus the ad spend of $300. If the total profit on the 8 sales we made from this ad is more than $300, we made money on this ad campaign.

Tracking advertising response rates

Online

These days, tracking your online ad response rate is easy using Google Adwords or Google Analytics or both. In Google Analytics, you can use Goals to track your online response rates. This can also tie in with your Google Adwords campaigns to measure your customer acquisition cost or cost per lead.

Tracking phone calls from your website or online advertising efforts can also be done by using special web only phone numbers.

Offline

Tracking your offline advertising dollars is a bit more involved. For most traditional advertising channels like print, TV or radio you will need to use phone tracking or ad specific online landing pages.

Phone Tracking

Your offline ads will need to each have a different phone number with call tracking to measure the response rate from each ad you run. Now I know this sounds expensive, but today it is actually cheap to do. You can get local exchange or 800 numbers with basic call tracking and reporting for about $7 per month each and pay only pennies per minute for usage.

You also don’t have to use a different number every time you run an ad. For a newspaper ad, you can expect that the response will only last a few days to a week after the ad is run. This means that you can use the same trackable phone number for ads you run a week apart in different newspapers without being concerned with too much overlap.

With phone tracking your customer acquisition or lead cost is simple to figure out. If you spend $200 on an advertisement and get 10 calls, your lead cost is $20 each.

Ad Specific Landing Pages

You can also use online methods to track offline ads as well. Who hasn’t seen a TV or print ad with a website tracking code? A website tracking code is usually something like: website.com/TV20 or website.com/SPECIAL. This is just a landing page specific to that advertisement where response rate can be tracked via unique visits to that page. Ideally you want to use a unique landing page and website URL or tracking code for each ad you run.

Conclusion

Traditional advertising providers do not want you to know your response rate. They will tell you about their demographics, distribution, reach etc…, but only you can measure the actual performance of the advertisement.

Knowing your response rate gives you leverage. When the advertising salesman comes around to get you to renew your ads, you will have response rate data specific to that advertisement and you can use that data to negotiate your next ad buy. If you run an ad and find that the response rate is less than ideal for the money you spent, just tell the salesman you will not pay the same rate because the ad is not performing well enough to justify the spend.

If the response rate on that ad campaign is terrible, tell them you want a discounted rate to continue or just tell them to forget it and you’ll shift your ad dollars elsewhere.

Once you know how your ads are performing, you are in the driver’s seat.

By tracking your advertising performance, you will be able to trim your ad budget and increase your effectiveness.

Measuring ROI: Customer Acquisition Cost is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

Video production is cheap. Distribution is Free. If you are not video marketing online, you should be. The barriers to entry are virtually non-existent.

The Audience

Online Video continues to show solid growth – up 34.9% in time spent during 2009. (Nielsen)

The average U.S. Viewer Watched 6.4 Hours of Online Video During the Month of April 2009. (comScore)

Blenders

One case study that is constantly referenced is Blendtec. Their “Will it Blend” campaign on Youtube has been phenomenal.

If you didn’t know Blendtec makes blenders. Their YouTube videos have been viewed tens of millions of times.

Let’s look at their production costs: Apart from the fancy stage they have setup for a backdrop, you’re looking at a pair of safety glasses, a white lab coat, a blender and whatever they are blending (glow sticks, iPhone, laser pointers, silly putty, etc…). I can’t imagine it costs much to produce compared with the mileage the are getting.

Look at it this way, if a blender company can get tens of millions of views, just about any other business can generate interest in their product or service through online video.

Local Case Studies

You don’t have to produce viral videos that get millions of views to be effective. Here are a couple of examples.

Pine Harbor Wood Products

I shot a very poor quality video of Pine Harbor Wood Products’ old sawmill with a low resolution digital camera that recorded to a floppy disc back in 2000.

Since the sawmill is no longer in operation and kind of nostalgic we decided to post it on YouTube and embed it in their website. Knowing that the video resolution would be a quality problem, I uploaded the video in February of 2007 and it has over 18,000 views. That’s 6,000 views per year over 3 years for what is arguably a terrible video.

They are planning video walkthroughs of their production plant and product videos for their line of sheds for roll out this Spring.

Destination Realty

Every week Joe Arnao chronicles what happened with the Cape Cod real estate market. He covers over all the statistics on real estate sales as logged by the Cape Cod and Islands MLS and offers some non-real estate tips every week. The off topic tips give the videos personality, which in the real estate market is a good thing to have.

Now as far as I know none of Joe’s videos have been viral sensations, but he has positioned himself. Go to YouTube and search for Cape Cod real estate you’ll see Joe’s face all over the place.

These two examples prove that video can be effective for business without needing to be “a big production”.

Resources

If they say a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a million words.

A list of 42 types of videos that can be produced by businesses with popularity and growth potential ratings:

New visual languages, graphic interfaces, rich media content, lower video production costs and shrinking attention spans are changing how businesses communicate. In-house or outsourced, video is becoming a standard delivery medium for marketing and communications activities.

From the Video Marketing Report (pdf) we get some good tips including:

Sales Page and Marketing Videos should be between 30 seconds and 2 minutes, with an absolute maximum of 4. Why? Most viewers want to get in, get out, and move onto the next video. You have to catch and keep their attention span before they find the next shiny object on the internet.

Video on your site:

WILL increase time-on-page

WILL generate useful feedback and comments

WILL capture more opt-ins

WILL convert more visitors into PAYING customers

Conclusion

Online videos don’t need to be tricked out, fancy or expensive to be effective.

Start up costs:

Flip video camera: $150

YouTube distribution channel: FREE

Like the blender company, you might even be able to come up with an interesting idea for your video marketing campaign that will take it to a level your website will never reach on it’s own.

One more thing, if you run TV ads and do not post these commercials online you are missing out on a larger audience that can be had for free.

Cheap Production, Free distribution, Using Video to Grow Your Business is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.

Last week when the news broke that Toyota would be recalling millions of it’s top selling models because of a “sudden acceleration” problem with the vehicle gas pedals or floor mats, I started to monitor the search results for “Toyota recall” to see who would be jumping on the advertising bandwagon first.

I noticed a few things within the first two days of the story breaking:

Toyota was running a damage control ad. To their credit, this campaign is also running on Bing and Yahoo which are both empty of competing “recall related” ads as I am writing this:

Toyota Recall “Toyota Takes Care of its Customers. Read the FAQs at Toyota.com”

GMC and Buick were showing the following ads, but these ads were already running under a previous campaign and likely just triggered for the broad match keyword “Toyota”:

May the Best car Win “On New GMC Models, Assurance Comes Standard. Get Details Here.”

May the Best car Win “See How Buick Stacks Up to the Competition. May the Best Car Win.”

Now a few days later we have Mazda and Ford pitching “reliability” and the lawyers jumping on:

Consider a New Mazda “Check out the reliable vehicles from Mazda and find a great deal.”

Ford Vehicles “Drive Safe and Reliable Ford Cars.

Browse Large Inventories Today.”

The lawyers:

Toyota Recall 2010 Update “Sudden acceleration danger. Free case review for injured.”

Toyota Accident Victims “Toyota Sudden Acceleration Recall. Free Evaluation, 1-866-***-****”

The Local Angle

One thing that I do not see is any local dealers geotargeting their own local market with ads yet.

Even though Toyota.com is running the ad above, this would be a great opportunity for a local Toyota dealer to target their own customers with self branded ads like:

Local Dealer Toyota Customers “We’ll take care of you. Call us now, 1-800-***-****”

Send the visitors from your local market to a simple landing page with a quick video, an “answer line” phone number to call, an email form to build an email list for broadcasting recall updates, etc…

I did hear a local Toyota dealer on the radio today running spots telling their customers to call the dealership and assuring their customers that everything will be fine.

Now the radio ads are great, but you have to figure every affected Toyota owner is going to look for information on the internet.

This is an opportunity for the local Toyota dealers to hold on to their customer’s trust, but also a great opportunity for competing local dealers that sell GM, Ford, Honda, etc… to also target these people in their local market.

Local Other Brand Dealer “Worried about your Toyota? Maybe it’s time for a change…”

With local geotargeting and recall related keyword PPC advertising campaigns on Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc… any local car dealer could probably ride this story a long way on short money.

When setting up the campaign don’t forget to also target the makes and model years affected. Include keywords like “camry recall”, “highlander gas pedal”, “toyota floor mat”, etc… It shouldn’t take to long to make a good keyword list for this local campaign.

• 2009, 2010 RAV4
• 2009, 2010 Corolla
• 2009, 2010 Matrix
• 2005-2010 Avalon
• 2007-2010 Camry
• 2010 Highlander
• 2007-2010 Tundra
• 2008-2010 Sequoia

If you are a local dealer that doesn’t sell Toyotas, now would be a great time to bid on your local Toyota dealers business names and run an ad trying to get people to switch to your brand of vehicles.

Here’s a good example from Twitter. A Ford dealer is trolling for distraught Toyota owners by offering a $1000 extra rebate.

Trade in your #Toyota and receive $1000 rebate extra on top of all offers when you buy a new #Ford.

A local Facebook ad campaign might be a good way to capitalize on this opportunity as well.

Note: This was written based upon ads showing in the local market here on Cape Cod, MA. Your local market may look different. Your local car dealer may work with someone like me who told them to start taking advantage of this recall story already.

I posed this question to an old friend of mine, a sales guy:

How would you approach selling new Toyota’s given the recent news?

What a great question. When companies are hit with recalls, and defective products that put peoples lives at risk, selling is the last thing most folks are thinking about. Yet, the selling must go on.

Toyota Recall: Local Advertising Opportunity is from CapeLinks Internet Marketing Blog located on Cape Cod.