Google announced on Monday Jan 4th that their “Click to Call” program will be rolling out this month.  In an email sent to AdWords Advertisers, “…your location-specific business phone number will display alongside your destination url in ads that appear on high-end mobile devices. Users will be able to click-to-call your business just as easily as they click to visit your website. You’ll be charged for clicks to call, same as you are for clicks to visit your website.”  I really like this concept and think it is great for local advertisers.

Here’s how it will work: an advertiser’s local business number and address will appear as additional lines of ad text, based on the searchers geographic location.  While this program will only work for searchers using Smartphones (mobile devices with the ability to view full HTML via the phone’s browser) there is still a huge potential audience for this strategy.  According to Forrester Research, U.S. subscribers owning Smartphones jumped to 17% last year from 11% in 2008 and 7% in 2007.  That’s phenomenal growth in a year where businesses struggled alongside the economy.  Before you can use this program, campaigns must be targeted to high-end mobile devices with the phone number and local business address saved in your campaign settings.

If you are a local business and want to reach out to an ever growing audience ready to call your line when they search for you, then this program is right up your alley.  I have said in many blog posts before, that the early adopters to new search marketing strategies usually get the most from their investment because of the lack of competition.  I see this program being a staple in any online marketing program for businesses looking to grab a larger share of their local market.  The companies who get in early usually grab that market share first and at a lower acquisition cost due to the lower competition.

With holiday shopping (hopefully) in full swing for retailers, I wanted to focus on two factors that can make or break an e-commerce site.  With competition growing every year, the days of fully paid shipping by the customer are going away.  During the holiday season, it is rare that you find e-commerce sites that do not offer free shipping.  At the very least, it is an incentive many websites offer to help you commit to that purchase by a certain date.

Another thing to remember is that your return policy can also influence a visitor’s decision to purchase from your website.  Depending on your product, the return policy can be a major selling feature or a major deterrent in getting visitors to follow through with their purchase.  In addition, the higher ticket items usually are viewed by online shoppers as higher risk purchases.  A clear, concise and fair return policy can go along way in removing any fears about making a large purchase online.  I was recently working with a client who sells furniture online and I asked them what they considered the best selling feature of their signature chair.  Their response was “if we can get someone to sit in the chair, they are sold”.  Well, that is great if they have a physical retail location…but they don’t.  There is no way to get someone to “sit in their chair” before they make the purchase online…so their return policy must be rock solid and their backing of the chair (no pun intended) must be unwavering.

We are in the middle of the busiest buying season of the year for most companies.  Online shoppers are getting assailed every day with “free” offers and incentives.  Be sure you are up to speed with your competition and make it as easy as possible for people to do business with your site.  Giving your customers a great deal is one thing, making them feel confident and comfortable about their purchase will keep them coming back.

According to Wikipedia, herd mentality describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items.  This phenomenon is obvious within the search engine marketing field just as much as everything else in our daily lives.  In fact, the top 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing/MSN) all seem to perpetuate the herd mentality with how they pre-load search queries when you use their engines.  Below is a screenshot from Google, when I entered a search query for my first name:

Google “auto-filled” search queries before I started typing my last name with popular searches.  I guess Google wants me to follow the herd and select one of their suggestions.  Yahoo and Bing have the same function built into their search engines.  Maybe they are simply providing the top search results relevant to my query to make it easy for me to find what I am looking for…but how do they know what I am looking for?  Obviously Google cannot read my mind (yet), but they are willing to apply the herd mentality to provide suggestions of what I will probably click on based on what everyone else has clicked on previously.

But does following the herd when creating a marketing plan hurt or help your chance of success?  Often when I speak to clients, they feel they must be seen for all the same keywords that their top competitors are bidding on, without any data to support whether those keywords will work for their site.  They completely buy into the herd mentality without any knowledge of how those keywords actually perform.  I would not presume to know the percentage of efficiently managed campaigns versus the “set it and forget it” strategy, but based on my experience, there are plenty of pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns that need a thorough overall.  Inefficient keywords, ad copy and landing pages are much more prevalent than efficient ones, and simply copying your competitors is no way to make that determination.  If you just copy your competitors you are almost assured to make the same mistakes they are already making.

Think outside the box, be creative and do your research before blindly following the herd of your competitors.  Instead of saying “what would my competitors do”, think about what your competitors are not doing.  If you’re not careful, that herd just may run you directly into a pack of metaphorical lions waiting to devour your budget and ruin your chance for survival within the online marketing space.