Seasonal Digital Marketing

As we sit here on March 25th 2013, it is snowing.  Now it’s not uncommon to have snow on the 5th day of Spring and I can remember a couple Phillies games that I went to that had freezing rain and/or snow at them. What I can say that is that, a certain groundhog in Western Pennsylvania, was completely WRONG.  This has gotten me thinking about the seasonal marketing that takes place and how much weather effects the business of online advertising.

We are on the verger of getting into our Spring marketing push and many advertisers are gearing up.  I’ve had a lot of questions about why SEM is important to seasonal advertisers and when you should start.

One of the main reasons why PPC on Google, Yahoo and Bing are so crucial to local Philadelphia businesses is that it allows you to be targeted and seasonal.  Below are three core reasons why each Philly seasonal business needs to invest in search engine marketing.

• Flexibility

• What other advertising platform can you be on where you can turn on your ads and be in front of those that are looking for your type of service?  None, is the correct answer.  The search engines are perfect for seasonal clients in Philadelphia because you can easily set up a schedule for your core season and leading up to it.
• Some might say that you would want to run PPC in Philadelphia all year long.  I would say that it depends on the type of industry and your budget.  We have clients that do both and for those that can afford it, you can definitely get business in your off peak but it needs to be managed correctly.
• Affordability

• Many businesses are noticing a trend in online marketing and this is that Google is putting an emphasis on doing PPC.  Read more about it at War on Free Clicks.  What Google is saying is that you must focus your efforts on paid search if you want to have really good placement.
• What seasonal businesses can do is to turn up and turn down their monthly spend on the search engines, which keeps their placement but also allows them affordability managing their marketing budget.

• Target-ability

• With search engine marketing in the Philadelphia area, you can cut out a lot of the waste in your marketing budget. The beauty of online marketing is that you can zero in on what your geographic area really is.  With Radio, TV, Print and other traditional advertising, this is normally not the case.  I worked in the radio advertising world and have seen countless cases of companies wasting ad dollars on big market radio stations but they only service a small area.  There is tremendous amount of waste in traditional advertising.
• Google Adwords allows for hyper targeting. Every seasonal local business in the Delaware Valley needs this and should take advantage of honing in on your target audience. You know if your potential clients will, or will not, cross the river to do business with you.  Setting up your campaign to achieve this is why PPC on the search engines is so valuable.

For more information about how to run your seasonal advertising, visit www.EricLaylon.com.