Do Not Make Internet Marketing Santa Angry!

It can be a struggle to start seeing ROI on your paid search marketing campaigns, and few things are more fulfilling than seeing one really start to get results. The money starts pouring in, and as we tend to do, we relax. Sometimes, this will work out, your campaign will keep getting returns and you can take your wheelbarrow of cash to the bank each month.

As the holidays approach, though, I can't help but think about the businesses that are selling themselves short.

"We're making money!" they cry, reaching into their stocking and getting a lump of coal, "How did I deserve this?"

Internet marketing Santa is fickle (particularly when he's played by me, because I don't even like Christmas), and he frowns upon those who cheat themselves out of seasonal business. He prefers you taking a dump truck of cash rather than a measly wheelbarrow. I've said it before, and I'll continue to say it until I'm blue in the face, but you have to treat your Internet marketing as seriously as your other initiatives to really get some return on it.

The tools are available to you. You have the conversion rates for your ad groups, not to mention your common sense. What works, what doesn't, and whens? What are you not pushing via your pay per click campaign that you're pushing in your offline channels? If your landscaping/snow removal company hasn't began running ads for snow removal services, but I can still find your ads for tree trimming...there is a problem. And Santa? He will not take kindly to this.

So what to do?

First, take a look at your offline marketing. Does it account for seasonality? In a lot of small businesses, this probably isn't the case (hey, you're flying by the seat of your pants, right?). Take a long, hard look at your offerings and start planning your marketing from a common sense standpoint, and map it out on a calendar. Align products and services with specific date ranges of relevancy. Building a timeline will help you coordinate all of your ads, and hopefully get you planning, researching, and developing your keyword sets, ad groups and ad variations months in advance. When the time comes to go live, you have nothing left to do but the minor tweaking.

Tying your Internet marketing strategy into your broader organizational plans can be a way to really drive ROI in your online initiatives. If you're a smaller organization, this approach can be a great way to build out a broader seasonal marketing plan. At the very least, this should help you avoid the wrath of Internet marketing Santa. He's a bad dude, I recommend you steer clear.

The author is Managing Partner of Netvantage Marketing, a Michigan search engine optimization, pay per click management and web analytics consulting company based in East Lansing, Michigan.