The land rush right now is into Facebook advertising. Early numbers from clients advertising on Facebook have caused the a lot of buzz because they have caused an extremely high number of click-throughs to our clients’ web sites. We are seeing a hundreds of clicks for hundreds of dollars, some exceeding the number of clicks generated by thousands of dollars in paid search investment. This is not to say you don’t want to be involved with paid search but it could indicate that there is a lower cost compliment that can double your productivity in the whole paid Internet endeavor.
Reputable paid search companies set up proxy sites to measure the productivity of their results. In other words, one of their paid links goes to a copy of your site on their servers that measures the results. It is closed loop marketing. They attract the prospect for you and deliver them all in a self-contained environment with excellent metrics including who emailed and who called. This is part of the reason I like ReachLocal. You know exactly what you are getting.
We are setting up the same sort of proxy model for our clients who want to measure the exact results of the Facebook clicks. By placing a version of your web site in a separate directory on your site and using a separate tracking telephone number on that proxy site, we can now measure the number of calls generated from all the Facebook driven clicks. In a month’s time, the clients who are blazing this trail now will be able to make strong budgeting choices on how to convert the vastly increased web traffic they are receiving through advertising in social media. My prediction: the call numbers will be as strong or stronger than paid search.
And, how does this affect your SEO? On our proxy site, we place some code that tells search engines to not index those pages so you do not repeat your content, causing SEO issues. This idea is SEO safe.
The model is coming very soon where you will need a balance of organic SEO, paid search and paid Facebook. Using proxy sites and tracking numbers, we will be able to account for productivity and determine what is best for you to spend where. If you are interested in developing a Facebook ad campaign, it is easy to do and can be very affordable. Most clients are spending the minimum which is $10/day. The proxy site is easy to set up and this month tracking numbers are only $320 and will be good through February. If you are interested in this simple and affordable way make your web traffic jump and measure the results, email me at donald@dogstarmedia.com.
