The International Franchise Association Convention is your chance to “Seize the Opportunity”! As the leaders in the franchise community gather in Orlando, Florida for the 52nd Annual Convention, we invite you to join the Qiigo team as they lead two Business Solution Roundtables in the Marketing and PR Track.
Join Qiigo CEO Rick Batchelor as he leads the Local PPC for the Franchisee Made Easy roundtable with Charlie Ellis from MDG Advertising. This roundtable will cover:

• What does it take to launch a locally targeted Google Adwords campaign?
• What is bid management and how can it be used to curb costs while increasing visibility?
• How do you pick keywords that will deliver qualified prospects to your franchise’s website?
• What are three simple steps you can use to track PPC conversions?
• How much should you be spending on your local PPC campaign?

Interested in Mobile Marketing? Then you should join Zach Dickens, Qiigo Senior Account Executive, for the Your Customers Have Gone Mobile: Now What? roundtable with Bill Adams of Matchbin. This discussion will cover:

• What mobile marketing efforts are critical to success?
• Are they best for branding or driving transactions?
• How can I make my web site mobile-ready?
• Can I track the effectiveness of mobile marketing?
• How does it fit into my overall marketing strategy?

The Business Solutions Roundtables will be held on Tuesday, February 14 from 10:15 am to 12:30 pm.
We look forward to seeing you at one of these Roundtable sessions. To meet with Rick or Zach prior to the Roundtable sessions, please stop by the Qiigo booth, #214.

The 52nd International Franchise Association (IFA) Convention will be held this year in Orlando, Florida from February 11 through the 14th. Leading franchisors, franchisees, and suppliers will attend what is known as the premier franchise industry event. Qiigo is among the outstanding companies who will showcase the resources they provide to the franchise industry during this four day event.

You can visit the Qiigo team at the following locations during the IFA Convention:

• Booth 214 at the Exhibit Hall – come and learn about our innovative Pay Per Click and Mobile Marketing programs that offer unique and innovative solutions specifically designed for franchisors and franchisees.
• Local PPC for the Franchisee Made Easy Roundtable – Qiigo CEO Rick Batchelor leads this Business Solutions Roundtable with Charlie Ellis of MDG Advertising. This PPC roundtable covers topics ranging from launching a targeted Google Adwords campaigns to understanding bid management and picking keywords to tracking conversions and more.
• Your Customers Have Gone Mobile: Now What? Roundtable – Qiigo Senior Account Executive Zach Dickens leads this Business Solutions Roundtable with Bill Adams of Matchbin. This Mobile Marketing discussion includes a look at what is needed to make mobile marketing successful, making your website mobile ready, tracking mobile marketing effectiveness, and more.

We look forward to the opportunity to meet with you during your time at the convention. Please stop by our booth, #214, to learn more about the franchise specific internet marketing strategies Qiigo offers.
If you are interested in learning more about Qiigo’s services before the convention, please contact Qiigo today at (404) 496-6841.

Currently, all the credit for closing the sale goes to the last ad, search or referral your customer clicks on before the conversion. Wouldn’t it be great to know what other marketing channels are playing an integral role in getting your customers to that final click? Now you can!

Multi Channel Funnels from Google Analytics is designed to help you track the role website referrals, searches, and ads play in a conversion. These new sets of reports will also tell you how much time has passed between a visitor’s initial interest and his or her purchase. With Multi Channel Funnels you will be able to:

• Gain insight into which channels customers interact with during the 30 days prior to conversion
• See which channels initiate, assist, and complete conversions.
• View interactions with virtually all digital channels, including paid and organic searches, affiliates, social networks, and display ads.

For more information about how Multi Channel Funnels can benefit your marketing campaign, call Qiigo today.

• Your Ad and Your Landing Page Don’t Mesh. Do your ad and your landing page tell the same story? Do they have the same feeling and leave the same impression on visitors? If not, it’s likely those visitors are jumping off as soon as they land. Create that “stickiness” factor by ensuring you have created a connection between the messages on both pages.  If your ad is warm and cozy and your landing page is slick and cool, you are going to turn people off.
• Give Clear Directions. Do you have a call to action? Is it clear? Be concise and direct. Tell visitors to your site what you would like them to do. “Click here to receive $10 off your order!” Don’t make them guess or jump through hoops to figure things out.
• Don’t Be A Show Off. No one wants to hang out with a know it all. Use an easy, conversational tone that sets your visitors at ease. Speak their language and use a tone that is comfortable for them, make them feel welcome.
• Keep It Simple. Don’t overload your landing page with too much copy. Keep it simple, make it easy to read. Keep sentences short and focused with crisp and concise thoughts. No long winded rambling monologues. Think in bullet points.
• Don’t Rush It. Don’t be that seedy sales person who misses all the social cues and goes in for the hard sell. Take the time to build rapport with the visitor. Don’t demand the whole enchilada as soon as your visitor arrives.

If your bounce rate is high and your landing page could use a little “stickiness”, contact the Qiigo team.  Let us help you improve your landing page structure including engagement strategies that will decrease your bounce rate. For more information call (404) 496-6841 or (888) 673-1212.

The 70% that will be allocated to digital channels will breakdown as follows:

• Online/Digital: Includes mobile, social, online directories, display, and digital outdoor
• Performance-based Commerce: Includes pay-per-click, deals, and couponing
• Customer Retention Solutions: Includes email reputation and presence management, websites, social marketing, and calendar/appointment-setting

During this forecast period, spending in traditional advertising outlets is expected to be flat with $10.8 billion spent in 2010 and $12.1 billion to be spent in 2015. However, overall spending on media, marketing and business solutions will grow dramatically from $22.4 billion in 2010 to $40.2 billion in 2015.

BIA/Kelsey also expects spending on performance-based commerce and transaction platforms to increase to $4.6 billion in 2015 up from $1.7 billion in 2010. Customer retention spending is also expected to increase. 2010 saw customer retention spending of $3.5 billion; this number should rise to $6.9 in 2015.

With so much spending expecting to shift to online marketing outlets, where does your company project their marketing plans for the future? If you are considering online marketing and don’t know where to turn or how to get started, talk to the experts at Qiigo. Let us show you how easy it can be to achieve internet marketing success.

With the merger, AdGrok employees will join Twitter’s revenue engineering team. Twitter plans to discontinue AdGrok’s Google AdWords management product on June 30.  Twitter has already announced plans to roll out Promoted Tweets in the 4Q 2011.  Promoted Tweets match up advertisers with Twitter account holders who have a larger follower base.

Ryan Sarver, Director of Platform for Twitter, has said that he believes Promoted Tweets will act as the equivalent of Google AdWords.  The acquisition of AdGrok positions Twitter well to target advertisements to consumers.  It definitely appears as if Twitter is laying the ground work to compete in the pay per click market.

When the consumer clicks on the Directions link it automatically maps the quickest route to the store from the consumer’s location. Consumers can use the Directions link from their desktop, mobile search ads, and Google Maps for Mobile on Android or iPhone.

Google has recently announced that they will be adding new performance metrics for the Directions link. These metrics will appear alongside those for clicks and phone calls.  Clicks on the Directions link will also be charged as a click on all Pay Per Click campaigns moving forward.

So how will this impact your Pay Per Click campaign?

We already know from experience that any customer who is ready to click on the Directions link and immediately head to your location is an actively engaged customer. This is a customer who is ready to spend and has passed the research stage of the buying cycle. So clicks on the Directions link should generate a sale.

Additionally, clicks on the Directions link will filter out those people who are investigating how far away your location is from them.  It eliminates the need for your staff to spend time on the phone qualifying the customer as they have already pre-qualified themselves.

Clicks on the Directions link will be counted the same as a click on the headline of the ad, so you still get the benefit of seeing the results of your clicks without having to spend valuable time on the phone. Instead those customers who are motivated can get their directions automatically and then head to your store to engage your services.

Click here to read Rick’s article “SEO and PPC are Among the Most Measurable Channels” from Direct Marketing News.

Or click here to view a PDF of the DM News article – DM News article.

As the first franchise to sign up for the Qiigo Pay Per Click (PPC) program, Hoffman Tire didn’t really know what to expect. Like any good businessman, Rich Hoffman obviously hoped the phones would ring and new customers would walk in the door. What he got was a solid return on his Pay Per Click investment.

Rich has found that the Qiigo Pay Per Click campaign works for his franchise because it puts his business where the consumer is. “People use the internet to gain knowledge about products and pricing. Pay Per Click is valuable because there is so much competition and it puts us where people get their information, on the internet and on their smart phones,” says Rich Hoffman. “Pay Per Click puts you where you need to be for people to find you, with a professional look so they will call. Then it is our job to sell the customer when the phone rings.”

On the back end, Qiigo provides each participating Tire Pro franchisee with a custom Call Dashboard. The Call Dashboard is designed to provide detailed insight into each individual franchisee’s campaign. Some of the in depth information available to each franchisee includes:

• Total Number of Calls
• Average and Maximum Call Duration
• Average and Maximum Number of Rings
• Number of Calls Answered, Sent to Voicemail or Hung Up
• Number of Calls by Day of Week
• Number of Calls by Hour

Additionally, the Call Dashboard records every call that comes into the store through the Pay Per Click campaign. The Call Tracking feature provides complete reverse look up information on the caller including a name and phone number, the time and date of the call, and the duration of the call. The ability to listen to each call has been a great help to Rich Hoffman. He has used this feature to review the calls coming into his store and finds that being able to understand how employees are interacting with customers is a great help to him.

Additionally, Rich uses the Call Tracking feature to reconcile this list of prospects against his customer list to verify which prospects have been in to purchase product from his store. He can then enter the revenue generated from that purchase into the call log and track the revenue generated from his campaign.

“Qiigo is a professional group that is quick to respond to issues. They have the customer’s best interest at heart. I highly recommend them to anyone and feel their Pay Per Click campaign is something that every tire dealer needs to have in their business plan,” says Rich.

Jeff Nugent, owner of the ANY LAB TEST NOW^® location in Dallas, has long been known as a leading franchisee. In March, Jeff transitioned to using Qiigo’s landing pages for his entire Pay Per Click campaign. The results exceeded even Jeff’s own expectations. The Dallas team answered 1,198 calls in March, a rise of 27% in call volume versus January*. That 27% rise in call volume translated to a 23% rise in sales, for total sales of $44,715 in the month of March!

This rise in call volume and sales was no accident. By working with the Qiigo team, and utilizing their tested and proven techniques for Pay Per Click success, Jeff is able to take advantage of the many benefits they offer. Qiigo’s Pay Per Click Analysts have developed heavily polished campaigns that are actively managed on a daily basis. This attention to detail ensures that each franchisee partnering with Qiigo has a campaign designed to achieve success.

The product specific landing pages that Qiigo has designed and tested are another key feature that franchisees benefit from. With each landing page localized to the specific store, no one location has a benefit over another. Each product specific landing page encompasses the crucial landing page design elements that are required to convert Pay Per Click traffic into qualified leads.

Jeff raves about the Qiigo landing pages saying, “The Qiigo landing pages are dynamite! From the look and feel to being fully transparent, they are superior from top to bottom.”

As an actively involved and driven owner focused on sales engagement, Jeff was focused on making sure that he got the most of the 1,100+ calls he received in March. With an average of just 2.3 rings per call, Jeff and his team are clearly answering the phone often and quickly. Answering the phone quickly and converting callers into customers is one of the keys to Jeff’s success.

Additional, Jeff’s view of Pay Per Click as an investment, not a cost, contributes to his success. His philosophy is that you should spend as much as your market can support because you will get the return on your investment many times over. By investing in his business, he has benefited greatly by enjoying increased sales.

You can share in this success by calling Qiigo today to set up your own Pay Per Click campaign. To get your location’s phone ringing, call Zach Dickens at 678.999.3941.

* Calculations were compared to January because the Dallas location was closed in February for four days due to extreme weather conditions.