How Often Should You Blog? Well, “Long Time – No Post?” is a question I regularly send to clients.  Our marketing model depends on our customers having a constant influx of new content to their website.  It doesn’t matter if it is a Video, Blog or Podcast.  Content matters.

Some clients try to save a couple hundred bucks a month by having someone in their office do the work.  If they go that route I usually advise them to read The Easy Guide To Online Marketing.  The real truth is that content alone isn’t enough.

When you ask how often should you blog, you are asking how often do I need fresh content.  That fresh content usually needs to include keywords that the post targets.   This is the only way search engines can help potential new clients can find your business.  Somewhat random blogs like this don’t do anything to help find new clients, they mostly help you to stay in touch with existing clients.  Unless you have some type of expert or celebrity status that is.

One of the interesting shifts in the marketing world is the expansion of the ability for people to become a celebrity.  YouTube, and the iPhone have made it possible to film a commercial in your store for free and get it online in minutes.  Will the commercial work?  Probably not.  The reality is that you can get a commercial that does work and get it in front of a lot of eyeballs for pennies per set of eyeballs.  This means you can compete with those big TV ads when it comes to cost per eyeballs.

When you consider that according to cbs, over 103 Million people watched the SuperBowl.  And that just the ad time alone ran up to 5 million dollars for Super Bowl 50.  And then add in the cost of creating those ads at $250,000 to $5 million, you can figure out each viewer cost the advertiser

Some simple math says that each set of eyeballs was only 4.8 cents a piece for the TV time, and up to about 5 cents for production costs. Your total cost per set of eyeballs is somewhere between 5 cents and 10 cents.  This explains why some startups bet the farm on a superbowl commercial.

PPM Ads give you a cost per thousand views.  This price on many sites can be very competitive with TV ads.  The key difference is reach.  You can target your ads and create ads tailored to your customer.  A SuperBowl ad has to be written for 103 million people.

PPC ads only charge you when a person clicks on your ad.  They cost more and sound like the smarter move until  that a salesman calls trying to sell you a fax machine.  As soon as you answer your phone and realize it is a $200 sales call that you paid for, it is clear why Google makes so much money and why the stock should be in your retirement fund.

The reality is that neither method really is the perfect solution.  Neither of them filter out eyeballs that will never be your customer.  Advertise milk to lactose intolerant families and you still pay for it.  A salesman types in “Personal Injury attorney” and takes the top three ads and calls them because he knows they have a big spend for the cost to acquire new clients.

Yesterday I spent three hours scrubbing a clients “lead list” from our competitor.  Our competitor charged the client $2000 per month for 54 “leads” per month.  When I scrubbed the “leads” I found multiple calls from the same company.  When I called the company, it was clear they were selling something.  About one out of five calls were a real person who might be considered a “potential new client”.  Even then they could be stay at home sales people, I didn’t call them all.  Guess what, I found?  He was right back to $200 per “potential” new customer acquisition.

Is it really that expensive to get someone to buy your product?  The answer is yes and no.  It all depends on you and how you market your business.

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