Franchise Groups Reap Huge Benefits From SmartLink Campaigns

WEST PALM BEACH, FL--(Marketwire - April 10, 2009) - Several franchise groups are realizing tremendous results from their SmartLink pay-per-click campaigns, indicating that the old adage of strength being in numbers applies to online advertising.

"An organized franchise owners group with an advertising fund is in a unique position to achieve results that individual franchisees could never achieve on their own," said Terry Murphy, president of SmartLink Internet Strategies, Inc. "We are working with several franchise ad fund committees to invest a significant amount of their marketing dollars in pay-per-click campaigns."

Murphy explained that pay-per-click is unique in that it is truly pay-for-performance only advertising. "People typically don't go to Google or Yahoo and type in 'bicycle repair' unless they have a bike that needs to be fixed. All of our clients are seeing the value of having their ad appear only in front of people that are looking for their particular product or service," he said. "No publication or broadcast medium can match that."

Franchise group pay-per-click advertising is proving to help individual franchise owners. For instance, a computer user in Chicago clicking on an ad can easily identify franchise locations in that proximity. "At the end of the day, we can tell each franchise owner exactly how many site visits, phone calls and emails they received from the campaign," said Murphy. "They can see what they are getting for their investment."

SmartLink not only tracks the leads, but it also evaluates which keywords and which search engine positions are generating the leads, and over time, optimizes by Investing more heavily in those areas. The result is that advertisers get more leads for the same amount of money as the campaign progresses.

"One of our franchise groups is a social organization whose success depends on a constant flow of leads for membership," said Murphy. "SmartLink has been remarkably effective and cost-efficient, and their success has enabled them to open locations in more cities."

Another group had been spending money on ads in airline magazines, primarily because their competitors were. "Those ads were very expensive, and they were getting almost no leads, which for them, was a complete waste of money," Murphy said. "On the other hand, their SmartLink campaign is generating huge returns."

A third group was already using pay-per-click but was paying one full-time person to do nothing but manage all the keywords and positions. "Managing a campaign without SmartLink's patent-pending technology can be an onerous job," said Murphy. "If you are buying 50 keywords, across five major search engines, that's 250 positions to manage. SmartLink does it all automatically."

For more information about SmartLink, visit www.thinksmartlink.com.

Contact Information: Contact: Terry Murphy (561) 688-8155