Internet Marketing 2.0
The Who What When and Where of Internet Marketing
Archive for November, 2007
November 29, 2007 at 10:31 am · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Search Engine Marketing
Hearst-Argyle Television and Google Strike Reseller Agreement
This deal as of yet hasn’t caught a lot of peoples attention. It did catch mine though and I expect to see a lot more deals in 2008. In order for Google to expand it’s reach as fast as the predicted local search spending is expected to grow then it is going to have to rely on resellers to connect local companies that do not have the manpower, skills or time required to advertise online.
The press release points out:
“Boston, MA-based research firm Yankee Group recently projected that local search and Internet ad spending will grow from $1.9 billion this year to $9.3 billion in 2010. According to research by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., more than 50% of U.S. small businesses believe they can use the Internet for sales, marketing and customer support.”
And to think I am busy now… 9.3 billion in two years is mind boggling considering the amount of work that is required to reach your market effectively using PPC advertising. Running a PPC campaign is not a set it and forget process. You have to do just as much leg work as you do with any other type of advertising sometimes more. But the payoff (ROI) can be huge if you do it correctly.
A lot of accounts that I see waste a lot of ad spend by not managing the accounts correctly. Bidding on terms that they think are relevant when there in fact they hardly ever bring in a conversion. I always take the position of let’s see what is working now and improve upon it. That gives me an idea of the campaign is performing and what should or shouldn’t be looked at in the clients other campaigns.
Back to the press release. Of the 2010 projected spending over 25% of that will be wasted. Yes you read correctly, WASTED. Why ? Simply too fast of growth to keep up with the learning process in order to stay competitive. Especially when you take Google’s ad quality score algorithms that seem to be changing on a monthly basis now. Example, one client I have just witnessed his campaign minimum bids increase and his conversion rates drop drastically. Why? It seems Google didn’t like the landing page we were using. Even though it had a good CTR ratio, and excellent conversion ratio. We used this page for several months after having the exact same problems just a couple of months earlier. We are now faced with having to make new landing pages again for the third time in six months. The saddest part is every time we abide and make the necessary changes we are forced to do it again.
To get back to my point, do you think that all these new small businesses that are not web savvy (remember I have been online marketing for 10 years) are going to be able to keep up? That is why I know a VERY LARGE percentage of that projected growth will be wasted. It simply isn’t feasible.
There is a silver lining though. Those that do not have their campaigns fine tuned will still see a better ROI than what they get with traditional advertising. I just hate to see all that money go down the drain on poor performing campaigns.
November 7, 2007 at 9:01 am · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords
Google AdWords Help Center: What is the One-Page Campaign Setup option?
I logged in this morning to create a new campaign for one of my clients and noticed a new feature in the campaign creation process. It is called the One Page Campaign Setup option. Basically it will allow you to copy an existing campaign and edit it on one page. Very useful indeed.
From the Google Help Center: “The advanced one-page setup wizard was created for AdWords advertisers who often use similar settings in many campaigns and asked to have a simpler way to create new campaigns. Once created, the campaigns look and function exactly like other AdWords campaigns created by the standard multi-page wizard option. (One-page setup is available only for keyword-targeted campaigns, not for site-targeted campaigns, at this time.) As always with AdWords, you can edit your settings or pause the campaign at any time.”
Thank you Google. I wished you would have done this a couple hundred campaigns earlier.
November 7, 2007 at 8:49 am · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Adwords, Adwords Quality Score
Google AdWords Help Center: How do I use keyword insertion? (tutorial)
Have you ever heard someone mention the term Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI)? Well Google has finally decided to spread some light on the subject. They have a full tutorial available and if you are not familiar with the practice I advise you to take a close look at it.
In brief it will allow you to dynamically insert the search term into your ad.
So if your ad says:
Cheap MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players.
cheapmp3.com
You can use DKI to do this:
{keyword:Cheap} MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com
and if the search term that was used was Low Cost MP3 Players
your ad would replace Cheap with Low Cost dynamically when the page loads so it would look like this:
Low Cost MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com
If the search term they use cannot fit into allowed number of spaces for the headline then your default term (whatever is after the colon:) will show in the headline.
Cheap MP3 Players
Browse our large
selection of MP3 players
cheapmp3.com
There are a number of variations that can be used because DKI can be utilized in the whole ad and not just in the headline.
To very important notes. Be careful because you do not want funny looking ads showing. Secondly while this technique will definitely improve your CTR ratio it will actually lower your conversion ratio.
The reason for this is because your headline is matched so well to what the person is searching for you get more browsers than buyers.
November 6, 2007 at 1:49 pm · Filed under PPC Campaigns, Internet Marketing, Google, Adwords, Android
GrandCentral: The New Way To Use Your Phones
For those of you that may not have heard the news yet, Google announced a new open source software called Android earlier this week. They have been in talks with the major phone carriers trying to convince them to go with the solution on some of their phone models. I would bet there isn’t probably any negotiating going on. Google is going to offer to everyone but will play favorites to those that jump on board the fastest. This will include a form of incentives , exclusives etc.
Who is Grandcentral and what do they do? How do they fit into the equation?
Grandcentral is a company that Google snapped up earlier this year. They provide a virtual phone service that lets you tie multiple numbers into a single line. That line can be almost anywhere in the U.S. I was surprised to find out when I signed up months ago that they had local available numbers for the small rural town I live in. Right now I have my business number ringing into this number. I also have the Grandcentral number setup to ring all my phones so no matter where I am at I will get the call. In addition to that you can schedule different times for certain phones to be ring to. If I do not want a certain phone to ring when a certain number comes in, all I have to do is setup it.
You know what the best part is about it? FREE. Yep that four letter word that everyone likes to hear now and then. I have seen services like this cost anywhere from 20 bucks and .10 a minute a month to over a 100 month. I was using something similar years ago for another company I created.
There are a bunch of other features as well. For example they have a call me button that you can integrate into an html page. Remember an html page can be a number of things. It can be your website of course, it could be a pdf, a power point presentation or even an EMAIL. This is where things are going to start getting blurred and merged together.
Here is an example of the Grandcentral Webcall button:
Example. I am sending a new client an invitation to a Grandcentral account so that we can track orders coming in from his PPC campaigns. We will take this account, (phone number) and tie it specifically to a PPC campaign so that we can gauge the cost effectiveness of the campaign. Why don’t we just send them to a special web page and count that as a conversion? We could but his main goal is for the sales funnel to lead to the sales person at the end of the phone. You see the sales person is really great at what he does. He can convert the customer faster and more effectively than what a landing page can. Until a landing page is created that can take customer input and then give feedback and suggestions, then a real “GOOD” sales person will always close more sales.
So let’s review quickly. Google is to be able to serve ads effectively on who knows how many millions of phones. They are going to be driving force behind a majority of applications that will run on the phone. They already have a service (I predict) they are prepping to be integrated smoothly with Android.
Don’t forget as mobile broadband network efforts continue to expand so does the possibility of what you will be able to do with your phones. Tie that to an open source platform were hundreds of applications will be available you have got the recipe for another tremendous flow of information for use to consume.
I will demonstrate what happens when you use open source effectively. But first let’s imagine what we could do…what if an app was made that would tie you into your social network at all times. I mean not just letting you view and post to your myspace page but something that would do it dynamically. It could be a gps geo point of where you are located being displayed on your myspace page for your friends or family. What if you could view real time online game playing from anywhere? An app could be built so that you view games tournaments, virtual worlds from your cell. What if you wanted to video conference with a client in Australia via Skype?
I could go on and on imagining what can and WILL be done. It is not a maybe, it is a WHEN will it be done. Android will enable some simple functions starting out. Expect easier web browsing for sure but it will take another year for the feature rich stuff to start rolling out.
Here is that example of what happens when you open up your platform as open source. For those not aware it was Facebook.
