09 Mar 08 The Google Advertising Enterprise Adds - TV Advertising
Google recently announced a beta program that allows advertisers to buy ads on television networks. Google will allow advertisers to upload 15, 30, 45 and 60 minute advertisements. The Google platform allows advertisers to closely connect TV advertising to the Internet and measure the results. As you know, I am a firm believer in only buy advertising that can be measured and this new Google beta mets that goal.
According to the Google website the program works the same as adwords, you basically pick networks and dayparts, set a budget and maximum CPM, upload the video and track you ads. As usual it’s simple, easy and easily trackable. You can finally track advertising results and ROI.
The benefits are obvious, you can track and measure your advertising results, Google says it is attached to various setup boxes so advertising results are measured. In the TV business, there is something called “make goods” where you repeat the ad to get the demo promised. There is also givebacks, where you give back money, the Google system helps reduce or eliminate this challenge.
The last benefit is the benefit you get using the Google platform, once you launch your ad, you can see performace of you advertising message and tune it to get better results.
If you are looking to advertise on TV, consider the Google network. If you want to know how it works, Call Today
04 Mar 08 Why Most PPC Campaign Don’t Work!! (or not well)
I’ve been working on a client’s PPC campaign and just got off the phone with this client. Basically I had an argument with the client about his campaign and why it’s not working. The client insists (despite concrete evidence to the contrary) on landing prospect on the main page of his website forcing the prospect to search all around looking for what they want. More often than not what they want isn’t even obviously available on his site, so the prospect flounders around until he quits (We can prove it by looking at his bounce rate)
My argument is that this is stupid (I guess you can tell I’m still steamed). When a prospect see a PPC ad and they click on the ad, they want to see the same message on the site. The process is called message to market match, in other words, when the prospect clicks on an ad, they land on a page that continues the sales message alluded to in the ad.
My client insists this is hogwash (his words), my client wants to have the prospect see everything he had to offer. I say he is wrong and have decided to design a landing page (for FREE) to prove my point.
BUt this isn’t my thinking the effectiveness of landing pages has been proven over and over again compared to landing a prospect on your home page.
The prospect is looking for something specific, remember the client typed in a specific search string “womens shoes in philly”, when they click on your ad, they don’t want to have to find the womens shoes, they TOLD YOU WHAT THEY WHERE LOOKING FOR.
So, when running PPC, land your prospect on a page that helps them find what they want. If your like my client and don’t beleive that this increases conversion then at minimum test to see what works best.
Dedicated to your success
Dwight
BTW - If you want to learn more or talk about your campaign call me
21 Feb 08 Search is Dead - Long Live Search
I recently read an article about Google’s new project Knol but when you go to knol.com, the site sells what looks like rug cleaners in German but from what I can tell the product is similar to wiki. Basically user generated content thats not moderated. While thats all good, I’m pondering the future of search.
As Google, starts to implement universal search, the relevancy of serch will change nd more and more people will rely less on plain jane search and more on other types of search.
As it stands now, more people are using wiki’s instead of generic search, when people use search engines they are using more local search (in other words, users are using search engines like Google to find local products) but even that could change as users rely on user review sites like Yelp.
So, while I think generic search will diminish, I also believe that specific search will flourish. So as you look to rely on the Internet for marketing, the process of SEO and SEM my change. Start to think more about how to encourage your customers to leave great reviews on review sites like Yelp.com. Check to see what your customers are saying about your business or service. Develop procedures to encourage online reviews. That way you can take advantage of new search strategies. Search is Dead, Long live search.
21 Jan 08 Why Pay Per Click Marketing Does NOT Work for Your Small Business
a recently was talking to one of my small business clients who was completely pissed off for pay per click marketing. he was frustrated because every month Google and Yahoo was charging his his credit card but he wasn’t seen any measurable success. And at dinner he said to me,” in a marketing and Pay Per Click marketing doesn’t work for my business and it’s a complete waste of money, I’m going back to the old way”.
So, as an experiment I offered to look at his local Internet marketing campaign primarily so I could understand the problem, because he wasn’t going back to pay per click marketing.
here’s what I found, my friend is a local contractor, his marketing goal is to generate leads for free estimates. So we looked at his campaign, the biggest problem was the campaign was to broad. in other words he had not clearly defined his universal selling proposition, his niche, is customer, or any of the other metrics that make Internet marketing work for small business.
You see the problem wasn’t that pay per click and Internet marketing didn’t work, the problem is that my friend’s business doesn’t have a clearly defined mission, doesn’t have a clearly defined niche, anyone that has a need for contractor is his client, so his marketing suffers because he’s competing in with every other contractor in the world.
if you’re going to use the Internet and media as a marketing tool you have to clearly understand how it works in the way it works is by creating a tightly defined niche for your business. It’s not the Internet marketing doesn’t work it’s your business that’s not clearly defined that to generally define that lacks focus and doesn’t give you the advantage of targeting a specific type of customer.
So before you go complaining about how your search marketing isn’t working, before you start complaining that you’re paying Google hundreds or thousands of dollars for little or no results, take a look at your business, take a look at how your marketing is defined and then use the power of the Internet to develop a clearly defined niche.
Use the power of the Internet to see what people are searching for and creating a niche or series of niches in your business and then watch your Internet marketing soar.
Dedicated to your success.
If you want to leverage Local Internet Marketing for your small business and looking to sharpen or create your universal selling proposition and clearly define your niche, Call me we can help
13 Dec 07 The Relationship between Your Customer & You has Changed,
What do you know about your customer, are you really listening to what they want. Check out this video. The lesson in my view is that just because you know the demographics of your customer, that is no longer enought. If your relationship with your customer is based on data and you are listening to what your customer wants, your customer will leave and when enough customers leave YOU ARE OUT OF BUSINESS. Check out this video.
We can help you build a system for listening to your client, click here
16 Nov 07 Does traditional SEO still work - Google’s Universal Search
More of a question than a comment like many people I have been watching googles move to Universal search. For those not keep tracking a Google search today is very different from less than a year ago. Now if you search Google for “St Lucia vacation”, you get a results page that includes not just websites, but blogs, news weather and videos.
So what is the impact on normal SEO strategies. Does tweaking Meta-tages, html, site mirroring, doorways and all that junk still get page rank. Or with Uni-search has Google made thos strategies obsolete. I’ve been reviewing my SEO techniques and wondering if anyone else is considering how to get organic results in a uni-search world.
Appreciate any thoughts
30 Oct 07 Pay per Call with Google’s Grand Central
The borg is still at work. As many know Google recently purchased Grand Central, a telephone number for life service. I recently signed up for Grand Central and have a new Grand Central number. The way Grand Central works is you get a single number and assign all of your telephone numbers and Grand Central will among other things ring all of the numbers, allow you to screen calls, switch phones on the same call and more. Checkout Grand Central at www.Grandcentral.com.
One of the additional features is the ability to put a “CALL ME” button on your website or blog. I put one on http://www.cash-flow-investor.com and it works perfectly. Basically, you click the button, enter you name and telephone number the service rings your phone and then connects your phone directly to my phone via Grand Central.
This is how Pay Per Call can work right now, because you can tell (via Analytics) if someone went to the call page and you know if you got the call. Every small business should register for Grand Central and start to implement this service on their website. Call me and I can show you how.
Dedicated to your success.
12 Oct 07 Using a Blog to grow your business
One of the new strategies for promoting your business is writing a blog and marketing the blog to your customers. The benefit is you can talk to your customers in an unfiltered manner, you can send them special information like sales, coupons and you can ask them questions in a survey. So blogs have real value especially if you market the blog to your customers. ( A blog is also a good way to get customer feedback and testimonials). Anyway, here is the advantage to creating a blog and an explanation of how your customers can get automatic updates using RSSLearn more about how your company can use a blog by call 215-893-5366 or email general@automated-lead-management.com
10 Oct 07 Social Networking can grow your business but…
What is a social network. Here is a short video on social networking and how you can use a social network to grow your business, find new customers and employees.For more info about how you can use social networking to grow your business contact us at 215-893-5366 or email general@automated-lead-management.com
24 Sep 07 My Campaign is Running But I’m Not Getting Sales
I recently have been watching a campaign for a friend to see how he is converting prospect to leads. Basically the campaign is converting less than 1% and my friend is dying to figure out why.
You know when staring at these campaigns with metrics is a job but just imagine what it’s like if you don’t have any metrics. You see my friend is running a Google Adwords campaign and the goal is to find a lead and convert them into a sale. What my friend doesn’t know is that there are some important factors that contribute to why prospects aren’t converting to leads. Here are some;
- Not knowing what the customer really wants. You see in the search market (actually in the I want to buy something market) there is a spectrum of buyers some closer to buying than others (A-Z Spectrum with Z being as close as possible to buying) In order to get a customer to buy you need to understand where they are in the buying cycle. In the beginning the customers is looking for information, so their search is broad but as he starts to move down the scale the prospects search gets much more specific. So you monitor your metrics to see if what the customer is searching and send different information based on where they are in the buying spectrum.
- Drip, Drip, Drip. In this world of continuous and never ending marketing messages, prospects forget about you and it’s your job to remind them constantly about your business, services, products, sales etc and the more reminding the more they are likely to remember you when they get closer to the buying decision. The also are more likely to refer you because if you are doing a good job providing valuable information they will reward you with a reference to a friend.
- Lastly (well not really because I can keep going) is message to market match. This is very important. The idea is to enter into the conversation that your customer is having in their head already. So based on where they are in the buying cycle, you enter their conversation and if you connect they reward you with a sale.
As we installed more monitoring and analytics tools, my friends conversions started to increase, the more we segmented the listed, dripped and enter the prospects conversation, my friend was rewarded with increase sales. You can do the same.
