One of the best aspects of online marketing is the ability to measure performance almost instantly. Most webmasters these days know to have a form of web analytics software that provides insights on visitors, traffic performance etc. I use Google Analytics for this exact purpose as do most of the clients I work with. While Google Analytics is great for measuring the performance of the visitors to your website is is also helpful to be able to tie this performance directly to your online ads and activities. In other words you need to be able to measure your clients activities a full circle in order to maximize your marketing.

This is where the integration of Facebook Insights with Google Analytics becomes powerful. Until very recently Facebook didn’t offer a sophisticated analytics package. Facebook Insights was useful but in reality it wasn’t really that great. And to top it off analytics was only available if you had paid ads on Facebook. There was no real way of measuring the other things you were doing in your marketing efforts. So, for instance Facebook Insights wasn’t as useful if you were running a social media outreach and wanted to measure the performance of this traffic in Google Analytics.

Well, worry no more, Raven Internet Marketing, has introduced a tool called The Facebook Tool that is designed to fill this void. This tool helps you to manage and analyze multiple Fan Pages. The goal is to help you improve your efficiency. Plus this tool works seamlessly with Google Analytics providing that 360 view of your market.

Here is how the tool can benefit your social media campaign (from The Social Times):

• Gain better understanding of the performance of Fan Pages beyond what is provided by Facebook Insights
• Create custom, white-labeled reports on the data
• Schedule updates to ensure updates are posted during high-visibility periods
• Manage multiple Fan Pages all from within the Raven system
• Assign clients and management read-only access to view metrics at their convenience

Check it out and let me know what you think.

photo credit: The Car Spy

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I just noticed a sponsored link on Google Local Search while searching for a meeting venue in Phoenix, AZ. I noticed that the local map listing had a “sponsored link” section. I had never seen this before. I did some investigation and found that this comes from connecting your Google Places account to your Google AdWords account. In addition to connecting your accounts you then have to activate the connection. I don’t know if this is going to be a permanent feature – but apparently you’re not paying to be listed first (this only shows up on the second listing). So, the advertiser is only paying for a link. At this point its hard to be sure how that plays into the cost and value of using this feature. However, right now this feature can offer you a competitive advantage since not too many advertisers are aware.

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It had been a few months since I looked in my Google webmaster tools account. All the sites I  own and operate are in this account and it’s rare for me to not be checking this account, but for some reason I just haven’t done it the past few months. When I log-in I can literally spend hours just going through all the information. It is amazing what you can learn and how you can improve your website through the data in the webmasters account. The information can help you optimize your website, improve traffic and conversions (if you’re e-commerce website).

Here are some of the  golden nuggets that can have an instant positive impact on your website:

1. View the top search queries driving traffic to your website. This gives you a picture of how relevant the traffic is that is coming to your website. It can help you answer  why visitors may not be signing up for your e-newsletter or, not purchasing your product. At the end of the day if you’re getting lots of visitors but they’re arriving based on completely irrelevant search queries, then you have a problem. You can see this in the search queries section. As a side note there is now an enhanced graphical presentation that makes guys like me drool! Here is what I’m talking about:

2. View the sites that link to your website. Which can give you a great idea of where you need to focus your link building efforts. Perhaps your SEO is not where it is because you don’t have the right set of domains linking to you.

3. Status of the sitemap you’ve uploaded to Google. You need your sitemap current everyday. If you don’t have a sitemap uploaded one up NOW!

4. The significance of your website in relation to your top sought keywords. You might think your website needs to be found for “XYZ” keyword, but what is your content saying to drive traffic on “XYZ” keyword searches? The significance scale can help you make the necessary changes to your content.

5. A bunch of diagnostic tools so you know where the Google spider is going, where it’s not going and where it’s failing.

If you have a website and don’t’ have a Google webmaster tools account, then you need to get one set up. I suggest you regularly log in to your webmasters tool account so you can stay ahead of the curve!

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Tip O’Neil said “all politics is local”. Well, all search is going local as well. Being visible on Google local map searches is very important. The first step is of course to submit your local business listing to Google’s Local Business Center (LBC) . But what if you have multiple locations? It can be very time consuming having to submit each location one by one and also having to individually verify ownership.

Don’t despair, Google local allows you to upload multiple business locations to LBC via a feed. The instructions are fairly straight forward. All you need to do is create a csv file with all your location information (according to Google specs) and upload that file. Full instructions are here. Be advised you need to have at least 10 locations to utilize this feature. Otherwise you’re going to have to submit the locations one by one.

Submitting the location is only the first step. Once the locations have been submitted you will need to verify ownership via phone or mail. Again, this can be very time consuming if you have many locations. So, you’ll need to white list your feed.  The instructions are fairly straight forward and can be found here.

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One of the things that irks me these days is the tendency for people to pronounce things dead. The idea being that some radical change is occurring  or has occurred rendering something obsolete. This old something must now in fact be pronounced dead. This pronouncement is given even though this old something has been so powerful in the past. In fact compared to this new thing the old thing has a demonstrated track record of high performance.

I’m sure there is a reason to think major changes are ahead that might permanently change things, but pronouncing things dead? Especially those things that have been mainstays for such a long time. Isn’t that taking things a bit too far.

So, here is a list of marketing tactics, techniques, ideas and thoughts that have recently been pronounced dead:

Jeff Gomez pronounces that “Print is Dead”

Marc Miller and Jason Sinkovitz pronounce that “Selling is Dead”

Michele Eggers asks “Is Marketing ROI Dead?”

Rick Aristotle Munarriz asks or states (can’t tell) “Death of Affiliate Marketing?”

And these are just a few examples. Over the years I’ve also heard the following:

• 60 second elevator speech is dead
• Personal Computer is dead
• Microsoft is dead
• Resume writing is dead
• Cover letter writing is dead

And recently I’ve heard a few people already pronounce that social media is dead.

And the biggest one of them all is when German philosopher Nietzsche announced that God is dead. Last time I checked he was the one that was dead.

photo credit: Shahram Sharif

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It’s been crazy busy around here the past few weeks and for good reason. The whole thing came to a head over the past few days.  Because in the last two days I launched all 21 videos for Sabdamala.com to hundreds of prospects.  So, in the last 48 hours I had to coordinate a free and paid membership section of the website, create email newsletters with explicit offers and update a plethora of documents.  All of this was a huge task indeed. I’m glad to have it all done and behind me!

In the midst of this process a friend of my asked me what I was doing to drive traffic to my website and hence develop this market. This friend is fairly new to Internet Marketing and hence he wanted to hear about the fundamental tools I had used. I decided to write this up to not only answer his question but also make it available to anyone else who might be interested.

So, here is the list of tools I used to drive traffic, build a email newsletter database and eventually drove revenue:

1. Google AdWords (Pay-per-Click) – I needed quick instant traffic so I turned to Google’s AdWords program. Since the search volume on my top keywords is not very high I decided to only use the content network. The content network allowed me to gain exposure via relevant websites and also helped to drive relevant traffic. At first I let Google find the sites for me, but over time I started to be selective about the sites and also included some of my own.

2. Facebook PPC – Unlike MySpace, Facebook has a superb ad business model that allows small businesses to reach its 400 million plus members. My market is fairly small in the greater scheme of things.  However, with the right descriptor phrases I was able to find over 15,000 FB members within my geo-target. I created two ads with differing ad text and eventually settled one one (based on performance).  I was able to drive a lot of traffic this way with only a $5 per day budget.

3. Affiliate Marketing Partners – From the very beginning it was my goal to develop a group of very strong affiliate partners. I was able to identify two very strong partners with exceptional websites. These partners included my ad on their websites and also sent out emails on my behalf. Currently I am tracking the traffic from these sites and will be sharing revenue with them as it comes.  I have learned that having affiliate partners who believe in your product is very important if you’re seeking to drive traffic to your website.

4. Association Marketing – This is a bit unique to my market but there are 15-20 associations that I was able tap into in order to get the message out to my market. These are regional associations that serve this particular market at the local level. I personally emailed association leaders seeking their support. The response wasn’t as enthusiastic as I’d expected, but that was due more to the newness of the relationship than anything else. In the end support from these associations helped drive awareness and acceptance.

5. Traditional media – Internet marketers love to focus on the latest online tools and services and oftentimes forget about the power of traditional media. By sending out press releases and providing radio interviews I was able to obtain a fair amount of exposure in my target market. I was also able to enhance the credibility of my business once articles appeared on traditional media outlets. This reputation building helped to assure customers of the product and service.

With all this great traffic coming to the website I needed something to create a dialogue with visitors. If you think about it this is the most important part of the whole process. You need to have a specific strategy on utilizing this traffic. If you don’t then you’re making a fundamentally bad mistake.There are lots of things you can do with this traffic.  And I ended up asking them to join my email newsletter.

After capturing their email addresses I communicated the value they would receive and why the needed to subscribe if they wanted to benefit from my services. Once I had their email address I communicated with them on a weekly basis. I set up an account with Constant Contact to facilitate this process. I found that about 20% of visitors were leaving their email addresses. In a few short weeks had a database of over 400 prospects. All of a sudden I now had a database to market to and that is where I was able to walk prospects through a purchase cycle!

The rest as they say is history.

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Following up on my earlier post “Optimizing Your Pay-per-Click (PPC) Campaign – Part 1″, today I will focus on placement bidding, landing page targeting by keyword and managing the content network. In case you missed the original post I discussed geo-targeting, the search query report and, effective day-parting.

Placement Bidding – The natural inclination of every marketer is to shoot for the highest position on any given keyword. The answer is never that simple and this strategy can be very expensive. While there are words for which you do want to rank in the top slot, there are instances when ranking in the third or fourth slot actually makes more sense. I’ll be honest though, the slot that is best for your keyword is not easy to identify. It can take lots of testing and close analysis to determine the most profitable position. At the end of the day the ROI at the keyword level should determine the best position for that particular word.

Whenever I start a PPC campaign I start by bidding for the mid-low positions. This would be potions four and below. The reason I do this is because I don’t to waste money right away. Plus I want to learn as I move up in position (which is cheaper) than when you move down in position (which is more expensive). I allow three to four days of data collection before making adjustments to the bid price. Words that receive high impressions and good CTR (greater than 2%) I start bidding higher and moving up in position. Then I closely monitor the ROI and keep track of any sweet spots I identity.

Once I have found spots that work for certain words then I utilize the placement bidding option in AdWords to lock in the position. Placement bidding automatically adjusts your bid price so you maintain the position. The default option in AdWords is that your bid price stays the same and your position changes accordingly. So, by choosing placement bidding you’re locking in your position (within a certain bid price range of course).

I’ve found that placement bidding can be a powerful tool in lowering the cost of keywords and maintaining a strong ROI.

Landing Page Targeting by Keyword – Grouping a similar set of keywords into the right ad group is a fundamental part of a successful campaign. This helps to improve your quality score both at the keyword level and the ad level. However despite your best efforts there will always be a few words that do not quite match the theme of the adgroup and hence it does not make sense to diver all words to the same landing page.

Or, sometimes what I’ve found is that a particular word outperforms all the other words and you want to send some words to a different landing page to improve performance. Furthermore, there are instances when a particular keyword will appear in the search query report and you want to improve conversions for this particular word. This will of course necessitate using a different landing page than the one for the adgroup.

What I’m saying is that regardless of how well the keywords are grouped together in an adgroup there are always instances when you might be interested in diverting traffic for one word to a particular land page.  I have found this to be very helpful in improving ROI. For example, for a particular hospitality client I was working for, I found that the word “romantic” was a common search query. However, the word was grouped with other similar words and was going to the same landing page. I wanted to see if I could improve conversion for only queries with “romantic” and so diverted this to a different landing page. I found that doing so dramatically improved ROI for this word. This discovery resulted in creating a romantic specific offers and its own targeted landing page.

Managing the Content Network – When setting up a new campaign one of the first things I recommend you do is create two campaigns for the same set of words. Set one campaign for the search network and the other for the content network. There are many reasons for this but the primary reason is this deliniation will help you better manage the ROI of your campaigns.

For instance, over time you will see that the ads that work on the search network may not work on the content network and vice versa. Additionally, the content network is cheaper than the search network, so being able to control the bid price for each is very important in delivering high performing PPC campaigns. Finally, while you mange position on search networks you’re managing content websites on the content networks. The tactics you employ to improve performance is different for these two metrics.

In the long term you will see that the content network has lower CTR, high impression but is cheaper. The ads you deliver here will be different than on the search networks. Search traffic on the other hand will have higher CTR and lower impressions and will tend to be more expensive. This is not to say that the search network is not profitable, it is. The only difference is that you need to manage it differently than the content network in order to see a good ROI. Lumping the two together makes it very difficult to mange effectively and consequently result in lower  ROI on both networks.

As I mentioned in Part 1 of this series, I’ve identified seven factors that make a strong PPC campaign. These are: geo-targeting, the search query report, effective day-parting, placement bidding, landing page targeting by keyword, managing the content network and, effective keyword discovery, research and utilization.

I will discuss keyword discovery, research and utilization in the next post. Stay tuned.

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photo credit: ActiveSteve

photo credit: Las Valley 702

photo credit: Marc_Smith

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If you run a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign then you need to constantly optimize it’s performance. You’re paying for clicks so you can’t afford to begin a campaign and let it run without keeping a very close eye on its performance. Just being satisfied with the traffic is not going to deliver the ROI that you can gain from an effective PPC campaign. Don’t get me wrong, traffic can be a good measure, but targeted, relevant traffic that converts into sales and delivers a strong ROI should be your ultimate goal.

When it comes to PPC there are seven critical elements you need to pay close attention to in order to deliver high ROI. In this post I will focus on three of the seven: geo-targeting, the search query report and effective day-parting. I will cover placement bidding, landing page targeting by keyword and managing the content network in a subsequent post. Finally, in my last post I will discuss effective keyword discovery, research and utilization.

Geo-targeting -  Whether you have an established business or one that is just coming up, you need to first evaluate where your most profitable customers are located. Do not make any assumptions and take a peek at your sales history, product performance to determine the major markets for your products.  Rank your geographic markets and set your PPC geo-target to the most profitable locations.

Google’s AdWords allows you to set multiple geo-targets. In my experience it is best to set one geo-target per campaign. This means you can closely monitor the performance of each market and turn off campaigns by markets. Effective geo-targeting requires testing so keep testing markets until you have a strong mix. As you monitor performance do not rely only on the metrics provided on the AdWords screen. It is very important to run a geographic report for each campaign every two weeks. When you do this you will discover additional performance metrics that will help improve performance. For example, if your geo-traget is regional in nature (entire Phoenix Metro area for example), then this report will break down campaign performance by  city (Scottsdale, Chandler, Tempe etc.) This breakdown allows you to further break down your market and focus on the more profitable areas.

Search Query Report – In my experience I have found the search query report to be one of the most useful performance reports. The reason for this is because this report provides the exact search term visitors uses to arrive at your website. Even though the keyword report tells you which phrase or keyword converted, you still do not know the exact phrase that was the source of your conversion. For example, they keyword report might indicate that the phrase “phoenix hotel” was the converting phrase, but the search query report might show that “pet friend phoenix hotel” was in fact the phrase the visitor typed to arrive at your website.

This additional information helps you understand that not only was the visitor looking for a phoenix hotel but they were specifically looking for a pet friendly hotel.  This additional information can help you improve the ad text you use, the offers you include in promotions and also expand your keyword mix.

Effective Day Parting -  Google AdWords allows you to turn your campaign on and off during different times of the day. One of the easiest ways to optimize performance is to keep your campaigns active only during the most profitable times of day. If you are just starting with your PPC campaign then I recommend taking a look at the traffic patterns on your website (via your web analytics) to set an initial day parting schedule. However, finding the most profitable times requires constant testing.

While testing your day parting times, one thing to keep in mind is, even though you have set it up so the daily budget is evenly distributed through out the day, this is never the case. I recommend running an hourly (regardless of date) campaign report to determine how your money is being spent on any given day.  I generally look at the time at which 80% of the budget is spent and compare this against the conversions during this time.  This analysis helps to determine whether or not to split the day parting even further.

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It can be a marketers worst nightmare or it could be a great boom! However, the ability to see what others have experienced on a website can be very valuable.  Many times I go to a website and while digging around I wonder how others may have used this information or what their experience may have been. I’ve never really used all the tools available to find out, but now that Google seems to have a nifty tool, I’ll give it a try.

I’m talking about Google Sidewiki if you’re wondering that I’m talking about. Here is the intro video:

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Yesterday NPR’s All Things Considered included a rather humorous segment by Andrei Codrescu.  He had a rather amuzing and yet philosophical take on Google, Facebook and all this new media stuff. You can listen to it on NPR’s website, but here is a section that I found rather funny and interesting:

My regular e-mail now tells me I have Facebook messages, forcing me to go to Facebook, which is slow on account of the jillion egos battling for verbal-audio-visual attention. And when I get there I find some cute thing that it’s taken me years to ignore in real life, and I start wandering involuntarily among postings in the hope of something to get that sickly saccharine taste out of my mouth, and I find more cute – a real sugarplum tree made by millions of bored people. After that honey bath, I’m ready to Twitter in rude Anglo-Saxon.

The new media’s given me several new insights:

1. Most people have too much time on their hands;

2. Most people are passive receptacles for whatever goes by;

3. Most people are not bothered by redundancy – they can do the same thing three or four times in a row without feeling defrauded; and

4. Most people want to be recognized for something, even if it’s just dumb repetition.

Andrei Codrescu is a the editor and founder of the online journal Exquisite Corpse, a journal of “books and ideas.”

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