Darren Contardo's Netrepreneur

PR and Google Insights

Is your PR working? Did your buzz-worthy campaign generate actual buzz? How do you know if it works? Well, the obvious measure of success is sales, but how do you know if people are interested or if they heard about your PR message?

Public Relations is hard to measure and advertising is as well for that matter, but there is a tool from Google called Google Insights that shows you what the searches are for your product, service or company by time period (7 days to 1 year), geographical region (city or country), plus it also shows the total seasonality of your search to help you plan for your marketing budget. Imagine knowing when peak demand or motivation is up for your product or service? Now with Google Insights you can. But back to my original purpose with this post -- how to measure your PR with Google Insights. Here's how:

1) Launch your PR campaign (articles online, PR stunt, etc)

2) Go to Google Insights and enter your search term to see if demand is up in your target region

3) Bid on those keywords if it is to help close the sale on the old Adwords platform

That's it! Ta da!

It's a win/win situation. You can measure your PR or advertising effectiveness and Google gets to sell more ads...and ultimately, you sell more product or more of your service!

It's so simple is magical. Perhaps they should call it Google Simply Magic? Nah, that sucks.

Work for Google

Ever thought about working for a big company like Google? Well, this isn't a job posting, but you can become a Google Adwords Professional in a matter of days. They offer the training and all you have to do is offer up the willingness to learn. Who knows, if you're good at it, you could make some more money out of your existing PPC campaigns.

Local Seach Google Style

OK, I've tested it and it's true. Local search has officially outperformed regular search. I had the same creative on two ads, like my own A/B test if you will. The result...a 5% CTR versus a 0.1% CTR. So, go local, it's cheaper and is more focused (if you can go local that is).

Google Adwords Discussion Group

Having trouble figuring out how to optimize your Google Adwords campaign? Well, it's a science for sure, but the best way is through trial and error. Or how about the those of other people? Check out Google's Discussion Group for some great tips and tricks on how to maximize the ROI on your Adwords campaign. If you're not careful, you'll be spending more money than traditional advertising.

MSN Adcenter

MSN is releasing a BETA of its new MSN Adcenter format for trial purposes. I'm going to test it out and let you know how it is. My thinking is that it will be similar to Yahoo! and Google's format, otherwise it will be too difficult to take user's away from the old Vets. There's always that pesky cost of defection with usability isn't there?

If you'd like to hear more about MSN's Adcenter then they ask to you join their mailing list. Heck, it might be worth it.

Landing Pages

I just recently read the landing page handbook by Marketing Sherpa. Basically, a landing page is the extension of your Search Engine Marketing Ad. So, if you were to look at it as buckets, you may have a sales bucket, category bucket, brand bucket, and lead generation bucket. Buckets are what you how you group you keywords. Therefore, you'd have 4 buckets in this case, with creative revolved around each bucket. So it would look as such:

SEM Sales Ad >> Sales Landing Page
SEM Category Ad >> Category Landing Page
SEM Brand Ad >> Brand Landing Page
SEM Lead Generation Ad >> Lead Landing Page

Each landing page would have creative that is highly relevant to the ad, plus it would limit the navigation of a typical webpage on your site to make sure the visitor take the action that you want. Whether it's to buy the product, sign up for an email, or dive deep into the brand information.

A simple rule of thumb is to limit a visitors options and clicks to a desired goal to increase conversion. If your conversion rate is 1% and you increase it to 2% by doing the above, you've just doubled your revenue and profit!

Some elements to consider on your landing page:
1. price
2. size/attributes
3. photos
4. ad copy
5. strong call to action
6. a limited time offer if you can swing it

Give these a try with your PPC ads and let me know how it works.

Organic or PPC Search? So

Organic or PPC Search?

So you want to focus on search to gain some web traffic? What do you go with? Do you focus your efforts on an Organic Search strategy or do you focus on a solid PPC campaign?

The answer? That depends, but I'll tell you what's best.

80% of all search traffic is from Organic Search and of course 20% is on PPC. Since PPC is a variable expense and can ramp up to thousands a month, I'd say to develop an Organic Search strategy that focuses on a good link strategy, great body copy, relevant H1 tags, and title tags. Then top off your search performance with the same keywords your trying to get with Organic Search in Overture and Google Adwords. Hint, Overture ends up being cheaper in the long run. Another good PPC vendor that is cheaper then the two above is Adsonar.

Response to Comment....100 Homepages Well

Response to Comment....100 Homepages

Well Richard, what you're doing makes sense. The USP or call to action is the focus of the page or ad, but if you could have highly relevant pages based on content and the referral link, then we're talking.

Let's use ICE.com as the example again. Say we placed a banner ad on Brides.com and linked to ICE.com, the best thing to do is to have a direct landing page such as ice.com/brides?referrer=brides or something like that. That way, when looking at your weblogs or webreports (your web analytics system will dictate your referral reporting strings) you'll know where the traffic is coming from and if they are responsible for a lead generation or purchase. Google also offers lead generation reporting and page view counts on their Google Adwords now as well. Not to mention leads to sales cross-channel reports. Additionally, having images and body copy relative to the Brides.com audience will make a big difference in their likelihood to act on your call to action or USP. In this case a big ring with a bride wearing it...etc.

Hopefully, this gives you a bit more insight on how to track and convert your audience. The more you target your ads, the more likely you're to convert visitors to buyers.

Drive Your Online Sales with

Drive Your Online Sales with Landing Pages... You've probably heard somewhere that PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is great at driving revenue...you've probably also heard that banner ads aren't that affective, but good for awareness. Quite honestly that's true, but only half-true. What's the other half? Landing Pages!

Landing pages are the web pages your prospect lands on from the ad they just clicked on.

- PPC Ad (i.e. Google Adword) >>> Landing Page >>> Your Website
- Banner Ad >>> Landing Page >>> Your Website

So why Landing Pages? Simply put, they're relevant, they continue the communication, and they are trackable. Landing pages also work for email marketing, direct mail to web, you name it! Anything that has a unique message or offer can leverage landing pages. I recently sat in on a Digital Marketing Conference and had the privelege of hearing the owner of ICE.com talk about his 100 different home pages he has running simultaneously. 100?! My thought initially was 'this guy likes to create work for himself', but after he explained his rationale it started to make sense. Basically, he said that PPC and his links from other websites are so critical to the success of his business that what the customer sees arriving on the homepage from a search term better be there to drive the sale or else they're gone!

So, if you want to increase your conversion rates on your PPC, Banner Ads, and links from other websites, spend most of your energy on your landing page...it will be well worth it. For more information on landing pages, check out grokdotcom (they're conversion experts).

Thinking about using a product

Thinking about using a product feed?

Some of the best ways to sell your goods are through online store directories like Bizrate.com (now ShopZilla), Shopping.com, Yahoo! Shopping, PriceGrabber.com, and Froogle.com. They're PPC (pay-per-click) models that only charge you pennies per click for a qualified shopper. Basically, if a shopper goes to these sites, finds your product, and clicks on it, they are very, very interested in your product. So much so, they are beyond the "consideration" and "evaluation" of alternatives stages; they are HOT!

Some of these sites are very effective at driving traffic and some seem to take a bit more effort. But if you're really not sure if this is for you, what I would suggest is opening up a Google Adwords account and try some TEXT PPC. Once you've done that, you qualify for Froogle for FREE! That's right, kind of a two for one! From there I would suggest Bizrate, Yahoo! Shopping, Shopping.com, and PriceGrabber.com in that order. That's the least expensive to most expensive (from my experience anyway, but that would depend on your category).

Now go get some hot leads and have fun bidding!

DC