Category Archives: PPC Marketing

Posts related specifically to techiniques regarding pay per click marketing.

Interview with Jeff Quipp the CEO of Search Engine People

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Today Paul Steven at NorthSouthMedia posted their interview with Jeff Quipp, CEO of Search Engine People. Here is the link to entire interview.

I have had the pleasure and opportunity of working with Jeff and his company since I started working at Yellow Pages Group as an employee in 2006. He is one of the most intelligent, level headed, and forward thinking experts in the field. I suggest checking out his corporate blog for insights from field.

There was a question in the interview that was asked of Jeff specifically about Social Marketing.

“I have recently become addicted to social bookmarking, esp. StumbleUpon. What words of advice can you give to anyone looking to become a power user in any of the social guises?”

To that Jeff answered:

Jeff: Don’t loseWeight Exercise perspective, and always track results against objectives. Social media can become all consuming, but the actual traffic is very difficult to convert. Its very easy to have spent a great deal of time and effort, with no real returns. So, begin by setting objectives (Benefits to Engaging in Social Media Marketing). Its not for every business … its merely a tool in our toolkit. So make sure the effort can satisfy specific goals.

2) Then; focus on getting really really good at blogging and content generation that people love. This content is the foundation! The key to making it work for clients is their content, and you’ll likely have to help create it.

3) Network … participate in these communities. Vote, comment, submit … in that order. Establish friendships in various social media, and migrate them to other platforms. Be loyal to your friends … follow their submissions religiously. Tip … use RSS to follow their submissions pages, and check every few hours. THIS WILL TAKE TIME … and continue to take time! If you really want to be a power social media user … its takes a lot of time and effort.

Could not have answered that question any better.

Jeff answered many more questions from Paul – so make sure that you check out the entire interview.

Google’s Mobile Ad Distribution – Free Until November 18 – Opt-Out Afterwards

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Is your website enabled to be seen on a cellular phone? Are you using Google Adwords to promote your business? If you answered yes to both questions your business may already be displayed as part of Google’s Mobile Ad strategy. I came across a posting by Michael Blumenthal called Google Intros Search Ads on Google Mobile Search in which a letter was sent from Google indicating their short-term strategy for mobile ads and the criteria to be displayed. Here is a copy of that letter:

We are happy to announce a new feature that will allow you to easily reach additional qualified customers who are searching
Google from their mobile phones.

In the next few days, your search ads will be eligible to run on Google Mobile Search pages (like they currently do on Google.com).
We are offering this feature – and any resulting clicks – for free through November 18, so you can experiment with the rapidly growing mobile platform while still reaching qualified customers.

Each ad’s eligibility will be determined by its landing page and only ads with landing pages that can be adapted for viewing on mobile browsers will be shown. You can monitor each ad’s performance via a special performance tracking page within your account called “Performance Data: Search Ads on Google Mobile Search.”

Again, you will not be charged for clicks on these ads until November 19, at which time we will begin charging the usual CPC prices. And as always, you may opt-out of this feature at any time.

We hope you find this new feature helpful and profitable, and we urge you to learn more about it at our AdWords Help Center:

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=72226

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords.

Sincerely,

The Google AdWords Team

If you fit the current criteria that you may already be taking advantage of this medium. Considering the growth of mobile and the mobile applications it is probably a good time to consider ensuring that your business can be viewed on a mobile phone. Not sure where to start – two suggestions; 1) find a design company that specializes in WAP, WML, and XHTML MP or 2) if you want to consider the process yourself, I suggest that you start by reading, Creating Web Content for Mobile Phone Browsers.

Here are some highlights from an article in January of this year titled – Putting 2.7 billion in context: Mobile phone users – which explores how large this industry has already become. The point to these stats, if you are a local business, is that your customers are either using or will be using mobile as a means to learn and connect with your business. Ensure that you are ready to take advantage of this opportunity.

* Worldwide there are about 800 million registered automobiles
* Today there are 1.3 billion fixed landline phones in the world
* Today there are about 1.5 billion TV sets in use in the world . (TV is often shared, especially in Asia where families are also large. So you might easily have 6 or even 10 watching the same TV show. The reach of TV is much beyond the 1.5 billion sets in use.)
* Today 1.4 Billion people carry at least one credit card.
* In most countries it is illegal for under 18 year olds to have credit cards
* There are about 850 million PCs
* In total over 750 million people access internet content via a mobile phone today
* About the total PC population or about 850 million people, access the web via a computer.
* During 2007 the first cross-over from PC to Mobile phones will happen, with more users accessing via phone than PC.
* The total shipped PDA population is about 85 million, most which are replacements.
* Thre are 85 Million iPod in use
* DVD recorders/ PVR shipments are under 100 million.
* Camcorders, are under 100 million total shipped (many as replacements).
* Gaming consoles have shipped near 200 million units, out of which 150 million are second generation (PS2/Xbox) or newer.
* The (stand-alone) digital camera has achieved shipments of near 300 million.
* There are 2.7 billion Mobile phones shipped (technically 2.7 billion in January, not December). They sold 950 million phones last year and the total worldwide mobile subscriber base grew from 2.1 billion to 2.7 billion.
* Phones are replaced every 18 months (and this is still shrinking)
* USA has reached 75% penetration for mobile phones
* The Western European average per capita penetration for mobile phones is already 110%
* Italy, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Israel have penetration rates at about 140%
* China adds 6 million phones every month, India adds 7 million phones every month.
* Finland, Norway, Denmark and Portugal – each countries with 120% or more penetration rates – Mobilephones are less than 6 million units total.
* SMS Messaging Is Biggest Data App On Planet
* On the internet there are about 1.5 billion e-mail boxes, maintained by about 800 million people.
* 1.8 billion people are doing SMS texting.
* Last year over 42% of Americans were active in SMS already
* E-mail is opened in 24 hours and replied to in 48 hours.
* SMS is read within 15 minutes on average and responded within 60 minutes.
* 65% of e-mail is spam, less than 10% of SMS is spam.
* In South Korea five separate credit card services are available on the three mobile networks
* In South Korea almost 100% of credit card based point-of-purchase sites accept payment via mobile phone credit (and charge) cards
* Two years from launch almost 10% of South Korean phone users watch digital broadcast TV on their phones
* The Pop Idol formats have earned a windfall of over 700 million dollars out of text messaging votes
* In 2005 already half of all phones sold were cameraphones so cameraphones outsell digital cameras by more than 4 to 1 .
* There are 3.2 Billion to 3.8 Billion radio users.
* 73% of the population now uses the mobile phone as their portable clock.
* 2.7 Billion phones in active use. There is a subscription for 40% of the planet’s population.
* The mobile telecoms industry earned 725 Billion dollars last year.
* Global music industry earns 16% of its revenues from mobile phones (mostly ringing tones);
* Videogaming earns 14% of its global revenues from mobile.
* Mobile telecom growth in dollar terms, from 2005 to 2006, was 105 billion dollars.

Google Maps Advertising – How to do it and Does it Work?

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If you are a Google Maps user – you may have noticed that other icons are appearing on the maps other than the numbered bubbles. This is Google’s extension of their Adwords program where you can place your advertising directly on Google’s Maps. The following screenshots are from The Bra Lady, and yes, this is my Mom’s business.

Advertising on Google Maps

Google Maps Advertising Profile

How do you do this? Here is a high-level overview of the process.

Step #1 – you need to register yourself with Google’s Local Business Center. This process takes you through 6-steps of information with the final step being validation.

Step #2 – Go through the validation process – you can select a phone call, SMS or a post card.

Google Local Business Validation

Step #3 – Once validated – sign up for a Google Adwords account and build a local campaign. You will see the following message – “Since this campaign is locally targeted, we thought you might be interested in creating ads associated with your Google Maps business listing.”

Step #4 – Complete the specific local business ad aspects of the ad by selecting your image and the icon and your ad will appear on Google Maps.

Does Advertising on Google Maps Really Work?

This campaign for The Bra Lady has been running since the beginning of June. Early indications are, at least from the raw stats, that it is working. Let me explain – we are running two ads – one on Google Maps and the other on Google Search and its Search Network. In terms of click thru rate – the map ad is outperforming the regular ad by 1.42% – the map ad is producing a CTR of under 5%. As far as CTR goes – the map ad appears to be strong.

The average cost per click on the ad on the map is running slightly higher than the average cost per click for the regular Google Search and its Search Network ads. We are also using conversion tracking with the Map Page as the conversion meter. The converstion tracking is clearly showing that the Maps is outperforming Search.

The bottom line success factor is based on the number of new clients to the business. In this respect Google is contributing, along with her YellowPages.ca Ad to driving new sales. So in this case, the ads are working.

Google is processing all of your Checkout sales for free for the rest of 2006

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This promotion is a clear attempt by Google to go after their main rival in e-commerce transactions, Paypal. At this point, Google checkout is based in US currency, but at some point they will start processing Canadian dollars as well.

So, as a Canadian, writing for Canadian businesses, why this particular post.

Simple, its a great opportunity for businesses to play with e-commerce. Many of my clients are Canadian businesses who actually sell products to the US or Internationally and we all know that the International currency is US funds. If there was ever a time to convert some of your existing traffic into sales, now is a good time to start.

The Google Checkout program is actually quite slick and is a fully integrated e-commerce solution in its basic form. If you happen to try out the service and make a few (or a lot) of sales before Christmas, let me know – I would be interested in your results.

Google’s Free Transaction Promotion.

User First – Revenue Later

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On the Adwords Blog, Google has just released more information on the Update to their Landing Page initiative. Although this probably won’t affect the majority of my readers, this will no doubt affect some of them that have not put the attention on their landing pages as they should have in the past.

Here is a highlight from the article, in terms of what this means:

Why are you focusing on landing page quality?
The goal of our ongoing landing page quality initiative is to improve the experience of our users by providing high quality results not only in the ad text, but also once the user has clicked through to the site. We strongly believe that an excellent experience on the advertiser’s site is an essential element in earning the continued trust of our users. Clearly, the better the user experience, the more likely it is that users (who are also your potential customers) will continue to seek out — and click on — AdWords ads over the long term. This is to the advantage of everyone: users, advertisers, and Google alike.

Effectively what Google is trying to do is increase the value of its advertising network by ensuring that when a user clicks on a paid ad, they are taken to a page that is relevant. I think long-term, Google will prove this is the best strategy to have to ensure the value of their advertising network.

From personal experience, nothing ticks me off more than linking on an Adwords ad only to get to a page that contains links to the topic that I was trying to get to anyway – in the search term this is called Search Arbitrage – See post on Search Arbitrage – Good or Evil at Search Engine Watch.

The lesson here for all small to medium sized businesses, is a) make sure the content on your websites is relevant, b) if you engage in search marketing – target your advertising to the users as well as the landing pages, and c) don’t get caught up in the volume of clicks, rather track the quality of your users and their impact on conversions and revenues.