Archive for ‘Paid Search’

January 10th, 2013

How to Use Google to Grow Your Small- to Mid-Sized Business

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Are you interested in using Google to drive more visitors to your business? If so, then you’ll enjoy our new episode of On Air with Jamie Turner where we interview Michelle Scruggs from Google and discuss ways small- to mid-sized businesses can use Google to grow their sales and revenues.

Michelle covered a lot of ground in her interview, including some of these tips and techniques:

  • Understanding Paid vs. Organic: One of the great things about Google is that you can use organic search to build visibility for your business for free. The more helpful and engaging your website, the higher it shows up in the rankings, so it’s a good idea to keep the content fresh and interesting. Alternatively, you might be interested in using paid search to drive traffic to your site. Paid search doesn’t always require a huge investment, which makes it perfect for businesses that have to watch every penny.
  • Getting Started in Mobile: What’s the best way to get started in mobile? Michelle recommends visiting TheMobilePlaybook.com, a website created by Google to help businesses like yours get started in mobile. As with all things Google, the site is clean, easy-to-navigate and packed with useful tips and tools.
  • Local Extensions: Have you ever conducted a search from your smartphone and noticed the small “Directions” and “Call” links at the bottom of the search listings? Those are called Local Extensions and Michelle talks about how to use those to drive traffic to your business in the interview below.
  • No Minimums: One of the best things about Google is that it doesn’t require a huge budget to run a Google Adwords campaign. In fact, there are no minimums, so if you just want to spend $5 or $10 a day, that works out fine.
  • Google Places and Google Offers: Michelle talks about Google Places and Google Offers in her interview, both of which are insanely easy to use and implement. If you’re a small, local business, you can use both these tools to drive more customers to your organization. Best of all, it doesn’t require a huge budget to get started.

We’ll be doing more episodes of On Air with Jamie Turner (which can also be seen on our YouTube channel), so stay tuned. For now, enjoy the segment below with Michelle Scruggs from Google.

Special thanks to ARKE+threesquared marketing communications for graciously providing the video production on this episode of On Air with Jamie Turner.

 

Jamie Turner is the Founder of the 60 Second Marketer and co-author of “How to Make Money with Social Media” and “Go Mobile.” He is also a popular marketing speaker at events, trade shows and corporations around the globe.

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CategoryGeneral Marketing, Google, On Air with Jamie Turner, Paid Search, SEO | Comment5 Comments »

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July 11th, 2011

The Five Most Common Paid Search Mistakes

Whether or not your brand or product already has a presence online, you are missing out if you are not using paid search as a marketing channel. Recent research has shown that 40% of all people on the internet querying a search engine will click on a paid search link first, and that number is increasing.

Paid search allows for unprecedented targeting and tracking, letting you control expenditures down to minute details. You can run a paid search campaign with $20 or $200,000, and the $20 campaign is not necessarily at a disadvantage. It can earn the same ROI.

Ready to jump in? Just look before you leap.

Here are five of the most common paid search mistakes that you want to avoid when starting your campaign.

#1 Ego Bidding – This mistake usually results from emotional attachment to a certain keyword or campaign on the part of the bidder. For example, the bidder decides that his/her phrase must rank number one on a particular engine. In most cases, the bidder simply wants the satisfaction of running a search and seeing his/her keyword in a top position. Sometimes, they want to rank a phrase using internal language, which is irrelevant to most searchers. This mistake can easily result in inefficient spending of the budget, and can often deplete your daily budget before dinner…or even lunch.

#2 Too many keywords per ad – This mistake is common to people fairly new to paid search; it’s easy to fall into but easy to get out of as well. Adding too many keywords to one ad group often leaves you with irrelevant keywords generating impressions for the ad.  First, these non-targeted impressions will decrease your quality score because your click-through rate will likely decrease. Second, these irrelevant keywords will cost you extra money.

#3 Focusing on budget instead of ROI – Paid search campaigns are not like other marketing mediums, so viewing them as another line item in your budget is a mistake.  The trackability and accountability that paid search offers allow it to run more efficiently than other types of marketing. Focusing on what you are spending instead of what you are getting in return leads to inefficient bidding and a campaign that does not maximize the benefits that paid search offers. Instead, manage paid search on a day-to-day basis, adjusting your bids and keywords in order to capitalize on the return on your investment.

#4 Not learning from your competitors’ strategy – Some paid search programs and software offer the ability to track what your competitors are doing online; what keywords, where they bid, when they bid, etc. Especially if you are going up against larger, more established brands with larger paid search budgets, you must learn from their strategies so that you are not two steps behind. With this approach, you should be able to circumvent a lot of the guesswork and gain on your competitors with efficient bidding, even on a small budget.

#5 Forgetting to think negatively – A common mistake in the campaign planning process is not thoroughly researching negative keywords. Positive keywords will drive traffic to your site, but negative keywords will filter out the traffic that you don’t want. For example, if you are selling Nike sneakers, and you are bidding on the general phrase “sneakers,” you would want to negative keyword “Reebok” or any other brands competing with Nike. This negative keyword will ensure that anyone searching “Reebok sneakers” is not directed to your ad simply because they typed in sneakers.

Have we missed any paid search mistakes you’d like to add to the list? If so, let us know in the comments section below.

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May 3rd, 2011

New Research Reveals 5 Ways to Improve Your Conversion Rates

We all know that testing your email headlines, website layouts and creative concepts is the best way to improve the results of your marketing campaigns. But we also know that A/B split testing can be a pain. So, we took a look at the Which Test Won? website and found new research that reveals 5 ways you can improve the conversion rates on your campaigns.

Here they are:

  1. Add a Video: The infamous music downloading company, Napster, tested 2 landing pages, one that featured a “What You Get With Your Subscription” video and one without. The page featuring the video got 18.5% more free trials and paid subscriptions.
  2. Testing into Success

    Grow your conversion rates with these simple tweaks.

    Use a British Accent: Now that we’ve established you should have a video, you should take into account the test done by Eyevision, a video marketing company which found that using a British accent voiceover on a video on the homepage resulted in a 6% lift in free downloads.  Interestingly though, in the UK an American accent upped downloads 8%.

  3. Use Fewer Words in Headlines: A test done for World Class Driving confirms that when it comes to Pay-Per-Click headlines, less is more. By cutting the verbage down from the explanatory title “Drive 5 Supercars. The US Supercar Tour” to “Life is Short. Drive Fast” they increased conversions 34%!
  4. Include A FAQ Box in Checkout: Van der Valk Hotels & Restaurants wanted to increase the conversion rate amongst customers who visited their reservations page. The hotel group surmised that one of the reasons people would abandon the site at an advanced point in the process was due to incomplete information and unanswered questions. So they looked at the questions that were received most by their customer service lines and put the answers up to the right of the reservations page in a FAQ box. The results were a 9.2% higher conversion rate for the page that featured the FAQs.
  5. Use People-Focused Language: In a test done for Hubspot in which they were hoping to increase free trials, the company tested a page which asked the visitor what their goals were: “Use Web to Grow My Business” or “Deliver More Quality Leads for Less” against a page where they asked who the visitor was: “I’m a Business Owner” or “I’m a Marketer.” The page that focused on the visitor’s role, as opposed to their goal, won out and increased free trials 49.1% for the site.

Though the results of these tests cannot be universally applied to all businesses, the outcomes can provide insights into the way consumers think when presented with marketing materials. And if nothing else, taking the quizzes on which version won is a good (and slightly nerdy) way to kill an afternoon.

Posted by Nicole Hall, Account Manager with Mobilize Worldwide. Mobilize Worldwide develops mobile apps, mobile ad campaigns, mobile websites and just about anything else related to mobile marketing for brands interested in growing their sales and revenue using this new and emerging medium.

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CategoryAdvertising, Marketing Best Practices, Paid Search, Website Design | CommentNo Comments »

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April 25th, 2011

What the Changing Landscape of Search Means for You

Google.  It’s a search engine. It’s an operating system. It’s a verb. It’s a noun. It’s everywhere. And when people consider search engine optimization and paid search, often Google is the only site that comes to mind. However, according to Experian’s Benchmark and Trend Report, even though Google is still the dominant force in search, people have begun changing the way they look for information in 2 ways that will affect marketers in the next few years.

What the Changing Lanscape of Search Means for You

According to Experian, 2010 was the first year that Facebook beat Google in traffic.

First, Google has been steadily losing share to both Bing and Yahoo for 2 years now. Even though Google still is still the biggest player, with an overwhelming  68% of the market, Bing and Yahoo have enough pull in the search engine market to make their platforms  an important consideration when running paid search and SEO programs.

Though the search engines do not disclose how they rank sites, it is apparent that each uses a slightly different method which causes rankings to vary across platforms. It is important to make sure that your site ranks highly for your selected keywords on all three sites and adjust your SEO efforts appropriately if it does not. Similarly, it may be worth looking at running your paid search campaigns across all platforms to ensure the greatest reach possible.

However, more important than shifting share within the search engine market, is the trend away from search engines as a whole. Instead of visiting Google to find information about the brands they’re interested in and to compare products, 17% of adults are going to social media sites such as Facebook to find this information.

There are several possible reasons for this. First, may be because many people are already going to Facebook to network, interact with their friends, and share their opinions and would rather stay within the site instead of navigating away to a brand’s website. Second, social sites frequently have comments and recommendations from other users, which, according to eConsultancy, 82% of people take into account before making a purchase.

Regardless of the reason, there are implications when you are setting up your Facebook page. While you should always use social media sites as an engagement tool and to foster community, you also should have the important information about your company and products easily accessible to users.

Make sure that your brand page is easily searchable and identifiable within Facebook by filling out as much information about your company as possible. Also, use the “about” section as well as custom tabs to feature products and promotions and always prominently feature links back to your website so consumers wanting more information can navigate there easily.

Google is one of the most successful companies in the marketplace today, and they are no doubt going to continue to dominate the digital space for years to come. However, it is important to realize how people are diversifying the way that they search for information about your industry, company and products. With the sources of information on the internet continuing to grow it is important to project a consistent and highly visible brand image across all of the platforms that people use to find out about your company.

Posted by Nicole Hall, Account Manager with Mobilize Worldwide. Mobilize Worldwide develops mobile apps, mobile ad campaigns, mobile websites and just about anything else related to mobile marketing for brands interested in growing their sales and revenue using this new and emerging medium.

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February 14th, 2011

The 5 Things You Need to Know Before Launching a Mobile Paid Search Campaign

Thus far, we have offered up some food for thought on how the early adopters of mobile media are connecting with their target audiences in relevant, yet simple ways. Prior to that, we provided you with the basics on mobile marketing methods. Now that you’ve graduated from neophyte status, our team here at the 60 Second Marketer, feels that the time is right in your mobile “education” to get intimately familiar with a very powerful, but straightforward mobile marketing tactic — mobile paid search.

What better time of the year to talk about mobile search than right after the Super Bowl, where the big brands were paying somewhere around $3,000,000 for thirty seconds of air time and probably just as much in production costs. Sure we all had fun watching the commercials during the big game and re-watching our favorites on Youtube (we loved VW’s “The Force”), but the questions you should be asking yourself is this: How effective were the commercials at driving revenue, store traffic or some other metric?

That is why we want to talk with you today about mobile search. Because, as you will soon found out, mobile search does not require a budget approaching the GDP of a small country, it does not require a big name Hollywood producer and/or director and it most certainly does not require you to guess at how impactful it is.

What The Experts Are Saying About Mobile Search

Depending on which source you go to, you will find different projections on the amount of mobile searches that will be performed or the amount of dollars that will be spent on mobile search ads over the next three to five years. What you will find in common though, is that all of the sources agree that because of the growth in the adoption of smartphones and advances in all mobile phone technologies, mobile search is going to be an increasingly important part of any business’ communication plan, mobile or otherwise.

Here are some of the stats we found that we think you should be aware of:

  • An eMarketer survey from August 2010 indicated that 64% of the respondents preferred to arrive at a mobile website by entering search terms into a search engine
  • A similarly targeted survey from Credit Suisse shows that “search” was the most popular mobile internet activity for all mobile users, surpassed only by communications (emailing and texting)
  • Forrester Research Inc., projects that mobile search spending in the US will reach $1.26 Billion by 2014; eMarketer is a bit more conservative at only $858 Million over the same time period
  • Business Insights predict that by 2012, mobile search will receive the largest percentage of any mobile marketing segment with 36.5%, worldwide
  • Another eMarketer survey, suggests that mobile search is one of the top three most accepted types of mobile marketing by consumers

The statistics can be a bit overwhelming, we know. It took us hours to arrive at the five bullet points above with all of the information and research out there just on mobile search alone. You should be excited though as this breadth and depth of data serves to further validate mobile marketing in general, and mobile search specifically.

What You Need to Know About Mobile Search

All of the typical capabilities that are available to marketers via desktop search engine marketing (SEM) are also available in mobile search. Mobile search campaigns can be geo-targeted to only show your ads to people performing a search within a designated distance from your store. Dayparting can be used so that your ads are only displayed when your offices are open for business. And of course, you can craft specific ad copy for your mobile ads to set them apart from your competition and your own desktop SEM.

The cost basis for mobile search varies slightly from traditional SEM in that the cost per click is typically much cheaper, sometimes as much as 50%, for the same keyword. Marketers can also keep a tight leash on their mobile search spending by using Pay-per-Call. This means that you only pay Google or Yahoo a fee when a customer calls the number listed in their mobile search ad. Further still, parameters can be put in place to mobile search campaigns such that they only display ads on certain phone operating systems or certain mobile carriers. This feature is great if you have separate iPhone and Android applications you are trying to get users to download or if you want to create a customized experience for smartphone vs. non-smartphone users.

From a management standpoint, it should be noted that mobile search campaigns can be managed side by side with all of your regular SEM via the same user interface. You do not need a dedicated mobile search marketing vendor. Most importantly, all mobile search campaigns have the same level of detailed analytics and reporting that we have come to grow and love about regular SEM. You can drill down the success of each mobile keyword by geography, phone type, time of day, action took, etc.;

5 Rules for Launching a Mobile Search Campaign

  1. Tracking – This should be one of your first concerns with any search marketing effort, desktop or mobile. Without tracking you will have no idea what kind of return you are getting on your mobile marketing dollars. Work with your technology department to make sure that you have the proper tracking tags in place so that you can determine the success of your campaign. Google Analytics is an extremely powerful (and free) tracking tool. Better yet, they provide step by step instructions on how to setup and report on your campaign.
  2. Landing Page - Make sure that the landing page people will be sent to when they click on your mobile search ad is relevant. This means that, not only should the landing page relate to the keyword being search for, but where possible, users should be taken to the mobile version of your website.
  3. Get Local – Unless you are a big retailer like Starbucks or Target, you customers are most likely close by and in concentrated areas. Use the geo-targeting capabilities to make sure that your mobile search ads are being displayed to the right audiences. Have multiple locations? You can setup dedicated and separate campaigns, targeting a tight 20 mile radius around each store, so that customers can be directed to the closest one to them.
  4. Have a Goal in Mind – Before you spend any marketing dollars on mobile search, make sure you know what you want your customers to do. Some possible goals are: drive foot traffic to a new location, have potential customers call your store, generate revenue on your mobile site or get people to download your mobile app. Your business goal should dictate your mobile marketing tactics and never other way around.
  5. Be Realistic – Although mobile search is closely related to desktop search, they are two very different beasts. The same user will demonstrate very different mobile versus desktop search behaviors and patterns. For example, mobile search is often used to complete a task like getting directions or finding a phone number whereas desktop search is used for more extensive research and fact finding. Manage mobile search on its own and judge its results against itself.

As you know, we’re focusing a lot of attention on Mobile Marketing here at the 60 Second Marketer. We hope you like the information above. Please feel free to forward it to a friend. Or, better still, subscribe to our blog to receive more updates like these!

Posted by Matt Luber, Mobile Media Manager at the 60 Second Marketer and MBA candidate at Goizueta School of Business at Emory University.

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CategoryAdvertising, Consumer Behavior, General Marketing, Google, Marketing Best Practices, Marketing Techniques, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Search, Paid Search | CommentNo Comments »

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