Google is offering up to two months of free advertising, or up to a $250 total value, for signing up for AdWords Express before December 16th. Most likely, you’ve received emails, possibly many, informing you of the promotion but it might be worth looking into for small business owners.
Find out more from Peter Kafka’s article at All Things D.
For anyone using online advertising, the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend is a great opportunity to see a spike in your ads’ views. Search Engine Roundtable reports, however, that a “technical issue” on some AdWords accounts caused ads not to show over perhaps the biggest online shopping weekend of the year.
No word yet on the official cause of the problem or how Google plans to deal with the backlash. I think I would want to be compensated in some way for the inconvenience and possible loss of business. Wouldn’t you?
To perform well in online marketing, you have to use Google. AdWords is far and away the best option available and you’re handicapping your efforts if you’re not using it. Unfortunately, Google understands this fact also. This means that as more and more advertisers rely on AdWords, Google can bleed more and more money from their budgets.
Joel Chudleigh has an in-depth look at the various ways Google encourages you to spend more for online advertising at Business2Community, but I’ll give you a quick synopsis.
Basically, Google has been able to develop innovative new ways for your ad to get noticed and ways for you to track how well your campaigns are performing, but has included in this innovations an urging to spend more to get more. This is not an indictment of Google, but rather a statement of fact.
Of course Google will readily show you click-through and conversion rates of ads that display at the top of search results as compared to your ads because they want you to bid up to capture those top spots. That’s just one example of AdWords’ service subtly prompting you to feed more into your ad budget.
Google has cleverly created a competitive landscape for advertisers where the highest bid receives the most views and clicks. For advertisers, there’s no choice but to play along.
You can never stop learning when it comes to online marketing. Google’s Display Network is constantly being updated and you have to stay current in order to best utilize the tools at your disposal.
To help you do just that, check out Matt Van Wagner’s column at SearchEngineLand. He’s got the rundown of the latest updates and how they can help you.
Bing Ads has been fervently working to become a realistic competitor and alternative to AdWords. Recently, they debuted their own location targeting tool, similar to one AdWords trotted out last month.
Just like AdWords, Bing users can now target only those in specific geographic locations or only those visiting specific websites.
So far, Bing has simply been trying to keep up with AdWords innovations, but they obviously are attempting to become a real competitor to Google.
Head over to CMS Wire for the details on the Bing Ads location targeting tool.
Facebook recently made it possible for users to search specifically in its App Center. You can search by an app’s title or by generic keyword. Josh Constine of TechCrunch suggests that this could open the door for ads within the App Center.
Though there is currently no results page, just a drop down menu after a search, Facebook could easily add sponsored results similar to what Google has already been doing with AdWords. Ads for apps related to the user’s search could appear at the top of the current drop down format, or as full-on entries in a results page.
App Center is not only set-up for ads to easily be included, but it also already has the audience. After only 2 months of operation, it boasted more than 150-million monthly users and that number was up to 220-million at the beginning of October.
App Center has “qualified leads, ample traffic, a model proven by Google, and a huge base of developers/advertisers”. All that’s left is to actually make the ads a reality.
There are so many options to personalize and remarket ads to your potential customers online, you may actually be annoying those consumers and driving them away. No one wants to see ads tailored to them on every site they visit, all asking them to come back and buy a product they browsed for hours ago.
So, David Rodnitzky put together a list at Search Engine Land, which should help you be a fine-tuned marketer, not an annoying, stalker type. Here’s a look:
1. Attribution
Because you’re using so many vehicles to get your message across, you need to know which ones are working and how well they’re working. Attribution tracking allows you to discover how a consumer got to your site, but it’s a pricey service.
2. Frequency Caps
You can use the attribution data to find out what is superfluous in your advertising strategy. Limit the number of times users see your ads on a given channel based on how well those ads work and how they work in combination with your other campaigns.
3. Change your creative
With the data you’re collecting, you can discover what stage users typically are when they see specific ads. Use that knowledge to tailor your ads content and message. Ads for users who are early in the process can be about awareness, while ads for users later in their shopping process can be focused on conversions.
4. Risk v Reward
Consider how many consumers you will alienate with ads when looking at how many more conversions you could get. If you run some ads more to get a slight increase in conversions, you may also be increasing the number of consumers who swear off your site because of over-bearing ads.
Adwords is making some dramatic changes once again. In October, Google brought back the ‘Rotate Indefinitely’ option for campaigns even though they didn’t recommend the option themselves. Now, Google will be making campaigns not set to ‘rotate indefinitely’ default to ‘optimize for conversions’.
As posted to the iNeedHits blog, Google estimates the change will increase conversions by 5-percent across the board. With the ‘optimize for conversions’ option, Google will dynamically change bids from advertisers to run ads with the greatest chance of creating a conversion.
Users who prefer to ‘optimize’ manually can do so by using the ‘Conversion Optimizer’ and ‘Enhanced CPC’ tools, which can track advertising bids likely to lead to conversion and ensure ads with high chances of conversion are being shown the most without an increse in budget.
Google will make the change the week of November 12th. This means that you’ll need to do your homework before then to make sure your campaigns aren’t automatically switched to something you don’t want.
When Siri was announced with the iPhone 4S, it didn’t bring about a revolution in search activity on phones. Most still search by typing keywords into Safari or Chrome. However, gradually, Siri and mobile apps are changing search habits and creating new opportunities for search marketers.
The Alchemy Viral crew gives us an infographic which helps cover everything about searching with Siri and mobile searching in general.
There is one error, which Search Engine Land helps point out. The infographic says Siri draws from social services, but Siri can only help users post things to Twitter or Facebook. It can’t help them get information back from those social sites.
With mobile searching poised to overtake desktop within two years, this infographic can be helpful to anyone interested in mobile searching.
Oh, and the creator of the infographic isn’t bad with spelling. They are just British, hence “optimisation,” instead of the American spelling.
A do-it-yourself attitude can be great for entrepreneurs It can save you money, as well as improving your abilities in a multitude of areas. However, it can hurt you in the area of marketing. John Follis from Small Biz Trends offers some reasons why.
1) You Don’t Know What You Need To Learn – Anyone can read a book or two about marketing practices, but they won’t do you much good compared to those working with qualified teams or consultants. The field of marketing is massive and unless you are qualified, trying to do-it-yourself can hurt you.
2) A Business Owner Can’t Be Objective – You should care about your business. That seems obvious. The issue is, marketing relies on an unbiased perspective. Being able to identify the existing issues before a marketing campaign is essential, and practically impossible for the business owner to do without bias. Don’t take it as an insult to your abilities as a business owner. Steve Jobs faced this issue time-and-again at Apple, but he was wise enough to listen to his team of talented marketers
3) The Best Marketing Doesn’t Come Pre-Made – Every marketing guru tries to push a “sure-fire” system. They all make great sounding claims, and promise unbelievable results. They also ignore the main principle of marketing. Every business is different, and a pre-made system for marketing any business is guaranteed not to be the most effective method. Remember, the ones making money from these systems are the people selling them.
4) Great Marketing Requires Talent – Quality marketing comes from a combination of business expertise and creativity. Many forget the creative side of marketing, and focus on their knowledge of the business, but this leaves them at a disadvantage. Forgetting the creative side of marketing leaves you unable to connect with the audience in a meaningful way.
5) DIY Marketing Won’t Save You Money – This seems backwards doesn’t it? Hiring someone else should obviously cost you more than doing it yourself right? Wrong. You are only thinking about what you are spending, not what you’re getting back from spending. A good marketing campaign will make the money you spent back, plus some. The companies associated with great marketing have been doing it from the very start. Apple became known for their iconic marketing at the same time they were rising as a company. Having someone skilled handling marketing also allows you to invest your time on areas where you will be able to make meaningful improvements to your company.
Doing everything yourself is tempting, but anyone that hopes to succeed using that idea has to know their strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise, you’ll just end up making things worse for yourself.
