In the past 18 months, Google has waged war against spammers. It began with their attempts to purify organic search rankings by introducing the Panda and Penguin updates. Now, with an AdWords policy update this week, Google has targeted those evil doers of the PPC game.
Ali Harris has an in-depth look at the changes at ClickThrough Marketing, but here’s a quick rundown of what you need to know.
Google’s goal is to improve the ad experience across the board, meaning only those with ill intent will object and most users and campaign managers will applaud.
By weeding out the spam, your Quality Score will likely rise and your cost-per-click will likely drop. But, you have to know the rules and follow them.
Your ads and keywords must be easily relatable to the landing page they point to.
If you mention a specific promotion or product in an ad, the landing page must feature it too.
No more throw-away lines like “Click Here Now!”
Just like in English class, poor grammar will be punished.
Keyword campaigns must be relevant and clear.
If your landing page has ads, they must be clearly discernable from original content.
No phone numbers
No email inbox look-alike ads
Essentially, you are expected to use common sense and be sincere in your advertising. If your goal is to trick users into clicking your ads, you will be punished.
Those punishments start modest but can become severe.
Campaigns that are flagged as not in compliance won’t run the disapproved ads until they are changed. If advertisers feel they were judged unfairly, they are able to submit their ad for review again.
Suspensions could be doled out to domains to temporarily stop their use of AdWords.
For repeat or serious offenders, accounts could be banned along with any related or future accounts.
Most likely, you’re already keeping tabs on AdWords metrics, particularly Quality Score. But now would be a good time to go through your campaigns with a fine-toothed comb in order to be sure you’re in compliance.
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The word easy isn’t something designers normally associate with logo design, right? If you do, that is a silly idea to have.
A logo encapsulates a brand’s identity, and should require real planning and thought to create a simple and memorable image. It isn’t just a doodle you push out. A good logo takes time.
Luckily, I have some tips that will at least make logo design easier. The tips are broken into two groups – what you should do, and what you should not do.
What You Should Do When Designing a Logo
Keep It Simple – Nike has one of the most memorable logos on the planet. That swoosh is embedded into minds literally around the world, from the USA to China. The logo is so synonymous with Nike that most of the time, it doesn’t even require text. As Sufyan bin Uzayr at 1stWebDesigner puts it, a logo is supposed to be an emblem of your brand, not a manifesto. It should be what is left when you boil down evereything your brand is about. A complicated logo will just leave your target audience disinterested, and maybe confused.
Be Dynamic – Flexibilty and adaptability are hugely important for any creative field. Keeping a static logo forever is reflective of no growth or improvement within the company. That’s not to say your logo should change every week, or even every month, but you should still be flexible when creating it. A rigid approach to logo design will appeal to only one type of audience – the one you would fall into. That’s not a good approach for design, and you should be willing to accomodate preferences and tastes of lots of different audiences.
Be Versatile – Your logo should be able to adapt to whatever you need it to. No one wants a logo that looks good in only one place. If it is strictly tied to a color scheme, for example, it won’t fit any time it is used outside of that palette. Apple’s logo is a great example of a versatile logo. The apple with the bite out of it looks great whether it is rainbow colored like the more retro logo, or the simple white or black outline present on their computers and other devices.
Be Unique – I apologize to any PC fans for using Apple’s logo as an example twice, but it is a great case of a unique but simple logo. Look at any picture of an apple you want. It probably won’t look very special to you. But using the simple outline, with the subtle bite taken out, suddenly that apple is a great logo. It is a minor change to what would otherwise be a dull logo, and now it is one of the most iconic images in the modern world. Don’t try to be crazy with your design to be “unique”, try to bring the boring into the realm of the uncommon through little changes.
Be Meaningful – Your logo should tell some sort of story. Ideally, it should actually tell two – The first story being the obvious, and the second being more hidden. Like I said, a logo shouldn’t just be a branded doodle, but it should consist of well thought out iconology and history. The Toyota logo helps explain this point a little better. Of course, the three ovals of the logo form a T, for Toyota. However, the company states that each individual oval has its own meaning. The overlapping ovals symbolize faith and trust between the company and customer, while the outer oval is to represent the global expansion plans of Toyota.
What You Should Not Do When Designing a Logo
Do Not Overestimate Color – While being a slave to a color scheme isn’t a good idea for a logo, that doesn’t mean you should keep all of your logo designs black and white. Colors can have a huge effect on the emotional response to your design. You should let the target demographic for your logo influence the colors. Keep in mind the age, gender, and cultural information of your audience.
Do Not Over-Innovate – This is pretty comparable to “keep it simple,” but it is important to note. Innovation is always a great thing. It keeps you from becoming stale or repeating yourself. The question to ask when trying to innovate should be “is this practical?” Often, if you innovate too much in your design, it no longer is clearly associated with the brand you are designing for. If you’ve reached that point, you clearly have innovated too much.
Do Not Underestimate Custom Typography – Every design should have a typeface that is unique. While there are thousands of free fonts out there to use, it’s important to realize that there are also thousands of designers using them. A handdrawn font on the other hand, will not only keep plagiarists from ripping off your logo, it is also more identifiable than any logo you will find online.
Do Not Be Predictable – As said before, any logo should tell more than one story. Part of figuring out how to tell these stories is making sure you tell them in new ways. If your company designs umbrellas, maybe referencing weather as a broad idea is a good start, but you don’t want to make a design that shouts “It’s gonna rain!”
Do Not Design a Cliché – Logo design has trends just like any other industry. Trying to follow these trends will usually end up in creating a boring logo that is as cliché as any meme you will find online today. Instead, if you make something unique as well as representative of the brand, your client will be much happier than being delivered the same logo for the fourth time.
Of course, any logo design will take time, but it is important to know where to actually invest the energy. If you put too much work into making a wild new logo, you may just confuse your client, but if you are lazy across the board, your client will be equally disappointed.
Facebook Paid Ads are a great way to spread the word about your business. They also help drive people to your company’s Facebook page, where you can share content and your messages at no cost. Why wouldn’t you want a captive audience of consumers who actively seek out your message? Well, Mona Elesseily, of Search Engine Land, has five ways to get them by effectively utilizing Facebook Ads.
1. Target your target
Be as specific as possible when using targeting features. Instead of limiting your ads to ‘only men’ or ‘only under 30’, narrow it down further by using education level, specific interests or workplace. The idea is to make a user feel as if your ad is speaking directly to him or her.
2. Use effective goals
While I think using ads to drive users to your fan page is a great idea, you need to set specific goals and track your progress to get the most from your effort. Exactly how many fans do you want to add each month? Exactly what demographic do you want to see improved growth from?
If you’re the type who wants to see their Facebook fans turn into conversions, you can set goals for that too. For every 50 fans on Facebook, how many conversions do you want to see?
Set specific, trackable goals, then be sure to follow up and tweak your strategies to discover what works and what isn’t worth your time and money.
3. Grab users’ attention
Put yourself in a typical Facebook user’s shoes. Your eyes aren’t focused on the sidebar where the ads are located. You are reading your friends status updates and looking at their latest pictures.
In order to steer their eyes away from their timeline, you’ll need bold colors. You can try using a colored border for your ad, but I tend to think this has been done so much, users are starting to tune it out.
Images of celebrities, especially female celebs, still tend to get a few looks, however.
Once you have a user’s attention, be sure to give them a reason to click on your ad. Put an immediacy to your ad with phrases like ‘Act now’ in order to take advantage of a specific, limited-time offer or special.
4. Images plus text
An ideal ad combines a brightly colored, eye-catching image with big, bold font that is easy to read. Again, the message should compell users to act.
5. Don’t get stale
I mentioned users tuneing out, or glossing over ad styles they’ve grown accustomed to, so take that lesson to heart. Change your ads often so users don’t get so used to seeing them that they stop even noticing.
You don’t necessarily have to reinvent your ad on a weekly basis. Instead, change details like color of your logo, font or just a different image.
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Imagine being able to point your phone’s camera down a normal city street and see a video game type environment complete with puzzle boxes and coins up for grabs. That’s the reality that a San Diego based start-up, called Cachetown, hopes to bring to fruition.
The positive spin here is that once you’ve created interactive games for people to play, you can add in an advertising angle and use this “augmented reality” to offer deals and promotions for stores on the other side of a user’s lens. Maybe you point your phone at a restaraunt and see an opportunity to get half off your next meal.
Tom Cheredar has more at this story at VentureBeat, including a commercial produced by Cachetown. The most interesting thing about the video is that it even seems to realize the one, looming drawback to this technology. No one wants to walk around the streets looking at their phone. Whether it’s a reluctance to look like a tourist, holding up your phone in your own town or a fear of walking into a bevy of obstacles, most people would likely be reluctant to fully embrace Cachetown’s current model.
The idea is sound, however, and could have some interesting implementations coming very soon.
https://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.png00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2012-10-15 12:30:012012-10-15 12:30:01‘Cachetown’ Makes Your World A Video Game
I’ve read a number of articles suggesting that Facebook is not an ideal marketing platform because your business will see a small click through rate from your Facebook page to your website and, perhaps, an even smaller conversion rate. And you know what? That opinion is dead on.
Those aren’t the proper metrics to measure Facebook success, however. In baseball, you don’t figure batting average by how many times the hitter successfully contacts the ball. He has to actually get a hit. Well, in terms of Facebook, your business gets a hit when a user ‘Likes’ your page, not when a user buys something from you. I know, that’s pretty contradictory when you consider the basics of marketing. But, it’s time to embrace the idea that sometimes brand awareness is the goal.
Avinsash Kaushik wrote a tremendous, but lengthy, blog post recently on this and many other topics that I urge you to read. He touches on advertising on Facebook, as well. Again, this is not a way for you to drive traffic to your site. You advertise on Facebook to get Facebook users to your Facebook page. It’s all very Facebook-centric.
Obviously, Facebook is not the only weapon you need in your marketing arsenal. Having a large, interested, captive audience on Facebook is a great thing. You can deliver as many messages to fans of your page as you want and they don’t cost you anything. But, while those fans might buy your product when a need arises and they might tell others about your product, you need other, more traditional marketing methods to truly impact your bottom line.
The most interesting part of marketing on Facebook seems to be that you can’t be marketing to users on Facebook. That is, those that attempt to use Facebook in the wrong way, which is marketing directly to consumers rather than attempting to build an audience with their page, fail with Facebook. But, if you have great content and create an entertaining forum for fans to gather with your Facebook page and don’t alienate them by bombarding users with ads and attempts to turn them into conversions, you’ll succeed with Facebook. Soon, those fans of your page will turn into conversions on their own and may even breed more conversions.
So, whether you’re struggling to gain ground or are just starting out with Facebook for your business, remember to measure success the right way and always consider your audience.
Facebook recently gave advertisers the option of where to place their ads. The options, including desktop newsfeed and sidebar, desktop newsfeed only or mobile newsfeed, create many possibilities, but the best value has quickly become evident. For the highest click-through-rate and second highest conversion rate, John Constine, of TechCrunch, reports using those dollars on mobile ads is the way to go.
CEO of BLiNQ Media, Dave Williams, says their numbers suggest “that mobile beats desktop placement by a 3 to 1 ratio.”
The one drawback is a positive for users. Facebook limits the number of ads for mobile users in order to keep their experience enjoyable. This means advertisers won’t be able to overload any group with their ads. So, those advertisers will have to be more clever in how they gameplan.
Also, companies are finding that mobile users that ‘Like’ their page are “worth” less than their desktop counterparts. This is because the mobile users are less likely to view photos and videos and also because desktop users are generally more active on a company’s page since they may have to do more work to seek them out.
Though fans of a business’s page only see about 16-percent of their posts on average, Facebook certainly seems to be worth the effort. Once a company has gained that ‘Like’, they are essentially marketing to interested consumers for free.
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The overlap between SEO and content strategy often ends up turning content creation into a marketing ploy, and little more. The blogs cite industry folks and data, and offer tips that are either glaringly obvious or recycled to the point of redundancy.
Guillaume Bouchard from Search Engine Watch has another idea for content creation. Think about what people want, not what “works” within the market. What works changes as fast as the industry can, while what people want stays relatively consistent. Long term success comes from reading what your visitors want.
For SEO professionals, you can follow the 70/20/10 model for a simple model for content creation.
The 70/20/10 model goes like this:
70 percent of content should be low-risk
20 percent should try to improve on what already works
10 percent should be high-risk experimentation
The model comes from Coca-Cola, and can be transferred to SEO pretty easily. Link baiting is low-risk. Optimizing and trying to capitalize on some newer trends in the market covers trying to improve on what works, and that leaves 10 percent experimentation.
70 Percent: The Link Bait – Link baiting certainly has its pros and drawbacks, but for this model just think of it as content made with a purpose. It informs audiences, communicates complicated ideas, and establishes your reputation as an expert. This helps establish your brand in the industry. This acts as the mainstay of your content. Always available, but it can’t be all you have.
20 Percent: Optimize and Sharpen – For optimizing, look at what content is doing the best and what people are saying about your content. Try to improve upon what is doing best, and reinvigorating old debates with new information. Stay aware of trends and ideas in your industry, and react to them with content. This type of content creation helps keep you tuned to the changes in your industry, and keep you relevant, which will always translate to your audience.
10 Percent: Proactive and Reactive Experimentation – Time to have some fun. Experimentation requires really understanding your audience, and being confident enough to have an opinion. Think about fashion trendsetters. They see what is popular now, and act on their impulses in response. Content creation experimentation is all about seeing what is popular in the field, and making new content that people have never seen before.
This model isn’t something to keep set in stone, but it will help keep you relevant and interesting. Those are two things audiences always want.
It’s no secret that Facebook is searching for new ways to monetize their site and improve their IPO. In doing so, they are bound to take some missteps. Perhaps, like their latest venture, ‘Promoted Posts’.
As Adi Gaskell reports for Technorati, users now have the opportunity to pay for a better chance for their friends to see their posts. ‘Promoted Posts’ was already available in 20 countries, but it wasn’t until last week that American users were included.
To use the new feature, users simply update their status as usual, then click a button to promote it. That luxury will cost about $7 for now. That post will then appear with a ‘Sponsored’ tag, which allows the user to keep tabs on how helpful promoting has been.
For you next community event, party or insightful political post, maybe ‘Promoted Posts’ will be worth the money.
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Starting on Monday of this week, small business owners in the UK became eligible for Google’s newest service, AdWords Business Credit. Essentially, Google created a credit card that can only be used for paying for a businesses AdWords account.
As Ingrid Lunden reports for TechCrunch, the program launched in beta 1400 U.S. companies last year and nearly three-quarters of those companies now use AdWords Business Credit as their “primary form of payment.”
Now, Google shifts its focus to the UK, where revenue in the 2nd quarter made up about 11-percent of the companies total revenue.
The card will carry an 11.9-percent APR in the UK, which is up from 8.99-percent in the U.S. during the pilot program. No annual fees will be included. You may note that this is lower than major credit cards. This is likely because Google intends to make an increase in profits by driving more businesses to AdWords and increasing the investment their, not from interest rates.
The internet is awash with tips and suggestions for SEO, but there aren’t many articles that clear up those pesky rumors and myths of the industries of optimization and blogging. So I’m here to help tear down those lies people hear and tell themselves about building an audience.
1) Making good content before you have an audience is a waste of good content – This is totally untrue. First impressions are all you get online, and if you are “reserving” all your good stuff for when you have a bunch of visitors, you will never get popular.
It is like selling a product before you’ve made the actual product. If you have just a few people coming to your site but they see good content, they will keep coming back as well as spreading the word. If you have a large amount of people visiting because you are advertising widely, but your content is worthless, they’re all going to leave and never look back.
Yeah, it isn’t fun to make great stuff that only a few are reading, but you have to keep an eye on the future. Great content attracts people eventually, as long as you put in the extra work to promote it. Plus, once you have an audience, they can always still find that great content no one was reading a month ago.
2) Great content will bring an audience – I emphasized that quality content will help attract an audience above and that still rings true, but there is other important work to be done before you’ll gain a crowd. You have to “pound the pavement” so to speak. Neglecting to actually promote the content can end up costing you links in the end.
Rae Hoffman at CopyPress has a full list of strategies for promoting great content, but the biggest emphasis is only push your awesome content. Spending energy on mediocre content won’t go anywhere, but if you can back up your promotion with quality content, you will get the launch you need.
3) Having a unique voice isn’t always possible – If you can’t find your specific voice, then you are doing the wrong type of work for you. Your site will never gain traction if you can’t have your own identity. You need a point of difference, or POD.
Finding your own POD can be as simple as combining seemingly seperate interests into your blogging, such as the girl who runs SkinnyTaste. She was just another amateur photographer who also loved making tasty low fat recipes. Both of those areas are flooded with contributors, but by combining the two into a blog with great recipes and enticing high quality pictures of the food, SkinnyTaste became a contender.
4) I’m not a great writer, so I’ll never be a great blogger – If you have found your own voice or POD, being a technically great writer is irrelevant. Many bloggers would have not gotten great grades in school if they turned in work in the style they blog in because they often make grammatical errors. Readers don’t care however, as long as the writer has a unique voice and interesting information.
5) Once I’ve got an audience, the rest will be easy – Rae Hoffman’s article earlier mentions Perez Hilton in this situation, and I can’t imagine a better blogger to express this point. Perez Hilton became a cultural figure for a short period because of his strong opinions and voice. So where is Perez Hilton now? Still blogging, but his television appearances have fizzled out, and you rarely hear his name brought up anymore. This is because Perez’s blogging became less celebrity journalism filtered through Perez’s voice, and more about why being Perez Hilton is wonderful. His focus left the gossip people were craving, and moved to the benign stories of a psuedo-celebrity.
The point of Perez’s story is once you gain popularity, you can’t rest or slack off. People are coming to you for whatever special information or content you are offering, and if you start slipping that audience will be gone faster than you could ever dream of.
Most of these myths are the type that people tell themselves when they are scared of making the leap into blogging, or the lies people give for why their site is floundering. Don’t let them keep you from getting started making a name for yourself, and if you are struggling, consider whether you’ve found your voice or POD or not.
00TMOhttps://www.tulsamarketingonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/TMO-Logo.pngTMO2012-10-09 15:30:012012-10-09 15:30:01Dispelling the 5 Lies About Building an Audience
