Discussing PPC Advertising, Analytics, and other forms of Search Engine Optimization.

There was an article in the New York Times today describing a very important test that went on at the end of 2008. This test was performed by Yahoo and several major newspapers to see how well the two could work together to aid each other in serving advertisements.

Yahoo was able to serve ads on the newspapers websites and vice versa. These ads were targeted to the reading behavior of the users.

“a new ad system from Yahoo, currently installed at about 100 newspapers, that allows them to sell graphical ads on their sites that are aimed at specific audiences, like car buyers or sports enthusiasts. The system puts users into those groups based on the pages they visit online, a technique known as behavioral targeting.

This allows publishers to sell, say, high-priced travel ads not only on travel pages but also on any page visited by a user interested in travel. “

By all accounts this cooperation has been a wonderful success in an otherwise challenging year for both parties.

Old Meets New

What struck me as interesting was that during this 2 week test old media veterans were introduced to some of the virtues of online advertising.

The marketing industry is in a very interesting stage. The veteran marketers are struggling to fully understand that capabilities of online marketing. Permission based marketing is replacing repetition marketing. Those who are positioned on the crest of these two waves should count themselves very fortunate.

Danger Lurking in a Strong Position

As an internet marketer I would recommend you pause to consider the potential danger in this otherwise enviable position.

A great number of the young marketers are limiting themselves to online media. In the short term this makes good sense. There is huge demand for online marketing - even in a down economy it’s not hard to get a job if you understand search engine marketing. Companies need search worse than ever. Online marketing is intuitive for a lot of young people who grew up understanding computers and how they work, for whom the internet is not just a series of tubes. On the other hand, the old media veterans have a vast pool of knowledge that will be left untapped if the youth don’t seek them as mentors.

In this article Mike Carlton talks about the lost art of mentoring and why it is so important for the next generation of advertising professionals.

Don’t forget them just because you’re well positioned on the latest trend.

Another strong reason to consider reaching out is the vast supply of connections that these industry veterans have. A very talented internet marketer will quickly realize that skills will only take you so far. At a certain point it breaks down to who you know. Whether it is a direct connection or a friend of a friend, at some point you will unexpectedly need the help of a specialist. It is so important that young internet marketers don’t become silos. Without someone to add the extra umph to your campaign, point out a mistaken assumption, correct your perspective or otherwise point you in the right direction, you might find yourself struggling with a losing battle.

There is a mentoring program at AMA Atlanta.

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On the Google Blog Avinash Kaushik wrote a post on Bounce Rate that begins a series called The Power of Measurement.

Lesson one is on Bounce Rate.

Bounce Rate is a very easy metric to understand. For that reason it is always one of the first concepts I talk about to my clients that need help deciphering their web analytics.

What does a bounce mean from a user experience perspective?

Bounce Rate is a very important metric because it illustrates one of the biggest problems from a webmaster perspective. It has become normal human behavior to enter a website with the understanding that if you don’t instantly see what you want then you go back to where you were and try something else.

Think about what this means to you as you leave the offending site. You weren’t able to find what you wanted. This doesn’t always mean that the site did not have what you wanted. It means that you were not able to instantly find it. If it is buried two layers deep it doesn’t matter because you are long gone. Even if the path to get there is perfectly clear, if you didn’t see it you are out of there.

What can you do to make it more likely that the person finds what they want on your site?

Well, I’ll give you a hint, pretty much every website now has conventional top navigation. Home, About Us, Services, Articles. These days the problem is seldom confusing navigation.

If it is not the top navigation then what could it be?

Well there are the typical special offers on the sidebar. We hold onto the expectation that people will read enough to decide that they want to do business with us and then go over to the sidebar to let us know. It is possible to improve the graphical appeal of side offers, or even the value proposition, but there is another way.

If you look at some of the most succesful sites on the web you will notice that many of them have something in common. Perhaps more convincingly, take a look at the websites run by people who are conversion and usability experts. You will notice one major trend:

Calls to Action in the Content of the page

Typically when you visit a website you begin by reading the headline. If the headline connects with you then you begin reading or scanning the content of the page. (Why do we expect them to stop reading and find our call to action somewhere else?) Put the call to action right in front of them where their eyes are in the content of the page. Use trigger words that correspond to the user’s motivation for coming to the site. Don’t give them too many choices.

Example of a good call to action in content:

Look right at the very post that inspired this one: At the end of the content Avinash says “check out this article on my web analytics blog”

Do you effective use calls to action in content?

Is there a reason you haven’t?

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Google Analytics Training Series

The Google team is gradually providing the public with more free information about how best to install, configure, and use Google Analytics to its fullest. Training is going to continue to be really important to get the kind of adoption rates they want for this service. The Google Analytics Blog has its own YouTube channel with brief instructional videos. People like Avinash Kaushik and Raku Coryne travel to distant cities to share the good news about web analytics. Raku was even kind enough to send me a free copy of Avinash’s book Web Analytics an Hour a Day.

In my opinion some aspects of the training are over simplified in a way that is similar to the Adwords training. In a way it is an edu-marketing where they sell you as they are training you on how to use the service. The nuts and bolts of making Google Analytics work from a technical perspective are slightly more complicated than the way that they portray (3 clicks and you’re tracking your ROI!). And that is just the technical implementation. You still need a web analyst to interpret the data and develop actionable insights.

Of course advanced segmentation in Google Analytics is the most exciting news for me since I got Ninjas in my Gmail. Months ago I actually emailed Avinash personally to ask him if this was possible in Google Analytics (I was embarrassed to admit that I didn’t already know whether it was possible or not). Turns out it was not available at that time.

I always find it interesting to keep tabs on what is still missing from Google Analytics. Some of the major factors are the lack of the ability to control your own data, house it on your own server, reprocess it, combine it with other historical data, etc. That coupled with the fact that Google will not maintain this data forever - they currently estimate that they will be dropping data every 2 years. It is still a fantastic free tool, but there is an important gap that must be filled by a paid provider and it is really important to know where that gap is and how it will affect you and your business.

Tracking ecommerce

There are several important ecommerce metrics that are easily trackable in Google Analytics. There is a description of the technical implementation here. You can of course measure the visitor engagement to include the following and more:

• Adwords Keywords generating the most profit - Because of Google’s broad match you can be a little misled here if you are not careful. The phrases you see in google analytics won’t be the exact phrases that brought people to your website. The good news is that the exact phrases are available with a little bit of customization.

• Revenue Per Click, ROI, and Margin - Crucial metrics to determine the health of your online marketing efforts.

• Average Order Value - It is crucial to take average order value into account when you are analyzing data surrounding user behavior. Always check because if you make decisions based on trends of the majority you could be alienating a big spending minority.

• Overall revenue per marketing channel - Use this to determine which channel deserves more attention and resources and what is completely useless.

Limitations

It is also important to understand what metrics cannot be easily tracked:

One important metric from this perspective which is not available in Google Analytics is latency. Latency is often measured and analyzed grouped with recency and frequency. Recency describes the amount of time between the first time someone visits a site and the subsequent visits. Latency describes it takes for that person to turn into a customer – make a purchase fill out a conversion form or take whatever action is desired on the site.

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As many of you know I’ve recently finished my Web Analytics class at the University of British Columbia. I was incredibly fortunate to have the renowned analyst and lecturer Stephane Hamel as my teacher for this session. In very few occupations do you get the opportunity to be taught by the very top industry professionals. In this case I think that Web Analytics is still such a young industry that so many of the great minds are still clustered around WAA, Yahoo Web Analytics Groups, and the first Web Analytics Classes at UBC and I am taking full advantage!

Accept Coaching (at the right price)

I can attribute a great deal of my success to accepting coaching from the right people. One of the best ways to do this is to hire them personally. It seems that a natural side product of engaging with someone for a consulting gig is to gain access to their opinions and expertise in the subject in general.

Group Coaching

When it isn’t possible to hire someone for one on one coaching it is a good practice to engage with the expert in a group setting. This costs less and in many cases can be just as beneficial. One thing I’ve learned with regard to this is that in a group the teacher will generally favor the person who is the most inquisitive and proactive and give them more personal attention, in which case you are getting 1 on 1 coaching but you are paying group prices.

Recently my good friend Sally Shields decided to release her personal coaching program to the public. The next round is set to begin January 5th and it will fill up soon.

Turn you and your book into an Amazon.com bestseller while increasing  your visibility,  credibility and revenue!   A 5 week mentoring course with bestselling author Sally Shields— 100% money-back guaranteed.  If you’re ready to reach more readers  with your message and your book, this may be just the  course you have been looking for.  Begins in early January.

http://www.sallyshields.com/coaching/

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The team really did a fantastic job on the Freedom Ops website. This one might win an award. It is a site for children to report to once they purchase one of the officially licensed U.S. Military Special Operations Toys. There will be games and all sorts of fun things for them to interact with on the site.

Since most of the site is Flash we are going to have some interesting challenges in tracking the activity on the site. There are various events on the site which we will want to track which are not necessarily pageviews. We want to track every time a user downloads an image, watches a video, or interacts with Flash in some way.

Fortunately Google Analytics just announced that they were event tracking which is designed to track AJAX, Flash, Silverlight, widgets. Stephane Hamel makes some good points about event tracking in his blog post on Google Analytics Event Tracking. There is also more information about this on the Google Analytics Blog.

Are you encountering tracking challenges?

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In Actionable Web Analytics the statement is made that, ‘Not knowing what is possible, companies haven’t known what their goals should be.’

What an insightful statement about the nature of the intersection between the needs of the modern corporation and the web analyst. In many cases it falls on the web analyst to explain what is possible.

The members of these corporations often have very disparate levels of knowledge about web strategy, internet marketing, and web analytics. Some people are barely aware of the revolution in customer thinking which we’ve witnessed over the course of the last decade, while others are astute enough to realize that there is now plenty of reason to demand a specific report on the return expected and the revenue generated from marketing efforts.

I like to start some sessions by encouraging a brainstorm about what can possibly be gleaned from web analytics.

• What are the questions that could be answered?
• What are the insights that we are already aware need to be addressed.
• What is the messaging of the marketing campaigns and how will we know that the audience in receptive to this messaging?
• Who will eventually need to be informed of these findings and what is the most palatable way for them to receive the information?
• What becomes possible if we were to change our processes just a little bit?
• What is testable?
• What decisions have been made in the past without testing?
• How do each of these touch revenue and return on investment?
• What impact might this have on our ideas about web design, product design, ad copy, and messaging in general?

I find that once these items are fleshed out it is then effective to begin considering what web analytics platforms can address these questions. What customization would be necessary to get consistent answers to these questions? How valuable would it be to have easily digestible reports available about these metrics as well as a reminder of what the changes suggest?

With an almost infinite capacity for custom application development, these brainstorming sessions can really uncover some interesting and creative perspectives on what can be achieved. It is worthwhile to emphasize that while ‘success does not come from having the most data, but the best analysis’ it is nonetheless crucial to determine whether the right data is going to be available when the time comes for analysis.

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As part of our continuing conversation discussing using Adwords and Analytics to aid in marketing a product with a low price point, which was sparked by the inquiry from the publicist for The Ethical Executive, Sally Shields has offered to share her experience.
Sally is an Amazon.com Best Seller and author of The Daughter-in-Law-Rules
101 Surefire Ways to Manage (and Make Friends with) Your Mother-In-Law!

Amazon.com Best Seller: Sally Shields

Create a Media Calendar

One of the things that I learned at the Publicity Summit was the quickest way to get publicity is to be timely. So creating a media calendar for yourself can be an invaluable tool for getting publicity online. That is, writing down all the times of the year that your topic could be relevant to pitch the media in your niche market. You can even check Chase’s Directory of Annual Events to see if there are any holidays that specifically relate to your topic.

For example, after finding out that the 4th sunday in October was “Mother-in-Law Day,” I googled “Wedding Blogs” and “Mom” related blogs, and sent this pitch around to a few of the top ranking ones:

October 26th is Mother-in-Law Day How To Turn
Your Mother-in-Law From Your Biggest Critic into
Your #1 Fan in 3 Simple Steps!

… and asked them if they would like to post a review or a pre-prepared Q&A and do a giveaway on their site (I offered a few eBooks - doesn’t cost me anything and gets the word out and the buzz going about my book.) I got several responses, and got a bunch of traffic this month so far.

Here’s one example of the result of this effort:

http://www.mommyland.com/the-daughter-in-law-rules-review

Setup a Google Alert

Another example: I set up a google alert for “Mother-in-law” and I was alerted to the fact that Joe Biden’s MIL passed away a couple of weeks ago. So I emailed this pitch to a high-ranking site (30,000 on Alexa.com) for moms called MomLogic.com:

Joe Biden’s Mother-in-Law Dies How to Make Peace
with Your Mother-in-Law, Before it’s Too Late!

They did an article and quoted me as an expert and mentioned my book as well. To view:

Make Peace With Your Mother In Law

Learn Article Marketing

Of course, then there is the whole world of article marketing. One of the best people teaching this great thing is Jeff Herring, who provides a couple of free templates to get you started. I wrote my first two articles in about 20 minutes using these templates. One of the best places to submit your articles is to Ezine Articles. Here are a few other places to try:

GoArticles.com
ArticleDashboard.com
SearchWarp.com
About.com
Squidoo.com
Helium.com
EzineMarketers.com
SubmitYourArticles.com

You want to make sure not to mention your book in the article, but rather deliver great content in the form of tips, dos and don’ts, top 10 lists, etc. You then make sure that you utilize the resource box to your advantage. Be sure to have all of your information, and something that really helps is to offer some sort of free giveaway as well. Here is the example of the bi-line that I use at the end of my articles:

Please visit Sally “The Mother-in-Law Manager” Shields, speaker and author of The Daughter-in-Law Rules on the web at www.TheDILRules.com for contest giveaways, free bonus gifts,The DIL Rules newsletter, 44 Top Tips Cheat Sheet, free music … and more!

A big thanks to Sally for sharing some of her expertise with us. Now I ask…

Do you have any great tips that have helped to develop publicity for a product, attract traffic to a website, or garner attention to a great cause?

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Due to the massive response to our last post about when to use adwords, I’ve asked a few friends to put together guest posts that describe how to market a book, or a product with a low price point using methods other than Adwords Marketing.

Our first guest will be Jacob Morgan, social media strategy expert and creator of Search Marketing Salon

Marketing Your Product Through Social Media, How?

By Jacob Morgan

When trying to market something such as a book, social media can really be a powerful marketing tool. Social media is going to allow for something much more powerful then a PPC campaign, it’s going to allow for the author to build a relationship with the reader. There are several great examples of how authors have used social media to further market their books, take for example the best selling book by Dan and Chip Heath called “Made to Stick.” This duo created a very popular blog based on their book that receives around 1 million views each month (according to Quantcast). Rohit Bhargava from Ogilvy also created a site for his new book “Personality not Included,” that has also been doing quite well. The point is that social media is a great way to market a book while building relationships with your readers. Not only that, but social media doesn’t have a direct cost associated with it, yes, you do have to spend your time to make it work but you don’t have to budget a direct amount like you do with something like Adwords.

So what are some ways you can market your book online using social media?

First of all create a blog for the book that talks about specific issues in the marketplace.

Basically use real world examples or advice that has to deal with your book. For example, if your book is called “The Ethical Executive,” then you may want to create a blog and write about real world example of how executives ARE or AREN’T being ethical. There should be no problem finding a new example every day. You can also give your “ethical tip of the day” to readers. Maybe you can even get some interviews with executives that you can put up on your blog.

Reach out to other bloggers

Find bloggers out there that talk about business, marketing, ethics, etc. and ask them to write a post about your book, this is probably one of the best ways to get the word out. Ask as many relevant bloggers as you can, this will allow you to capture the blogger’s attention as well as the bloggers’ readers attention. If done properly you can have a groundswell effect work for you that will get you a lot of attention.

Join Twitter

Twitter is a great way to connect with and build relationships with users. I have around 700 followers on twitter and every time I write a new post or come across an interesting article I send it out to 700 people instantly. Don’t underestimate the power of twitter. If you have something to say and something of value to provide, then do it. You can also run special promotional deals (not just on twitter) where you give your twitter followers a special promotional code for 10% off the book.

Get on Linkedin

Linkedin is a great marketing tool that many people neglect. There is a section on linkedin that let’s you ask and answer questions to your network (and others). Why not create a question on linkedin titled “What is an Ethical Executive,” and ask your network what they think about the subject? Of course you can also make a plug for the book when asking the question. You can also join the various business networks out there and let them know about your book.

Get on Facebook

Facebook is another great way to market your book. One of the things you can do is post your new blog post links in facebook so that your entire network sees the updates. You can also create a facebook fan page for all of the loyal readers of your book/blog. If you do create a fan page, make sure you interact with your fans (this is a better strategy for once your traffic has picked up).

Look for Syndication or Partnership Channels Online

Writing a blog on a particular subject is great for syndication provided you add valuable content to the blog. My Social Media Blog for instance is syndicated on social media today, marketing.alltop.com, and socialmedia.alltop.com. This means that my reader base increase exponentially. If you are looking to market a book then getting syndicated in niche communities is a great way to get the word out.

Use Your Already Existing Channels to Spread the Word, Offline and Online

Do you have a link to your site in your email signature? What about on your business card? Are you telling people about your book through twitter, facebook, and linkedin? Do you attend industry events where you can tell people about the book? Do you speak at small conferences or events?

Create a Flickr Account

People love images, why not create a flickr account devoted to the most and least ethical executives out there? You can also ask your readers visitors to upload photos that the come across as well. Hold a contest; offer a free signed book or $100 cash prize to the person that gets the best photos up.

Participate in Online Discussions Around Your Topic

Do some research and find some business social networks, join then, and then join the business conversation. Linkedin is one, Ryze is another, Workology is European networking site, there are many others out there too, you just have to spend some time researching. Join and connect with as many people as you can, the more relationships you build the greater your marketing reach is going to be. You can also check out business forums or community sites.

Cross Promote, Be Clever and Be Creative

When using the multiple social media channels out there it’s important to cross promote. For example, you may tell all of your twitter followers to connect with you on facebook, etc. Probably one of the most important things you need to remember is be clever and be creative. Don’t be scared to try out a new marketing tactic that hasn’t been done before. Heck there are several authors out there that have even given their books away for free! Inject personality in everything you do and try to think outside the box, get creative and have fun with your marketing ideas, remember the goal here is to build relationships.

The above tips should provide for a solid social media marketing foundation. These ideas can be used for virtually every product/service out there, you just need to think of a unique angle or promotional campaign that targets your users.

Thanks for reading

Check out my Social Media Blog

Follow me on Twitter

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Connect with me on Facebook

A big thanks to Jacob for his coverage of what social media initiatives would work for marketing a book such as The Ethical Executive.

Now what do you think? Is there anything in your experience that you think would work that we haven’t covered? Have you had any experience using these networks that you would like to share with us?

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I recently had an inquiry from a friendly lady who was interested in using Adwords to help sell her husband’s book The Ethical Executive. I thought it might be a good time for an ethics check before accepting this proposition.

Do you think I did the right thing?

– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – –

Friendly Lady,

(REALITY CHECK BEGIN)

Let’s take some time to consider your motivations for choosing Adwords as an advertising platform. Adwords of course is a very agile and inexpensive vehicle for serving ads and generating interest in a product. It is also very responsive and can begin to return results immediately as opposed to other types of advertising that have a long term cumulative effect.

As with any type of advertising, the revenue generated by selling a product must be considered when determining whether it would be worthwhile. In this case, with a book that may cost $25, after overhead the profit from selling one book might be $5 or less. The cost per click to get someone to your website in Adwords might range from 50 cents to $5. That is just to get someone to your website with no guarantee that they will make a purchase.

With a conservative estimate of an average $2 per click you could achieve 150 visits to your website per month from Adwords. With no historical data and no time to test and experiment to find the best conversion rate, it is hard to guess how many of those visits would be likely to actually purchase a book. Almost certainly less than 25%. Therefore based on that guess (25%) it would cost you $500 to sell 37 books per month. This is clearly not a profitable equation (unless you happen to profit $15 per book).

THE OPTIMISTIC POTENTIAL

That being said, there are other objectives to consider. As we discussed it would be tremendously profitable if Adwords could aid this book to make the best seller list. If this were possible, the momentum of being on that list would result huge number of sales.

While the number of books which must be sold in order for a book to be a candidate for the best seller list is unknown, it is also most likely more than 37 per month.

In addition to the specific trackable sales resulting from Adwords referrals,
there is the added benefit of interest and buzz which can be generated. It is possible to achieve a great number of ad impressions using Google Adwords which means that the name of the book could be put in front of a lot of people’s eyeballs. This could result in additional word of mouth and more purchases which would not be directly attributable to Google Adwords. Obviously with a larger budget this ancillary effect can be increased.

There is also the benefit of the vast amount of data that can be collected by using Adwords coupled with Google Analytics to track user behavior. In the case of a long term project this data can become the basis for findings which can help you to effectively develop your messaging, drive design changes in your website, as well as predict outcomes of other potential initiatives.

If you are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization you can apply for a Google Grant. Google provides grants that range from $10,000 per month to $40,000 per month in free advertising for qualifying organizations.

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