Location, Location, Location

Finally, there’s an easier way to leverage the power of geotargeting your Google AdWords campaigns by analyzing CTR’s, Conversion rates and CPA’s by geographic origin. Using the new AdWords report “Geographic Performance”, you can run a report at the account, campaign or AdGroup level that’ll show you metrics by country, region, metro area and city.

Some or all of this data might be also available in your analytics, but always required the extra step to run the analytics report. Additionally, you’d have to have your analytics setup in a similar campaign and AdGroup format to get this information in this useful layout.

Couple things I question – why are we forced to run the report that shows a daily listing only? Running a month’s worth of data will require some Excel gymnastics to create meaningful summaries.
And, it would be a great enhancement to make this report interactive by using a map. As you move your mouse around the map, your key metrics would appear. It’d be great to also be able to interactively consolidate regions on a map to get summary level statistics for larger areas such as Southern California.

But our team will gladly take this first version of the report and begin further refining and tweaking our client’s accounts while we closely measure the impact in performance from using this data.
Note that this report approximates geographic location based on the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of people who saw your ads.

The Power of Equilibruim

The word on the street is that PPC advertising will fall out of favor with advertisers as the economy worsens. Further, I’m hearing that companies will steer more towards natural optimization so they can avoid PPC click charges.

This is absolutely insane.

Think about it … the PPC environment is a classic case of the capitalistic world where market supply and demand determine prices or bids. So if the worry warts are correct in their prediction that companies will leave PPC, those companies that stick it out will see the benefit of lower click costs and potentially higher positioning as the competition bails.

Worst case – even with inventory (searchers) dropping, lower click costs will relax the pressure on ROI and make PPC a more profitable marketing initiative.

Now the other prediction of more companies focusing on SEO is equally flawed. If true, as more companies increase their dollar investments in SEO, the competition for the top organic placements will increase, forcing those companies to spend even more resources.

As they spend more resources, the increased potential of PPC will draw those companies back into paid search, and return their SEO spending plans back to pre-recession levels.

So, forget the predictions. If the economy tanks, PPC will not go away. Google will not disappear. Savvy marketers will invest their tightened budgets where the ROI is the highest, and if their competition begins reducing their PPC exposure, PPC will be the land of greatest opportunity.

Great Free PPC Tool Available

If you’re managing pay per click campaigns you know, or most definitely should know the importance of incorporating a thorough negative keyword list. Unless, of course, you’re bidding all of your terms exact match … and if that’s the case unless you can climb into the minds of all of your potential customers, you could be missing out on a lot of qualified traffic.

Check out this free negative keyword listing from Engine Ready here. The folks at Engine Ready claim their list includes over 420 negative keywords that are useful for most businesses.

They also have a couple other intriguing ideas on how to build your negative keyword list. It’s worth the visit.

Speaking the Right Language – The Life cycle of the purchase

Something that I still see many marketers forget is that prospects who are thinking of doing business with you are in different places in the buying cycle. Some may be launching their first attempt to research the general options related to products and services that meet their needs.

Some have decided exactly on which product/service category will solve their problem, but need to hone in on a specific product type or service provider.

And others have completed their research and are ready to buy now.

It’s important to tailor your message to your prospects based on where they are in the buying cycle. Those in the first phase are attracted by copy that drives them to research or get more information. White paper downloads are prime targets for this group.

The 2nd phase prospects are closer to buying and are looking for specific benefits related to your product/service. Strong compelling benefit driven bulleted copy is a winning strategy here.

The last phase needs compelling call-to-action, sense of urgency and guidance directly to the purchasing process. Guide your visitor right to the “order now” button.

Don’t make the mistake of talking to prospects in the first phase like “Buy now …”, or “Free shipping”. It’s like being a little to presumptuous on that 1st date … if you know what I mean.

And obviously, don’t craft a message that says “Browse …” when you’re prospect is at the end of the buying cycle.

Now the logical question is how to determine where the prospect is in the buying cycle. Study the purchasing habits and analytics of your site visitors and look for trends. The length of keyword searches, use of specific words, or model numbers may be the clue you need to speak the right language to snag the sale.

The 2008 Recession – A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

It’s happening – despite whether the US economy was headed for a recession, we, the people of the US, seem to be willing to make it a certainty. Not that it’s our fault. The headlines on most major news sites seem to proclaim the doom that awaits.

Businesses have been forced to take an even sharper knife to their 08 spending plans and the average consumer is showing signs that he is trying to hold back on non-essential items.

So what? Isn’t that what fiscally responsible people do during downturns? Yes, but this time it’s different. Our last recession in 2001 was before the birth of web 2.0. Google “blog recession” and you’ll now see a multitude of blog sites, restating studies, projections and statistics about the dire state of the economy. That didn’t exist in any other pre-recession or recession period.

So in 2008, we have the added weight of web 2.0 and the blogoshpere further reminding us of our likely upcoming fate. Just another reason for us to cook a romantic Valentine’s Day dinner at home and save $150.

To clear up any misunderstanding, I’m not saying that the economic fundamentals don’t exist for a down turn. What am I theorizing, though, is that the power of web 2.0 will help determine the length and severity of any pull back in our economy.

Social Media and Customer Service

Had lunch today with Becky Carroll, President of Petra Consulting Group. Becky’s firm specializes in helping organizations maximizing the return they get from customer relationship. She’s got some unique and extremely useful insights in social media and customer service.

I highly recommend you check out her blog at http://customersrock.wordpress.com . It’s well worth the read.

Hammering a Nail with a Screwdriver

Was at a prospect’s office yesterday and they understood the importance of creating a targeted landing page for their PPC campaigns. They also understood the importance of creating an optimized “entry page” for an organic ranking.

The ultimate goal of both of these efforts is increased conversion and sales. However, the prospect was very set on designing 1 page that accomplished both: Compelling the PPC visitor to convert, and compelling Google to rank the page well.

Just like using nails and screws can be for a common goal – building a house – you don’t want to start using your screwdriver as a hammer.

Now I’m not advocating using black hat, or even gray hat SEO techniques, however, based on my testing, there are various distinct difference between pages that get a human to convert and pages that satisfy a ranking algorithm. Trying to split the difference with 1 page will result in a page that does neither well.

Interesting how the prospect was sold on the idea of 1 page to achieve both purposes.

Why are there still boundaries between Web 2.0 and Web 1.0?

Everywhere you look, there is no shortage of hype about how Web 2.0 is revolutionizing the marketing and promotional world. I’m not a skeptic of the potential of social media, networking, user generated video and blogs, but wonder why there seems to be a disconnect between the Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 worlds.

The real opportunity for capitalizing on the power of this new medium is through the integration of conversation and buzz (Web 2.0) with the traditional role of the web, providing information and marketing prose (Web 1.0).

But when you look at some of the most popular YouTube videos of 2007, some of these companies really blew their chance to take their 2.0 efforts to the next level by not integrating their creativity with conventional 1.0 promotion. And, it appears that the marketing departments of their competitors were also asleep at the wheel.

Here are a couple examples:

1. The Cadbury Gorilla Drummer video has received almost 1 ½ million views. Go to Technorati and you’ll see many blog entries praising the video. But look over to the right where the Google sponsored links are and you’ll not see a Cadbury ad.

   Searching for any online press releases related to the Gorilla playing drums again produces no listings. And on the Cadbury site, there’s no mention of the video.
   Search on “gorilla playing drums” in Google returns the YouTube page, but wouldn’t it be perhaps even more effective if Cadbury had an optimized page that ranked well under that search phrase … or if Cadbury had even bid on the phrase?

   “Wow factor” grade: A
   Real Marketing grade: F

2. The Ray-Ban Catch Sunglasses video has received over 3 million views. Unlike Cadbury, though the Ray-Ban folks carry through the Wow of the video. For instance, at the end of the video, the words “Never hide” are scrawled on a Honda Civic. Go to the Ray-Ban web site, and you’ll see that same slogan prominently displayed.

   And on their site, you’ll find a series of videos on their site supporting the same theme as the catch sunglasses video.

   Type in the phrase “catch sunglasses” into Google, though, and you won’t find any PPC ads from Ray-Ban or their dealers. On the other hand, typing in their slogan, “Never hide”, does at least return a link to their corporate site.

   “Wow factor” grade: A
   Real Marketing grade: C

3. The “Blendtec – Will it Blend?” series of videos on YouTube have been particularly popular, with the latest iPhone episode garnering over 3 ½ million views. And kudos to Blendtec – go to their home page, and you’ll see prominently displayed a button that takes the visitor to all of the “Will it Blend?” videos.

   In addition, they even sell CD’s of the video series on their site. And typing, “Will it blend” into Google produces a sponsored listing to the BlendTec site. They have even purchased the domain willitblend.com, which shows as the number one listing.
   Finally, they’ve incorporated their name into the title of the video series, so there’s no mistaken who they are. However, why have Blendtec dealers not taken advantage of this great exposure? There are no Blendtec dealers bidding on this keyword phrase.

   “Wow factor” grade: A
   Real Marketing grade: A (if we don’t count the missed opportunities for Blendtec dealers)

Some Interesting Quality Info on Ranking

Matt Cutts best known for being the Google SEO Guru recently talked about some SEO tips and traps at the PubCon in Las Vegas in November 06. My favorite part is the discussion of inbound links.

There is so much misinformation and speculation on proper linking and the importance to good ranking. Here’s what Mr. Cutts revealed:

1. Don’t bother trying to build inbound links very quickly. They will only be counted in a fashion that’s similar to real-world link attraction. It’s just not natural to expect a site to gain 125 inbound links in 1 day. Patience is the rule.

2. Despite the controversy over the value of reciprocal inks, Matt suggests that they are worthwhile, as long as they come from related type sites.

Overall the advice is don’t try to fool (cheat) Google. It will likely cause one of the Google filters to apply to your site meaning a penalization in your ranking.

Another Keyword Tool … Courtesy of MSN

If you’re looking for yet another keyword tool to help expand your keyword listings in the pay per click engines, visit the Microsoft adCenter Lab Keyword Mutation page.

Here, you’ll be able to see the most common mispellings (per MS) for your keywords.