Quality is in the Content Google Adwords is a useful, effective and cost efficient marketing tool to have in your quiver, but it requires some work ahead of time to make sure you are getting everything you can out of your campaign. Here are some items you should consider before launch: 1. Make sure you are considering your search engine optimization techniques on your site before you create your campaign. Google will look to your site, as well as your ad, to deduce the relevancy of the information during a user’s search. You want to make sure you have optimized the keywords on your site. This includes meta tags, alt tags on pictures, and make sure you have properly utilized the
, tags on your page (we’ll talk more about this on a future post). 2. Use the built-in keyword tool in the Adwords editor to help you choose keywords and keyword phrases. Keyword phrases will help you target your audience since it puts the word in context. For example, if you’ve seen the Bing commercials, keywords alone can drop you in a search having nothing to do with your business. “Did you get the tickets for Hawaii?” “Tickets: How to beat a traffic ticket.” Keyword phrases like, “airline tickets for Hawaii” in the search and on your campaign (if you were selling tickets to Hawaii) would have yielded much better search results. 3. Create ad copy for each keyword phrase, and create a link with your keyword phrase embedded. For example, let’s say you have a used car lot. You may want to choose the keyword phrase, “Buying a Used Car” and place it in your Google Adword Campaign. Then, you may craft your ad copy as follows: Buying a Used Car Contact Our Experts When Buying a Used Car www.usedcars.com/buying_a_used_car 4. Make sure you optimize your ad copy with calls to action, and test ads to ensure you are using the most effective campaigns. 5. Experiment with Exact Match or Keyword Phrase Match to see which setting is most effective for your campaign. 6. Don’t just choose keywords showing the highest traffic volume, you will most likely have a broad term (like, cars) which only casual searchers or researchers are using; not purchasing. Select transaction based keyword phrases (like, buying cars). 7. Negative keywords should be thought about and used in your campaign. You don’t want to pay for clicks from audiences not interested in your product. For example, while looking for an online booking engine, the same ad kept coming up for me, “Quality Used Engines.” It was comical, but not so much for the business owner who had to pay for this faux pas. 8. Geotargeting – if you are a local proprietor, you may want to ensure users finding your ad are in the local area. It makes little sense for a bakery in Long Island to advertise to a bride in Fairbanks, Alaska. You have the ability in Google Adwords to target by city(ies), or by a radius in a map. This is a great feature and helps you target your audience even further down. Remember, the name of the game is: Conversion. You not only want to get traffic to your site, but you want to get customers to your site. A well crafted Google Adword campaign will help get you there.
When I was younger, the word ‘Twit’ was reserved for those lacking in intellectual prowess. Now, ‘Twit’ is a word used for a 140-character word update on the highly popular Twitter network. And if you don’t know the word as a marketer, you had better learn it fast.
I have set up a couple accounts on Twitter for some clients to inform their customers of upcoming events, or to advertise specials. But, I had not put together a Twitter account for my company, Evolve Communications Group until today – http://www.twitter.com/evolvecomgroup.
It isn’t surprising to me that I have waited so long to do this myself, you know the saying, and “a cobbler’s children have no shoes.” But, a study done by the American Marketing Association at the beginning of this year found that only 3.4% of marketers use Twitter. I found that a bit surprising considering the prolific use of the social networking site. We are pretty busy people, and we are skeptical about the latest trends which come on strong and fizzle out quick. Although, Twitter doesn’t look like it is going away anytime soon, therefore at least set up an account to experiment with and learn.
Here are some rules to guide you, and if you follow me on the Twitter page, I will keep updating as I learn more:
1. Update regularly. Followers get bored and frustrated with Tweets that do not provide fresh content. You may even get some negative feedback, so if you want to go at this, make sure you schedule some time to update your 140 characters at least weekly.
2. You are a business, or are representing a business, make sure your content is professional and of interest to your followers. I chose some people to follow because they were in admirable marketing positions, yet I was surprised to see some of the Tweets were a little mundane. It may help you to be found in searches to update frequently, but you don’t want to damage the brand.
3. My Twitter page is generic right now, but within a day or two, I plan to have the page branded. You may want to take the time to brand before announcing it is out there. You are limited on what you can do (change the colors, background, put on a logo), but I saw some pretty decent things done by other companies.
4. Make sure to place a Twitter logo and link on your website. I have used Twitter widgets with clients. The widget has a running update of all the Twitter posts that show on the page. This gives the users on the site a taste of the type of information they will get if they choose to follow.
5. This is a mistake I made right off – each Twit should direct the followers to your site. I use http://www.tinyurl.com to create URLs to the main site. For instance, my client http://www.luxuryvacationpartners.com has a Twitter which announces travel specials and the URL directs them to the page with all of the details about that particular special. We want them on the page – not just to follow us – so make sure you use this feature with every post.
6. Don’t rely on Twitter, Facebook, etc. to encompass your entire e-marketing strategy. There are many facets to the ever changing field of e-marketing. Utilize social networking in concert with your banner ad campaign, Google Adwords, website, email marketing, and traditional print marketing tools. Think about it, CNN and Ashton are well known outside of the Twitter-sphere, and you need to be as well.
I have seen many neat and entertaining interactive applications on company websites. Some of the programs are so fun for the user they become viral - the point of most of these apps - and thus the company gains what we marketers call "greater brand awareness." But, before you jump on the web application band wagon, make sure your glimmer doesn't fail to give users a clear idea about the company, or the call to action.
Recently, I was asked to create a couple of "games" for a financial company. The only direction from them was to make sure people would want to play. I would add to the direction "and it doesn't detract from the company brand, it allows us to showcase one product or service, and the user wants to continue on to the main site, or sign up for our newsletter, or some other call to action happens."
Web application programming doesn't come cheap, so companies must keep the direction I added in the previous description on the fore-front of the project. For instance, a local newspaper wants to develop a web application program because they see competitors and other companies doing it. The consultant they have hired comes up with a newspaper boy throwing all of his papers to all the houses without breaking a window or landing on the roof. It is mildly entertaining, but what does it accomplish?
Now let's add some marketing finesse to the program, the user registers on the site to keep their score in the newspaper game while agreeing to be on a mailing list. This would increase the company's database. Add to this scenario the last newspaper thrown opens up and exposes the day's headlines which are clickable and now we have database growth and possible hits to the main site. We can ratchet this up by ensuring the look and feel of the game mimics the brand established by the newspaper, and the company logos are static in the users' viewing window. This increases the brand awareness of the newspaper with anyone who chooses to play the game, and it doesn’t detract from the established brand of the company.
