The King Seeks an Heir

Once upon a time there was a king who had three daughters. As he was nearing retirement age and had spent his entire reign commissioning ballads about his greatness and generosity, he had not done much succession planning, and now had become somewhat desperate.

Which daughter should he choose to rule the land after him?

He decided to set his three daughters a task – whichever of them performed it best would win his undying admiration and the chance to move into the best room in the castle after he lit out for Boca Raton.

Here was the task he set: 

"In 4 weeks, bring me the sweetest peach in all the land." Read the rest of this entry »

Beekeeper Sue Hubbell writes in A Book of Bees:

" For 15 years now I have worked on such familiar terms with the bees that when I see them down the river, or listen to them at night, I know exactly what they are doing. I now can understand a little bit, though not nearly as much as I thought I did the first year I worked with them. They have forced me to realize that my senses and powers of observation are very limited.

"My city friends know well enough what I do here during the season; it may seem strange work to them, but it is undisputedly work; what I do during the slack times is harder for them to figure out: "organizing my ignorance" is perhaps as good a description as any."

Marketers have a lot in common with beekeepers; when we first start working with our market we think we know a lot more about them than we really do. The longer we engage with prospects, the better we get at figuring out how to speak to them and how to serve them, but we also realize how much we still don't know.

It's ironic, perhaps, that our increasing wisdom highlights our ignorance. But it's by exploring those places of ignorance, those little nooks and crannies where we don't know what we need to know, that we develop true deep market insight. Read the rest of this entry »

If you haven't been following Google's whirlwind evolution since the publication of Google AdWords For Dummies less than a year ago, you might be surprised what's new. This cute and very clear video gives you the lay of the land in about 75 seconds:

Help Me Help You

Which of these models are you most interested in learning more about? Take this quick poll and I'll find guest experts who can show you how to advertise profitably and painlessly with  the new models:

At the 2010 System Seminar in Chicago earlier this month, the rock star presenter was Mike Marshall, SEO Expert Extraordinaire. His presentation was nothing like I've ever seen or heard about SEO before, and I've been in this business since 2001. 

Mike showed us how to eliminate the months of trial and error testing that most SEO folks (agencies and entrepreneurs) go through to climb to the top of Google.

When I discovered that we were neighbors, I enticed him to visit and record an interview with me. For three selfish reasons:

1. I wanted to be one to sharing this great stuff with you. When you listen to it, you will go, "Wow, Howie, thanks for sharing this great stuff with me." You will white list my emails, click my links, and come to my workshops.
2. I wanted to help Mike promote his NC Search Engine Academy workshop (May 24-28, 2010). When Mike sees how this recording helps him fill the workshop, he will go, "Wow, Howie, thanks for helping me fill this workshop." He will teach me his SEO tricks and help me rescue my sites from Google's remainder shelves.
3. I wanted a reason to clean my cesspool of an office, and having a visitor is the best motivator for clutter removal.

So without further ado, here's a link to the interview in MP3 format. You can right-click to download it to your iPod or iPad or iPed (the new iPod for cyclists?) or iPeed (never mind) or iPood (really never mind) or even your desktop.

Mike Marshall Bends Your Mind About SEO

Here's a direct link (not an affiliate link, that's how serious I am about my three selfish reasons being sufficient) to Mike's Search Engine Academy workshop:

NC Search Engine Academy

Do me a favor: After listening to the interview, please post your thoughts to comments on this post. I'm really curious whether other people are as amazed by Mike's insights as I am.

In the hilarious (and – be warned – raunchy) video I'll share at the bottom of this post, Axis of Awesome goes through a medley of pop songs with the exact same 4-chord structure. From The Beatles' 'Let it Be" to Jason Mraz's "I'm Yours" to Banjo Patterson's "Waltzing Matilda" to Toto's "Africa," it's amazing how many different – and great – tunes can come from this one simple structure.

Marketing, like music, can seem to be a highly complex activity. But like music, marketing follows basic rules and principles. When people fail at marketing, it's generally not because they don't have incredible technical skills, or they aren't hypnotically persuasive, or they haven't bought the latest course on using Twitter or Facebook or Gazoomba (made that one up, as far as I know). 

Instead, people fail mostly for ignoring the basic 4-chord structure.

Here it is:

1. Market – Who's your customer? What do they want? Where can you find them? 

2. Message – What can you say to convince them to buy?

3. Medium – Where can you reach them predictably and affordably?

4. Money – Can you make a profit on the transaction, including the marketing costs?

Everything else about selling stuff to people is an advanced technique. I love advanced techniques, but only when they're built on solid foundations.

Free Pre-Camp Checkmate Training Series – a Solid Foundation

Sign up below for the Camp Checkmate training series – a 6-week online course designed to promote Camp Checkmate Chicago, held June 10-11, 2010. In the pre-camp training, you'll discover how to find and read the mind of your Ideal Customer, out-position your competitors, and become the Obvious Choice to your market. 

It's powerful – has to be if I want to convince you of the value of a live 2-day workshop – and it's free.

Sign up here:

And now, Axis of Awesome with the only four chords you'll ever need:

Sometimes you can do all the right things with AdWords, like deleting expensive keywords that don't lead to sales, and discover that your best efforts have actually killed your sales.

What's going on, and what can you do about it? Read on… Read the rest of this entry »

Most people who've tried to grow their business with AdWords have given up in apparent failure. After struggling to understand the complicated interface, they finally get a campaign up and quickly see lousy results. They pay lots of money to Google and their sales don't increase at all.

They turn off the campaign, mutter something about another Internet scam, and go back to all the other ways of getting traffic that weren't sufficient before.

Why does this happen so frequently? And what can you do to avoid this gaping chasm of failure? Read the rest of this entry »

A reader asks:

I purchased your Google Adwords book and on page 54 at the bottom, you said to "click the approx avg search volume header to sort by average monthly search volume, from greatest to least", but I don't see this option on google's keyword tool. Is there something else I can click on to get the same results?

My response:

I'm lying in bed with a wrenched lower back, so the keyword I gravitate toward is "low back pain." Next time someone asks me a keyword question, I hope I respond with an example more like "ultra-marathoning over 40" ;)

Here's how you do it in the new Google Keyword Tool:

1. Enter your keyword and get a table of results:

2. Next to "Sorted by" at the top right, click the drop-down menu that currently shows "Relevance".

You'll see the whole menu, and then you can select the sort field:

Notification: Camp Checkmate Chicago: June 10-11, 2010

If you're doing keyword research, what do you do with all that research? How do you write compelling "Game Over" Ads based on all your insight and hard work?

Most instructions on market research tell you what to research and where to get the information, but now how to use that intel to create compelling marketing messages that make you the obvious choice to your ideal customers.

Camp Checkmate is the answer to that problem. Two days of high level workshop and mastermind, where you'll come away with your marketing done for you.

Read more: CampCheckmate.com

Quick heads-up: Registration is now open for Camp Checkmate Chicago, June 10-11, 2010. Two days of intense "Playshops" (fun workshops), quality time with me, Perry Marshall, and Glenn Livingston. Click to find out more (opens in a new window so you can keep learning about the Search Funnel Report on this page).

And now to the Search Funnel Report. Here's what Google has to say about it:

In a nutshell, here's the problem that the Search Funnel Report solves:

You run a keyword report and discover that a certain broad keyword gets lots of impressions, many clicks, and no conversions.

So you delete the keyword.

Then, next month, you realize that your sales are down, even for keywords that had done really well before. Keywords that weren't even in the same ad group or campaign as the one you deleted. Not only conversions, but clicks as well.

What the…?

"I'll Have the Usual"

Suppose you walk into your favorite diner tomorrow morning, go up to the counter and tell the short order cook, "I'll have the usual." Eight minutes later, you get the tall stack of banana pecan pancakes, three slices of bacon, wheat toast with orange marmalade, and a pot of English Breakfast tea.

Next week, you're traveling on business to an unfamiliar city. You find a diner that looks just like your favorite one, walk in, go up to the counter, and tell the short order cook, "I'll have the usual." The cook looks at you like you have three heads. 

Obviously, the words "I'll have the usual" don't have any magic power. They work at your diner only because of numerous previous interactions with the cook. They don't work where the same history isn't in place.

The Hidden Conversion Path

Your best converting keyword may be a version of "I'll have the usual." Suppose you sell digital cameras. Your money keyword might be "PowerShot 780SD". That's the click that brings the customer ready to buy. 

But suppose customers will buy from you only if they already have a history with you. Suppose they have to start buy searching for "digital camera" and then find your store. They don't buy, but they spend time looking. 

A couple days later, they search for "Canon cameras", based on information they got when they were on your site. They see your ad, but go instead to an organic listing that reviews Canon cameras.

The following week, they search for "PowerShot 780SD" as the camera they want, and they see your ad, click it, and place an order.

Until now, Google would tell you only that the keyword "PowerShot 780SD" led to a sale, and the keyword "digital camera" brought a bunch of tire kickers who never  bought anything. 

Based on that data, you might have deleted "digital camera" as an ROI-negative keyword, and never realized that keyword was an indispensable early stepping stone on the conversion path.

The Good/Bad News

Conversion tracking just got 300% more complicated. That's good news if you're willing to spend the time to understand and engage the new complexity. And bad news for those advertisers who would rather not pay attention to results, and just let Google optimize everything for them.

Of course, you can always hire an ROI-obsessed AdWords management agency to do this for you. (If you've been burned by agencies before, I feel your pain. Check out the agency that Kristie McDonald and I started in November: ThePPCagency.com.)

Quick and Dirty Online Research – Free Webinar Thursday 11 March 2010

Join me for a Camp Checkmate preview call Thursday, 11 March 2010 at 1:00pm EST, where I'll take you through a 30-minute exercise that will give you insight into what your market wants and isn't getting. 

You'll discover how to play the Google search results page like a 1955 Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 guitar, so that you can cut through the clutter and become the obvious choice for your market.

Full disclosure: this is a preview call for the Camp Checkmate live event coming up in Durham NC in 3 weeks, on April 1-2. Frankly, I've done a sucky job of promotion so far, so my plan is to entice you with my best stuff and then make you an offer you can't refuse. 

Click here to register for the webinar.