Yesterday I visited my local independent bookstore, the Regulator, down on 9th Street in Durham, hoping to see some copies of AdWords For Dummies on the shelves.

I haven’t been to a bookstore since AdWords For Dummies was released, so I was kind of nervous. Luckily, there were two copies in the store, so I didn’t make a scene. And my 11-year-old daughter dragged me away before I could start asking store patrons if they wanted my autograph.

What makes this experience blog-worthy is the location of the book. As you can see in the photo, it’s prominently displayed next to - Your Career in Nursing.

Now, all issues of quality and content aside, which book looks more visually appealing? It’s the nursing book, right? Because you can see the entire front cover. Me, you just get a spine. Two spines. Right next to iWoz, the book by the Apple founder nobody remembers.

Now, in a chain bookstore that sort of placement would never be accidental. The books that show more skin generally pay for the privilege, and for some reason Wiley was not willing to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars to get special cardboard displays of AdWords For Dummies in every Borders and Barnes & Noble in the English-speaking world. In this case, I suspect the stocking clerk thought the cover was nicer, or maybe figured that since everyone in Durham is involved in health care one way or another ("Durham, City of Medicine"), the nursing book would be a hotter sell.

You get a similar effect on the Google search results page (SERP, we’ll call it except at the dinner table where that kind of language would be rude.) The organic results grab some text off your page. Google decides what to show. Look at a sample organic result on the keyword adwords consultant:

The headline is fine - probably his title tag. But look at the text Google has chosen. Not very compelling. Probably not the first thing Brian wants you to know about him if you’re looking for a consultant. Now look at a typical paid listing:

Much more targeted message, even though it’s considerably shorter. The moral of the story: your AdWords ad is the spine of your book. Your organic ad (if you can get it and keep on SERP page 1) is like a more or less random page of your book. Make sure your spine sells enough to get the searcher to click and pull your ad off the shelf.

A little personal productivity experiment here. I have a free account with jott.com, which allows me to speak into my cell phone and have my words transcribed into text messages and sent to me, other folks’ email addresses, or my blog in this case. Wanna see/hear it?

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been playing around with Facebook at the urging of my friend Sherman Hu, creator of the popular WordPress Tutorials. Here’s my "Facebook for Dummies" question and Sherman’s prompt and helpful reply:

Howie’s Question: Since I joined the 2 groups you invited me to, I’ve been inundated with "friends" requests from people I don’t know. What should I do? How do I think about the social networking phenomenon so I can use it to my advantage without pretending relationships that don’t exist?

Read the rest of this entry »

A question from a subscriber in the speaking/info-products business:

"How do I manage multiple websites (multiple products) and link them together in the most strategic - and profitable/productive - way?"

In the old days (circa Spring 2006), having lots of mini-sites was a good strategy. Register the domain names with different registrars, host them on different servers, link them all to each other, and keep churning them out to create your own happy little web-ring.

Trouble is, mini-sites tend to get the cold shoulder from Google these days. Too much salesy-ness, not enough content, and virtually no "authority."

The Google Slap of summer 2006, along with subsequent Slaps that continue to this day, penalized non-relevant and non-authoritative sites by increasing their minimum bids to up to 100 times the bids of the best sites. Instead of a dime a click, folks were paying ten bucks.

You can keep your mini-sites, but don’t use them for Google landing pages. Use them for two other functions:

1. Testing URLs

If you have product-specific URLs, they might convert better than your main site. For example, www.free-lead-generation-course.com is more descriptive and benefit-laden than askhowie.com). You can use the mini-site URL as long as you forward the page to your "authority site."

2. Experimenting with conversion from traffic sources other than search

You may want to try things that Google doesn’t reward or allow, like pop-ups, flash sites, and other things. Remember, if you send offline traffic to your site, you can do whatever you like on it.

But if you intend to drive search engine traffic (paid and/or organic), then spend the time to turn your main site into an authoritative source of information on your topic. Remember that inbound links are the things that make Google go "ahhh," and create a site that other Web sites will link to as a service to their readers.

Google AdWords is the best place on the web to begin your advertising adventure. It’s quick and easy to setup, allows for instant split testing, and provides incredibly powerful and detailed feedback to help you optimize the three M’s of marketing: your Market, your Message, and the Media conduit between the two.

But don’t stop there. According to the Associated Press, the popular social networking site Digg has just replaced AdWords with Microsoft’s AdCenter as their advertising vendor. Facebook has also opted for Microsoft, which means you should seriously consider getting an AdCenter account to increase your reach if you currently are having success with Google’s content network.

Also check out up-and-coming Miva.com - check out Dave Taylor’s excellent Attachment Parenting Blog for examples of Miva and AdWords ads on the same site. And there’s the old standby, Yahoo Search, that may one day get its act together and become user friendly.

As wonderful as AdWords is, if it’s your only source of traffic, you’re sitting on a one-legged stool. And one-legged stools have a tendency to topple, and you don’t want to think about where that one leg goes if you’re still sitting on it…

According to Herbert Spencer, English philosopher, political theorist and lead singer for the Social Darwins, "The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools."

Nowhere is this more true than planet earth, and AdWords in particular.

19th century department store magnate John Wanamaker is credited with having said, "I know half my advertising is a waste of money. I just don’t know which half."

With AdWords, you can find out to the keyword, to the web page, to the ad, which ones are making you money and which aren’t. You can bid precisely to get the optimal position. You can discover that you shouldn’t advertise on Saturday afternoons, or in Wichita during college football games, or on any searches that contain the word "emanuensis."

You can discover all these things by setting up conversion tracking and analytics, creating and automating reports, and studying them on a regular basis.

Chapter 14 of AdWords For Dummies covers Conversion Tracking and Reports, and Chapter 15 features a wonderful primer on Analytics. (I know it’s wonderful because most of the content was provided by Timothy Seward and his merry band from ROI Revolution.) Until you’re munching on marketing feedback, you’re undoubtedly more of a fool than you need to be.

I recently received the lamest postcard from Verizon Wireless, my cell phone provider. It showed three of their latest cell phones - the Blackberry 8830 World Edition, and the Motorola MOTOKRZR and MOTOSLVR - and explained the features and benefits of each phone.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t judge a pedestrian promotion like that so harshly, but of course, this is still the week of the iPhone.

Motorola announced second quarter losses last week, as investors are calling for the head of CEO Edward J. Zander. Sales of Blackberries and Nokias are flat. Margins are razor-thin (or is that RAZR-thin?).

And Apple, a company that had never tried to compete in the cell phone market, has just redefined the entire industry with its revolutionary, or well-designed and well-marketed, iPhone.

And you’re telling me you’ve found an AdWords market too competitive to compete in?

If you wanted to name a highly competitive market in which the major players are all brand names, huge companies with millions of dollars in R & D scrambling mightily to produce the latest and greatest, cell phone manufacturing would be a hard one to beat. You might think these companies would be experts at giving consumers exactly what they want.

Uh-uh, apparently.

It turns out that everybody pretty much hates their cell phones. The way they look, the complicated interface, the unnecessary features, the features that weren’t included, etc. etc. etc.

You can’t really blame the cell phone makers, when consumers can be so irrational, can you?

And then along comes Apple, with a completely different vision of the relationship of the human to her or his technology. And now everybody wants one, despite the well-publicized limitations (including molasses-in-January web connection speeds and a spotty-at-best AT&T wireless network).

Now, I’m not suggesting you pick the most competitive market you can find and invent something crazy just to see if you can win market share. But you can use AdWords to drive qualified traffic to powerful surveys that will tell you, if you do them correctly, exactly what your market is and isn’t currently getting from existing vendors.

And I can almost guarantee that your competitors aren’t doing that. Because it’s harder than split testing, harder than keyword research, and harder than peel and stick.

And that "harder" gap is precisely why it’s so powerful. If you want to achieve things your competitors aren’t achieving, you have to be willing to do things they can’t or won’t do.

For over 15 hours of detailed audio instruction in the AdWords to Onine Survey method of market domination, visit www.UltimateAdWordsResearch.com.

And if you like it, let me know. Call me from your iPhone.

The other day my wife and son were reading Tomie de Paola’s wonderful children’s book Strega Nona, an Italian retelling of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice story. In this version, Big Anthony comes to work for Strega Nona and overhears her incantation over her magic pasta pot. The result: he learns the spell for endless pasta making, memorizing the chant to turn the pot off, but because he is hiding, he misses the visual accompaniment to the "stop-the-pot" spell: blowing three kisses.

The pasta pot produces relentlessly, threatening the whole town, until Strega Nona returns and solves the problem by invoking the correct words and gestures. (Sorry for the spoiler.)

Online marketing is a lot like a magic pasta pot.

Big Anthony see a competitor’s ad running for several weeks, and naturally makes the assumption that they’re making money.

He visits their landing page (by typing in the URL, of course, since it wouldn’t be fair to make them pay for your competitive research) and see their front end offer. A $39 widget. A $19 ebook. A $3500 seminar. Whatever.

Big Anthony assumes that he understands their business model, and so copies it. But somehow the numbers don’t turn out right. He spends $100 on clicks for every $25 in sales. He’s going broke fast by emulating what he sees.

Keep Your Eye on the Back End

Big Anthony’s mistake, of course, was assuming that what he could perceive was all there was. Blowing three kisses was invisible, and so is the value-exchange that takes place between merchant and customer following the initial sale. His competitor may also be working with a negative ROI on the front end, and making it up with a high priced upsell, or a series of emails promoting affiliate programs, or a robust continuity program.

If you’re serious about emulating your successful competitors, then you must become their customer. Pay for the privilege of watching the whole spell, so you don’t end up drowing in spaghetti like Big Anthony.

This week I’m selling a refrigerator on my local Raleigh-Durham Craigslist. It’s a chance for me to practice my marketing and copywriting, in a marketplace that doesn’t know me, trust me (a used appliance salesman!), or like me. Plus it’s highly competitive - I’m writing this at 10:30am and there are already 5 new posts up today for the search term "fridge":

Jul-11   GE Side by Side Fridge - $800 (Clayton) <<household items

 Jul-11   Need a small dorm room refrigerator? - $100 (Raleigh) <<furniture

 Jul-11   Will Go Fast….Refriigerator - $400 (north raliegh) <<household items

 Jul-11   Upright FREEZER!!! - $175 (TRIANGLE) <<household items

 Jul-11   STAINLESS STEEL FRIDGE!!!!!!!!!!! - $300 (raleigh) <<general

Here’s my listing title, from yesterday:

 Jul-10   Amana Bottom-Freezer Refrigerator - Quiet, Good Condition - $250 (Durham) pic <<household items

The first thing I did was research the competition so I could price my fridge competitively. As you can see from the photo below, it’s smack in the middle of my damn living room. If I can’t get rid of it in a day or two, I’m going to start using it as a bookcase. So I’m looking for a quick sale at a reasonable price. I thought I could get $300 maybe, so in the interest of a quick sale I dropped $50 to make it a no-brainer.

Second, I added two important benefits to the title: quiet, and good condition. When buying a used appliance, folks often want to know if it works and if it sounds like a construction site. Compare my addition to the exclamation point festival from a couple of the competing posts. Which is more likely to compel a click?

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday watching my son E’s karate class, the sensei (Japanese for "guy who can beat the crap out of me without even trying") was teaching the Yellow Belt class how to punch with energy. "Don’t punch at the target," he explained. "Punch through the target." And then he demonstrated the difference, which was (forgive the pun) striking.

Assistant Sensei Robinson (who I also must remember to stay on the nice side of) used the analogy of parking a truck in front of a building versus driving into the building.

While the destructive image may not float my boat, it sure made an impression on the kids’ punches for the rest of the class. They struck and blocked with more focus, energy, and commitment.

Seth Godin’s version of the USP

In his recent book, The Dip, Seth Godin redefined the Unique Selling Proposition (USP) in a powerful way: Be the best in the world.

In online marketing, this is what Perry Marshall calls "taking your customer off the market."

In dating, this is called marriage.

If you’re taking the trouble to get an AdWords account, choose some keywords, write some ads, set up some landing pages, and create some sales funnel, why do it if you can’t defend it from poachers?

Being the best in the world (in the world you define as your niche, not the entire intergalactic thing) is the only reliable shield against competition.

Find out what your market wants and how they want it. Creatively serve them like they’ve never been served before. (The bar here is so low it’s laughable - a follow-up phone call of thanks, an extra bonus, an email that shares rather than pitches.)

AdWords, and online marketing in general, is getting more and more competitive each day. Timothy Ferriss’s book The Four Hour Work Week is #15 on Amazon right now, and it teaches people how to live like a billionaire with an AdWords-based business. Ya’ think certain markets are about to be overrun by newbies?

And then some joker has to go and write AdWords For Dummies, which in my opinion is a totally irresponsible sharing with the masses of very powerful strategies - oh, wait, that’s me. Never mind.

So if you’re going to enter a market, don’t settle for ordinary. It doesn’t last. Punch through, not to. Ki-ya!!