A reader whose entire online business consists of a $20 book on a health topic wants to know how she can compete, AdWordsily, against big pharmaceutical companies bidding on the same keywords.
My answer: Read the rest of this entry »
A reader reaches out for help:
What does it mean if Google AdWords says your average position is 5.8, when in fact, it’s not? When I type in the keyword [actual keyword omitted], it doesn’t show on the first several pages of results. What’s the scoop?
My response:
I spoke this morning with Imal Wagner, my publicist, about ways to get online and offline PR for any size business.
I have to admit, when I hired Imal to sell loads of books for me, I just did what she said, showed up for interviews, and didn’t pay much attention to what she was doing and how she did it.
So this 25 minute call was my attempt to get up to speed. AdWords is great, but when the keywords are too competitive or expensive, or when you’re just starting out on a small budget, it’s nice to have ways to get traffic that just require focus, empathy and creativity, without the credit card.
In this interview, Imal shares her expertise about becoming an "A-list" blogger in your industry, pitching the media on your stories and interviews, and getting booked on radio shows.
Pay special attention to the story about the kid who was living in his parents’ basement and was trying to figure out how to pay for his education. If Imal’s methods worked for him, they can work for the rest of us as well.
Imal’s been working with high-profile clients for a long time, and today she’s opening up her practice to folks who want to learn how to do their own PR, rather than hire it out. Rather than send you to a long sales letter about her 12-week group coaching program, I invite you to email Imal (say that 5 times fast!) to set up a conversation to determine if her program is right for you.
You can reach her at imalwagner AT gmail DOT com.
Oh, and here are the links Imal mentioned about where to find radio stations:
wsradio.com - compendium of Internet Radio Shows
radio-locator.com - searchable list of every radio station in the US and Canada
I recently found a great example of an opt-in form, from Remember the Milk (an online to-do list service). Here’s a short video showing what I love about it:
What other web pages have great opt-in forms? Post your favorites to comments.
According to today’s New York Times, retailers spending money on expensive display ads are receiving less bang for their buck than advertisers using text ads (i.e. AdWords). Ironically, the article appeared below a banner ad for Grand Auto Theft:
And just to make sure the expensive ad was extra-annoying, it kept unfolding over the article:
The good news? Most big companies, like the ones mentioned in the Times article, still are working off the old TV brand-building mindset online. For smart advertisers, the downturn in online advertising is an opportunity - cheaper clicks, less competition, and more chances to be friendly and helpful, rather than in-your-face and annoying.
I discovered the McGurk Effect the other day.
Actually, my friend Sammy told me about it, and I looked it up on youtube, which is almost the same thing.
The McGurk Effect: if you listen to a recording of someone repeating the sound "Bah Bah Bah Bah" while watching a synchronized video of them mouthing the sound "Gah Gah Gah Gah", you will actually hear the sound "Dah Dah Dah Dah."
If you want to confirm for yourself the reality of the McGurk Effect, search for it on youtube.
Now, I’m anticipating three possible reactions to this summary of scientific progress:
1. "That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever encountered. Where can I learn more?"
2. "Big deal."
3. "Why are you wasting my time on this nonsense?"
Give me a minute, OK? There’s a lesson in here somewhere. Let me see…
When you create marketing campaigns, you are communicating based on a set of assumptions about your market:
My question is, how many of these assumptions are you consciously considering, and how many are based on observable evidence as opposed to pre-judgment?
You see, if you write about your product as if your prospect already knows what it does, you may be a self-inflicted victim of a Marketing McGurk. You’re saying, "Here’s a big discount on my Magrouple-OpMart-WangChickle," and your prospect is hearing, "Dah Dah Dah."
Because your message is incongruent in context, just as the lips forming one sound and making another are incongruent in their context.
If you assume your prospect connects your solution with their problem, you may be McGurking yourself as well. You can treat sinus problems with chiropractic? Really? Acupuncture can help with eczema? The problems you can solve may be old hat to you, but your prospects need education and explanation and repetition to make the connections you take for granted.
Ken McCarthy understands the power of avoiding Marketing McGurkisms. He just announced the faculty and program of the 2008 System Seminar (Yes, I’m one of the faculty members, which entitles me to attend a pizza party on Sunday, June 1, not to brag but there you have it :)
And rather than assume that you would recognize the names and expertise of the presenters (most are not "gurus", but simply hard-working and clever practitioners and educators, so you probably won’t recognize them), Ken took the entire System 2008 program and made it available right now.
http://program.thesystemseminar
So if you’re not familiar with Nancy Andrews, Richard Mouser, Lon Naylor, or any of the other 22 faculty members; if you don’t know that Nancy Andrews has cracked the SEO code, that Richard Mouser used simple testing tactics to turn his money-losing online store into a huge success, that Lon Naylor is the expert in helping folks
use screen capture video tutorials to grow their businesses - you will after browsing the program guide.
Ken knows that by stepping out of the way of the product, and letting it sell itself, without hype or fancy marketing footwork, he’s allowing his prospects to gather information in their own way, to make an informed decision about whether System 2008 is appropriate for them.
If you’ve read AdWords For Dummies, you know that I credit Ken with being my Internet marketing mentor, as well as my first copywriting teacher. The most important thing he taught me is this:
Don’t try to be a copywriter. Just explain what you’ve got and why anyone should care - and then just get out of the way.
In other words, don’t mess around with mystical, manipulative tactics that are supposed to magically vacuum money out of your prospects’ wallets while they grin stupidly in a hypnotic trance.
Just talk to people. Be interesting. Be respectful of their time. Share value. Make your pitch. And shut up.
You can download the System 2008 program here:
http://program.thesystemseminar
If the program convinces you to join me in Chicago on May 30-June 1, I’d be delighted to connect with you - just give me a shout. If you read through the program and decide that it’s not for you, then that’s the right outcome.
No McGurks here - either it’s the thing to do, or it isn’t. Either way, you’ll broaden your perspective on Internet marketing tactics and strategies simply by browsing the program.
A reader asks:
Do you believe Affiliate Marketing is a reasonable and economical starting point for someone trying to learn adwords and is it possible to be able to promptly track the results of ROI and conversion rates? Everything I read in Adwords is tied to having control over my own website which obviously I wouldn’t have as an affiliate.
Here are my thoughts:
This question is like asking me if I think it’s possible for a 5′10" 43-year-old guy to train enough to dunk a basketball if he currently has a vertical leap that wouldn’t clear a soda can. (Not thinking of anyone in particular, mind you.)
Yes, I absolutely believe that success is possible in both cases. But I’ve proven myself quite unwilling (so far) of doing the work that would get me to either goal.
I know some folks who make a good living at affiliate marketing. They know their markets, they test constantly, they track every traffic source for ROI conversion down to the keyword level, and they constantly scout out high-converting merchants. They manage their bids with alertness that would put your cat to shame. And they become brilliant at several forms of traffic generation - not just AdWords, not just article marketing, not just SEO.
Here’s the thing about affiliate marketing: because it seems so easy, it’s incredibly competitive. There’s the lure of easy money with no work and no customers and no website.
Not only that, the pure affiliate business model has structural downsides: you do all the front end heavy lifting of lead acquisition without any of the back end of long-term customer relationship. Also, affiliate programs change, Google changes, companies go out of business - so make sure if you want to be serious that you create a multi-legged stool, for traffic generation (not just AdWords) and affiliate merchants (not just one or two).
That said, affiliate marketing is great for supporting your entry into a marketplace in two significant ways: Read the rest of this entry »
I send a survey to AdWords For Dummies readers a few days after they sign up for the Gold Key section of the askHowie.com website. I do this to find out what questions people have, what level of internet marketing and AdWords savvy they possess, what additional products and services I have a chance of selling to my list, etc.
One of the questions is, "If you could spend 30 minutes on the phone with me, what would you ask?"
Usually, I hear things like, "How to get more clicks… how to choose a market… which tools to use…" Stuff like that.
I just received an anonymous survey response with a really great answer, that I have to share:
Survey: If you could spend 30 minutes on the phone with me, what would you ask?
Respondent: How are you?
Reminds me of a line in one of my daughter’s favorite books, Indigo’s Star, by Hilary McKay:
History test question: "What would you say to Tutankhamen if you bumped into him on the street?"
Student’s answer: "Sorry."
So, I write about this because it amuses me, but I’m now casting about for a marketing lesson to wrap around the story, so you don’t feel like I’ve wasted your time.
Maybe it’s this: most of the other 105 completed surveys have given me an insight into my market that makes it very easy for me to connect with readers. It’s very hard to create from a blank sheet of paper. It’s fairly easy to answer someone’s questions (when you know the answers, that is).
We all know that we need to constantly create new and valuable content to compete for attention online. Yet most of us don’t feel like writers (me included, at least 80% of the time), and wonder how in the world we’ll find anything new to write about our industry.
Just find a way to systematically collect your prospects’ most pressing questions, and you’ll have fodder for more writing than you’ll have time for.
I use SurveyGizmo.com - their basic service is free, their interface is simple and intuitive, and I like the color scheme of their website (I know, I’m shallow).
Survey responses will also give you invaluable data about your AdWords account - which words to bid on, what to say in your ads, etc. Nothing like knowing the mind of your market if you want to make them happy.
And to the anonymous survey respondent, if you’re reading this:
"I’m fine, thanks. And you?"
Not to brag, but I just created my first mobile web page. If you’ve ever tried to access the web from a cell phone (other than an iPhone, I suppose), you know how annoyingly slow it can be, and how difficult to navigate.
You can create pages on your own site that are optimized for cell phones rather than computers, but I sure don’t have the technical skill to do that myself. I could learn (and I expect a flurry of emails from programmers telling me how easy it is), but now, thanks to Google, I don’t have to.
Google has rolled out a mobile business pages wizard that allowed me to create a listing for cell phone searches in about 30 seconds (it would have been quicker if I had memorized my address and phone number). I can share my headine, phone number, address, 1000-character description, payment methods accepted, and business hours. And Google hosts my page on their own googlepages.com/m domain, which presumably gives it extra SEO mojo, for whatever that’s worth.
I’ve been thinking recently about the key distinctions between my AdWords students who’ve had great success, and those who have continually struggled. Here’s a big one, relevant to this discussion: the ones who have prospered have found a way to make one-click changes to their sales processes.
In contrast, the strugglers have to go through dozens of steps to make a change. Whenever I hear someone complaining about the unresponsiveness of expense of their webmaster, I just know we’ve got a problem. But when someone says, "OK, I’ll get that taken care of by tomorrow - it’ll just take an email," I smile and expect great results.
Now that Google has rendered the creation of a mobile web page UFO ("User Freaking Obvious"), if your business lends itself to being found by hungry cell phone searchers, you have no excuse not to go try one.
adwords, googlepages, mobile business page, mobile ppc adA reader asks: Is it worth learning Google API or does the editor and online tools cover all the things you need?
My answer: It depends what you need. Unless you’re a software developer, you don’t really need the API. The Google desktop editor does most things you’d want, and you have the report center for the rest.
The API - which is the technical term for "a wormhole in time and space that allows cybergeniuses unfathomable access to the bowels of a big database" - can help programmers create custom interfaces that allow the data to become more useful, intuitive, and shareable.
A couple of years ago, I - and by this I mean "people other than me with whom I collaborate who can actually write software" - wrote a piece of software that used the AdWords API to automate split testing of ads. It was a fantastic idea. In those days, API access was free and extensive.
Shortly after we released the software, to much fanfare of our own making, Google started charging for API access. We calculated that our $20/month program would cost the average use $10k/month in Google API charges. Clearly not worth it.
Shortly after we did that math, Google did us a favor by crippling API access to most of the data we needed. So it was back to the drawing board for another year.
The happy ending: we’ve (again, I mean "they’ve") re-introduced the split testing tool in another format - as an automated reader of the free report you can create in the Reports section. So now WinnerAlert.com actually works (and works very well, our customers tell us).* But not via the AdWords API.
So there’s a long answer to a short question. That’s what happens when you hit a nerve. I’m better now. Really. (Sniff.)
*Try it free for 14 days at www.WinnerAlert.com.