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Brad interviewed by Dr. Ralph Wilson

December 31, 2008

I’ve been a long time reader of the Wilson Web newsletter. Dr. Wilson and I did a quick video about quality score a couple months ago which was just published.

If you’re wondering why we’re laughing and seem to be moving quickly at times, it’s because we had just done the entire interview and found out that the tape wasn’t rolling. So, we were almost rehashing a conversation we’d just had in simpler terms. Overall, an enjoyable experience.

Don’t forget the factors that make up quality score.

You can see the entire video here: How to Improve Your AdWords Quality Score with Brad Geddes (6:55).

Friday Fun – What not to do on a website

December 19, 2008

These two sites are pretty self-explanatory. Everything you shouldn’t do in a website in two easy to see examples.

Usability? Readibility or Navigation?

Please turn the sound on, this site had me laughing for quite some time.

Businesses are confused by internet marketing – Can your business find the right product mix?

December 18, 2008

The Yellow Pages aren’t dead.

Small businesses are confused by search marketing.

Over 50% of small and midsize businesses fail to properly track successes (Source)

Who will empower reps to sell the full marketing package?

Will your company be the one that breaks the magic formula?

There are millions of dollars for both small agencies and large sales forces lying around just by helping small businesses.

Some Background

In 2005, I spoke at Pubcon on how search engines need to make changes to help local adoption. About half of my points have been implemented by the search engines. At that time, there wasn’t an ad display hierarchy system that examined the search intent (by keyword or property) to display ads. These suggestions were implemented:

• Stop showing national ads over local ads on local search intent queries
• Show local ads on local properties
• Better tools for local advertisers

In 2006, I spoke at SES Local in Denver about SME campaigns. I had two points to make:

• Fulfillment from aggregators had to be better: Most campaigns were being set up with 1 ad copy and 25 keywords due to technology and scale limitations (although, I’m proud to say LocalLaunch could do hundreds of ads and thousands of keywords for a single SME campaign).
• Search Engines needed to empower agencies. A small business doesn’t have to understand the inner workings of search marketing; they just have to believe in the power of it. While part of this responsibility falls on the sales force – the rest falls on the search engines. There’s a reason both manufacturers and dealers run ads – they’re complimenting each other.

Both of these points have improved – but are definitely not solved.

In 2007, I spoke at Google on the network effect of searchers to publishers to advertisers. Along the way I made several suggestions; of which 90% have now come to pass (Thank you AdWords Team).

While the network effect works well for non-local queries; the process is still breaking down at the local level.

Yellow Pages + Internet Yellow Pages + Search Engine Marketing

Throughout those years, I worked with some very smart sales trainers on selling the “Triple Play”, which is a combination of Internet Yellow Pages, Yellow Pages, and Print advertising. It was RHD’s future strategy; and was so believed in that RHD acquired Business.com.

Why sell all 3?

There’s not enough search for all local businesses. The Yellow Pages are still highly used. One should never lean on just one source of leads for their business. IYPs have fantastic conversion rates. The list goes on.

However, just like one should not just buy AdWords or just rely on SEO for all of their traffic; advertisers should diversify their traffic sources.

While we were selling the Triple Play; that doesn’t mean you need to sell print. You need to sell a combination of advertising mediums that make up most (if not all) of a company’s leads.

A company’s position should be: When our clients think of advertising – they think of us first.

You should be the gateway between your clients and their leads.

Do you want to be part of the marketing mix or do you want to be the marketing mix?

Where does that leave us today?

Print and Search Engines are highly used to find local data:

You can also look at this and not think just YP and Search. It’s where eyeballs currently lie. If you can put a business in front of enough (and the correct) eyeballs, then you can be the marketing mix.

According to the study, the first sources used are Search Engines (31%), Print Yellow Pages or White Pages (30%), Internet Yellow Pages Sites (19%) and Local Search Sites (11%). This represents a change from last year’s study, which ranked Print Yellow Pages first (33%), followed by Search Engines (30%).

Source

 

 

• 47% of consumers have used a search engine in the past 30 days, compared with 64% for print Yellow Pages
• Teens are almost equally likely to have used a search engine (52%) or the print Yellow Pages (47%) in the past 30 days
• Search engines were deemed the “most useful” of the eight key platforms tested; they rated highest in satisfaction for being a free service, providing the right amount of information quickly, acting as a trusted resource, and providing relevant results

Source

 

Businesses are confused by search engine marketing.

 

 

Source: Opus Research, AllBusiness.com (2008)

The study revealed that 59 percent of small businesses with Web sites don’t currently use paid search marketing, and of those, 90 percent have never even attempted it.

One quarter of respondents believe paid search marketing is too complex.

Twenty-one percent thought it would be too time-consuming.

Thirty-five percent felt they would need an agency to help set up a search marketing campaign.

Source

If we examine the numbers:

• 15% State lack of time. Translation – they need a 3rd party
• 19% State Internet not relevant. Translation – they haven’t heard an internet marketing product pitch that resonates with them, waiting for the proper 3rd party to come along.
• 7% Skeptical of effeteness. Translation – still waiting on the correct product to come along.
• 25% State Confusion. Translation – they need a 3rd party.

That means 66% of businesses which are confused by search engine marketing just need the right product and sales rep to come along.

 

Will your company be the one that breaks the magic formula?

The formula isn’t hard:

• Create marketing products that:
  • The business, executive team, and sales reps believe in.
  • Bring ROI to the customer
    • Will produce excellent renewal rates
  • Can be understood by the business
  • Can be understood by the sales reps
  • Can be measured to show tangible value
• Train sales reps to:
  • Use a need based analysis sales approach
    • Understand what the business needs
    • Determine which mix of products fits that need
    • Be able to sell multiple products if necessary. If you’re not a newspaper or Yellow Page company, you can still sell display, IYP, websites, local data inclusion, etc. While search marketing is sexy; all of the above venues can work for a company.
  • Understand the product
  • Believe in the products
  • Explain the products in simple terms
  • Training the sales reps is often undervalued – please make sure your reps have the proper training.
• Train your analysts to:
  • Understand search marketing
    • Understand other marketing avenues of your product (IYP, display, print, etc)
  • Understand the product (sales and analyst alignment are crucial)
  • Properly fulfill the product
  • Don’t use the ‘set and forget’ mentality
• Implement technology to:
  • Scale your business
  • Improve your product’s value
  • Showcase your product’s value to your clients

I could write another 20 pages about the formula, so this is the simplistic view.

 

Where does your business fit?

Small Businesses are confused about search marketing.

There is value in selling multiple products.

There is value in selling SEM (SEO + PPC).

There are millions of dollars on the table.

Is your company ready to help businesses?

If the answer is yes, good luck, there’s a lot of money sitting on the table waiting for the right product.

AdWords Editor Update – Now Showing Quality Score & First Page Bids

December 17, 2008

The AdWords Editor was recently updated; and now shows this information:

• Quality Score
• First Page Bids
• Keyword opportunities now shows data by location
• The volume column in the keyword opportunities tab now shows last month’s data
• Full release notes

It’s now easy to sort by quality score within the editor to see where you should stop making bid changes and do some quality score optimization work.

I also like the fact you can see a 1-10 number for advertiser competition within the search-based keywords research tool in the editor.

Caution before updating

At present, the only way to see minimum bid information is the an older version of the editor. The reason that’s useful is that the higher the minimum bid (especially over $1) the more likely the landing page was at fault. You might want to export your account into an excel file so that you can see cases where you might want to update your landing page over work on ad copy to keyword to landing page relevancy work.

Getting Things Done in a Communication Overload World

December 15, 2008

I recently bought my first BlackBerry, the Storm. Until all of my emails for an entire day were stored in a single place, I didn’t realize how many communication pieces I received in a single day. And yet, I manage to get things done in a communication overload world with just a few simple applications.

If your day looks like this (and this is what I’ve received from 6am-5pm today):

• 79 Facebook notifications
• 106 direct/reply twitter messages
  • No idea how many twitter messages I actually saw
• 112 personal emails
• 258 business emails
• 17 blog comments
• 11 forum emails
• 200+ IMs
• 50+ SMS txts
• Who knows how many new RSS, news, and other random items
• and 23 phone calls (but only 14 voice mails)

There’s a simple way to manage everything

First, use either GMail or Google Apps for Domains.

Secondly, use Firefox.

Third, install these Firefox extensions:

• GTD Inbox and then read the page about how to use it. It will help with prioritizing email
• Remember the Milk and sign up for an account while your at it. It will help with task management
• Better GMail2. It will assist with a more usable GMail account
• WiseStamp for your signature
• If you’d like a more custom GMail, you can use Greasemonkey or Stylish
• There are many other good Firefox add-ons, but the above will help with email management the most

Next, customize your GMail filters. By creating filters (or even aliases with GMail for domains) you can have items like news go into one label, and twitter into another one, etc – as long as they bypass the inbox and then only view those folders when you have time. With GMail you can also send yourself email that triggers filters.

Lastly, use the GMail labs features and enable the labs that will help you. I prefer the ‘default reply to all’; quicklinks, forgotten attachment detector, custom label colors (Red for next action, yellow for action, etc so it pairs with the GTDInbox priority list), and superstars.

Managing Your Work Flow

Go through your inbox and put a GTD Inbox filter (next action, action, someday, waiting on, etc) on each email and archive it. If it’s not due for a while, put it in either the action folder and use Remember the Milk to set a reminder when it’s due.  I also like using the superstars to ‘sub-label’ emails within action. Don’t forget with GTD Inbox you can send yourself personal emails and put them into categories as well.

Then…

• Go to the next action label
• Work on the items until its empty
• If you need a break, check your RSS feeds, twitter, Facebook, etc labels
• Check Remember the Milk to see what tasks you have due that day
• Go to the action box and see what needs to be moved to next action
• Go back to your inbox, prioritize the email you’ve received and archive it
  • Notice, we never went back to the inbox until we were ready. This is important for managing information overload.
• Start over again

Some Quick Tricks

• When you send an email to someone where you want a response, BCC yourself
• Label the BCC email ‘waiting on’ and archive
• At the end or beginning of each day, if you have emails that are in your ‘waiting on’ folder that you need responses to that day, send a quick reminder to the person. Since you’re forwarding the email you BCCed yourself on, they have the full context of the email so you don’t need to rewrite it again, just a quick forward and note as to a timeline when it will be completed (or something nicer if it’s a prospective client)

I also like using Vonage’s visual voice mail so that I receive a text of the voicemail message to determine where it fits into the priority list. I rarely answer the phone and instead prioritize responses (hence why with some people you get much faster responses via email than voicemail, such as myself).

Your Inbox has 0 Messages in It

Most of the time my inbox doesn’t hit the dream of 0 emails. However, it’s almost always under 30 emails.

Today’s social world is not about communication overload. While it’s easy to drown in a sea of emails and to-do list, the goals of productivity have not changed. It’s just about effectively managing time and expectations.

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