The Work Media Internet Marketing Blog

Allocating Your Advertising Budget: Think Before You Spend

2008-02-20T08:27:00.002-06:00

Think before you spend. That is today's lesson. We're talking about spending with regard to what you spend on advertising, especially online advertising. We have a large client who inquired about advertising on the front page of Yahoo!. Before we even looked into what it would cost, we knew this was a bad idea.

Yahoo! has massive reach. The home page gets nearly 2 billion impressions PER DAY. That is a lot of eyeballs. It's fairly analogous to advertising during the Super Bowl, both in terms of reach and expense. So yes, advertising on the front page of Yahoo! would give you an incredible amount of exposure and probably drive a lot of traffic to your web site.

But even if you are a big enough company to afford Yahoo!, is it the best use of your money? Probably not. For a fraction of the cost, you could run ads on dozens or hundreds of web sites much more closely aligned with your target market. For instance, if you are a financial services company, you could run your ad on many financial-related web sites, where people are already interested in your type of service, for pennies on the dollar of what the Yahoo! ad would cost.

You should apply this kind of thinking to all of your marketing. Ask yourself: am I spending my money on an advertising forum that will expose my message to the maximum number of people who are good prospects for my service at the best price? If you have lots of money to spend on marketing, we still think you should apply this kind of thinking. Spend your money on targeted advertising first, and then if there are funds left over, you can use those funds on a more broad, branding-oriented campaign.

If you could use some guidance with your pay per click management or search engine optimization, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Learning How to Podcast

2008-02-19T09:06:00.002-06:00

Work Media has begun doing a podcast. This is definitely a new area for us. We blog all the time (obviously), but to me, it is more difficult to smoothly convey a message with spoken words, rather than printed words. In print, I have all the time I need to compose my thoughts and structure the copy the way I want it. In audio, even if you have what you want to say written out, you can't just read - you have to talk. It needs to sound conversational. So we're still working out how to best do the podcast, but we expect to get better the more we do it.

We have found a couple of podcasting resources that may be helpful to you if you decide to get into podcasting:

http://www.podcastblaster.com The most useful feature of this site is that it has a form you can use to automatically create a podcast RSS file. You just provide the details of the podcast and each individual epidose. The PodcastBlaster creates the file you need to supply to podcasting directories.

http://www.podcasting-tools.com This is a pretty useful site that provides lots of information about how to podcast. It also has a nice list of podcasting directories where you can submit your podcast.

http://www.podsubmitter.com A tool that will let you submit your podcast to multiple podcast directories at once. This could save you a lot of time. The caveat is that they require a link to the podsubmitter web site to use the service.

We are still working on a page for our site dedicated to the podcast. In the meantime, there are links to our first two episodes on our home page.

If you need some help implementing a content strategy for your site, including blogging and podcasting, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

The Simple Secret to Ultimate Online Marketing Success

2008-02-15T16:00:00.002-06:00

You probably don't realize it, but you have the ultimate tool for business success right in front of you. Assuming you sell a reasonably high quality product or service, all you have to do to be successful is get people to your web site and then use the words on your site to convince your visitors to do business with you. Fortunately, there is a marketing technique that can accomplish both of these objectives:

Pay per Click!

Or, as we usually refer to it, paid search marketing. With paid search, you can find the marketing copy that turns visitors into customers. You can run multiple ads for sets of keywords (ad groups), with each ad linking to a different landing page. You can then use the landing pages to test different copy. Make sure you set your ad groups to display the ads an even number of times (turn optimization off). After a few days or weeks (however long it takes to generate a few hundred clicks), you will have some very solid data showing which landing pages (and which copy) generate the most sales or leads.

Once you have figured out what copy converts visitors into customers or clients, it is time to get more aggressive with your campaign. Direct all your traffic to the best landing page. Increase your budget. Increase your bids (although keep an eye on your return on ad spend - you don't want to bid too high).

One critical component of making this technique work is to make sure you have conversion tracking in place. This is very easy. All you have to do is place a snippet of code supplied by the search engine on your conversion confirmation page. This will allow you to make the connection between specific keywords, ads, landing pages, and conversions.

Many times in life, the things that work seem too simple to believe. Success is not about carrying out some complicated plan - it's about doing the simple things very well. Create a plan for your business based on the technique discussed in this article, and you are guaranteed to succeed. Just don't rush the process. Be patient, and make sure you have enough data to analyze before making any big decisions.

If you could use some help implementing a data-based pay per click management plan, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Search Engine Marketing: Hot Tips for Writing Better Articles

2008-02-13T08:08:00.003-06:00

Article writing continues to be one of the most effective search engine marketing techniques in existence. It has two major benefits: it is a good branding move because it makes you appear like an expert in your field; and it generates one-way links to your web site which often contain specific keywords in the link text. If you write articles regularly, you will do yourself a lot of good. But there's good...and then there's GOOD.

So how do you write a GOOD article?

We're not really talking about good in the sense of writing that is compelling and interesting. I mean, if you can do that, then that is a huge bonus. We're really talking more about writing that will improve your search engine rankings and close business.

First off, you should have a specific keyword in mind when writing the article for which you would like to improve your search engine rankings. If you don't already have a specific keyword in mind, you might want to visit http://Nichebot.com or a similar service to look for keywords that get a lot (or at least some) traffic that are relevant to your business. It doesn't do you nearly as much good to write an article focused on a keyword that nobody ever uses.

Once you have decided on a keyword, then you need to try and use the keyword in the title (if it makes sense), the article body, and most importantly, in the author's box. The author's box is where you can actually make a hyperlink out of a keyword. If you can insert a hyperlink in the body text, that's even better, but that is often frowned upon.

As far as the content for the article, one easy way to create content is to pull it from your blog (you do blog, don't you?). For example, I just authored an article based on two blog posts. Each blog post discussed a real life example of poor web site marketing at the local level. So I combined the blog posts, re-wrote some sections of it, and titled it "Two Examples of the Damage Done by Poor Local Web Site Marketing".

Now I'm going give you a power tip, so pay attention. When conducting online research for an article, I use Google Notebook to collect snippets of information into a single page where I can view it all. Basically, I'm creating notes on the fly from different sites that I can use as the basis for my article. This technique could save you a lot of time.

When writing your article, use proper grammar and spelling. You can write the article in a conversational tone (which is good), but you don't want to appear ignorant. Remember, there is a branding component at work here. You want to come off as a true professional in your industry.

Once the article is written, it needs to be distributed to article directories. You can do this manually, one at a time, or you can use a directory submission service. The manual way is best, but it takes oh so long to do. You will probably want to use some kind of automation to get your article out to as many places as you can.

If you see the power of article marketing but just don't want to do it yourself, Work Media offers an article writing service. Call us at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Chronicling the Development of a Google AdWords Management Application - Trying to Finish

2008-02-11T06:59:00.000-06:00

Yes, after all these months, we are still trying to finish the Google AdWords management application. Some time in late November, I decided that it was just going to take me too long to finish and stabilize the program myself. So I decided it was time to seek some help. The vehicle for finding that help is http://elance.com.

Elance.com, if you don't know, is an online resource for finding developers, writers, and other skilled individuals for hire on a project-by-project basis. We don't really need a full-time programmer right now, and don't want to deal with an I.T. staffing firm, so finding an off-site resource on our own is the best option.

Using elance, is pretty easy. You just create an account and then describe what you are looking for. You can also upload documents for prospects to get more detail about the project. I think that's a critical part of the process - making sure you have created documentation that thoroughly details what you are trying to accomplish. I spent a few weeks working on a Word document that contained specs for the project. My specs are probably not up to par with what a real developer expects, so I also created a static HTML mockup of the site. This allows potential hires to get a better idea of how the application should work, beyond trying to interpret my specs.

We have been contacted by a number of developers since posting on elance. Bids are all over the place. One of the bids is so low that we don't believe the bidder understands what we are doing. But there are a couple of bids that are very much in the ballpark of what we were looking to spend, and those developer seem to have a good understanding of what we need. So we are very confident that we will be able to hire a quality developer within our budget (which ain't much).

We also posted on http://craigslist.com, but did not receive much of a response to that. We did get contacted by one local developer who was between gigs. That would have been perfect, but he really didn't have the skillset we needed.

If this project goes well, I have a feeling we will be using elance for more projects in the near future, to get things done quicker and free us from having to do them ourselves.

If you need help with your search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Do Not Fear the Missing Google Rankings

2008-02-08T09:17:00.000-06:00

We have recently begun being more aggressive promoting our own web site. We have very strong rankings for search engine marketing related keywords that contain the word "Nashville", which is generally where we advise businesses with a brick-and-mortar location to begin. It is often very difficult to achieve high search engine rankings for broad, non-geographically targeted keywords. So generating rankings for keywords specific to your home market is a great way to begin driving traffic to your site that consists of very strong prospects for your service. It has definitely been beneficial to Work Media to be near the top of the rankings in Google for search terms like "Nashville search engine marketing firm". In fact, just out of curiosity, I just typed exactly that search term into Google and we have the top-ranked natural listing and the number one paid search listing. Now that's good shelfspace.

Anyway, we've decided it's time to start promoting our site for more broad terms, not specifically related to Nashville. We have a ton of content on our site and the site is reasonably well optimized, so the main thing we're concentrating on is off-site optimization (i.e., getting links pointing to our site). We've been working on it for a few weeks and have already begun seeing results. But one odd thing happened which we have seen happen a lot. So we thought we would tell you about it so if it happens to you, you don't freak out.

There is one keyword in particular we are keen on ranking for, so it is the main one we have concentrated on in our linking campaign. When we started, we ranked a little past 100 for the keyword. A few weeks after beginning our new efforts to rank for this keyword, we disappeared altogether from the Google results. But we were not worried - we've seen this before.

Sure enough, after a few days, we were back in Google's results for the keyword, this time ranked in the 60's. Nowhere near where we hope to be, but a real nice jump from where we started.

When a web page suddendly begins to have lots of new links pointing to it, that page tends to disappear from the rankings, only to reappear later, higher ranked. Our theory is that when Google picks up on a lot of new rankings for a page, it temporarily removes it from the rankings in order to do some additional analysis on the page. This analysis probably includes Google asking questions like: Are the links relevant to the site? Is the site strong in content? What do we know about the site?

Since our site is very strong in content, well-aged, and has been indexed for a long time, we think Google performed the analysis and made the determination that we were not trying to spam our way into its index. It then re-ranked our site accordingly, taking into account the new links we have.

This is all just a theory, really. But we've never been ones to stress out over trying to figure out exactly how Google's algorithm works. We just follow the basics...and it works every time. So if you undertake a linking campaign and find your site suddenly disappearing from the rankings, don't worry about it. Unless your site is junk, in which case it may not make it out of limbo. So make sure your site is strong on content.

If you need some help with your own site's search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Search Engine Marketing: Going Wide Versus Going Deep

2008-02-06T08:36:00.000-06:00

We are in discussions to provide search engine marketing services to a company with a very significant presence in numerous Latin American countries. One of their primary competitors has been making extensive use of Google's content network to distribute its marketing message to the same countries, so our potential client wants to do the same thing. In the course of a conversation yesterday, we discussed something which may be something you should think about for your own search engine marketing. And that is:

Should you go wide or go deep?

Here's what we mean. We don't want to launch an all-out marketing blitz in all of this company's market countries at once. We want to start on a fairly small scale, generate some data, and then start expanding. But is the best approach to take a single country and saturate it with search and content ads (going deep), or should we pick just a few target content sites and run ads on those sites in many countries (going wide)?

Each approach has its advantages. The deep approach will generate a lot of country-specific data related to lots of different sites and search queries. Chances are pretty good that what works with one country will work with another. So if we can generate enough data, we can probably create somewhat of a template that could be applied to the search marketing campaigns in the other target countries.

The wide approach makes sense if the advertiser already has a very good idea about what specific sites are effective for its marketing message. Our prospective client believes it knows at least one site that will be very effective, although we won't know for sure until we run ads and see if they result in converting customers.

Ultimately, like everything else to do with Internet marketing, it just comes down to testing. We don't know which strategy is best until we try some different things to see what works. Our suggestion in this case is to do both. By aggressively marketing in a single country AND marketing cross-country via a few select sites, we will learn very quickly which approach is best and can start doing more of it.

So ask yourself...should you go deep or go wide? The only way to find out may be to do some testing on your own.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Microsoft Buying Yahoo! Would Be Wonderful for Advertisers

2008-02-04T08:34:00.000-06:00

I read over the weekend that Microsoft is trying to buy Yahoo!. They are willing to pay a nice premium over where the stock is at right now (having been beaten down by disappointing earnings), so it would represent a nice profit for Yahoo! stockholders. Will the deal go through? Who knows.

As search marketers, we would like to see the deal go through. We have tried to use Microsoft's search network and marketing platform (and continue to try) but Microsoft just doesn't have enough traffic yet, and its ad serving platform sometimes just doesn't seem to work very well. There are some features of Microsoft's ad center control panel that we really like, and some that we don't like.

The same with Yahoo! There are some features of its control panel we like, and some we don't. If the merger does happen, we would hope Microsoft would combine the best features of the two platforms into something really useful. The keyword inventory of the combined companies would also come closer to rivaling Google, and would exceed Google worldwide.

Frankly, we would just rather have to only deal with two major search marketing platforms than three. We like a lot of the things Microsoft has tried to do. Combining Microsoft's technology with Yahoo!'s Web positioning would create something new that could really be a boon to search engine advertisers. It would also set up an even more competitive situation between Google and the combined company, which should result in an increased pace in innovation and a better situation for advertisers. It seems counter-intuitive to think that a decrease in competitors from three to two would result in more competition, but it would. Microsoft just does not have the search engine traffic to be a real threat to Google or Yahoo!. But the new merged Microsoft/Yahoo! would be able to give Google a real run for its money. And that would be good for all of us.

If you could use some help with your pay per click management, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Shopper Frustration: Local Businesses Losing Sales by not Using the Web

2008-01-30T08:28:00.000-06:00

Local businesses are losing sales by not taking advantage of the Web as a sales tool. No, this is not based on any kind of poll or data analysis. It's based purely on my own experiences. It is usually the case that for every one person who experiences a problem, or expresses dissatisfaction about a situation, there are many more people who feel the same way. So I am going to make the assumption that there are many people who have the same frustration I am about to discuss.

Businesses at the local level just don't seem to get it when it comes to online marketing. They will spend thousands of dollars on TV ads, print ads, radio ads, etc., but give no attention to their web sites. Here is a cold, hard fact: more and more people use the Web to do product research and find local businesses with whom to do business; and that trend is only going to continue. So why would ANY business not have a strong Web presence that shows what products or services it sells, and that makes it easy to do business with it?

Here is an example of what I am talking about. I am researching gas and electric fireplaces for my house. One large retailer in Nashville who I thought sold fireplaces (since there is a fireplaces page on its site) has ZERO visibility and almost no information about its fireplaces. If I did not already know about the company, I would not have looked at their web site to start with since it is not possible to find it in the search engines. As it turns out, I found out that this business stopped selling fireplaces two years ago...despite the fact that they are still shown on its web site. I mean, come on...in TWO YEARS you couldn't update your web site?

So I continued my search. I only found a single local business online that had a reasonable number of the kind of product I was looking for. The business' web site was not very good. There is very little information about specific products. It is an ecommerce-enabled site, but there is so little information about the products that I don't think any user would feel very comfortable placing an order online.

I cannot find a single business in Nashville that sells fireplaces that has a well-crafted web site with adequate information about its products. And that can be found in the search engines. There is probably a retailer in Nashville with exactly what I want. But I can't find it. So I am reduced to physically visiting random stores in hopes of finding what I want. Wherever that perfect store is, it is probably going to lose a sale.

If you own a physical business that sells products locally, all you have to do to have a MAJOR advantage over your competition is put up a high quality web site where visitors can get lots of information about your products. If they can buy the products online, that's even better. And PLEASE have the web site built in a search engine-friendly manner so your site can be found. Ask your web site developer about this. If he is not experienced in SEO, either hire another designer or bring someone onboard who can work with your designer. Yes, it will cost some money, but it will be a very, very good thing for your business.

If you need help promoting your local business via search engine optimization or pay per click management, contact Work Media at 615-263-2811 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Managing a Paid Search Campaign: The Importance of Goals

2008-01-28T08:16:00.000-06:00

I'm still working on the specs for our Google AdWords management application. I have to say...even just doing specs for something like this is a laborious task. Trying to get everything out of my head and onto paper that I want the application to do is difficult. If I were a better programmer, I probably would have creates specs from the start for my own purposes. But it really helped me to get a feel for what we could do with the AdWords API by writing code and building the thing organically.

I'm now trying to work out the logic of how the application should make automatic bid adjustments. I have read where some applications of this type use complicated Wall Street-style algorithms to make adjustments. These applications tend to be very expensive. And I really don't think we need to worry that much about it. The situation is sort-of similar to stock trading - you can obsess over charts and technical analysis to make just the right trades, but in the long run, a steady and consistent investment plan will likely do just as well.

One problem with a single magic algorithm to make adjustments is that it does not take into account the goals of the advertiser. For purposes of our application, I don't see any way around letting the user set his own account parameters to meet his specific goals. Some advertisers may just want lots of volume, regardless of conversion rates. For those situations, obviously, a wide open, aggressive bid attack is called for. More often than not, cost per conversion is a major consideration. For those advertisers, it is critical not to bid too much. Different objectives require different strategies.

So how does this relate to you? We just want you to think about your goals while managing your paid search campaign. Do you just need the visitors? Is there a a major branding component to your campaign? Do you need to turn a profit on the campaign right away? Or are you in a position to lose money initially in order to get new customers in your system? It is important that you decide early on what exactly you want to accomplish with your paid search campaign.

Your goals will have a major impact on how you manage your campaign. If volume, branding, and name recognition are your major goals, then you will want to be aggressive, bid high, and try to position your ads as high as possible. Likewise, if you are trying to get customers into your system even at a loss, you will want to be aggressive, though possibly less so than with a branding strategy. If immediate profitability is your main concern, then you need to be much more concerned with the price you are paying for clicks and conversion rates.

If you need some help withpay per click management so that it accomplishes your goals, please contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Friday Afternoon Musings

2008-01-25T12:09:00.000-06:00

Friday afternoon...and we've not made a single blog post this week. Not good. I don't really even have any knowledge to impart today, so I figured I would just use this post to let you know what's going on around the Work Media offices.

We have been working with a company called Student Loan Financial Group for a couple of months. We were doing paid search,which was really cool because they had a big budget and (at first) just needed as many leads as we could get. The closing rate of the leads turned out to be low, so as the campaign went on the priority shifted from volume to unit cost. Toward the end, we really had the thing humming, generating a strong number of leads at a very reasonable cost per lead. The student loan business is very cyclical, so that campaign has ended. The kids are all in school now so not too many people are still looking for student loans. We are also engaging in an SEO campaign to generate free traffic. That is going well. The whole student loan industry is in a crunch right now (as are most things to do with credit), so we're not sure what the future holds but hopefully we'll get a chance to take what we have learned in the first round of paid search and kick some major ass in round two.

We are in discussions with a few very large companies to run search marketing campaigns. Large companies are definitely our focus these days, as far as our marketing efforts go. Our guy here Jim Reams is making some great contacts that hopefully will pan out in the weeks ahead.

The Google AdWords management application that we've been working on for many months got stalled toward the end of last year because we just got so dang busy. I have decided that the quickest way to finish that thing is to pay somebody who is a lot better programmer than I am to finish it. So I am working on specs that lay out exactly what it is supposed to do, then I will begin searching for a programmer to finish the thing up.

We have developed a proprietary method for analyzing a web site's search engine competitive situation. Rather than post it here, I have written an extended article and am seeking publication in a legitimate magazine or newsletter. More about that later.

Finally, we are just about set to record the first episode of our long-awaited podcast. We finally bought some podcast recording/broadcasting equipment for the office. In fact, I think this afternoon Chris and I are going to take a stab at doing one. We'll let you know how it goes.

That's about it. Busy, busy. But that's the way we like it. As usual, I leave you by suggesting that if you need any help with your company's search engine marketing, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 (615-263-2811 if you're in Middle Tennessee) or email us at Info@WorkMedia.net.

Seach Engine Optimization: Get the Link Out

2008-01-18T08:18:00.000-06:00

We have been thinking a lot about this whole linking thing that is causing such an uproar in the Internet marketing community. If you haven't heard, Google is supposedly cracking down on paid links and is de-emphasizing the importance of links to a site's rankings...supposedly. We haven't seen it.

We are doing a lot of work right now for a company that is in an industry in which the top competitors are very aggressive about using paid links. In order to compete, we had no choice but to emulate the strategy. There was just no way we were going to be able to catch up using a purely natural linking strategy. It would take years...and we don't have years. So we're paying for links.

Are we going to be punished for buying links? We think not. Another thing we have in common with the companies we are competing against is that we are all heavy spenders on paid search ads. Is Google going to punish some of its best customers...customers who are generating millions of dollars in revenue for the company...for being aggressive in promoting their web sites?

We understand that Google wants its search engine results to be as genuine as possible and does not want companies doing things to try to artificially influence those results. But as a multi-billion dollar company, we do not believe that Google is going to piss off some of its largest advertisers.

Maybe the situation in your industry is different. But how would Google apply different rules to different industries? We don't think it would do that.

Our point here is that you have nothing to fear by going out and pursuing links to your site. Use a number of different strategies - link swapping, directories, paying for them, whatever. Now...we're not saying you should add your site to FFA pages or other sources of junk links. It will be a waste of your time. But for higher quality sources of links - go for it. The best strategy of all is to create content that is so interesting that other sites are compelled to link to you. Natural, non-paid, one-way links are still king. But regardless of what linking strategy you pursue...do not be afraid.

If you need help with your search engine optimization campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Search Engine Optimization: Thoughts on Linking from Personal Observation

2008-01-15T09:35:00.001-06:00

A lot has been made in the press and in the Internet marketing community lately about Google's attempts to de-emphasize the importance of links in its ranking algorithms. We've been asked a number of times by our clients if linking is still important. Based on what we have seen lately, the answer is a resounding...hell yes!

Google's anti-linking efforts are aimed at stopping web sites from purchasing links. Google feels this is a manipulation of its system. It wants only genuine, non-paid-for links. However, we are currently promoting a client in a very competitive category in which ALL of the top sites have used paid links to drive up their rankings. And they don't seem to be doing anywhere. In order to compete (and compete quickly) we basically had no choice but to adopt the same strategy. Otherwise, we would be too far behind the ball to catch up. We are not using paid links exclusively - it's just one part of a comprehensive strategy. So far the strategy is working, as our client is climbing the rankings.

Whether or not to use paid links should probably be determined by the competitiveness of the industry you are in. But regardless of your stance on paid links, you definitely need to keep getting links. Start with directories. List your site everywhere you can. Then start writing some articles and distribute them. A site we like for article distribution is http://isnare.com. If you are really dedicated, you can start going out and posting comments on other sites' blogs, with a link back to your site or blog (you do have a blog don't you? It's a powerful content creation strategy).

Then you can move into the realm of social bookmarking. This is where it gets really useful to have interesting original content on your site. If you have a really interesting web site with content that people want to link to, you will do well with social bookmarking. Once you introduce your web site via social bookmarks, hopefully other people will find it interesting or useful enough to add their own bookmarks. This can create a snowball effect where lots of people bookmark your site, thus creating lots of very high quality, one-way links to your site.

We are still using links as an SEO technique, and it continues to work for us. So don't worry about what the pundits say - keep working, keep linking, and keep aggressively promoting your web site. If your web site is high quality with strong content, then a linking strategy will work if you are diligent enough. If your site does not strong content, then you need to address that before you worry about linking. First things first.

If you need some help implementing a linking campaign for your web site, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Microsoft's Latest Keyword Research Tool: adCenter Add-in for Excel

2008-01-11T08:20:00.000-06:00

Microsoft has released a new tool for use by advertisers on its search engine - adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007. Microsoft describes it as:

"...a keyword research and optimization tool that can help you understand keyword popularity and trends, and gain valuable insight on the demographic and geographic information of actual searches."

Now, we are all the time doing keyword research in various tools, exporting the data, and opening up it up in Excel to do whatever type of sorting and filtering we need to get down to a list of keywords we can use for our purposes. So we were very interested in a tool that would allow us to do keyword research directly from Excel, even if all the data comes Microsoft's own search network.

To download the tool, go here:

http://advertising.microsoft.com/advertising/adcenter_addin

It is easy to install and it even worked the first time we tried it. One disadvantage is that you have to have Excel 2007, which a lot of people probably don't have yet. Obviously Microsoft would like everyone in the world to upgrade to their latest version of Office, which may be one reason it only works in the 2007 version. But it did not seem to cause any problems with Excel's functionality, so if you have Excel 2007 and have need to do keyword research, you should definitely try it out.

After installing it, it places a new tab on Excel's main menu labeled "Ad Intelligence". Clicking the Ad Intelligence tab reveals a whole new sub-menu of really big, colorful buttons:

Keyword Wizard - generates a keyword list from seed keywords.
Keyword Extraction - generates a keyword list based on the copy in a particular web site.
Keyword Suggestion - suggests keywords based on three possible criteria: advertiser bidding behavior, keywords which contain the original keywords, and by keyword category similarity.
Search Buzz - suggests keywords based on top spikiness or frequency.
Monthly Traffic - provides historical and forecast traffic for selected keywords.
Keyword Categorization - identifies categories for selected keywords.
Geographic - provides location information for keywords.
Demographic - provides demographic information for keywords.
Monetization - provides keyword monetization data, such as CPC, CTR, impressions, etc.
Advanced Algorithm - lets you customize the parameters used to create keyword lists.
Options - lets you set system options for the keyword tool.

To try it out, we typed in three seed keywords in successive cells, clicked the Keyword Wizard button, selected the cells, selected the algorithms to use (campaign association, keywords that contain the seed keywords, or keywords that are similar - we selected all three options to bring back the most keywords), set the maximum results to return and the minimum confidence, and then let it run. It returned a list of keywords directly in our Excel workbook that contained lots of traffic-related data for each one.

The whole problem with Microsoft's search platform is that it just doesn't have enough keyword inventory. We recently gave up on Microsoft for a search campaign we were running because we were actually doing much better generating traffic in second tier search engines like Miva (and of course, Google and Yahoo!). But purely for purposes of generating keyword data to be tried in various search engines, Microsoft's adCenter Add-in for Excel is a very cool tool.

If you need help running paid search ads in Microsoft or any other search platform, please call Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Using Widgets and Mashups to Promote Your Business

2008-01-08T07:48:00.000-06:00

A "widget" is a program that runs inside a browser or on a user's desktop (such as when running Google Desktop) that provides extra functionality for the user. Widget creation is a hot trend in online marketing these days. They are generally written in JavaScript, although other languages can be used as well. The advantage of a widget is that, if you can get your prospective customers to install it, it provides you with a way to keep your marketing message in front of your prospects. And as you know, repeated exposure to a marketing message is key to its success.

Widgets created for Google Desktop are called gadgets. But the concept is the same. Google provides an API for creating gadgets, which can be found at the following web address: http://www.google.com/apis/gadgets/docs-home.html.

For example, let's say you sell New York Yankees merchandise. You could create a widget that showed updated news headlines related to the Yankees. A Yankees fan could place the widget in his browser or on his desktop that would constantly feed him Yankees news, along with marketing messages to buy Yankees merchandise. Or maybe the widget would constantly display new listings on eBay for Yankees merchandise, which would be very useful for a collector.

If you lack the knowledge or internal skills to code widgets, you might try hiring a third party contractor. You could create an account on eLance.com and post details of what you are wanting to do. Chances are excellent you could find a developer who will do the work for a very affordable rate.

A mashup is something that combines content or functionality from different sources, such as a web site that contains pieces of other web sites. Microsoft has a very interesting web site called PopFly.com that lets you drag and drop functionality from different web sites to create mashups without any coding. For example, while trying it out, we combined a Microsoft Live image search with some kind of image rotater. The merged product was a screen that showed images pulled from Live.com rotating in a circle. We're not sure how useful this particular mashup is, but it was fun to create.

Widgets and mashups are definitely a hot trend in marketing, and they can help get your marketing message distributed and repeated to your target market in a way that they find entertaining or useful, which will make it easier for your message to soak in.

If you could use some guidance using widgets or mashups to promote your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Improving Paid Search Performance Through Better Targeting

2008-01-04T08:11:00.000-06:00

If you are driving traffic to your web site through paid search, but that traffic is not profitable, then you may need to re-examine how you are targeting your ads. Chances are your targeting is too broad. Remember, you don't just target with your keywords - you target with your ads and you target with your landing page copy.

For your keywords, you should use a wide package of keywords that includes broad, high volume keywords as well as more specific, low volume keywords. Make sure you have tracking in place so you will know exactly which keywords generate sales or leads. After a few weeks, you should have a very good idea which keywords you should be spending your money on.

If your keywords are driving traffic but no sales, then you need to look deeply at your ad copy. Are you attracting the right prospects? If you attract a lot of traffic that is not converting, then you need to tighten up your ad copy to attract the right prospects. You will generate less traffic, but it will be much more profitable traffic. Ask yourself this: who is your ideal prospect? What industry does he work in? Does he drive a truck? Does she have good credit? Whatever characteristics make up your perfect prospect, you can use that information in your ad copy. For example, if your ideal prospect is a deer hunter, maybe your ad copy should mention deer hunting. If your ideal prospect is disabled, maybe you should try an ad header like "Disabled? We can help". These are just hypothetical examples, but you get the idea.

The same thing applies to your landing page copy. You need to make it clear who you are looking for and write your copy with that person in mind. Think of this whole process like a big funnel, and you are doing everything you can to apply filters so that the prospects who arrive at the end of your funnel are very eager to do business with you. By fine-tuning ads and ad copy for specific groups of people, you should greatly improve the performance of your paid search campaign.

If you need some help better targeting your paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Marketing Success for 2008: Measurement is the Key

2008-01-02T07:47:00.000-06:00

Welcome to the first Work Media blog post of 2008. We hope everybody had a terrific New Years!

We've been finishing up the Work Media 2008 marketing plan and it got me thinking about something very important when it comes to marketing, and that is measurement. Even though we're an Internet marketing firm, we will be using a number of different strategies for promoting ourselves in our local market, several of which are off-line. It would be foolish to exclude certain marketing venues just because they are not the techniques we specialize in providing.

But the question is: how do you know what combination of marketing strategies to use? There are many - search engine marketing (which we, obviously, heavily recommend), direct marketing, print advertising, TV, radio, etc. The first clue as to what methods to use is by finding out what methods are used by your most successful competitors, or similar types of businesses that are successful in your home market.

One problem is that the strategies used by your competitors may not be the same that work for your business. So ultimately what you have to do is try different things and track results as tightly as you can. You need to try and associate leads with the marketing techniques that generated those leads. A couple of ways of doing this is to use a special URL or phone number with different advertising campaigns. For instance, if you run a TV ad campaign, you might direct viewers to a URL like "www.mysite.com/TV". Then when you check your stats, you can see how many visitors you had to the "TV" URL, which will give you a good idea how effective the campaign was.

This strategy is not perfect. In the above example, someone could type your URL without the "TV", in which case you would not be able to make the connection. But this strategy is at least a starting point. A more accurate, but more complicated, way to measure ad campaign performance is to set up a unique phone number for different ads. Then you can tell which ads are working by how many calls come in for different phone numbers. There are a number of different companies that can help you set these phone numbers up and provide call tracking.

So when you are working out your marketing plan (you do have a marketing plan, don't you?), please keep in mind how you are going to measure performance. Finding the right marketing mix can mean the difference between success and failure for your marketing and your business.

For help implementing a successful marketing plan for your business, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Merry Christmas!

2007-12-20T08:39:00.000-06:00

This will be our last blog until after Christmas. Work Media will only be open for part of next week, and I (Jerry) will be in Memphis for several days, so our productivity will definitely take a hit. So before we close shop, we wanted to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy and safe Merry Christmas. We hope everyone gets everything they want for Christmas, and if you don't...well, there's always next year (but you better be good).

And as you are working out your marketing budgets for next year, if you have any questions about Internet marketing, feel free to contact us at 888-299-4837 or Info@WorkMedia.net.

Merry Christmas!

How Not to Promote Your Business Locally Online: Shopping for Car Stereos

2007-12-17T08:10:00.000-06:00

An experience I had this weekend got me thinking about the importance of local Internet marketing.

Saturday, I wanted to take my car somewhere to have a new stereo put in. Work Media is based in Nashville, but I live in a little town called Dickson. There is no big chain store to have such a service performed. So I did an online search for a car stereo retailer/installer in Dickson. I found two results. According to information I found, one of the businesses had a web site and a MySpace page. The other dealer had nothing other than an address in Google Local. Intuitively, you might think that I would automatically gravitate toward the business with the web site. But that was not the case.

When I tried to visit the business' web site, it appeared that the domain name had expired and had been purchased by someone who put up a generic web page with car stereo-related links. When I went to the business' MySpace page, I found a couple of quotes that said something about wanting my money. There was little information about the business. I was very turned off by what I saw on the MySpace page. It made me think that the business was only out to get my money and didn't really care about taking care of its customers. I decided to visit the other business. Even though it didn't have any kind of Web presence, in my opinion, that was better than the other business which had a presence that I found very displeasing.

My point in relaying this story is that you can do more damage with bad online marketing than you can with no marketing at all. If you have a web site, you should inspect every word on every page to make sure you are getting the right message across. Does your marketing copy emphasize that you really care about your customers? Or does it relay the idea that you only care about extracting money from the pockets of your customers?

Now, in the name of open disclosure, I should point out that I actually ended up going to the business that I had decided not to. It seems the other business either was in business no longer or was in some location impossible to find. So I guess the point there is that it doesn't matter what kind of marketing you do if you're not open for business to start with. By the way, I found the business to be just fine, but their poor online marketing almost cost them a sale.

A well-orchestrated local search campaign can do wonders for your business...if you do it right. For help implementing a local search component to your online marketing campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

A Seven Sentence Marketing Plan for 2008

2007-12-14T08:08:00.000-06:00

We are working on Work Media's 2008 marketing plan, so I thought that would be a good subject for today's blog post. I was listening to an audio program at some point in the last year that had a formula for a seven sentence marketing plan. This may be a Michael Gerber invention (I can't remember exactly who it was), but here are the seven questions to ask to create your seven sentence marketing plan:

1. What action do you want your prospects to take?

2. What is your competitive advantage?

3. Who is your target market?

4. What marketing weapons are you going to use?

5. What is your niche in the marketplace?

6. What is your "identity"?

7. What is your marketing budget (as a % of projected gross sales)?

If you use these seven questions as a mental diving board to think deeply about your business' marketing, you will be in good position to sketch out a more detailed plan. It might be a good idea to create one document that is literally a seven sentence plan based on the above questions (a sort-of thumbnail) and another document that elaborates in much greater detail.

An important part of having a plan is LOOKING at the plan periodically. I'll admit that we have historically been bad about creating a nice plan and then having it sit in a shelf collecting dust. I know we're not the only ones. But let's change our ways, starting in 2008. You've got about two and half weeks left this year to do your brainstorming and create your plans for the new year. So get your marketing plan created and look at it periodically to see if you're on track. It just might make a huge difference in your performance for the new year.

And of course, make sure you have an Internet component to your marketing plan. Search engine marketing is the only form of marketing that can immediately place your message in front of people who are looking for exactly what you're selling.

If you need some help developing a strong Internet marketing plan, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We specialize in helping companies find just the right combination of strategies. We would love to help you.

MSN Budgeting Hot Tip: How to Keep Your Search Ads Running

2007-12-12T08:44:00.000-06:00

I'll admit that we have used MSN much less than Google and Yahoo!. It just doesn't have the keyword inventory of the big two. But we have a client who needed all of the traffic we could get it, as long as it generated traffic at their threshold cost per acquisition. So we are using the three major search engines along with Ask.com and some second tier second engines like Miva.

We were having a very hard time getting any exposure in Microsoft. We blogged about it previously, but it bears worth repeating: Microsoft does constant billing at its threshold billing level for each client, which starts out at only $50. So every time you spend $50, Microsoft will bill your credit card. You might want to let your credit card company know this so that they don't start denying charges, which will cause your account to go offline until payment is made. And even then there could still be a serious delay. We experienced this problem with this particular client.

However, even when we got the billing issues corrected, our ads were still getting very spotty distribution. And the problem definitely was not our bids or budget - we had plenty to spend and were bidding aggressively.

Finally, after multiple phone calls with Microsoft, someone told us something that explained everything.

Are you ready for this?

For any single campaign, Microsoft divides the budget exactly evenly among the ad groups. Whenever an ad group exceeds its share of the budget, ads for that ad group stop running.

Now...this makes no sense. It completely violates the way paid search works. In a typical paid search campaign, you will have some ad groups that contain high volume keywords for which you expect a lot of clicks...and some ad groups that contain low volume keywords for which you expect few, but much more cost effective clicks. Microsoft's scheme assumes that all ad groups are equal, which is just not the case.

So, in our case, the ad groups that had the most high volume keywords were being cut off because they were using up their shares of the campaign budget very quickly.

There are two ways around this problem:

1. Set a really high monthly budget for the campaign. If you do this, you will need to watch it very closely to make sure you don't end up spending way more than you intend.

or...

2. Set up keywords and ads at the campaign level, rather than the ad group level. In other words, if you have two ad groups - one with high volume keywords and one with low volume keywords - you should set each ad group up in its own campaign, so that your budget does not get split evenly between the two.

So far, we have found Microsoft to be slow to get our ads online, inconvenient to deal with because of the low credit threshold, and difficult to use because of the way campaign budgets are allocated. No wonder Microsoft is so far behind in the area of paid search. However, if you can deal with these issues, it is a possible source of more cost-effective clicks than Google or Yahoo!.

If you are trying to manage an MSN paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Importing Google Data Into Yahoo! - Things to Keep in Mind

2007-12-07T08:01:00.000-06:00

Earlier this week I was trying to import a Google campaign into Yahoo!. Yahoo! has this tool that is supposed to convert a spreadsheet with Google campaign data into the correct format to work with Yahoo!. Well, that thing seems to be a piece of crap. We ended up having to manually move lots of columns around, change column names, and add lots of data that Yahoo! needed. It was a pain in the butt. And then it still didn't work...at first. If you are trying to do this same thing, here is what we had to do to make it work.

1. We had to first create a campaign in Yahoo! to hold the new campaign data. Unless I'm wrong, you can't actually create a new campaign by importing the data - you can only add data to an existing campaign.

2. We had to specify our newly created campaign ID in the import spreadsheet.

We had also originally specified IDs for our new ad groups (which we made up), but Yahoo! did not like this. So...you DO specify a campaign ID in the import file, but you DO NOT specify ad group IDs.

There was a lot of work that had to be done on the import file (which was created by doing an export from Google AdWords Editor, which we have blogged extensively about), but the frustrating thing was when we got to the point of importing the file and it still didn't work. That is until we took the above steps.

If you need help managing your Google or Yahoo! campaigns (or any other search engine), feel free to contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

A Few Quick Microsoft AdCenter Tips

2007-12-06T08:52:00.000-06:00

Like all of the major search engine ad platforms, Microsoft's AdCenter has some nice features as well as some not-so-nice features. One feature we like is its bulk keyword editing feature. For one of our accounts, We imported a data file that contained both broad and exact match keywords. For some reason, the exact match keywords didn't get added. But using the bulk keyword editing feature, it was a simple matter to also set the keywords as exact match. Unlike Google, which requires that the same keyword be added twice in order for it to be in your account as both exact and broad match, with Microsoft, you only add the keyword once, but you can then set it as exact, broad, phrase, or any combination of the three.

For maximum coverage, we recommend you add your keywords as both exact and broad. Keywords set to exact match receive preference over broad match due to increased relevancy.

Microsoft requires a privacy statement or link to a privacy statement page on ad destination URLs that collect visitor contact information. This is a very minor, easy-to-account-for detail, but if you forget it, Microsoft may shut your ads down and it could take 24 hours to get them running again.

One thing we don't like about Microsoft's ad platform is that it takes much longer for your ads to enter rotation. With Microsoft and Yahoo!, your ads can begin being displayed in a matter of hours or less. With Microsoft, it seems to be at least a day. Also, for some reason, it seems that search ads go online much slower than content ads.

Another thing we don't like is that Microsoft places a credit threshold of $50 on new accounts.This means that every time the advertiser spends $50 on ads, Microsoft will send a payment request to its credit card company. So, for example, if you are investing $1,000 per day in MSN ads, Microsoft will be making 20 payment requests to your credit card company on the same day. We have found that some credit card companies are resistant to allowing that many charges from a single vendor. If a payment is declined, it can cause your ads to go offline. Once you're offline, it can take 24 hours to get back online. So we recommend having a conversation with your credit card company so that they know to expect many charges every day from Microsoft.

So above are a few tips to keep in mind when setting up a Microsoft AdCenter account. The Microsoft search network doesn't have nearly the total keyword inventory (search traffic) of Google or Yahoo!, but you may find that you can generate cheaper leads. It's definitely worth your time to give it a try.

If you would like to try out MSN ads for advertising your web site but just don't have the time or patience, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net. We'd love to hear from you.

Things to Test in Your Paid Search Ad Copy

2007-12-04T08:24:00.000-06:00

The human mind is a wondrous and complicated thing. It is also completely unpredictable. When it comes to writing ads for paid search marketing, you might think you know what copy will cause people to click your ad...but you really don't. We've preached this before but it bears worth repeating - the only way to know what works is by testing. Here are some different things you can test that could have a profound and unexpected impact on the success of your ads.

Capitalization. Most marketers capitalize the first letter of every major word in the title. You should try that as well as not capitalizing any letters. Do the same with your display URL.

The order of content. Let's say you have an ad with both an offer as well as a deadline. Try running ads with the offer first and with the deadline first.

Dynamic versus static content. Most search engines now allow you to dynamically have the keyword that triggers the ad placed in the headline or copy. Usually, this will result in higher click-throughs, but not always. Experiment to see what works for you.

The display URL. Try using "www" versus leaving it out. Try just the root domain name versus a domain that includes a sub-folder with keywords. For example, "www.yourdomain.com" versus "yourdomain.com/keyword".

Adjectives. For example, "easy" versus "fast". One of the two will probably trigger many more clicks. The only way to know the right psychological trigger is to test both.

Call to action. Visit now...Buy now...Learn more. These are all different ways of specifically requesting that the reader of the ad click the ad to visit your web site. Try different calls to action as well as not having a call to action to see what works best.

If you experiment with the above elements of your ads, you will have a much better chance at discovering the ad copy that generates the highest click-through rates as well as conversion rates. Another important part of this analysis will be only changing a single ad element at any one time. For example, if you change both the display URL and the call to action at the same time, you won't know which change causes a chance in the performance of the ad. This kind of analysis will not only drive the most traffic to your site, it will save you some money because ads with higher click-through rates can be displayed above ads with lower click-through rates even if the placement bid is lower.

If you need professional advice for managing your paid search campaign, contact Work Media at 888-299-4837 or email Info@WorkMedia.net.

Internet Marketing Nuggets and a Bit About Football

2007-11-29T08:04:00.000-06:00

Just a few nuggets of information for your reading pleasure:

In a continuing push to give advertisers more options and control, Google has released a new feature for the AdWords interface that allows advertisers to create a campaign template that can be used to quickly set up new campaigns. We have not had a chance to try it out yet, but we'll let you know what we think of it when we do.

Quick tip: when setting up ads in Google with dynamic titles, if you use the form "{KeyWord:your keyword}" where the "K" and "W" in "Keyword:" are capitalized, then the words in your title will be capitalized. Now, this is not necessarily a good thing. For instance, if you are bidding on keywords for which lots of advertisers are using dynamic or similar titles, then you might be better off using all lower case in your title in order to look different. You never know until you try.

Privacy groups are filing complaints with the Federal Trade Commission regarding the new advertising platform being launched by Facebook. You may want to hold off on investing your marketing dollars in Facebook at this point.

The Yahoo! Store ecommerce platform shut down for many of the sites using it on Monday because of the extremely heavy volume. If you run an ecommerce site, that might make a strong case for using your own platform on your own server.

Last, but not least, the SEC football championship game is this weekend! Being based out of Nashville and being UT fans, we are excited at the opportunity for our Vols to bring home a conference championship. The season the Vols have had this year can serve as an important business less for all of us: never give up; never stop fighting to accomplish your dream. After three blowout losses to Cal, Florida, and Alabama, it looked like the Vols were down for the count. But they kept fighting. Five games later, they are 9-3 and headed to Atlanta to face the LSU Tigers. Go Vols!