Week 14 - MKTG 349 - Using Columns To Find Specific Performance Data

Columns in your statistics table show you various information on your account.  Your columns vary based on what you have selected to look at.  You can easily choose which stats/columns you want to look at.  This allows you to look at specific data quickly.  Throughout this blog, I will detail the steps on how to add and delete columns to view your data.

After logging in to your AdWords account, click on the campaigns tab.  Next click one of the tabs that appear in the middle of the page such as: campaigns, ad groups, ads, or keywords.  Then click on the columns button above the statistics table.  After clicking on that, click on "modify cloumns" from the drop down menu.  From there, you have to the ability to add and remove specific columns to add to your table.  You can also drag and drop these columns to put them in any order you like.  You also can save this order so you do not have to re-organize it again after logging out.  After saving the data set, you can download it and share it with anybody and/or print it out.

Week 14 - MKTG 348 - Tips From SEO Professionals

I recently read another article on Forbes.com that had 25 tips from SEO professionals.  It was a very interesting read.  It is always great to receive insight from people who have real world experience.  Receiving insight is always beneficial, as we can better prepare ourselves now and in the future.  Since there are 25 tips, I will only share with you certain ones that really stood out to me.  

The first tip was from Bruce Clay, who is considered an industry leader in SEO.  His tip is to blog.  He believe blogging is the awareness channel that leads to micro-conversions.  The second tip that stood out to me was from Joelle Gropper Kaufman.  Kaufman was a CMO at Clarizen Inc. and is now head of partnerships and marketing for BloomReach.  Her tip(s) include: identifying and reducing duplicate pages and content, and making sure your in-linking helps users and search engines find their way around your site, among others.  The final tip that I will share with you is from Julia Rosien, Brand Engineer at Restonic.  Her tip is authenticity.  Rosien notes that the word "authentic" is over used and often misconstrued.  However, she believes that your own thoughts and beliefs are unique and you should be able to express them, authentically, because people want to read about them.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnrampton/2015/04/13/25-tips-from-seo-professionals/3/

Week 13 - MKTG 348 - The Future of SEO

I recently read an article on Forbes predicting 7 themes of SEO 10 years from now.  While these predictions can be wildly off the mark come 10 years from now.  These prediction were based off of past history with SEO and the ever changing Internet.  The first prediction is that users will rely heavily on specific niche search engines when searching for specific topics.  The second prediction is that embedded online search in apps will be on almost any desktop and mobile application.  While searching on applications is already prevalent, application searching will almost be an everyday activity as data begins to grow and become more embedded into our lives each and every day.  The third prediction is that SEO and social media will further merge together with traditional public relations and marketing practices.

The fourth prediction is that Social Media sites that have every day user functions will outlast others.  The fifth prediction is that technical SEO professionals will find better opportunities with software companies instead of marketing agencies.  The sixth prediction is that users will be more savvy making older online marketing tactics obsolete.  The term "banner blindness" will no longer be effective.  Users do not respond to these banners anymore.  They will evolve and find other methods that will make their marketing tactics more effective.  The last prediction is that SEO will never be a popular professional degree in college.  The reason for this is that there are so many other majors out there that cover SEO and the certifications that come with it.  SEO will never develop into a popular professional degree.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/brentgleeson/2015/04/06/7-bold-statements-about-the-10-year-forecast-for-seo/

Week 13 - MKTG 349 - Evaluating Ad Performance On Search Network

There are many ways to track your performance of your adwords campaign.  A good starting point is to monitor clicks, impression, and click-through-rate (CTR).  You can find these numbers in the accounts statistics table.  There are also many other options to track your ad performance.  The first option is monitoring your actual ad performance.  You can do this by checking on the status of your ad by simply clicking on the status button in your campaign.  Another great method is to check on your average position.  This will tell you where you typically land on a search result list.  The last way you can check your ad performance is through your ad variations.  By checking out each of your ad variations, you can see which ads are performing better than others.

Another great way to track your ad performance is through monitoring your keyword performance.  The first way to monitor your keyword performance is through keyword status.  Keyword status will tell you which keywords are triggering a response to web users.  Another great way to monitor keyword performance is through quality score.  This option is usually disabled, but when enabled, you can see how well your keywords are scoring.  The last way to track keyword performance is through search terms.  This option allows you to see what the users actually searched for when they saw your ad. This is a great way to see what people are searching for and how you can refine certain keywords to fit these search terms, thus increasing your ad performance.

Week 12 - MKTG 348 - Blog Links

John Dodson - http://jdodsoniii.blogspot.com

Francesca Guido - http://francescaseoblog.blogspot.com/

Shannon Oconnell - http://shannonsmarketingblog.blogspot.com/  

Carlos Salinas - http://carlosmarketingblog.blogspot.com/

Ashfaaq Seedat - http://ashmarketingblog.blogspot.com/

Maureen Lepke - http://maureenlepkemarketingblog.blogspot.com/

Cory Evans - http://coryevansmarketing.blogspot.com/

Caitlin Campbell - http://campbellmarketingblog.blogspot.com/  

Kaitlyn Szaflarski - http://kaitlynmarketing.blogspot.com/  

Bruno Gomes - http://brunogomesmarketing.blogspot.com/  

Sumaira Quraishi - http://sumairasmarketingblog.blogspot.com/  

Trevor Walzak - http://trevormarketing1.blogspot.com/

Anthony Phipps - http://phippsmarketingblog.blogspot.com/

Kevin Carroll - http://kc3marketing.blogspot.com/

Tommy DiPonio - http://tommydmarketing.blogspot.com/

Steve Kositzky - http://stevesmktgblog.blogspot.com/

Drew Keil - http://drewkeil.blogspot.com

Week 12 - MKTG 349 - Designing A Mobile Site

When designing a mobile site, there are four best practices.  The first practice is keeping it quick.  Since your design is made for a mobile site, get rid of the large sections of text that will not be legible.  Replace these large sections with bullet points.  Also compress pictures so that that they are not too big for the site as well.  The second practice is making the mobile site easy to purchase something off of it and create the site to make it easy for customers to contact you.  Good ways to do this are: reducing the number of steps it takes to make a transaction, keep forms short, use check boxes, lists, and scroll menus to make data entry a lot easier, and use a click-to-call functionality for a phone numbers.

The third practice is to simplify navigation of your site.  You should minimize scrolling and keep your site vertical.  Organize your menu and make sure each option is properly spread apart so as to not overlap each option.  Create clear, easy to find back and forward buttons for your customers to easily navigate through your site.  And make sure to use seven links or less per page.  The last practice is helping people find and get to your site.  You should include your address or store locator on the landing page.  Include maps and directions and, when possible, a GPS to personalize even more with your customers.  You should also allow customers to check stock at nearby stores.  And finally, make sure your site is being indexed for web search.

Week 11 - MKTG 349 - Tips For Creating Successful Ad Groups

Now that your campaign is all set and ready to go, it is time to create your ad groups.  A simple start is to organize your ad groups into similar themes.  Ad groups contain a set of keywords, ads, and bids that you manage.  We will go into a deeper understanding of these elements that you will be using on Google search or the display network.

Lets start with keywords.  Building a good keyword list can help you show your ads to your target market/audience.  When choosing your keywords you should be in the mind of your audience.  Think about what they are searching for and how they are searching for it.  You should also align your keywords with your goals.  Don't just throw any old keywords out there and hope that your target audience will find it.  You need to look at this as, "what do I want out of this campaign?"  After finding that answer, you will have a few keywords in mind.  Finally you need to group your keywords into themes.  It is crucial for you to group similar keywords together.  Do not just throw together a bunch of keywords that all have different meanings.

The second element that will be discussed in more detail is the ad itself.  There are various forms of ads that you can choose from that will show up in a Google search result.  Choosing the right ad type all depends on what you are trying to advertise.  There are various ad types, they include: text, ad extension, image, WAP mobile, App promotion, video, product listing, and call-only ads.  As you can see there are a lot of ads that you can choose from.  Choosing the right ad that fits what you are trying to do is crucial and will make your ad campaign very successful.

Week 11 - MKTG 348 - SEO - Best Practices For SEO Local

When you are optimizing for a local search engine, there are four practices which you should do.  The first one is to include your clients' websites to local search engines.  There are three site which you should primarily focus on if you want a high rank.  These sites are: Google Local Business Center, Yahoo! Local Merchant, and Ask Business Search.  The second best practice is to submit your clients' listings to popular directories and Internet Yellow Pages.  There are plenty of directories out there to choose from.  Some good directories to start with include: yelp.com, citysquares.com, mojopages.com, and insiderpages.com.  You can also greatly increase your clients' visibility on the web by utilizing Internet Yellow Pages.  Sites like SuperPages.com, Switchboard.com, and Yellowpages.com are good sources to start with.

The third best practice for local SEO is to set your geographic location in Google's Webmasters Tools.  In order to achieve a higher rank on local search results, you must find detailed reporting on your pages' visibility on Google.  Google's Webmasters Tools is a great resource for getting this type of information.  The last best practice for SEO local is to include contact information on your website.  By adding an address in your address tag and a phone number, you are increasing your credibility to the search engines.

Week 9 - MKTG 349 - Making A Profit On Your Campaign

Success in investments usually is measured in profits.  So how can you generate the biggest ROI on your AdWords campaign? There are three stages one must go through in order to start earning a profit and increasing your return on investment.  The three stages are: testing, growth, and maturity.


The first stage, testing, consists of gathering data about your performance and determining which CPC, keyword(s), ad combinations work best.  The main goal in this stage is to establish a profit by comparing your costs to revenues.  The minute you start earning a profit, you are ready to move on to the next stage, growth.


In the growth stage, your priority is to gain more customers all the while generating a profit.  The best way to do this is by increasing your budget, but still leaving your bids and keyword(s) and ad text the same.  If you begin to see a decrease in your profits, revert back to your old strategy, or perhaps even adjust your bids, keywords, and ad text.


The final stage is maturity.  When your costs do not reach your daily budget and you have a profit then you have successfully scaled up to the traffic available.  This means you have successfully matured your AdWords account and are earning exceptional ROI.  Some characteristics in this stage are: your budget is high enough to show at all times, and your daily costs, profits, and sales all fluctuate regularly in correlation with search volume.

Week 9 - MKTG 348 - SEO - On Page Optimization Factors

There are many factors that go into on page optimization.  It is important to have a telephone number and an address on your page.  This helps search engines identify the type of business you are in.  It is important to use what is called geographical qualifiers.  These "qualifiers" are city names, county names, state names, and streets in title tags.  Adding these qualifiers gives your location more prominence on search engines.  There are also many outside factors that improve your on page optimization. 







The first factor is offsite optimization. Offsite optimization is adding anchor texts to incoming links in order to hold local qualifiers.  The second factor is to submit your local business to the big search engines.  The big search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask) have a local business center which is made exclusively for small businesses.  These small companies should submit their business to these search engines and include information such as: address, city, state, and a brief description of you company.  After doing this, the search engines will include your company on local search results for users to view.  The last factor is to take advantage of other search engines such as yellow pages and other directories.  These types of sites receive heavy amounts of web traffic each day looking for companies and information on them.  Good sites to take advantage of are: yelp, yellow pages, local, infousa, citysearch, and superpages.

Week 8 - MKTG 349 - Understand The Landing Page Experience

The landing page experience details how good someone thinks someone's experience has been on a landing page.  There are many ways to improve your landing page experience.  So why does the landing page experience matter?  Tuning up your landing page will increase an overall better experience for your audience. There are three ways to improve your landing pages.  The first one is to include relevant, useful, and original content.  You need to make sure your landing page correlates with the content from your site.

The second way to improve your landing page is through transparency and trustworthiness.  Building trust is key in everything.  So to be trustworthy is crucial in having a great landing page experience.  Your visitors also must be able to find your landing page easily.  Distinguishing yourself from advertisements and explaining to your visitors why you are taking their personal information and what you are doing with it, will build your trustworthiness and make you more transparent.

The final way to improve your landing page experience is to make navigation of your page easy.  If visitors have to search all over the place for your page, you're doing something wrong and the experience will be a bad one.  If your site contains a purchase page, make it quick and easy for people to order the product.  It is important not to have any pop-ups on your page as it will annoy your visitors and could cause them to leave.  Lastly, provide useful information about your product or service that your visitors can read and learn about.

Week 8 - MKTG 348 - SEO - Blog Optimization

It is important that you optimize your blog.  Without optimization your blog will be an enigma an the world wide web.  There are six ways in which you can optimize your blog.  The first way is just by creating simple content.  This is one of the best ways to optimizing your blog.  The second way to optimizing your blog is through search engine submissions.  A great way to do this is by having as much relevant content as you can.  Search engines always prefer bigger websites with lots of content.
Another great way to optimize your blog is through keywords.  Integrating popular keywords in your blog gives you a competitive advantage.  Doing a keyword research will help you understand what your audience is searching for and what keywords they are using.  Another great way to optimize your blog is to optimize your blog template. Make sure your post title shows up on search engines in its entirety.  Also make sure you append you title.  The last way to optimize your blog is to update your blog regularly.  When you update your blog and make changes and add to it, search engines will index these new updates.

So what are the advantages to blog optimization?  First it increases your rankings on search engines, thus facilitating the SEO process.  Optimization also increases your visitors, increase website trafficking.  Essentially, when you optimize your blog, more people will see your blog and you can begin to build up an audience.  The more popular you become, and if you follow the six ways to optimizing your blog, you will be ranked very high on search engines.

Week 8 - MKTG 348 - Hubspot - Importance of Customer Delight

The final methodology in inbound marketing is delight.  It is very important to keep your existing customers happy.  Usually, companies are always looking to attract new customers, and they have their time and energy on these prospective customers.  This leaves the existing customers feeling left out.  The facts show that it is 6-7x more expensive to attract and obtain new customers then it is to keep existing customers.  Only 7% of customers say their customers service experience has been better than their expectations.

These stats show that there is a huge opportunity for companies.  These advantages are not only financial, but also consistency among customers and companies.  It is important to develop relationships with your customers.  Relationships help build trust, and trust is important to creating a great inbound experience.  Inbound experience is built by the people and it is made for the people.

Week 7 - MKTG 349 - Setting A Budget

After setting up your campaign, you need to set up a daily budget.  Base your budget off of your advertising goals and how much you are willing to spend.  The average cost-per-click (CPC) is 10 cents.  So if you are expecting 100 clicks each day, set your budget to $10 per day.  If you are more comfortable budgeting your campaign on a monthly basis, you can calculate how much you will spend per day by dividing your monthly budget by 30.4, the average amount of days in each month.

Now that you know the amount of money you are willing to spend. You need to understand that this budget only applies to one campaign.  You set your budget up through a few steps.  The first step is to click on the campaign tab.  Under this tab, click on the + and select the type of campaign you would like to run.  Under the select campaign setting, scroll down until you find "Budget" and enter your daily budget.  After selecting a daily budget, you are all set and your campaign is ready to run.

Week 7 - MKTG 348 - SEO - Traffic Analysis

Traffic analysis is the act of evaluating referrals from different search engines, which are based on the conversion of traffic keywords.  Visitor traffic analysis aids in optimizing the campaign in greater details in order to increase the return on investment.  There are many ways the visitor traffic analysis can be done.  Some of these parameters include: traffic on keywords, keywords and landing pages, whether the call to action was followed with conversion, qualified traffic, and converted traffic.

With regards to keywords and landing pages, you are trying to figure out which pages are attracting more pages than others and why are certain pages attracting more viewers than others.  With a call to action, marketers are looking to see that certain activities are being done on their sites.  Marketers need to make sure these activities are being done or not, and if they are not being done, why aren't they.  With converted traffic, the whole goal is conversion through sales.  It is crucial to track your sales.  Sales is everything when it comes to SEO and converting your website trafficking into sales.

Week 7 - MKTG 348 - Hubspot - Why The Conversion Process is So Critical

The conversion process is the second step in the inbound marketing methodology.  Conversion allows you to generate leads.  The conversion process turns unknown visitors into real people that you begin to know (a lead).  As a marketer, it is important to create conversion paths.  There are three steps that lead to a successful conversion path.  The first one is a call to action, the second is creating a landing page, and the third one is a thank you page.

How, as a marketer, do you convert the right visitor into leads?  The whole goal in the conversion process is to attract your buyer persona and guide them to the sale.  The best way to guide your buyer persona is through your conversion paths.  The buyers' journey, if you recall, is the awareness, consideration, and the decision.  For each stage in the buyers' journey, you need to have your conversion paths laid out.  By setting up a call to action, creating a landing page, and a thank you page for each step in the buyers' journey you will successfully turn visitors into the right leads.

Week 6 - MKTG 348 - Hubspot - Effectiveness of Email

While the common knowledge of email is that it is obsolete and "old school", the reality is that email is still relevant and growing.  Currently, there are 3.2 billion email accounts.  95% of online consumers use email, and 91% of those consumers check their email accounts at least once a day.  Ironically, email has a longer life span than social media.  In a poll taken, 77% of people prefer email for marketing communications.  And finally, email has a 4,300% return on investment.  76% of marketers say they use email more than they did three years ago.

So now that the numbers prove email is still relevant, how do you use it to help with your inbound marketing strategy.  Email actually works for every stage in the inbound marketing strategy.  Email can be used to attract new visitors, and attract those visitors into leads.  With those leads, you can nurture them into customers, and finally keep your customers happy so they in turn develop into promoters.

Week 6 - MKTG 349 - Successful Text Ads

In order to have successful text ads, you need to have specific, relevant, empowering, and attractive ads.  There are many ways to create successful text ads.  The first one being to highlight what makes you unique.  By pointing out what separates you from everyone else, you are showcasing why you are better than your competition.  You should also include prices, promotions, and exclusives that your are offering.  Another thing you should add to your text ad is to empower your audience.  If you are selling something tell the people what they can purchase.  If they have questions, show them who and how to contact people.

There are many other methods to creating successful advertising.  Including a keyword in your text ad shows relevance to the site and what the audience is looking for.  Appealing to mobile users is another great method that will result in successful text advertising.  Having an easily visible phone number and a location on the ad will cause intrigue.  And finally experimenting with three or four text ads is a great way to know what is and what isn't working.  After a few weeks of experimentation, you will know which keywords work and which ones do not.  From there, you can create one or two ads with the most successful keywords.

Week 6 - MKTG 348 - SEO - Bid Strategy

When it comes to setting up a bid strategy, there are many things to consider.  First, every PPC site basis their bids off of different merits.  Keywords or phrases may be more effective on certain PPC engines.  Depending on which PPC engine you choose, you need to have a distinct strategy for that specific engine.  All engines are all made up differently.  A perfect example of this is Google and Yahoo.  Google takes into consideration past performances and click through rates (CTR).  Yahoo, on the other hand, only takes into consideration how much you are bidding for each campaign.

If you are only concerned with getting the first position on search results, then bidding high on an engine like Yahoo is the way to go.  Offering expensive bids will almost certainly put you at the top.  If you are just trying to reach your target audience, selecting specific keywords that relate to your site will be effective.  While the traffic is less, the competition is not there, so when your target audience enters your keywords or phrases in the search query, your site will show up on the results page.  Another strategy that can be implemented is to bid slightly higher than your competition.  This is a great way to get ahead of your competition without going to the bank.  This strategy has proven to be effective when used properly.

Week 5 - MKTG 349 - Ad Reach

With ad reach, you have the ability to control what cities and states your ad will appear.  You can even compare the number of people who might see your ad in specific areas.  This comparison can help you determine if you even need to control where your ad should be seen and not seen.  To find your reach results, go to settings and click on locations, and from there you can see where your ad was seen.  This is a great way to see, geographically, who's looking at your ads and who is not.  By having this knowledge, you have the ability to shut it down in certain areas, need be.  This lead to a more efficient and effective ad campaign.

Reach is based on an estimation of the number of users seen on Google properties within your specified geographic region.  Reach numbers in adwords may differ in comparison from census population data or any others.  There are many factors that can cause this, including: number of devices being used, number of web browsers, number of temporary users, length of time, cookies, and the search partner or Google Display Network.  Because of these factors altering other data, reach should be used as a guidance tool, and not something that you should base your entire campaign off of.