The PIBlog: Internet Marketing Views and Tips

Much like the mystery of the Big Mac’s secret sauce and Colonel Sanders 11 herbs and spices, we’ve all speculated what exactly makes up the closely guarded formula that determines Google’s PPC Quality Score.

• What are all the factors?
• How much weight does each factors carry?
• How can I exploit this to my advantage?!

Last week Search Engine Journal posted screen shots of tiny suspicious text beneath Google AdWords ads. The text icluded pScore, mCPC and thresh.

This spurred much discussion concerning what these terms mean and why they appeared. Google issued a statement to Search Engine Journal citing a "technical error." The company admitted the data displayed was indeed AdWords ranking information, but refused to share what the statistics meant. (Well obviously.) The discrepancy was not limited to any one country. This Search Engine Roundtable post shows the Netherlands saw AdWords quality score text too.

One day, after eons of research, we may decipher AdWords’s secret sauce. Perhaps it will simply fall into our laps. Who knows? It may turn out to be as simple as discovering the secret sauce for a Krusty Burger:

Let mayonnaise sit out in the sun. (Okay, okay...the Krusty-AdWords connection is highly unlikely.)

I suppose that it’s best for the AdWords Quality Score to remain a secret. It keeps the playing field level and encourages good sportsmanship and all that.

*Sigh*

The day didn’t grow darker, exactly. But the light shifted in a way that was almost imperceptible, the day that Mediocrity rode into town. It rode a limping horse with a second-hand saddle on which it balanced precariously. Behind it rode its army: Whining, Ambivalence, and Lame Excuses.

Taking a deep swig from its flask of Lethargy, Mediocre started to spit then decided it didn’t have the energy. “Well, well, what do we have here?” Mediocre said, with a mocking eye. “If it isn’t Creativity and it’s earnest band of overachievers.”

He took in our shiny uniforms, our gleaming stable, and our stamping horses. “How’s burning the midnight oil going? Those brilliant notions still waking you up in the middle of the night….” he drawled. He jumped as Critical Thinking threw a knife that landed right in the center of a nearby oak tree. “We’re not going to mince words Mediocrity,” said Critical Thinking. “ We aren’t going to bribe and flatter. We are going to focus all our energy on the most effective way to run you out of town.”

“What are we waiting for?” cried Good Ideas, hopping from foot to foot. “I have ten scalable solutions in mind right now. He’ll be nothing but a case study by the time I’m done!”

Visionary just closed its eyes and hummed.

Lame Excuses lurched forward. “It’s not our fault. The muse just hasn’t been in,” it shrieked. “We can’t create on demand.”

“There just hasn’t been time,” Whining trilled. “No one’s even explained it right.” Ambivalence started to say something, but settled for a smirk.

“We are here to run you out of town Mediocrity,” Creativity said firmly. “Hop on the raft of Malaise and go back to the lukewarm land of Status Quo where you belong. You have no place on the Professional High Road. I’m surprised you were able to climb this far anyway.”

“Oh, we may have cut a few shortcuts here and there,” said Mediocrity, smiling sweetly. “But we still got here, didn’t we, just the same as you.”

Just then, the Results Police rode in, with Metrics, Testimonials and Revenue behind him. “You aren’t the same as Creativity, Mediocre,” the Sheriff said sternly. “And we can prove it. Me and my boys have been watching you for a long time. You may have gotten lucky for a while, sped through a few assignments, took the easy way when no one was looking, cheated your clients out of decent output. We are charging you with jaywalking across the street of Hard Work, shoplifting fancy buzzwords to avoid genuine thought and prostituting the integrity of your profession. It was only a matter of time before someone caught onto your Mediocrity. Let’s go.”

Creativity and its army turned and left, each blazing its individual trail home.

Twitter is a Popular Group Chat Client

When Twitter came on the scene 2006 I was an early adopter. Chatting IRC style with the addition of subscribers and an archive was most compelling to me. I was quick to abandon it too. Back then you may as well have shouted, "Hello!," into a desert canyon, but without the comforting echo. Twitter reached a tipping-point (and I began using it again) during the 2007 SXSW conference when attendees used the tool to chat during sessions and figure-out which bar to convene in. At the same time conference bloggers lit the Internet with stories about just how revolutionary Twitter was.

Today the question is,

"How do I use Twitter to get rich for marketing?"

Personalities like @GuyKawasaki, @SethGodin and @JasonCalacanis all use Twitter so there must be gold in them there hills. Right?

Right size your expectations.

Twitter is a lousy audience building tool when you have to start from scratch.

Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin and Jason Calacanis did not create new audiences on Twitter. They brought their audiences with them. They told blog readers and subscribers, "Follow me on Twitter to receive more fresh content and enjoy some personal time with me."

So how do Guy, Seth and Jason use Twitter to grow the readership their blogs and web sites? They exploit the fact that no one enjoys being privy to only one side of a conversation.

• On Twitter everyone has their own followers
  • When you send a message to Guy Kawasaki your followers see what you write
  • When Guy writes to you people will not see what Guy writes unless they follow Guy too or visit his profile
• When your followers see you conversing with Guy Kawasaki
  • Many will want to know what Guy wrote to you
  • They will visit Guy’s Twitter page
  • Some will follow Guy
• New followers will get Guy’s messages, both personal and marketing

The larger the audience you bring with you to Twitter in the beginning the more useful Twitter will be as a marketing tool. If you have only a small audience Twitter will prove difficult use.

You can build an audience from scratch on Twitter.

It takes time to make new friends. As you become more involved and recognized people will follow your account. It can be a slow process, especially at the outset.

• Create an account with your real name (Unless your nickname is widely recognized).
• Use a Twitter search tool
  • Find discussions that interest you
  • Make sure you have a potential audience on Twitter
• Visit the Twitter pages of @names you see frequently in messages.
• Read their recent posts
• Evaluate them
• Follow them
• Visit their web sites and blogs
• Participate in the conversation.
  • Be online during peak posting periods
  • Use people’s @names in your posts
  • Seriously, engage people and use their @names in your messages. This is the most important secret of all.
• Write compelling content
  • Write only when you have something worthwhile to contribute
  • Don’t be a troll or somebody who fans the flames of argument
  • Avoid useless messages like, "Me too."
  • Use Tiny URLs (Firefox addon)

Here is one last hint.

Don’t follow too many people right away.

If you visit somebody’s Twitter profile and see that they follow 250 people but only 25 follow back, chances are good you will not follow either. The ratio is unnatural, too far apart. Keep this in mind for your own account when you begin following users. Start with under 50 then grow gradually. You’ll pick-up speed soon enough.

If you want to follow me

These secrets and some determination should get you started. And, if you want to follow my tweets here is my Twitter Profile: SEOinSeattle.

Once in awhile you get a client who’s site offers a lot of little specific products that is great for niche keywords but low traffic. Those keywords are great when they convert, but the real traffic is in the high competitive keywords that bring the visitors to the site. These visitors that search by the broad terms most of the time don’t actually know what they are looking for yet. It’s a “I’ll know it when I see it” type of shopping mentality.

So, the question is: how do you get the most out of those big terms you have to bid on to get the traffic?

For example: Your client sells bridesmaid gifts. The keywords to get traffic to the site related to bridesmaids gifts are going to be expensive, but the problem is the bride is shopping around and isn’t exactly sure what to get yet.

So in the meantime, we have to be smart with the spend while waiting for that bride to find what she wants.

First off, look at your keywords. Could they be segmented out further for increased relevancy and a lower cost per click? Do you need to separate “gifts” keywords and “presents” into different ad groups? Can you break out keywords that include “suggestions” or “ideas”?
And at the most granular level, check out your keywords letter by letter. Find out if while “bridesmaid gifts” converts, “bridesmaids gift” does not and act accordingly.

Second, look at your revenue generating keywords. What are those? Would it be a benefit to break those into a separate ad group or even campaign by itself? If they were in their own campaign, you could increase or decrease the budget as needed to make sure they’re receiving the funds they need . Or adjust the campaign settings to show during peak times of the day or incrementally increase the bids during those times only.

This one’s a keeper!

Third, look at your non-revenue generating keywords. Those terms that are just bleeding money. Do you really need them? Try pausing them, deleting them, lowering the bids of even throwing them in their own ad group or campaign to better control the cost.

Some revenue, but over time this one hurts.

Fourth, look at your match types and negatives. If they keyword is showing thousands upon thousands of times a day, it may be a little too broad and out of control. Try upping the ante with phrase or exact. At the very least you should be running search query reports and searching on the terms yourself and seeing what else is showing up with your ads. Filter out those irrelevant and over inclusive searches.

Fifth, and most certainly not last, ad copy. Use those revenue generating terms in your headlines and again in the body. Make those search terms bold so that they catch the eye of the potential visitor.

If you’re account doesn’t pull in much revenue yet, use bounce rates, pageviews and time on site to evaluate the relevancy of the keyword. If the bounce rate is much higher than 50%, people are not finding what they are looking for when they come to the site. If they’re only spending a few seconds or looking at a couple of pages, you have your answer on that particular keyword.

Get rid of it!

Recently I was looking for a way to make some cool rusted metal text in Photoshop, and after searching through a few tutorials on Google I decided that all of them were garbage. So I messed around for a while and created my own.

Lists and grouping are terrific ways to simplify or remember complex stuff. So today I am sharing how I categorize audience development for Internet websites.

Before I start, however, I want to emphasize a point. Management guru Peter Drucker declared, "The purpose of business is to create a customer." Success in business depends on creating positive ROI; it requires profit. Everything below, no matter how counterintuitive, are pieces of a puzzle...a Rube Goldberg machine that delivers customers to your doorstop.

Ever website should cultivate three audiences:

1. The Sales/Conversion Audience
2. Search Engines as an Audience
3. The Social Media/Conversation Audience

ONE: The Sales/Conversion Audience

This is your traditional target market, the prospects, leads and customers that you want to draw into your sales or conversion funnel. This group also includes customers, especially ones you hope to offer repeat sales or support. This is your Peter Drucker audience.

TWO: Search Engines as an Audience

For most businesses search engines are the top deliverer of website traffic and prospects.  Search engines have their own needs: relevance, authority and trust. Meet these needs and they will feed you a steady stream of leads. This is not about manipulation. It is about cultivation. Search engines depend on certain signals to rank web pages. Develop those signals naturally, with purpose and in harmony with your other audiences.

THREE: The Social Media/Conversation Audience

Malcolm Gladwell calls them Mavens. Rand Fishkin calls them the Linkerati. The fact is that most people do not add content to the Internet and they will never link to your website. Yet, links to your website and conversations about your website are two fundamental measures of relevance, authority and trust, benchmarks search engines use for ranking pages. The Social Media/Conversation Audience will also drive branding and increase recognition among your Sales/Conversion Audience.

To get website traffic from Audience #1 you need:

• High search engine rankings - Audience #2.
• Internet mavens writing about your business and linking to your website - Audience #3

To get high search engine rankings you need:

• Lots of relevant keyword rich content
• Internet mavens writing about your business and linking to your website

To get Internet mavens to write about your business and to link to your website:

• You must provide them with compelling content that they can pass on to their own networks and audiences.

It is indirect. It is counterintuitive. Which is why most business websites target only The Sales/Conversion Audience. Look at the above image, the circles. Most business focus on the yellow circle exclusively. Others only cultivate SEO and social media when those two audiences overlap with the yellow. In a competitive world success probably lies beyond the overlap. Out there, in the green and the blue…that is where the new opportunities are.

Again, it is indirect. It is counterintuitive. So is paying a public relations firm to get a 30 second clip onto the 6:00 news about a family that uses your product.

PPC, at times, can feel a bit like going to Vegas and pumping nickels into the slot machines. Except imagine the nickels are dollars, or sometimes several dollars. Ouch! Pretty soon you’ve squandered your dinner money, and the forgiving 7-7-7 has eluded your grasp all night.

Fortunately, there’s a way to hedge your bets in Pay-Per-Click Marketing. A way to avoid the slot machines and move your money over to the poker tables, so to speak – where at least you can influence whether you win or lose.

You can’t make people click your ads and you can’t make them buy your products, but you can put your monetary resources where they’re more likely to. That’s where geo-targeting for revenue comes in.

But give the actual interface a star and a half. (On a scale of four stars, Google being four.)

Almost every time I call MSN adCenter support for my various issues, be it basic account editing, billing, ad approval, keyword status or a general “what just happened?!”, I get top notch support and “I’m sorries”. While I find the helpful, apologetic and even sometimes even humorous answers great, I just wish I didn’t have to call them so much. Here is a short list of fun items that I have had to call about and have the support specialist come to my rescue for:

• Opening an ad group and finding no ads there, even though I know darn well there are ads somewhere. There are clicks on keywords, I remember writing them, where did they go? Apparently there was a xml update that needed to be download and run. Surprise!
  
• Credit card was rejected, I got the card cleared off, but now what? You have to call and ask the support representative to manually re-try the card. There is no “retry card” button.
  
• Used the copy campaign feature to create additional ad groups/campaigns. But every time I changed an ad in group A, the ad in group B changed to the text from group A and vice-versa. I suspected this had to do with the copying tool and sure enough, adCenter automatically assigns them the same ID, which means they are the same ad. Sure this is great if you were say, geo-targeting across several states, wanted to run the same ad, change it once and the rest of the ad groups pick it up automatically. The issue was why would I assume that would be the case? Why would that be intuitive? Where was the warning, disclaimer, ANYthing informing me that this might happen? I asked the representative if they could add that to the list of things that weren’t such a good idea, that I know they have there, and she laughed. A lot. That list must fill an entire filing cabinet.
  
• Haven’t called for this one yet, I just really like it. The error page when adCenter just simply stops working,
  “Microsoft adCenter is experiencing problems.” Really? I would say that’s just the tip of the iceberg....

When it comes to marketing, it’s always peanut butter and jelly time.

No, this isn’t some lame joke about how lunchtime is the best part of an internet marketing gig, nor is it some vaguely incestuous reference to the necessary blend between technology and creative. Actually, this is a story about my fourth grade teacher, who in between Newberry classics and ancient Greece, gave me my most valuable internet marketing lesson to date.

The infamous peanut butter and jelly lesson goes something like this, and I’m sure many of you can relate:

Her: “Tell me step by step how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

Me: “Pull out two pieces of bread.”

So far, so good.

Me: “Now open the jam and spread it.”

Teacher opens jam and starts spreading on desk.

Me (alarmed): “No, not on the desk, on the bread! ON THE BREAD!”

Teacher (innocently): “Well why didn’t you say so?”

This went on for quite some time, and by the time my teacher completed my instructions there was peanut butter on the projector and saw marks in the Social Studies textbook. As a saucer-eyed fourth grader, it was pretty much the equivalent to the fall-out from a war, and I was totally freaked.

My guess is, anyone who has ever worked in internet marketing in a non-freelancer capacity has dealt with a not-on-the-desk-on-the-bread moment. As an impressionable nine year old, I wanted to slap my still-hot-from-recess forehead and marvel at my octogenarian teacher’s ineptitude to infer even the most obvious instructions on how to make the most basic of items: a freaking peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Now, as a creative lead, I am firmly sandwiched myself under a host of managers and over a rotating team of designers, writers and developers. What middle management blues have taught me more than anything is that there are in fact two secret staple ingredients that keep a simple project from turning into ludicrous pandemonium.

1. It Isn’t

Not really. I mean sure, I could come up with some long winded post using the ball as a metaphor for links and making some contrived puns about bouncing. But it isn’t really anything at all like internet marketing. But that won’t keep me from going on and on about it on this blog.

The Rundown:

Last week some of the members of the Portent team came to the realization that none of us had played Four Square (heretofore known as 4sq) since grade school. This was clearly unacceptable, and had to be remedied immediately. Starting small, they formed a coalition which quickly grew to a force to be reckoned with. So the stage was set for a true clash of titans.

The place:

Behind a nearby office park.

The time:

Friday Afternoon

The Challengers:

They were truly a fearsome lot, every one of them fell and dangerous to the core.

• Tracy “Normandy” Beach – Dominating with his crowd-pleasing “Van Halens”
• Andy “The Net” Schaffer – Master of the “Blackjack,” as well as the always controversial “Baby Drops”
• Michael “Hustle” Weigand – Deadly with a well placed “Sissy Spacek”

• Sarah “Tsunami” MacKay – Disorients foes with her fearsome battlecry.
• Mike “Russian Roulette” Fitterer – King of the dreaded “Slammie”
• “Shoeless” Stacy Conner – Keeping the rally alive with the unconventional “Double Bouncies”
• Miles “The Enforcer” Grover – Chaos on the court with the unpredictable “Bumbled Bobble”
• Dan “The Rookie” Scott – Keeping opponents on their toes with precision line drives
• And last, but certainly least, me: Mack “Stealth Bomber” Rieder-Johnson - Creator and champion of the treacherous “Fugitive”

Officiating the contest was Line Judge and 4sq veteran Chris “The Missile” Bachmann

The Result:

It was a Herculean struggle, to be sure, and though many tried only one was victorious. I say, with no small amount of modesty, that I emerged the victor with my last minute elimination of Miles. Though truly when such titans of sport clash, we are all winners.

(But really, I won.)