It is no surprise that more ad dollars are being invested in pull media, such as search, as the alternative is down right annoying. This became very clear to me today when I received no less than 7 calls from the same telemarketer about these great "free" gifts that I have been randomly chosen to receive, but of course didn't request.

This situation was both annoying and a little scary, as they knew the last 4 digits of my credit card and claimed to be affiliated with my credit card. The seven calls gave me a chance to do some probing and I quickly learned that they were not with my credit card company at all. As usual, I declined their "free" offer because to be honest, I know these things are never free and I don't think my wife would be all that excited if I started to build a collection of "Girls Gone Wild" videos at the house.

Had the conversation ended there, I would have been more than happy to chalk this up as another mildly annoying telemarketing call. But each caller said that I had to go through a recorded description of the offer during which I was to respond OK twice and at the end I would be given the opportunity to decline the offer. The problem was, that I never made it to the end because their statements were worded in such a way that an "OK" response would have resulted in a recording of me agreeing to receive the offer. After explaining why I had a problem with this I was hung up on by a couple of the callers and the others said that I absolutely couldn't be removed from the list without going through the process as the system was automated. So I guess I just have to keep an eye on my credit card statement and keep fielding these calls.

While I filed a complaint with the BBB, I doubt anything will come of it. The only way to stop this is for the budgets to dry up. Hopefully advertisers will become more aware that there are better options, where you can draw your customers in by giving them what they want, rather than jamming what you want them to have down their throat.

Labels: pull marketing, push marketing

When thinking about the concept of Facebook and the overall ability it gives a user to put whatever details about the going-ons in their life right out there for everyone else on Facebook to see, one could convince that it might not be a big deal if recent online purchases began showing up in user profiles. After all, if Janie Teenager bought two tickets to see Fantastic Four with her main squeeze and wanted people to know about it, what harm could be done in Facebook displaying that Janie actually bought the tickets to said movie on Fandango, one of the participating companies in Facebook's Beacon program? In many cases users may see it as confirmation that another likes or uses certain products, however, after last weeks national news story about the intern-bust http://valleywag.com/tech/your-privacy-is-an-illusion/bank-intern-busted-by-facebook-321802.php users of Facebook and MySpace should think twice about what they put in their profiles as well as their privacy settings. Moreover, users need to be aware of what Facebook may slyly be placing on your profile.

Now this was not a case related to online purchases, but say that our friend Kevin here had purchased a plane ticket and 2 seats for a game at Madison Square Garden through Beacon participating companies on Facebook? While the fairy outfit scenario was likely far more amusing to his boss than the above would have been, there is something to be said for privacy and that goes for online purchases as well. Should this information be shared with other users of Facebook unless you were given a reasonable notice? Probably not. While Facebook's sneeky 20 second opt-out feature http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20071121/tc_nf/56860 is rather bogus, users should be aware of it and for goodness sake, if you're going to tell your employer or anyone else a white lie, don't post the truth for everyone to see!

Labels: facebook, online purchase, privacy

With all the buzz lately about Facebook’s new advertising platform, another social media ad platform may have been overlooked. While LinkedIn’s ad platform (http://www.linkedin.com/static?key=advertising_info) may not have all the bells and whistles of Facebook’s (http://www.facebook.com/ads), it does enable advertisers to reach a different audience.

LinkedIn, a social media site dedicated to helping professionals stay in touch with past colleagues and classmates, or explore new career opportunities, is a great way for advertisers to reach a more mature, professional audience. Advertisers have access to over 16 million professionals on LinkedIn, and can target them by industry, seniority, job function, company size, geography, number of connections, and gender. Banner and text links are available to display advertising messages.

LinkedIn is great option for advertisers in industries like finance, business technology, health, travel and more. For a financial company offering Rollover IRAs, the business professionals on LinkedIn might be a better audience than the demographic that uses Facebook. That’s not to say there isn’t an audience for Rollover IRA’s on Facebook. But with almost 21 million Facebook users ranging from high school students to retirees, versus the over 16 million professionals with an average of fifteen years business experience, you might get a better bang for your buck on LinkedIn!

Labels: display advertising, facebook, linkedin, social media

A colleague of mine and I were in New York for Ad Tech last week and had the pleasure to schedule time with a few of the leading ad serving and tracking providers. Our core focus for the meetings was to ultimately unlock that holy grail of advertising - closing the loop from customer awareness to purchase. This concept goes far beyond just direct awareness to conversion it also includes identifying the multiple touch points a consumer experiences with a brand. From hearing a radio spot to viewing a banner to finding that brand via a search engine. There are many steps to this process and many funnels to how these conversions may take place.

Fortunately, solving this challenge is at the forefront of these vendors' minds and they are making some strong steps to get there. One vendor for example will soon provide a report illustrating the relationship between media spend, impact on brand name searches and whether these brand searches converted. Another report shows the most frequent searches clicked on for a keyword prior to a conversion on that keyword. Reports such as these are a solid step toward a far deeper understanding of customer behavior.

We must remember however, that while this is a step in the right direction, it is still a baby step. 3rd party cookie limitations and the inability to track organic placements are just a few of the challenges that are still to be faced...and oh yeah, what about those offline campaigns? The good news is, we're getting there.

Labels: 3rd party cookie, paid listings, search engine marketing, tracking online advertising

An often overlooked aspect of Pay-per-Click Advertising, targeted landing pages can have a significant impact on conversion rate. Why? It's the first page a visitor sees after clicking your ad, can be as relevant and granular to a search term as desired, and has the ability to give the customer exactly what they're looking for. Moreover, search engines favor campaigns whose landing pages are highly relevant to their ad groups. As Jennifer Laycock pointed out in her recent blog,
(http://www.searchengineguide.com/jennifer-laycock/five-common-paid-search-mistakes-that-ca.php) "Microsoft and Google both look at an ad's landing page as part of their determination of what an ad will cost per click. If the landing page doesn't match up with the keywords from a user's search, the cost per click needed to rank well goes up." So, what are some elements that help make a good landing page? Here are a few things to keep in mind when designing your PPC Campaign landing pages:

1. Does your Landing Page support your ad? If the copy in your ad is focused on running shoes and the landing page is about running clothes and accessories, you are requiring visitors to search for information that you've already advertised to them was immediately accessible. In many cases, not only are you distracting the visitor from their initial focus, but you may be turning them off enough they leave your site completely.

2. Does your Landing Page match your call to action? If you are promoting "buy now" in your ad copy, a visitor will expect to land on a page where they can make a purchase. Likewise, if you are advertising "learn more" or "get more information," the user should be brought to a page where they will find exactly that. Make sure your landing page delivers on the expectations set in your ads.

3. Does your Landing Page focus on one specific action? Whether it's signing up for a newsletter, making a purchase, or requesting more information, everything on your landing page should be focused around this one goal. Keep distracting links that take the visitor away from this path to a minimum, shorten text to get straight to the point, and minimize the number of clicks a user must make to reach the end goal.

4. Does your Landing Page look like the rest of your site? This is not to say that the landing page cannot deviate at all from your website, but there is something to be said about keeping logos, colors, and branding in place. This builds confidence with the customer and maintains the company image that customers have come to expect.

If your goal is to increase conversion rate, creating targeted landing pages is a valuable tool which shouldn’t be overlooked. Keep the above considerations in mind, and be sure to have clear goals about what other elements you will be testing. Most importantly, remember that determining the best landing page is a process, possibly requiring several rounds of revisions to determine what factors work best together. Good luck!

Labels: conversion rates, landing pages, PPC

Google announced this week that CPC site targeting is currently out of Beta, and available to all advertisers. They also announced that they will now call what was formerly known as Site Targeting, "Placement Targeting".

According to Google, "With the launch of CPC bidding, you can not only pick the placements where your ads appear, but you can also select the bidding option that best matches your clients' needs. For instance, if the purpose of your client's placement-targeted campaign is to increase sales, leads, sign-ups, or other conversion-oriented metrics, you can select CPC bidding and pay per click. Alternatively, if you want to maximize impressions and increase brand awareness among your client's target audience, you can select CPM bidding."

It would be great with the launch of these announcements, Google could also provide case studies that demonstrate the impact/performance of CPC placement targeting vs. CPM for a particular advertiser. The data must be available and is usually the first question I have when a Google feature comes out of Beta.

Currently, the search engine allows advertisers to convert their CPM placement targeting campaigns to CPC with a quick change to their campaign settings. Although not yet available through the API or compatible with Adwords Editor, Google hopes to integrate these within the coming months.

Labels: cpc placement targeting, google, search engine marketing, site targeting

On Monday, CEO and Founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, unveiled their new ad platform. Essentially it will allow advertisers to create a corporate profile. Facebook users will be able to become "friends" with the company and share their experience with other friends within the social network. In addition, the Beacon Project will allow user's to share their purchase and interaction behavior outside of Facebook on participating sites through feeds. Advertisers can then in turn serve up ads to people that have showed an affinity to a certain brand. There is apparently some form of behavioral/demographic targeting as well because I was just served up an ad for "SYNC" and I don't use any Blue Tooth devices nor do I own an iPod. I do happen to be male, between the ages of 25 and 34, so I expect that is why I got that ad. Anyway, I digress.

As with anything related to social networking, there is a lot of buzz about how revolutionary this idea is and that it will change the way that people market. I agree, there are certainly some interesting aspects, such as the ability to target to people that have expressed interest in a particular brand, but is that really going to help people that don't have a well established brand? Let's be real, there are only a handful of brands that are both widely known and appeal to a large enough market to make marketing worth while. We are talking about the iPod's and PS3's of the world here. I just don't see this as a viable marketing channel for companies that don't have a well established brand, even if people are looking for an buying their products online. As a result, I expect that the majority of ad space will be filled with demographically target ads, making Facebook's new ad platform not really all that unique and revolutionary after all.

One thing that all marketers can enjoy about Facebook is the quality and accuracy of the demographic data on their users. Because supplying real information is the only real way to connect with your friends, I think that the data people enter in their Facebook profile is likely to be far more accurate then what they might enter when signing up for a Hotmail or Yahoo Mail account.

I guess only time and testing will tell, but I am excited to start testing.

Labels: beacon, facebook, online marketing

The new website, www.freerice.com, offers visitors the chance to donate 10 grains of rice by simply playing a multiple choice vocabulary game. That’s it, that’s all you have to do. According to my colleague, there are approximately 14,500 grains of rice in one cup - http://www.producersrice.com/rice/facts.html#A

All you need to do is answer 1,450 questions correctly and you can provide one cup of rice to a hungry and less fortunate individual somewhere on the globe!

The project was started on October 7th, 2007 and registered 830 grains of rice and yesterday, November 6th, 2007, the total had risen to 856,444,020. That’s over 59,000 cups of rice. Not bad for 30 days work.

The cause is good and it shows the power of a unique viral marketing program; There is even a freerice add on in Facebook. We will keep an eye on this one and see just how much rice the world can get… Give it a shot.

Labels: facebook, free rice, freerice, viral marketing, vocabulary

Does your current marketing strategy take into consideration what types of online web directories you should submit your website to? If it does and you're not careful, you could end up wasting money away and potentially hurting or influencing your rankings. At Rock Coast Media, our SEO link building experts are constantly working to develop a comprehensive list of quality web directories to improve our client rankings. Below are Top 5 Red Flags on the types of web directories you should avoid.

Red Flag #1 No Editorial Review – Recently, Google has taken action on banning hundreds of web directories that it considers outside of its"quality guidelines". Senior Google software engineer, Matt Cutts has mentioned the importance of quality on numerous occasions in the past and present. However, while Google is the search engine leader, at one point quantity did play a greater role and was more important in other smaller search engine competitors such as MSN. These days though, this is not the case as search engine algorithms are constantly updated for improved relevance in an effort to reduce SERP manipulation.

You should always make sure the directory you submit to has an editorial policy and takes the time to review your site. If there isn't, then skip it and move on!

Red Flag #2 Excessive Advertising – When spotting a quality directory, take into consideration the amount of sponsorship/Google Adsense ads that are present on the site. There is nothing wrong with placing adsense advertisements on a web directory, but you really want to avoid excessive advertising when deciding where you should submit to. Keepin mind, a lot of webmasters will attempt to set-up web directories for the purpose of generating revenue (whether through adsense, or paid submissions) without serving any value to the individual who pays. So in the end, you end up wasting your money and getting no value back.

Red Flag #3 Directory Age – Pay attention to how old the directory is and how long it has been around. Best Of The Web (www.botw.org) is a perfect example of quality web directory which has been around since 1994! These are the type of directories you should go after.

Red Flag #4 Same IP Hosting – As I mentioned above, certain webmasters have a tendency to set-up web directories for the purpose of generating revenue and nothing else. Individuals may run a network of 100 or more directories all hosted on the same IP address, and you may not even know it. Before deciding where to submit, you should analyze each directory domain name to make sure it is hosted on individual Class C blocks as opposed to same IP.

And finally…..

Red Flag #5 – Check Domain Indexability! – So you're ready to pay to be included in a directory. Everything looks good, nothing seems shady, right? But, have you checked whether the directory is actually spidered by search engines? I am starting to see this problem more and more…webmasters will allow the indexability of its main domain name, but have you checked whether the directory listing page you plan to submit your site to is actually indexed by search engines? Webmasters will sometimes attempt to put a 'nofollow' tag on a lot of internal pages of their site to avoid a so called PageRank 'Leak', in an effort to boost up the PR oftheir homepage. Sure, a directory may look great, but one that passes no backlink value to your site is worthless!

You should pay close attention to these warning signs at any time you decide to do your web directory submissions.

Labels: link building, link development, SEO, web directories

At the end of last week, I started receiving emails from Yahoo "informing me about the savings I've received for my account(s) due to Pricing Discounts":

"Pricing Discounts are designed to take quality into account in pricing traffic from Yahoo’s partner sites. This means that you may be charged less for certain clicks coming from partner sites depending on the quality of those clicks. Quality is calculated based on conversion rates and other measurements of the ability to deliver more interested customers to your website."
The email went on to outline which accounts I got pricing discounts in, listing out the days I received less than quality clicks, and the savings I received. The discounts were pretty good; for the couple days last month where I received discounts, it looks like I'm receiving over a 50% savings. Not so bad!

However, rather than finding out when a refund was going to be attributed to my accounts, Yahoo went on to outline "potential opportunities for reinvesting my pricing discounts" which included utilizing the team for keyword research, increasing bids on keywords that were effected, increasing terms that were otherwise unaffordable, etc. While this is all good (and its great to see Yahoo being proactive with our accounts), I'm left with feeling confused on just how these discounts are being applied, whether I talk to my rep about keyword research or not. I’m sure the goal is to have us spend more on account of these discounts, but I’ll let you know what I find out.

Labels: search engine marketing, Yahoo, yahoo pricing discounts, ysm