Marketing for Success - Mike Vilimek

Yahoo Unveils Apt, a New Display Ad Platform

Yahoo has just launched their new much anticipated advertising platform called Apt. This is Yahoo’s latest attempt to grab a piece of the huge online advertising market that Google has dominated for so long.

While Google’s Adwords platform has focused on advertising based on search terms, Apt will focus more on display ads. Yahoo claims the platform will allow advertisers and publishers to buy and sell display ads while using the same type of easy self-service features that helped make Adwords so successful. Yahoo also hopes that by using data they already collect on user’s preferences, advertisers will be able to better target their campaigns.

Apt will only be open to a select group of newspaper companies initially, with availability to other publishers and advertisers to begin in early 2009.

I’m a huge fan of Adwords' do-it-yourself functionalities and the concept of being able to do something similar for display ads could be very powerful. Yahoo could certainly use the boost.

From TV to Internet and Back Again

It’s no secret that over the past few years a strong trend emerged of advertising dollars being shifted from traditional mainstream media such as TV and newspapers over to online advertising. This makes Google’s recent announcement all the more interesting.

Google and NBC Universal said they’re teaming up to allow Google to sell advertisements on some of NBC’s cable channels such as MSNBC, Oxygen, and the Sci Fi network. Both companies gain from the deal with Google wanting to sell ads someplace other than just beside their search results and NBC gaining access to advertisers who currently advertise online through Google.

Is this a sign of the future? Will marketers be able to setup a Google advertising account and select which portion gets displayed online and which portion goes to TV? Too early to tell, but the problem of quantifying traffic and ROI generated from TV ads will still be difficult compared to that of PPC models.

Landing Pages

Where do your PPC ads link to? They should link to a page specifically designed to function as an extension of your PPC ad campaign, often called a landing page. They are not generally part of your existing website and are not linked through the site map. Landing pages usually have 2 purposes:

1.       Reinforce the message of the PPC ad and encourage the visitor on to a goal conversion.

2.       Allow you to track how effectively your PPC ads are drawing qualified traffic and how well you are converting that traffic.

You should have a unique landing page that is tailored for each unique PPC ad campaign. The landing page must provide what your PPC ad promised or you risk having a large bounce rate.

Think like one of your buyers. What information do they need to reach their goal? That’s the information you should provide. But don’t overcrowd the page, you don’t want to the buyer to become distracted. Make the next step within your conversion process the most prominent feature. Eg. If your goal is for visitors to sign-up for a newsletter, then the sign-up form should be front and centre.

As with PPC ads themselves, you should be experimenting with different landing pages and testing to see which ones are the most effective. It should be an ongoing process that never really finishes.

Writing for Your Buyers

When writing press releases, blogs, or website content, it seems too many companies use words and phrases that mean nothing to their most important audience, their buyers. Have you used the following terms in your recent communications? Flexible, robust, world class, cutting-edge, groundbreaking, turnkey, the list goes on and on. Do you think these terms mean anything to your customers? Well they don’t. They are so overused and meaningless; they don’t provide any value in your communications.

Every time your company communicates with the outside world, regardless of the medium, use it as an opportunity to connect with your buyers. Think of the problems that your customers face and the language in which they would use. Communicate less about the features of your product and more about solving your buyers’ problems. This will also improve your visibility in search engines, as potential buyers will search for solutions to their problems using their own language. Can you image someone searching for a turnkey, flexible, robust solution? I don’t think so.

Before releasing any content, always ask yourself, “Am I writing for my buyers?”

Google Launches New Browser – Chrome

Google is taking aim at Microsoft’s dominance in the Internet browser segment with the launch of their new free Internet browser, titled Chrome. Why should this concern you as a marketer? Because a key differentiator between Chrome and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer revolves around ad targeting and user privacy. Microsoft’s latest version, Internet Explorer 8, allows surfers to hide their Internet address and viewing history - often called "porn mode." This represents a threat to Google who attempts to pinpoint its search results to a user's interests, resulting in more efficient ad targeting. With Microsoft owning 72% of the browser market, Google sees a threat in losing their ability to collect valuable ad targeting information.

The war for Internet browser dominance has been waging for quite some time. What’s new is that a key battle within this war will focus on efficient ad targeting versus user privacy.

Writing Ads for Pay-Per-Click Campaigns

Many people think that descriptions for PPC campaign ads such as Google Adwords should be the same as your search engine descriptions. The problem with this approach is that the objective for each is quite different. Search engine descriptions should be designed to attract as much traffic to a site as possible with the plan of converting that traffic into customers. Remember, these clicks don’t cost you anything.

PPC ads on the other hand require a different approach, because you are paying for each click. You don’t want to be paying for unlikely prospects, window shoppers or those who have no interest in your products or services at all. PPC ads should be designed to attract only those who are truly interested in purchasing your products or services. For this reason, relevancy is key. Describe exactly what your business offers. It’s not enough to generate traffic through PPC ads; you need to generate the right traffic.

Other tips include:

-          Include a call to action

-          List at least one feature and benefit of your product/service

-          Include your keywords

Are You Using the Right Website Keywords?

Keywords are the basis for your SEO program. One of the most critical steps in optimizing your website for search engines is choosing the right keywords. They will be the basis for your website copy and any PPC campaigns you plan to run.

You may already have a good idea of the main keywords you want to use, but it’s always a good idea to research others that you may not have thought of initially. There are great tools to help with this called keyword suggestion tools. There are many of these tools available on the web, and here are some of the best.

Wordtracker: For an annual ($329) or monthly ($59) subscription, Wordtracker allows you to search for terms in the database of terms collected. It can tell you how often a keyword or phrase was searched for and how many competing sites use the keyword. It also offers a top 1,000 report that lists the most often searched for terms and a Competition Search option that helps you determine the competitiveness of each term. A less featured but free version is also available. 

Trellian Keyword Discovery Tool: For an annual ($599.40) or monthly ($69.95) subscription to their Standard version, you can see the market share value for a given search term, see how many users search for it daily, identify common spellings and misspellings, and even see how terms are affected by seasonal trends.

Google AdWords Keyword Tool: This free tool provides suggestions for additional terms that you may not have considered, including a ranking of advertiser competition, and an approximation of search volume for each. What is unique about this tool is the ability to examine your web page or entire website and make suggestions for keywords and phrases that could be useful.

Direct Marketing vs. SEO

There are countless companies that invest a significant amount of their marketing dollars in direct, outbound marketing initiatives. Direct marketers try to send their messages directly to consumers, without the use of intervening media. The most popular forms of this communication are direct mail, e-mail, and telemarketing. The main drawback of this practice? It is almost always unsolicited, resulting in a low percentage of positive responses (often 1-2%).

Compare this to SEO techniques, where the purpose is to reach customers at the exact moment they are actively seeking information about a product. If a customer is searching for a product you supply, isn’t that exactly when you want to reach them with your marketing message? For this reason, more and more companies are making SEO techniques a priority over direct marketing. That’s not to say that direct marketing vs. SEO has to be an either or, but if you’re spending a lot on direct marketing, try spending some of that on SEO. To learn more about SEO techniques, try reading SEO: Search Engine Optimization Bible by Jerri L. Ledford