2009 March | Windy City Strategies

Archive for March, 2009

A/B Testing And Pay Per Click Management

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

One critical part in your pay per click management campaign that we see most people not doing right is A/B testing of ads. A/B testing, or split testing is when you have baseline data, and then you do one change at a time to improve conversion rates. You only do one change at a time, so you know if your results were positive or negative. By doing too many changes, you will not be able to pinpoint which change made the result. To start A/B testing, you can either create two different ads going to one landing page, or two ads that are the same going to two different landing pages. Now make sure you edit the settings, so the ads rotate, and show evenly, that way you have data that is 50-50. Let these ads or landing pages run for at least 100 clicks each for optimal results, but if it is not highly searched let if go for several weeks. Now let’s analyze the results.

The amount of data in the results may seem a bit overwhelming for some, but Windy City Strategies internet consulting helps our customers understand what each part of the data specifically means to the navigability of the website so that the client can adjust its internet marketing where it’s most needed.

First, let’s take a look at the two different ads going to one landing page. The ad with the highest click through rate is the one that potential customers like, but that does not mean that it is the best. If you are an informational or service site that does not have conversion tracking, the click through rate is the most important, and if that is the case, take the ad with the lowest CTR, and create a new one to compete against the ad that performed the best. Now if you have conversion tracking, the highest click through rate does not mean that it brought you the most conversions. You have to take this into account while implementing pay per click management strategies, because conversions make you money.

Now the scenario with two of the same ads going to two different landing pages is about the same as the last scenario, except now you are analyzing the landing pages. Which one performed the best? Again, look at the click through rates if you don’t have conversion tracking, and use the best performing landing page, or create another page to compete against the better performing page. If you don’t have another page to analyze, create another ad going to the better performing landing page, and now do A/B testing for ads. If you do have conversion tracking, use the best converting landing page, and create another ad, and start doing A/B testing again. I hope these scenarios and tips help you with your internet marketing.

Tags: a/b-testing, click-through-rate, internet-consulting, internet-marketing, Pay Per Click Management
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Google Adwords Marketing With Keyword Matching

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

When doing Google Adwords marketing it is critical to understand the different ways to market a keyword. The three different variations are exact, phrase and broad match. Now let’s use the keyword red car and see what the three different variations can do to help your Google Adwords marketing. First off, we can use this keyword as a plural, so we are going to have exact, phrase and broad match based on red car and red cars, so you will have a total of six keyword variation. The exact match variation of red car(s), are for searchers that are actually only typing in those words. This is great to see clicks going to this because you know you are right on target with your potential clients. The phrase match version are for searchers that are adding words in front, behind or in front and behind of red car(s). Red car(s) has to be in that order though. Broad match is by far the keyword match that you need to watch out for, as this can hurt your internet marketing. This keyword match picks up all the variations of a keyword that you don’t have, but also matches you with keywords that can pertain to that keyword. Terms like car(s) red, blue car, car seats, truck, motorcycle and rear view mirror can show for that keyword, so you need to make sure you do reports to find out what you are being shown on and create negatives on keywords you don’t want to show, while adding keywords that can help you. Hope this helps you understand the different types of keyword variations in Google Adwords.

Tags: Google AdWords, google-adwords-marketing, internet-marketing, keyword-match, keyword-match-variations
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Yahoo Search Marketing Advanced Targeting Capabilities

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

As a certified and leading pay per click management firm, we find out many enhancements that the search engines roll out before the public finds out. Today, I am going to share with you the next enhancement by Yahoo Search Marketing. In mid March 2009, they are going to have the ability to day part, enhanced geo-targeting, bid adjustments based on specific location, and better implicit content match targeting. The day parting is an enhancement that will help clients immediately, as they can pause accounts on weekends, and advertise on specific business hours. Previously you had to manually do this, which caused customers to become irritable with Yahoo. The geo-targeting is now going to incorporate zip codes, so you can target specific area of a city that brings in the best rate on investment for your company. This is crucial as there are areas of a city that you do not want to go. All and all I think the enhancement is going to help Yahoo, but they are still way behind Google Adwords.

Tags: Pay Per Click Management, yahoo-search-marketing, yahoo-search-marketing-advanced-targeting-capabilities
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Internet Marketing And Why It is Important

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

Nowadays internet marketing is becoming the future and quickly. With billions upon billions of searches monthly and growing it is a necessity to have a website and brand yourself in your field of expertise, and market your product or service. 80% of people do searches online to research a product before purchasing, get price quotes from local services before settling on an internet marketing company, and even do research on the company itself to see what customers are saying about them. Can you afford to not get a website?

The problem is people believe that all you need to do is get a website, and magically you are being shown to everybody, but that is just not the case. Like the operations of your company, it takes time and energy. Think of your website as an extension of your business. To get a job as a marine biologist, you can’t just wake up one morning and put on your resume that you are a marine biologist and start to do research or get a job. You need to get yourself an education, and even get some training through an internship to support your knowledge. Your website is the same. You need to create landing pages, optimize those pages, write blogs, do press releases, pay per click advertising, etc to get the results you want. The problem though is some people just don’t have the time, so you need an internet marketing company to help them. A good internet marketer will let them know what they can do easily on their own, while some of the more time consuming aspects can be given to the internet marketing company, so get out there and give your website the time it needs and beat your competitors.

Tags: internet-marketing, internet-marketing-company
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Landing Pages And Pay Per Click Management

Sunday, March 1st, 2009

When we are doing internet consulting, one of the main things we look over is how your website is going to interact with a potential customer. More specifically, your landing pages for your products or services. The three things that a quality landing page needs is relevant and original content, transparency, and navigability. By doing these extremely simple things, you will decrease your keywords cost per clicks, increase your keyword-targeted ad’s position, more likely to convert your traffic into paying customers, and develop a positive experience for your customer.

Here are some tips to help with your pay per click management:

Relevant and original content means that the customer should be able to easily find what the ad promises. Don’t confuse them, because you will lose them, and make sure the ad link brings them to the best page on your site about the product or service. The page itself should have its own unique content. Do not copy from another site. If you copy content, you will get penalized by the search engines.

Transparency is where you build trust with the customer. Define clearly what your business entails, and honor the deals that you are advertising. Do not ask for customer information unless you must have it. They may think you are a spamming site. If you do need their information, make sure you have dialogue that lets them know what you are going to do with their information.

For navigability, make sure that the path for a potential customer to buy something or get information is direct, and don’t use pop ups and make sure the pages load quickly. If you make the process difficult you will lose them.

These are simple tips to make your pay per click management account run much better, while getting more customers, and paying less. For more information on these suggestions take a look at this Google help page.

Tags: internet-consulting, landing-page-quality, Pay Per Click Management
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