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Posts Tagged ‘Budgets’

When’s the last time you sat across from a salesperson and they said, “Sorry, we probably won’t be able to meet that price or/nor those expectations“. I never have, either.

Tonight I walked away from a contract I could have done with my eyes closed. However, I know that the simplicity of the contract would evolve and open a huge can of worms. I’d setup and install a blog for someone and then, by default, I’d become their blog support, their IT support and their hosting support. I’m not guessing – I’m speaking from experience. It’s why I’d much rather refer prospects to a Software as a Service vendor like Compendium. (Disclosure: I’m a shareholder)

The clients I do help with blogging aren’t a one-time contract, we have ongoing relationships to cover said issues. I’m happy to assist them with any of their needs since those resources are anticipated. That wasn’t the case tonight… I simply walked from the request since it was just a project quote. There’s no such thing as a web project that ends… unless the company goes under. From content, to design, to platform, to integration… every web project evolves as demands change over time. Blogging does, too. And a software as a service (SaaS) firm is designed to handle ongoing issues and support. I’m not.

Back to my point… perhaps if more companies turned down unreasonable budgets, crazy timelines, and ridiculous expectations the rest of the honest businesses could actually build trust with our prospects. The problem is so many folks out there, especially in the online marketing and social media domain, are afraid to walk away from a few bucks.

Many salespeople would rather pay their bills at the expense of the client than actually charge enough to deliver on their promises. It’s unfortunate because the next poor sap to walk in the door is immediately attacked t like they’re a 2-bit thief there to rape, pillage and empty the coffers.

If you can’t complete a project in a timeframe, deliver on your promises or make a modest income doing the work, why would you take the sale? A few months ago, I had to part ways with a great friend and their firm because our projects weren’t working out. I wasn’t meeting their expectations… and I’d rather keep the friendship and lose the money than outright fail. And we would have failed spectacularly on the project I walked away from… I know it.

Could I use the money? Of course! Small projects like that are a great influx of cash to the business and could carry us through the lulls of large contracts coming and going. I just can’t do it, though. In hindsight, I wish I would have walked away from a lot of small contracts since I started my business.

The irony is that these are the very same customers who approach me down the road on much larger projects that have solid deliverables, good compensation and flexible timelines. Each time that I say “No” now, I know that I’m building trust and the opportunity to get a better opportunity down the road. You should, too.

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

Don't forget to follow @corpblogging on Twitter or become a Fan on Facebook!

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In order to get the best results from your PPC campaign, it is important to always test new things. Test keywords, ads, settings, budgets, keyword bids, etc. – if it is something you can change, you should test a variation. The trouble is, it is often difficult to determine if the change you made is really a success or if other factors are contributing. For instance, maybe you increased bids and saw an increase in conversions – we can assume the bids are the reason for the boost in conversions, but maybe your competitors pulled back their budgets allowing you to capture more of the market so really your bid adjustments didn’t have anything to do with it. There hasn’t been an easy way to isolate changes and test performance to see if one change really makes a difference, until now.

Google AdWords has been working on new features to help manage tests with an initiative called Adwords Campaign Experiments or ACE. It is still in Beta, but is now available for some users to test out for themselves. If this is something you want to join, simply submit your AdWords Customer ID for consideration. You won’t get an email saying you have been granted access, so check your Settings tab after a few days to see if the option has been added. If access has been added to your account, it will be under Advanced Settings and labeled as “Experiment”.So, you were able to get access to the new tool – now what? Get ready to start testing! The Experiments feature works on existing campaigns, so you can make adjustments and compare it to your control group. To get started, click on the Experiment link in the Setting tab. You will need to enter a name for the test, start date and end date. The default testing time period is 30-days, so make sure you have enough traffic coming into the campaign to provide results in that time period. If your traffic levels are lower, consider extending the test for a longer time period to make sure you get enough data to make an accurate conclusion. You also can select the percentage of exposure directed to your experiment vs. the control campaign. The default is a 50/50 split, with 50% of the time your control being used and the other 50%, your test. This is the recommended setting but if you are testing something significant that may greatly change your overall spend or performance, you may want to allocate slightly less towards the experiment. For instance if your experiment is based on increasing your keyword bid by 60%, you may want to direct a smaller portion of your budget to your experiment in order to help control overall spend.

At this time you can experiment with keyword bids, keywords, ad text, ad groups, keyword match types, ad group bids and keyword insertion. Within the content network, you can also test bids on managed placements, new placements, additional keywords, ad text or display ads, new ad groups, and keyword bids. Basically, you can test anything besides campaign settings. Your current campaigns settings including geo-targeting and ad rotation will be applied to your test so everything is consistent.

Once you set up your experiment on the settings tab, you can now adjust the elements you want to test. Make sure you think about your strategy and approach prior to making any changes so you will gain valuable information from the experiment. Be sure you are only testing one element per experiment so the data is statistically significant and can be attributed to a specific change.

Let’s say for your experiment, you want to bid up on keywords to see if a higher placement will get you additional conversions. To do this, go to the keywords tab within the campaign that has the experiment set and you should see all of your keywords with two rows below. One row allows you to set a bid for the Control and one for Experiment. If you do not see this, go to the Segment button (just below the Settings tab) and select “Experiment” – this will bring in the additional rows needed to manage bids separately. To adjust bids, click on the bid in the experiment line item and then adjust either up or down by the percentage you want it to change by. For instance you may want to see if you get additional conversions by setting your bids 20% higher than the control.

Maybe instead of keyword bids, you want to test a new set of keywords against ones currently in the account. To add these in, go to the Keywords tab at the top. Add in the keywords as you normally would, BUT make sure you select the “Add as experiment only keywords” check box at the bottom before hitting save. This will put the new keywords into the experiment group and will not add them to the control group.

There are a lot of different options you can choose from when setting up your experiment – try clicking on the beaker to the left of the keyword and you can determine if a keyword should run in only the Control group, only the Experiment group or both. Again, be sure not to test more than one thing at once, you can always run additional experiments later to see if other changes positively impact your account.

Your test it set up and running, now what? Watch and observe. Try not to make any adjustments to that campaign during the time period in order to make sure the data you are gathering is accurate. You will see in the data lines, small arrows that show the difference between the control and experiment. If data is statistically significant you will see multiple arrows to help flag the information.

Your experiment will automatically end on the date you selected, so there is no need for you to do anything more except watch the account. Depending on the change, you may find that the data you are seeing is statistically significant in a shorter amount of time so make sure you are checking back.

At the end of your experiment you have to option to apply the experiment changes to the campaign. Let’s say you now know that increasing your bids by 20% brings in significantly more conversions and you want to apply the changes made in the test to the campaign long-term. To apply the changes exactly as they are, go to the Settings tab in the advanced settings where you initially set up the experiment. Select the “Apply: launch changes fully” button and the changes you made will be applied. If you determined you do not want to make these changes but rather go back to your original settings for all search queries, select the “Delete: remove changes” button. One note, once you delete the changes you will no longer have access to the experiment data so be sure you have what you need prior to selecting this.

At the end of the day, the tool is a welcome addition to the AdWords settings, even in Beta format. If you are able to gain access to it I strongly recommend testing – you might be surprised at the results.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Working with an unlimited budget would be wonderful, but since that isn’t the case for anyone I know, I thought I’d share 10 things that we look at when an account is projected to be over budget at the end of the month. By managing your budget throughout the month you’ll be able to stay on top of your spend, and hopefully you won’t be in a situation where you have to completely pause your account.

As you go through the following suggestions, keep these two questions in mind:

Are you spending without converting?

• If you are spending money without getting any conversions, something has to change! Start at the campaign level, then look at ad groups within the problem campaigns, and make adjustments or pause keywords or ad groups as needed to help cut back on costs.

Is your cost per lead (CPL) too high?

• The majority of our clients are leads based (remember a lead doesn’t have to be an eCommerce sale), and we set goals for our CPL as well as our budget. If all of your accounts are converting, find the campaigns, ad groups, and keywords that convert at the highest CPL, and work with those first.

1. Identify the “problem” search engine. Most of our clients run on Google, Yahoo and MSN all at the same time, and while it’s easy to focus on the largest spending account (usually Google), by doing so you could be overlooking your biggest problem areas. Even if an engine only spends 10% of your monthly budget, it’s a waste of money if it isn’t generating leads, and you need to start with that account first.
2. Lower campaign daily budgets. Look at your campaigns, and identify those that are spending their daily limit. Start with the campaigns that convert the least, and cut their daily budgets back. To make sure you don’t cut back too far, first calculate your estimated savings depending on how much you cut back the budget by. For example: If your average daily spend is $20, it is June 15^th, and you want to cut back the daily budget to $15, you will save $75. I calculated this estimate by using the following calculation:
   • Calculate the number of days that are left in the month
   • Calculate your estimated savings by using:

   (Current daily budget * Days left in month) – (New daily budget * Days left in month)

3. Sort by CPL. Starting at a high level will help you identify the big issues that need to be addressed first. Look within the interface to find the campaigns that have the highest CPL for the month. Once you have identified those campaigns, look at their ad groups, and evaluate them on the following criteria:
   • High CPL – Though your CPL is high, you are still getting conversions, so you want to be sure that you don’t cut out any potential leads. First find the keywords that have a 0% conversion rate for a long period of time (at LEAST 3 months), and pause them. Watch the account, and if costs don’t improve, look at the ad group level, and pause any ad group that hasn’t historically converted following the same criteria you used for keywords.
   • No Conversions – If you aren’t converting this month, don’t just start pausing things! Follow the steps above, and first identify the keywords and ad groups that have not converted for a while. If that doesn’t help cut down your spend, start pausing keywords and ad groups that either that have a very low conversion rate, or only have a few conversions per month.
4. Run long-term reports. You want to be sure that you always make decisions based on a large enough amount of data. Run 30 day, 60 day, YTD and last year reports to analyze your campaigns, ad groups, and keywords to help find areas of concern. By assessing metrics like your cost, CPL and conversions for long periods of time you’ll be able to spot items that have always been a problem, and should be paused, or items that used to convert that are paused, but can be turned back on after a little bit of optimization.
5. Adjust keyword bids. Before you start adjusting bids, remember that you do NOT need to be in position 1 to get conversions. Instead, focus on being on page 1 (to make sure you are seen), and make your bid adjustments based on overall ROI. We typically target positions 3-5, but you will need to make decisions based on your business goals, and what the data tells you is your optimal position.
6. Add site exclusions. If you are running campaigns on the content network, make sure you are adding site exclusions. To do this in Google, run a Placement Performance report, and identify the sites that are either spending money without converting, or have a high CPL. Be VERY careful to run this report on a long enough period of time to make sure that you aren’t excluding a site that is typically good, but may be having a slow spell. We also recommend excluding sites based on the URL, not the entire domain when running this report. We’ve found that some pages on various sites will work, so if you cut out the entire domain you will be eliminating conversion opportunities.

   If you are diligent about running placement reports on a regular basis, it’s a good idea to go into the interface and look at a minimum of 60 days to double check that there aren’t any domains that are spending without converting. By regularly blocking URLs, when you do check the interface you’ll be more confident that blocking a site on the domain level within the interface will be beneficial, and can help reduce your spend.

7. Add negative keywords. Remember to regularly run search query reports (SQR). These will help you identify keywords that you want to block to help reduce irrelevant clicks, thereby lowering your overall cost.
8. Pause underperforming ads. Look at your ads on a fairly regular basis to find those that have clicks without conversions. When possible, pause the ads that are underperforming, and you will help increase your quality score, and ultimately lower your bids, which will help reduce spend.
9. Pause ad groups that haven’t converted. If you’ve made smaller changes within the account and you are still projected to be over budget, you will need to identify entire ad groups that can be paused. As with any other change you will want to make sure you have enough data to make a good decision.

   View all of your ad groups, and sort by CPL. You will then be able to quickly identify the ad groups that have a high CPL with a low amount of conversions, or those that have spent without converting at all. I typically start on the month-to-date view to see which ad groups are currently having problems, but before I pause anything I look back 30-60 days (or more depending on the amount of traffic), and make my decisions based on longer term data. If the ad group hasn’t converted very much over the longer period of time, and it hasn’t converted this month either, it’s fairly safe to say that you can pause it without sacrificing leads.

   Tip: Be aware that when you are pausing ad groups within a campaign that you still have the potential to spend your daily campaign budget. If, for example, you have 5 ad groups within a campaign, and one of them is spending 60% of the daily budget but not converting, and the others are only spending 10% each. When you pause the ad group that is spending the majority of the budget the other ad groups will then have the opportunity to spend more, and you may not end up saving any money. As long as you are aware of this, you can monitor the other ad groups, and quickly identify if the campaign daily spend needs to be cut back too.

10. Pause underperforming campaigns. After looking at all other aspects in the account, if you need to make some serious cutbacks you will need to look at the campaign level. You will want to focus not only on the campaigns that are spending with little to no conversions, but you will want to identify those that are reaching their daily spend. When you pause campaigns that are reaching their daily spend, you will have a concrete idea of how much you are going to save, and can therefore calculate what your total savings is going to be, and know when you’ve paused enough to come in under budget.

As I mentioned before, at the end of the day you want to make sure that you are managing your budget throughout the month so you aren’t forced to pause the account. The most important thing is that you constantly tweak your accounts, and you don’t try to do all of these things at once. Make small changes first, and focus on the more granular levels. Always be aware of the number of conversions you are cutting out when pausing or decreasing budgets, and be sure to communicate the effects of your changes to your clients. There are some people that would rather go over budget if it means bringing in leads, so by being transparent with clients you can make sure that you are managing the account in such a way that you will help them meet the goals that are their top priority.



Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

It would be difficult to overstate the importance of a properly structured geotargeting strategy to the success of a good percentage of PPC campaigns. We’ve discussed geotargeting for PPC many times before on the blog, so if you are confused, go ahead and read about it. But to get the value out of this post you need to know that there are basically two reasons geotargeting could make or break your account:

Everyone Can’t Be Everywhere

Some products or services can only be offered to people within a certain distance from your actual physical location, so you better only show your ads to people either within that distance, or who are using search queries that contain your location. This is important to remember for local businesses, who often also have small PPC budgets, and for larger businesses with multiple locations. Targeting the people searching in a certain area with keywords and ads that are specialized for that area is much more likely to return success.

The World is Not Homogenous

In addition to the somewhat specialized case above, some…many…all? products or services are going to have geographical locations in which they sell better. If you use the data available to you properly, you can determine where these are and devote more resources to a population you’re more confident will convert.

There are a few ways to find out where your high-value location targets are. For one, you can use analytics data to determine continents, regions, or cities where your conversions are concentrated. Depending on the analytics package you use, you’ll have different levels of detail available, but in any case, this can be a helpful place to start. For those without analytics availability or who just want more detailed information, sourcing this information directly from your conversion data can be a viable option if you have the right tools.

For some people, leads come in the form of form submissions that ask for data such as city, state, and zip code. On top of that, for sales or revenue-based clients, you have shipping and sales address information available. That means that you have all sorts of potential to geotarget your PPC campaigns.

So What to Do?

Almost everyone can get this data compiled into a spreadsheet, which is great but can be overwhelming. A year’s worth of conversion data? This could be 32,428 rows in excel, and sounds completely daunting to sort through to try and find conversion location patterns. Which basically gets us to the point I’m trying to make: the idea overwhelmed us, too, until a team member discovered this very neat website: BatchGeo. You just paste in your properly-formatted spreadsheet information and it maps the locations of your whatever- sales, leads, high-value customers- on a Google maps map. It can even handle missing information and can map city/state combinations, address/zip code combinations, and zip codes only. It’s free, and it has been an extremely helpful tool for us in identifying areas in which leads are concentrated. Whether you’re using this kind of raw data for geotargeting now or not, it won’t hurt you to plug the data in and see how the map looks- you might get a useful surprise!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Launching a multilingual pay-per-click campaign is a good way to quickly have a presence in a country. Many companies do not have the resources and budgets to build multiple versions of their website based on language, but through the wonders of pay-per-click, advertisers can efficiently and effectively reach an international or bilingual audience online.

The problem with most multilingual pay-per-click campaigns is laziness. Many advertisers will launch international campaigns without consideration for accurate translations and culturally relevant messaging. Thankfully this problem is easy to overcome with a little extra consideration and planning. So before you launch a multilingual pay per click campaign, take to time to focus on the following best practices:

1. Translations. Translations. Translations. The success or failure of a multilingual pay-per-click campaign lies in the crux of translations. The quality of translation is the most critical component, and thus should receive the most attention and consideration. Many advertisers are guilty (often unknowingly) of translating ad copy in a literal sense without consideration for localization. When this happens, ad and landing page copy is often confusing to a native speaker, decreasing the effectiveness of your campaign. Not to mention, literal translations stick out like a sore thumb, native speakers can immediately pick up on the lack of consideration for their language, and will immediately dismiss your message.Don’t fall victim to this common mistake. Don’t use a simple online tool. You need a human! Spend time researching a quality translation service at the onset. A quality translation service will read the content in English, then rewrite the content to it conveys the same message and tone in your language of choice. Once you receive translated content, run it by a native speaker to ensure the job was done right.
2. Leverage Existing Campaign Structure. Campaign structure is very important with a multilingual pay-per-click initiative. Regardless of the quantity of languages targeted, campaigns and ad groups should be separated based on language. You can only set language and geographic targeting at the campaign level in Google, so your language breakdown must be at this level.Leverage your well-organized campaign structure from your English-targeted campaigns. To build a campaign in another language, duplicate the structure (but not the keywords) of your English campaigns. Next, modify the keywords (see multilingual keyword research below), ad text and landing pages accordingly.
3. Pay Attention to Your Campaign Settings. According to the AdWords help section, “the AdWords system looks at a user’s Google interface language setting to see if it matches one of the languages that your campaign targets.” If your campaign only targets “Spanish” for the campaign settings, then the ads will only serve to users who have designated “Spanish” in their Google account. For example, a user is searching on Google.com and has their personal account settings set to “Spanish,” then they will see ads from Spanish-targeted campaigns. Similarly, if someone is searching on Google.fr the language default is French, etc. If you are targeting users in a different country that speak one common language, then set your AdWords campaign to target that language.However, depending on your campaign objectives, this type of language targeting may narrow your search too much. Particularly when you are targeting a bilingual audience. In this case, you can expand your campaign targeting by changing your campaign settings to target more than one language.
4. Conduct Multilingual Keyword Research. Don’t just translate your keywords! In most cases, keywords or phrases can have multiple meanings when translated in another language. If you use a direct translation, then your keywords or phrases may not be relevant to your product. Conduct multilingual keyword research to best target keywords in the targeted language. Get started on your keyword list with the following:
   • Search Query Report. Run a search query report to identify existing foreign language keywords that are serving your ads.
   • Competitive Research. Refer to competitor ads and landing pages to identify keywords or phrases that are relevant to your campaign. Note, be aware you’re your competitors translations may not be accurate. Always run these keywords or phrases by a translation service or a native speaker prior to launch.
   • Translate Existing Keywords. Start with the keywords that you are targeting in English. Hire a strong translation service to identify the most common translation for that keyword or phrase—be careful of taking direct translations!
   • Ask a Native Speaker. Once you have completed your keyword research, run your list by a native speaker. This simple step will identify any red flags in the translations. It can also spark new keyword-targeting opportunities.

   If you plan to target a campaign in Spanish, you need to target keywords in Spanish. While some advertisers target Spanish speakers with English keywords and ad text, it is strongly recommended to cater your messaging to the native language. First, keywords in other languages are much less expensive, so you will see lower cost-per-clicks within these campaigns. Secondly, your campaign will be much more relevant to your target audience if you speak their language. Take the time to translate your entire language-targeted campaigns, this simple step may give you a leg up over your competition.

5. Use Language-Specific Ad Text and Landing Pages. Translated ad copy and landing pages are mutually exclusive. You cannot have one without the other. The landing page needs to play off of the cultural promise from the ad text. So, if your ad text is in Spanish, then your landing page needs to be in Spanish. To maximize relevance and effectiveness of your campaign, both ad text and landing pages need to be translated to the targeted language.As with keywords, both the ad text and landing pages should not be a direct translation of the English copy. I apologize if I am starting to sound like a broken record, but work with a strong translation company to translate your landing page and ads from English to your targeted language. A strong translation service will make adjustments to cater to local dialects and cultures. Landing page localization does not just stop at translations— incorporating culturally relevant images, design and color schemes also should be considered to improve relevancy.

Have your launched a multilingual campaign? Please share your experience and suggestions!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2010 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Brad Geddes is one of my favorite bloggers, and he has a really interesting link to a YouTube video that talks about how you can get information at the keyword level in Google Analytics that shows what conversion rates you get at what position in the SERPS. You can view the video here:

I have wondered at times for a particular account that recently lowered its budget if our positions are just too low now to generate the kind of sales we used to. Now, I should be able to find out this information using this report in Analytics.

If you find that you generate super high conversions in positions 4 – 6 over positions 1 – 2, that’s great evidence to your client that you don’t need to be in super high positions in order to convert well. Some people call clicks on ads in positions 1 and 2 curiosity clicks. Curiosity clicks are clicks from people who aren’t ready to purchase yet, but they’re in their leaning phase and click on ads in top positions just to get a further idea of what they want.

To run the report in Analytics, simply follow these steps:

1. Login to analytics
2. Click on traffic sources on the left hand navigation
3. Click on Adwords
4. Click on Keyword Positions
5. From there you can click on any keyword that shows up in the middle of the page.
6. The report by default will show keyword visits by position
7. If you want to get conversion rate by position, simply click on the drop down menu where it says visits, and click on conversion rate. (see screen shot below)

This report is also great to get additional budget from your client to get in higher positions in the SERPS. You can simply show your client that you convert higher in higher positions (if that is the case) and hopefully they’ll increase their budgets to get in those higher positions more frequently.

The more insight you have over your Adwords keywords the better decisions you can make on bid adjustments, etc. I love that Google offers these robust reports and will explore this in all of my accounts!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

Note: This post is NOT written for list owners. It’s written for advertisers that rent emails lists or advertise in email newsletters. If you’re an advertiser who has, or is planning, to include 3rd-party email into your marketing mix it will help to use the channel more successfully and get a better ROI, with smaller budgets. In the end, it will help list owners, too. After all a happy advertiser is a repeat advertiser.

Throughout my years in email marketing both on the email marketing agency and email list rental side, I’ve had a few conversations like this, and I paraphrase, “I’m canceling my campaigns because I’m not getting enough [clicks, leads, sales, or other tangible results]. ” The advertiser then pulls the campaign and leaves disappointed with the performance of the email list.

But there have also been instances when, before the advertiser (or their agency or list broker) pulled the campaign, they were willing make a few small adjustments and retest. And for those who once felt disappointed then saw an immediate improvement in campaign performance. I shared with them one tried-and-true secret to successful email advertising, which is:

Match your creative and success criteria to your campaign objective.

Yes. This is marketing 101, but I cannot tell you how often I have seen that the objective, creative, and measures of success are completely misaligned. And when they are, the campaign is nowhere near as successful as it could be. (NOTE: For reasons unknown this misalignment happens more often with email.)

The good news is that it’s an easy fix that can quickly invert the ROI of email marketing. When looking at an email-centric campaign, start by asking yourself these four questions:

1. What is my goal for this campaign?
2. Does my creative and landing page align with that goal?
3. Does my offer, creative and landing page make sense to my audience and not just to me?
4. How will I measure the success of the campaign, and does it align with the goal?

What are you trying to achieve? Branding? Registrations? A sales inquiry? An immediate purchase? Whatever your goal is, make sure that your creative, landing page, and measurements all align with the goal and make sense from the perspective of your audience (which is often different than yours).

Is your goal branding? Email effectively achieves key branding goals: awareness, message association, favorability, purchase intent, etc. I’ve found that most advertisers, especially when using e-newsletter advertisements, have great success with branding ads in the email channel. Their creatives are engaging, their brand is prominent, and they reinforce messages that they want the viewer to associate with their brands. But the disconnect, when there is one, comes when the advertiser measures the campaign by clicks or some other metric when the creative was never intended to elicit that kind of response. Brand is measured by the impact that viewing (i.e., an impression) the ad has on the perception and intent of the viewer, not by an immediate response. Instead use open-rates as your barometer.

Want visits to your website or new registrations? Great! Make sure to design your creative to elicit that kind of response. If your ad’s message is, “WidgetTown: The best widgets around. Click here for more.” you may have impacted the prospects’ brand perceptions, but you are unlikely to get them to click. Why should they? They have all the information they need, and down the road, if they need a widget, they are more likely to call you. But they’re not going to click right now or they, by virtual of impeccable timing, have an immediate need. If your goal is registrations, give the viewer a reason to click. Give them something that’s truly valuable (to them).

Is your goal lead generation? The incentive and landing page is now a critical part of your campaign. Does the creative tie in to the landing page? Is the incentive promoted in the creative clearly and prominently shown on the landing page? Is it clear on the landing page (and email) what the prospect must do next, and is the incentive reinforced? Are there distractions (navigation, social network links, etc.) that would derail the prospect from completing the task? Any of these can reduce the effectiveness of a lead-generation campaign and reduce the number of leads you generate.

Maybe your goal is online sales. Is it a product that someone would buy on impulse or should your campaigns be centered on events, such as holidays? Have you gone through the entire checkout process? Is it clean and simple, or convoluted and cryptic? Are you tracking cart abandonment so you can see where the problem spots are? Does your email service provider (ESP) or internal email solution support cart abandonment triggers? Are you placing a cookie in the visitors’ browsers so if they come back in a couple days and buy that product, you can credit the ad that generated the leads?

By the way, don’t try to achieve multiple goals with one campaign. It will be like a futon—it doesn’t make a very good sofa or a very good bed.

These are just of few of the basic but ever-present factors that can affect desired actions and thus your evaluation of the ROI of your 3rd party email campaigns. Just remember, the line between and email marketing success and relative failure in a fine one. Use these steps to ensure that your messages and objectives are inline and you can instantly sway the ROI-meter to your favor.

This post was written by Scott Hardigree

Scott Hardigree is CEO at Indiemark, a full-service email marketing agency and consultancy based in Orlando, FL. Scott can be reach at scott@indiemark.com.

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• Dick’s Sporting Goods Driving Social Media with Email (2)
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• Using Animation in Your Email Marketing (0)
• ExactTarget Connections 09: Success By Design (1)

• AdWords has made it even easier to track conversions. The tool has been redesigned and now includes 3 tabs – Conversions, Webpages and Code to help manage your data. Emily Williams at Inside AdWords gives a quick run down on each of the tabs.

• Ad copy is the first impression a potential customer has of your business, so it is an important part of your PPC campaign. As part of the SEM Beginner Series, the Microsoft Advertising Community stresses the importance of strong Ad Copy along with tips and tricks for writing successful ads.

• You know how some people are so competitive, they have to be number one no matter what the cost? That might work in some arenas, but it’s not the best way to handle your PPC bids. If bidding your ads into a higher position doesn’t increase your conversion rate…you don’t need to be there! No matter how cool it makes you feel.

• The RKG blog discusses the relative importance to your PPC accounts of quality score vs bids- and why focusing on quality score strategy may be a beginner’s mistake. “Get it right then move on”.

• It’s a common thought that branded keywords convert better than non-branded keywords. While, this is usually true, Search Engine Land is asking, Should You Bid All Brand Keywords To The First Position? The post suggests that just because their branded doesn’t mean the first position is most efficient.

• Looking for ways to revamp your emailing marketing? Search Engine Land is offering 5 Tips for Effective Email Copywriting. Some of the topics covered include: focusing on the subject line, mix promotional and informational, involve your readers, and make a clear call to action.

• Hitting your clients’ goals each month is mission number one. But you need to stay within your allotted budget as well. Josh Dreller at Search Engine Land has written a helpful article on 4 ways budgets get off track and some tips for fixing them.

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.

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Lately I’ve been overhearing a lot of conversations about marketing that sound more like “FIRE!” than “Ready. Aim. Fire!” I know budgets are tight and some marketers are feeling a bit desperate. But please, do yourself a favor and remember the strategy behind the tactics with which you so enthusiastically charge forward.

If you haven’t for a while, I highly recommend that you revisit your macro strategy at some level. Ask yourself some questions such as the following:

• Who are we?
• What do we stand for?
• What do we do?
• Who are the clients, where are they and what do they care about?
• Who is the competition and what are they saying these days?
• What’s our key relevant difference?
• What would we like to be different about our business in the next year?

This doesn’t need to take days or even hours and be all fancy schmancy. Just do it. And write down the answers, for goodness sake. It’s a darned good idea to do this on a regular basis. Think quarterly.

Then consider your micro strategy. What tactics will connect with your prospects and clients in a way that they will give a hoot about you? How will you know when you’re achieving some measure of success? Is there some easy channel that you’re taking for granted that needs a tune up? How can you integrate your message and visuals across all of your touch-points?

Now, go ahead and get all excited about that variable data campaign or that social media blitz. If it fits your strategy.

Register Now! Indiana Business Rally October 1st

The Indiana Business Rally is back with a whole new format and reaching more Hoosiers for the same common goal of overcoming the wake of the economic turmoil of 2008-2009.

The breakfast rally will feature networking with executives and business leaders across all industriesand stimulate new contacts as you continue to grow your business and rally in our recovering economy. There will also be an opportunity to share the positive things that are happening in your business or industry!

• In this economy, you definitely need to be smart about the way you spend your budgets for your PPC accounts – but there can be obstacles. In this post from Search Engine Land, Josh Weller examines 9 problems with paid search and the tactics that can be used to solve them.
• The Rimm-Kaufman group conducted a small study considering the impact of geographic demographics on search user behavior in regard to PPC ads. It’s always interesting to get someone’s (data-based) take on when and where geo-targeting does and doesn’t make sense.
• Some interesting insights (and questions) from Search Engine Land: can AdWords damage its bottom line with the transparency offered by Google’s Bid Simulator tool?
• Google’s blog post last week about the effect of position on conversion rate was met with a mixture of confusion and ambivalence. Regardless of whether or not it’s more than a slight marketing ploy, a lower position can possibly increase conversion rates – if you have specifically targeted ads.
• Did you know optimizing your URLs can increase your CTR? Ivan Strouchliak writes on Creating Search Engine Friendly URLs with PHP. The post starts with the differences between static URLs and dynamic URLs and then discusses additional benefits of URL optimization.
• Carolyn Miller from Microsoft gave us several tips and tricks with regard to keyword research with Microsoft Advertising Intelligence. She lists several resources that will prove useful when performing keyword and negative keyword expansion, market trend analysis, bid/budget management, and more.
• Search Engine Watch posted The Number One SEO/PPC Marketing Tip You Will Ever Learn. It’s simple, but so true – no matter how great your ad position, landing page copy or conversion rate is, it doesn’t mean anything if you don’t have a good product!
• We’re all starting to get very comfortable with the new AdWords Interface. Today, the AdWords crew brings us a few tips for keyword management that will help to maximize the benefits of the new interface. Some things covered are column customization, filters, spreadsheet editing (I love this), and much more!

Check out The Adventures of PPC Hero: Heroic Feats of Pay Per Click Management at http://www.ppchero.com/. Copyright © 2007-2009 Hanapin Marketing, LLC.