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Posts Tagged ‘Guru’

This post was written by Matthew Umbro from http://theppcblog.com.

Matthew has been in the PPC industry since August 2007 and has earned his Google AdWords and MSN adExcellence certifications. He can be reached via email at matt@theppcblog.com or through Twitter @Matt_Umbro.

As a PPC campaign manager for business-to-business (B2B) clients, there’s one question I always ask: “Will you share your leads with me?” I don’t want to muscle in on their territory. I want to know how effective their PPC campaign is.

I recently read a great article by pay-per-click (PPC) Guru Brad Geddes concerning Post-Click Conversion Optimization for Long Sales Cycles that really made me think about how PPC conversions and revenue are tracked for B2B clients. Geddes states that for most companies, “single click-to-purchase transactions are rare,” and can require “several visits and multiple touch points before any revenue is generated from initial clicks.” I understand exactly where Geddes is coming from. Finding the ROI of a PPC campaign for long sales cycles can be difficult, especially if you are only managing the paid campaign and have no insight into what becomes of the leads you bring in.

I strongly believe that the PPC campaign manager must have insight into the leads in order to better optimize the campaign. This statement sounds obvious, but often the leads will go right into the clients’ sales automation system and not be shared with the PPC manager. And if PPC is being outsourced, it can be extremely difficult for the PPC manager to know how relevant the leads are. I can tell a client that his campaign saw 25 conversions last month, but I cannot share which keyword and text ad brought in each specific lead. For example, I want to be able to tell a client that the term “IT disaster recovery plan,” led to a whitepaper download by a network engineer. When I can do this, I am not only reporting a number, but the actual quality of that lead.

Whenever I begin a campaign for a B2B client I stress conversion optimization. In other words, the primary goal of the PPC campaign will be to garner quality leads. I stress the importance of sharing these leads with me so I can see what is and is not working. I need to make sure that the quality of leads coming in aligns with the goals of the campaign.

Sometimes clients are hesitant to share this information or claim it will require too much work to get the leads to me. I understand their concerns. However, I present a way that I can receive the leads with little client involvement. Often, B2B leads are generated when a visitor fills out a form in order to receive a whitepaper or some other download. These leads can go into a sales automation system, but they can also be sent to a special email address (i.e., sales@example.com). I ask to be added to this email list and, through the analytics, I can break out the leads by source. In the monthly reports, I list all leads captured through the PPC campaign and ask the client what is happening with these leads. Through this simple process I know the quality of the leads and I am able to show clients the value of their PPC campaigns and, ultimately, the ROI.

I understand that not all clients will be willing to share their leads, but it is imperative that you ask. Not only will you be better able to optimize the campaign, but it is also an opportunity for you to be more involved in the sales cycle and know exactly what happens to the leads.

How do you track the quality of PPC campaign leads?

This week I was motivated to do some research when I noticed an SEO expert being promoted on another company’s web site. The SEO guru in question has a blog that’s been around for more years than mine – so I was curious to compare our stats. I consult with many customers on search engine optimization, but I’ve never called myself an expert.

Until now.

I am changing my title based on the comparison to this guy… who has a SEO and Web Marketing blog that’s been around longer than mine, combined with a nice company who has a fantastic array of large clients who are probably spending a lot of money with him.

The Expert Statistics

• The SEO Expert doesn’t rank #1 for a single competitive keyword.
• The Marketing Technology Blog ranks #1 for 31 competitive keywords.
• The SEO Expert ranks for 19 keywords overall.
• The Marketing Technology Blog ranks for 741 keywords.
• The SEO Expert’s blog is ranked about 87,000 by Alexa.
• The Marketing Technology Blog ranks 47,000 by Alexa.

The Marketing Technology Blog continues to be found in the top 100 marketing blogs on the Internet. The SEO Expert’s Web Marketing blog isn’t even on the list.

In fact, since starting my own business, my organic search engine traffic to The Marketing Technology Blog has increased by 84%:

Blogs are naturally attractive to search engines because they provide a platform where you can write content frequently and present it in such a way that’s optimized for search engines to find and index. None of the techniques that I utilize are a secret… in fact I’ve written all of them in my eBook, Blogging for SEO and will expand on that with a book being published next summer.

If your company needs some help with your Search Engine Optimization, you can call one of those SEO Experts… or you can give DK New Media a call… the company who increased its own Search Engine Traffic by 84% over the last 7 months. It’s your choice!

The lesson, of course, is to ‘trust but verify’. Just because a self-proclaimed expert has a blog, a company or even a book, does not make them an expert. Results make them an expert!

If you’d like a copy of the eBook for free, simply subscribe to my blog via RSS or by email and you’ll see a link in the header of the feed. That link will take you to a page that will pop up a download link.

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.

Thanks for subscribing! From all of the bloggers at The Marketing Technology Blog, we'd like to wish you a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays! Our present to you... download Doug's eBook on Blogging for SEO at no cost.

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As I’ve indicated before, content ranking and analytics service Postrank is a sponsor of Social Media Explorer. One of the benefits of that sponsorship is one post per month about them. But I’ve asked the folks at Postrank to give me a little lee-way with the post so that I can ensure that it adds value to you, rather than just serves as an advertisement for their services. It’s a bit of an experiment with online advertising — making it more engaging — and they were cool with the idea, so here’s a sponsored post I hope doesn’t seem quite as much of one.

Long before Postrank was a sponsor of SME, I asked them to do me a favor and help me rank the top education blogs. That post continues to be one of the most visited at Social Media Explorer because it serves a valuable purpose for people looking for blogs in that category. In order to both provide an additional service by ranking blogs in a category of interest and show off the evolving technology that runs Postrank, I asked the gang there to help me produce a ranking of the Top Environmental Blogs.

I pulled together an OPML file (which is a collection of RSS feeds) of each of the blogs listed in Postrank’s community curated lists of Environmental Blogs, Green Blogs and Sustainability Blogs and sent that master list to Postrank for analysis. I asked Jim Murphy, Postrank’s stat guru, to expand the filters from Postrank’s main tool, however, so we could give folks a nice resource to play with. Postrank’s consumer tool displays engagement scores based on the last week’s worth of information. I asked him to give us a bigger picture of these blogs and score the engagement over six months. The following are the Top 25 Environmental Blogs based on June through November 2009 engagement.

Before you get up in arms that your favorite environmental blog may not be here, keep in mind this list was procured from Postrank’s publicly curated lists. It may not be all-inclusive. Jim also ran some extended numbers on the top five on this list. I found this chart interesting. It shows how AutoblogGreen shot up in engagement with an active fall. Comparisons like these are useful for public relations and marketing professionals performing blogger outreach because it shows who’s hot now and who’s consistently engaging over time. This is why Postrank is a valuable service.

A six-month comparison of the top five Environmental Blogs based on engagement from Postrank. (Click for larger view)

Murphy did say that the information he provided me was really a look at what the technology can do, not what Postrank provides … yet. While new features are continually being worked on, the consumer tool for Postrank does give you a more real-time analysis rather than historical per view as we have here. Postrank’s Analytics tool for your blog (technically the service that sponsors SME) does a really nice job of giving you deep analysis of both what your blog does over time and how each post on your blog performs along various engagement parameters.

The reason I accepted Postrank’s Analytics tool as the first true sponsor of Social Media Explorer is because they are a service I think the majority of my readers would find useful. If you are a blogger outreach person (PR, marketing, social media), Postrank helps you determine which blogs matter most and right now. If you are a blogger, Postrank helps you analyze what pushes your audience’s buttons to help you get better. It can also help you quantify your blog’s success to monetize it more effectively.

And I also knew they’d be hip and help us produce some lists that folks would find useful. Enjoy the list of Top 25 Environmental Blogs. And if you work with green bloggers or are one, let us know how we did in the comments.

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When I got home Thursday, I had a package waiting. It was from Andy Sernovitz, the Word-Of-Mouth guru. Andy has invited me to speak at a one day event he’s putting on in Chicago Dec. 16 called, “Word of Mouth Supergeniuses.” You can learn more on the event website, but keep reading first.

The package contained a yellow T-shirt. I unfolded it and read the front. It’s a shirt customized for me, saying I’m speaking at the event and giving out my event discount code, “JASONISMYHERO,” which gets you $101 off the price of admission. This is an outstanding example of why you should consider coming to the event. Andy knows how to make people talk about a product or service. He’s called upon other experts in various categories, including several major brands, to teach similar techniques.

I’m probably not going to wear this shirt anywhere but around the house. But that’s not the point. Andy knows the people he sends the shirts to will think they’re clever, take pictures of them and post them online for people to see. They also give the recipient a feel-good benefit by letting their audiences know how to save some money on the event by using the discount code.

There’s no way I was going to ignore this little nudge to talk about Supergeniuses. Andy is brilliant. You can learn from him, me and several others, including by former boss, Todd Spencer of Doe-Anderson, who will be telling the Maker’s Mark Ambassador’s story. Other speakers include Paul Gillin, Olivier Blanchard, Rick Murray, Spike Jones, Saul Colt and more.

Register for Word-of-Mouth Supergeniuses online and be sure to use the “JASONISMYHERO” discount code. See you in Chicago on Dec. 16!

I’m a graphic designer and though there are tons (!) of free wordpress themes, I cannot find the one that suits my specific needs. How much would it cost me to hire a professional wp coder/CSS guru/wordpress theme developer? I’d deliver the homepage and subpages (up to 4) as a photoshop template, along with instructions, how it should work.

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