Effective advertising or NOT?

Do you think this is an effective ad?

If you are going to try to sell something to me, at least make it believable.

One of the tips must be to STOP EATING?

Does the word "Photoshop" come to mind?

What do you think? Would you click it?

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles
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PPC Management Tips

Top 10 PPC Management Tips Guaranteed to Lead to More Profitable Campaigns

Sometimes it seems that getting your website ranked in the organic search results can take forever. And if you're trying to rank a landing or sales page, you can just about forget it. Luckily, that's where pay per click (PPC) management & advertising comes in. It's the search engines' answer to immediate traffic so you can start generating leads or sales from your site (and of course so they can generate some income as well). Unfortunately, if you've had no PPC training, managing your own pay per click campaigns can prove a daunting task.

But honestly, it's not as complicated as it seems - pay per click management is really just setting up a campaign and making incremental adjustments to certain factors in order to get the most bang for your buck - or I suppose conversions for your buck is a more appropriate term. When it comes to setting up your campaign, the service you choose (Google's Adwords, Yahoo's Search Marketing or MSN's AdCenter) will have step by step tutorials describing exactly how to create your campaign within their program's dashboard.

Of course, there's plenty that they'll leave out, so to help, here are 10 essential tips to help you with campaign creation as well as your own PPC Management.

Setting Up Your Campaigns

• When researching your keyword list, use several different keyword generators to get as big a list as you possibly can. Then scrub the list by eliminating keywords that have nothing to do with your product or service, or keywords that won't lead to sales for you. For example, if you sell office copiers, make sure one of your keywords isn't dvd copiers.
• Break your keywords into themed groups - putting similar keywords and phrases that contain the same words together in one group. Each of these themed groups will be your "ad group" to use Google's terminology. This allows you to write more targeted ads for each group, and will improve your quality scores, which in turn helps lower costs in the long run. Many groups with only a couple keywords in them is better than fewer groups containing tons of keywords.
• As you create your ads, use the keywords in the headline, and create at least 2 ads per group that only have one difference, either in the headline or the ad text. This will allow you to split test the ads to see which one is more successful. Also make sure your ad subtly (or obviously) tells people what you want them to do on your page, such as fill out a form to win something.
• When entering a target URL for your ad, use dynamic keyword insertion in the URL - you may have to talk to a web developer for this if you have no idea what it means. This technique automatically inserts the keyword into the URL string of the landing page you're sending traffic to, which also helps increase quality scores.
• Set up conversion tracking within your PPC campaign - this will allow you to see which keywords lead to the most conversions/leads/sales as you conduct your PPC management.

Pay Per Click Management

• Begin your campaign using broad, phrase and exact match keywords (that's in Google & MSN, Yahoo calls it advanced match). Spend a little money and see which keyword match brings in the most traffic that leads to the most conversions.
• Develop a negative keyword list - especially if you use broad and phrase match. This tells your PPC advertiser NOT to show your ads when certain words are paired together with your keywords. Again, using office copier sales as an example, you would want to add dvd as a negative keyword.
• Tweak your cost per click so that your ad is shown in position 3-5 in the sponsored listings. Studies show this is more cost productive as many people click on ads in those positions.
• Show your ads evenly so that you can split test them. After getting a good sample of data (at least a few hundred impressions) choose the ad that got more clicks and conversions. Then write a new ad, changing just one variable from the most successful ad, and split test those. Continue this over time to create the most productive ad for your campaign.
• After a few weeks, or several thousand impressions, start to pause keywords that trigger your ads but never get clicks - these can negatively affect your quality score, not to mention waste your money.

Oops, did I say 10 tips? I guess I meant 11, since I've got one more to round out the list:

• Do more research! This is by no means a comprehensive list of tips you can use to tweak your PPC campaigns into success!

Pay per click management comes natural to some, and remains elusive to others. If you find yourself struggling with your own PPC management, it may be time to look into some extra PPC training. Luckily, there are always educational resources to be found across the web as well as companies that can offer PPC training or management. If you're swamped enough with other things, educating yourself on pay per click advertising may not be the best use of your time. In which case, hiring a company to manage your PPC campaigns for you might be a time and money saver in the long run. In the end, it's really about what you're most comfortable with - and of course which option will help boost your bottom line the most!

Ashley Lichty is a copywriter and PPC manager who specializes in web and landing page copy as well as PPC management She works for ProspectMX in Lancaster, PA, a full-service internet marketing company offering the following services: SEO, link building, PPC training social media optimization, internet marketing consulting, and much more.

Greg Cryns

The Mighty Mo Website Design and SEO Promotion

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Advertising: Give a little lovin coke commercial

Here is another very creative commercial

The object here is to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling about Coca-Cola. I think it succeeds. It doesn't always need to be sell, sell, sell.

Greg Cryns

Wahm Search Engine - low priced advertising

Business Advertising Mistakes

I talk to people every day who paid me to help them make some changes on their website and advise them about how they can help themselves (without handing me their checkbook).

These folks mean well. Many of them start out doing what they need to do. Others never really get started. Something puts them off. I don't think it is laziness. I think it has something to do with inertia. We simply don't want to change our habits. It is too painful to carry out projects that are unproven but which could change our lives. Here is a nice article about how to improve your advertising. Will you take action?

7 Common Business Advertising Mistakes

by Kevin Sinclair

You've probably heard the famous saying "I know that half of the money I spend on advertising is wasted: if only I could figure out which half it is!” Well, now you can. By eliminating the common mistakes many businesses make with their advertising programs, it's easy.

Here's a checklist of mistakes many companies make with their advertising:

1) Not focusing enough time and effort on their advertising

Most business owners spend far more time and effort on mundane things that don't really affect their bottom line than on advertising. This is the first huge mistake. Without effective advertising, almost all businesses will fail.

If you feel you don't have the time or desire to handle the advertising for your business, consider hiring a consultant or agency - but with caution. It's almost more difficult to find an ad agency that knows what is effective than it is to study it yourself. Many agencies are far more focused on winning awards than creating profits for their clients.

If you do feel you need to hire an agency, find one that will work on a results compensation basis vs. a straight commission for all the media they buy. This gives them an incentive to provide results and not pad the budget to justify a larger commission for the agency.

2) Relying on advice from friends and relatives

If business owners do handle their own advertising, many times they let their friends/wives/husbands or other various employees who have no idea whether or not advertising is effective make the decisions about their advertising plan.

Would you ask your dentist for advice about fixing your car engine? Of course not - that's not their expertise. So why in the world would you base something as important as decisions about your advertising on a relative who has no idea what he's talking about?

3) Being led by pushy or aggressive media sales people

The reason media companies pay their sales people big bucks is because they can influence you to buy space, air or time (in the newspaper, radio or television) and give you no guarantees if it doesn't work. Sounds kind of crazy, doesn't it? Your customers probably wouldn't buy from you and not expect the product or service to perform the way it should. But ad sales reps do it all the time.

Now sometimes they really mean well, and they have lots of experience and some fluke event or problem comes up. But for the most part, ad sales reps will do virtually anything they can do to get the sale.

If you feel like you're being bullied by an ad sales rep or that they really aren't looking out for your best interest, but really feel you want to work with that station/newspaper, etc., then ask for a new rep. They want your business and you're the one calling the shots, so if they want your business, they need to find someone you're comfortable working with.

4) Allowing your creative delivery to be ineffective

You can buy the best media schedule in the world that reaches 100% of your market 100 times, but if your message is not well created, it won't bring you the results you want. Most companies rely on either their ad agency or the media company themselves create the ads for them. This is a very difficult thing because most companies acting on your behalf don't take the time to learn about your business, your customers and what makes you different in your market.

To be effective, your commercial or ad must give the potential customer a compelling reason to buy your product or service. That means you have to come up with a better slogan than "we have the best service and we've been in business for 112 years."

No one really cares....well they do, but they don't believe you. If that's what you want to convey to your market, then give them a story that tells them that you have the best service. Make your company stand out.

You also have to include some sort of call to action. If you have a wonderful warm and fuzzy commercial that makes people 1) notice the ad, 2) actually read or watch it without being distracted by one of a million other things going on in their lives, and 3) become compelled and engaged by the message to have a positive feeling about your company and don't ask them to do something as a result of that - you're wasting your time and money. This is something that many ad agency creative types don't get.

If you don't ask them to do something specific within a certain time period, there's no way to measure the response. You may say that you can compare last year's sales for the same time period with this year's, etc., but that doesn't take into account a myriad of other possible reasons that your sales went up or down.

By giving your ad viewers/listeners/readers a specific action to take, you know that the reason they did that is because they were motivated to do so by your ad.

5) Always doing the same old thing because that's what you've always done.

If you're not growing, you're dying - and the same goes for your business. If you're happy with the same old returns on your advertising (assuming that you're measuring it in some way), then continue to do the same thing. Most business owners aren't though, so it's important to try new things.

The way society changes the way it uses media and as quickly as those changes happen, you need to keep up or lose out. Many business owners are afraid to try something new because it takes them out of their comfort zone - especially if no one in their industry has ever tried the new idea. This is a huge mistake and robs them of potentially huge profits.

6) Falling into the price trap.

This is another huge one! Unless you're Wal-Mart and can guarantee that no other business can sell for a lower price, don't use that as your main selling point. Once you start down that path, it's virtually impossible to stop.

If you can't come up with another reason for your potential customers to choose you instead of your competitor, you really need to find one (or more)!

7) Not using publicity or events in their advertising plan

It's amazing how few businesses even try to use publicity or special events in their advertising. It's often the best advertising you can get - not only because it's free, but because it cuts through the clutter. If the newspaper runs a story or a TV station is covering something during their newscast, it has automatic credibility that you just can't buy.

Of course you can't control the message 100%, but if you learn solid techniques of creating your publicity or press event, you can have a great deal of influence about how a story is covered.

If you can eliminate only 1 or 2 of these mistakes (assuming you're making them all), you'll wonder why you didn't do so earlier! In business, if there are enough of the right customers buying your products and services, many of your problems seem to disappear.

Kevin is the publisher and editor of besuccessfulnews.com, a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.

Greg Cryns

The Mighty Mo Website Design and Promotion

Email headlines that got my attention

Here are some ad subject lines that went directly to my Yahoo trash bin. The headlines shown below were not SPAM as I did opt-in. But the message contained content that Yahoo felt was spam.

By the way, I am a sucker for local ads because they usually offer discounts. Love that!

What can we learn from them, if anything? Are they creative? Do they demand action?

Member Perks: Time is Running Out ($100 Savings) - this one comes from someone I trust, so I may open it, maybe not

How big is your list? - has some pull power

This site could be banned at any moment - moderate pull

The Habits Of Successful Home Party Business Owners! - strong pull for me

Caroline Middlebrook - this is Caroline's subject line. I open everything from her. I can say that for only a treasured few. Name branding works if you have IT.

[chrisbrogan.com] - the same for Chris Brogan, I open it all - see how he continues to brand his name?

Your Weekly Showtimes from Park Cinema 9 - I like this one because it comes from our local movie house and I want to see what they have to offer

Walmart.com Free Shipping and Rollback Specials! - like a magnet for frugal Greg

Only 2 Objectives For You Online Business - this is an example of a newsletter with really good stuff but really crappy headlines, in my opinion

Small Business Trends - another name branding effort - has good content!

Say Hi On The Inner Circle Forum - Willie Crawford will not be happy that I did not whitelist his newsletter, but I just don't do that? I do often check my SPAM file. But this pulls me in because Willie earned my trust.

like Larry and Sergey from Google called.. - this one had two things going for it -1) I respect the author, Jim Morris, of NicheBot.com; 2) I love to hear about Larry and Sergey and any Google news.

What do you think about email headlines?

Greg Cryns

The Mighty Mo Website Design and Marketing

All About Paso Robles

Work At Home Profiles

Be careful with idioms (and idiots too)

Is Twitter all it is cracked up to be? (means: not as good as people say it is)

My teenage son laughed when I used that phrase. "Are you on crack cocaine?" he said. I began to wonder if he was on to something or if I was simply trying to crack him up?

"cracked up to be" is an idiom. Do you know what an idiom is? No, it is not something just for idiots, usually.

Dictionary says an idiom is "a group of words which, when used together, have a different meaning from the one suggested by the individual words, eg it was raining cats and dogs"

A better definition: a natural manner of speaking to a native speaker of a language. Remember, not everyone speaks and reads English.

Examples of idioms:

A Dime A Dozen: Anything that is common and easy to get.
A long row to hoe: a difficult task that takes a long time. Must derive from gardening?
all in a day's work: to understate an important achievement
ball breaker: someone who is unreasonable and excessively difficult to have dealingswith
bite off more than one can chew: to be overly ambitious, to take on more than is possible to deal with
Busman's holiday: A busman's holiday is when you spend your free time doing the same sort of work as you do in your job.
cruising for a bruising to behave in a manner that is likely to bring about bodily harm in theform of injury inflicted by others
Don't Look A Gift Horse In The Mouth: When someone offers you a gift, take it!
everything but the kitchen sink practically everything including that which is not necessary
feel your oats to be full of energy, fueled up
handle with kid gloves to be extremely delicate and careful with someone
in a jiffy very quickly
join the club "I understand your problem and sympathize"
Long in the Tooth: Old people (or horses).
Never Bite The Hand That Feeds You: Don't be a damn fool.
Son of a Gun: A scamp. "I'll be a son of a gun!"
Til the cows come home: A long time.
When Pigs Fly: Something that will never ever happen.

Here is a list of many more idioms: http://www.idiomsite.com/ .

The problem with an idiom is that someone who is not very familiar with English, for example, may not understand what you are saying when you use an idiom. This is particularly problematic on the Internet and not necessarily in your local newspaper.

Idioms also create serious problems if you put up your ad in another country. For example:

In Taiwan, the translation of the Pepsi slogan "Come alive with the Pepsi Generation" came out as "Pepsi will bring your ancestors back from the dead."

Also in Chinese, the Kentucky Fried Chicken slogan "finger-lickin' good" came out as "eat your fingers off."

And this one that is especially telling in today's economy:
When General Motors introduced the Chevy Nova in South America, it was apparently unaware that "no va" means "it won't go." After the company figured out why it wasn't selling any cars, it renamed the car in its Spanish markets to the Caribe.

Source: http://www.tealdragon.net/humor/ads/ad_bloop.htm

I get the feeling that many idioms were common in the past but are not used by younger people now. How many of these do you recognize?

What about Twitter, you ask? I will address the question "Is Twitter all it's cracked up to be" in the next post, that is unless I am joshing you or if I am telling you a cock and bull story.






Greg Cryns
All About Paso Robles

A brief example of a niche marketing technique

Do you have a marketing plan? Do you have an advertising plan? Do you understand that marketing is not exactly advertising?

Here are some thoughts I have on internet marketing as opposed to internet advertising.

Buying a banner or text ad on a web page is advertising. You want to be sure you are finding your target market when you place an ad on the Internet.

Let's assume for a moment that you sell mattresses for a living.

So, if you sell mattresses then you need to find out who needs a new mattress. That person would be in your target market.

You may want to appeal to people who have had herniated discs fusion surgery. If I had disc surgery I may not know how a mattress can help me.

Or you also be interested in people who have an allergy. How many people equate allergies to mattersses?

Perhaps you want to do some social networking to make people who have bad backs aware of your product?

So, your internet marketing plan probably does not want to include using Adwords for the keyword "mattress". You would be better off to search Google's keyword tool for key phrases people use to find a mattress that fits their needs. Try searching "mattress for" (with the quotes included).

There you would find that 2,400 people searched for "mattress for back pain" in November 2008.

You found one important search phrase that people who experience back pain may use to locate and buy a mattress. This is a technique used by people who do niche marketing.

Wouldn't it make a lot of sense to write a nice article employing the search term "matress for back pain" and put it up on a web page that a search engine will pick up and present to someone?

Greg Cryns
Work At Home Profiles

Today I will test Twitter to try to find out how many people actually see and read my Twitter posts.

I will post this message at different times during the day:

HOW MANY FOLLOWERS SEE YOUR POST? - IF you READ THIS POST please notify me in a message, date and time - I update later - thanks!

My Twitter followers are nearing 1,000. I don't know of any other method to find out how many people actually see my posts.

Do you know any?


greg cryns
http://www.workathomeprofiles.com

We all need customers

How important are you customers to you? Do you take them for granted? If you do you may find your checkout time from your business will come very soon.

American Airlines was the first major airline top develop a websigte that let passengers plan their trips and book reservations, as well as access real-time flight information.

What was different about the apporach by American is that the site was designed specifically for the company's 32 million most profitable customers- its AAdvantage frequent flyers.

Along the way, American learned some important lessons.

American discovered that customer profiles are important in order to be able to tailor offerings for each customer. And it discovered the value of the Internet as an interactive marketing channel.

Greg Cryns
http://www.workathomeprofiles.com

Fossil Fuels Beer

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This is a local news story in my area. Let's see. How can I relate this to marketing? A press release for Fossil Fuels Beer.


Any suggestions?




(photo by Jan Yarnot - thank you Jan!)
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Professor brews beer with 45-million-year-old yeast

Cal Poly professor emeritus Raul Cano and colleagues recently unveiled Fossil Fuels Beer, a unique beverage that uses ancient yeast as a key ingredient, at Kelley Brothers Brewing in Manteca.

In 1995, Cano reported in Science magazine that he’d extracted living bacterium from a bee entombed in amber 25 million to 45 million years ago.

His research was a key inspiration for the “Jurassic Park” books and movies.

Now more than a decade later, research by the microbiologist and director of Cal Poly’s Environmental Biotechnology Institute is playing a key role in an entirely unique venture — brewing beer from prehistoric yeast plucked from ancient amber samples.

The fungus, originally considered a nuisance in Cano’s laboratory, is now the “star athlete” of Fossil Fuels Brewing, said a Cal Poly spokesman. The firm’s motto is “Bringing Good Things Back to Life.”

“Why waste good waste?” Cano said. “I’m hoping to use profits from beer sales to fund biofuels research at Cal Poly’s EBI. The wastewater from beer production has a great deal of energy, therefore, potential to be reclaimed as biofuel.”

< /snip >

Greg Cryns
http://www.workathomeprofiles.com
Twitter: http://gregcryns.blogspot.com

"SPAM" disguised

You visit a website. On the side you see a link for something or another that you think may be interesting to know about. You fill out the info with your email address included. You may not know it but you are now on their email list.

Internet marketing people use this technique all of the time. They offer something of perceived value (usually an ebook) so you click the link. You then find yourself on a page that has a short form on it, usually just asking for your name and email address though there could be other fields to fill out. You put in your first name and your email address.

In the inernet marketing industry you have landed on a "squeeze page". It is named that because they will "squeeze" your email address from you. This is also called a "landing page."

Whatever they call it I bet many newbies and even experienced web surfers will not be prepared to be put on a mailing list. You will often see a message from the website owner as soon as you refresh your email client. If it says "You need to click this link to receive further messages from us" then you are in the "double opt-in system" provided by the website's "autoresponder" system.

The double opt-in protects you from being spammed after someone puts your email address into the system from the website as a joke or if they just despise you. ;P It also protects the website owner to some degree from accusations of spamming though people can always complain and, unfortunately, some hosts will automatically suspend your account no matter what if they suspect are spamming. At least the owner sould be able to point to the fact that you signed up for the messages.

Autoresponders are very cool and valuable assets for just about any website.

But here is my problem. Not all systems are set up for the double opt in technique. I am seeing a growing trend of website owners not taking the double opt-in route. This is disturbing.

Today I saw a form that said I would be entered into a drawing for a prize from the site's sponsors. I am not sure who were the sponsors (ebook purveyors?) but I wanted to see if I would be sent a double opt-in message.

I was not.

I did contact the owner and asked if I would be on their email list. I received an immediate response that I would get messages but that I could easily opt out.

That's not enough in my book. I think all websites must employ the double opt-in method or be subject to fines like any other spammers. Like I said earlier, I am not against autoresponders and I use them for my own websites.

We have a right to insist that we fully understand that we will be getting advertisments dumped into our email boxes before we hand over our email address.

It's also good business for the website owner. Disrespecting people will often result in a severe case of assbiteitis.

Greg Cryns
http://www.workathomeprofiles.com
http://www.allaboutpasorobles.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/calgreg