Facebook offer several options for small businesses to advertise, the basis of which is the Fan Page. The fan page is your space within Facebook to share pictures, updates, and contact information, as well as to interact with customers and fans. The other primary aspect of advertising via Facebook is to use “Sponsored Stories,” which is essentially an ad, to lure customers to your fan page.

Facebook’s advertising set up is essentially self-serve. Large, international brands (such as Amazon.com or Starbucks) have managed accounts with Facebook, but as a regular person with a local business, you have to make do with their “Online” category of advertising, which calls for setting up your own Fan Page and moving from there.

Get to Know the Fan Page

The Fan Page is your place to drive engagement for your brand. A good fan page includes pictures of products, the business itself, or customers interacting with the product. For example, if you own a pizza restaurant, you want to have plenty of photos of tasty-looking pizza, customers chowing down, and maybe some cool shots of pizza being prepared in the kitchen. In addition to photos, the Fan Page should include relevant information about your business; think of it as an extension of your business website. Include hours and location, promotions, and a link to your website so that customers can find the information they need quickly.

When managing a Facebook Fan Page for your business, another key way to drive engagement and to get new fans is to create discussion and encourage your fans to interact with the page. This could involve asking questions like “What’s your favorite pizza combination?” or “Who’s coming to watch the game at our restaurant tonight!?” When Facebook users like, share, or comment on your posts, information about their interactions with you may show up in the feeds of their friends, which increases your exposure to new people.

Based on research by Nielsen that found that ads with a social context had higher click-through rates, Facebook uses something called Social Stories instead of simple ads. Essentially, when an ad contains a friend’s name, for example “Natalie likes Pizza Restaurant!” along with a link to the Pizza Restaurant Fan Page and a “like” button, users are more likely to check out the brand or engage with the content in other ways. Social Stories is kind of like word-of-mouth, except it is based on Facebook algorithms. This method is effective for advertising on Facebook because it gives you—the business owner—a direct line of access to friends of people who already like your page. This means your ads are more likely to get click-throughs and to reach Facebook users in your demographic.

What are Your Options?

Facebook has several other ad types that business owners can take advantage of. These ads are the kind that usually appear on the sidebar of Facebook and not necessarily in a user’s feed (that’s what Sponsored Stories are for). A standard ad’s purpose is to drive traffic to your website, not to your Facebook site. Use this kind of ad when you want to push users to somewhere other than Facebook. A Like ad is intended to encourage users to find your Facebook page and engage with your brand there.

These can be useful, but have generally been eclipsed by Sponsored Stories. You can also create ads to promote an app or an event. If your pizza restaurant has a cool new ordering app, you could take out an ad to promote that via Facebook. For events, you might create an event to encourage people to come to your restaurant, such as a business anniversary, a new product launch, or simply happy hour. Getting users to attend your even is another way to engage them in your brand.

Finally, whatever type of ad your chose, have a clear goal in mind for users when they come to your page or website. If you are creating an ad to drive page likes, have some new pictures or content on your Fan Page so that users have something interesting to look at when they get there. If you create events on Facebook, follow up by making sure that your event is fun for the people who show up, and then post photos or comments about the event to make sure Fans know what they missed out on so they will want to show up next time.

What Are Rich Snippets?

Most websites contain structured data which is stored in databases. It has become increasingly difficult for search engines to pull this data. On-page schema or rich snippet markup is a way to enable search engines to better understand the structured data contained on these web pages which in turn provides better search results to users.

Rich snippets are additional data displayed within your ad listing that provide a quick glance at what your page offers without forcing the surfer to click. If done properly, the data provided by rich snippets can result in a positive increase in performance by delivering visitors who know exactly what to expect when visiting your page.

Below is an example of a recipe rich snippet(top) vs. a traditional listing:

Information that can be marked up as structured data includes:

• Telephone numbers
• Email addresses
• Physical address
• Products
• Organization
• Reviews
• Books
• Movies
• Recipes
• Event information

Why Should I Use Rich Snippets?

The use of rich snippets will become more common in the near future. So why should you use rich snippets? Rich snippets will help increase organic traffic for the following reasons.

1. Make your listing stand out – When your listings have rich snippets they will display photos, reviews, telephone numbers, email addresses, links and much more.

2. Help Search Engines Better Understand Your Content & Increase the Relevancy – The more Google is able to understand about your website the better. When Google is able to better understand your content it increases the relevancy which in turn helps your site show up in Google for your selected terms.

For more information on the types of Schema.org markups that are available, check out the tutorial in Google’s support center. To learn HTML5, which is the code in which rich snippets are written in please visit the following tutorial on W3Schools.com.

“When was the last time I looked at my Klout score?” The thought entered my mind somewhere in between my morning Mountain Dew (don’t judge me, coffee drinkers; we both have problems) and my first call of the day. A random thought? Sure, but the real reason for writing this article is simple: I cannot remember the last time I even thought about Klout. No scores…no perks…nothing.

Launched in 2009, Klout took the world of Social Media to new heights by attempting to quantify an individuals contributions, and expertise level, by analyzing a users performance on popular channels (Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook/YouTube, amongst others), as well as feedback from their peers who also adopted Klout. 2012 was the year of Klout, as every SEM and SEO I know went Klout Crazy.

Sure, there were hiccups along the way. Accuracy of influence was one. In my own case, at one point I was influential about kittens (thanks guys), as well as moving. Odd since I’m allergic to cats and have lived in the same place for nearly 4 years Klout themselves caused an uproar by changing their algorithm without warning, causing a mini fanatic-panic as their carefully cultivated scores plummeted overnight. Despite these bumps though, the service prospered and was largely accepted as the ranking of choice by most in the online marketing industry.

Fast forward to early 2013, and Klout seems to have lost some of its luster. The product itself seems as good as ever, and they’ve even added a Pulse section to tie current events into the Klout model. The dashboard and reporting are slick, modern, and a definite upgrade over the old ones. In spite of this, however, Alexa shows an 8% decrease in pageviews over the last 3 months, and in general, the service seems to have fallen out of the social conversation.

I can’t remember the last time I used Klout, and have a strong feeling this is the case for many. Is it possible that Klout simply doesn’t matter any more? Do you regularly check your score, or utilize the perks? Has the social crowd simply moved on to something else? What do you think?

AdMob

AdMob was started in 2006 and acquired by Google in 2010 for $750 Million.  By simply being acquired by Google, the largest mobile ad network of all, AdMob will certainly maintain its status as an immovable force in the mobile eco-sphere.  AdMob works across nearly every platform including Android, iOS, Windows Phone and more.  By tapping into Google’s large pool of current mobile advertisers, AdMob should show significant growth over the next couple of years in the In-app advertising space.

iAd

iAd is Apple’s mobile advertising network, serving ads to users across all Apple devices through their iOS platform.  Their differentiation comes in being the proprietary mobile network for a majority of Apps running on the iAd Network.  Over 60% of the Apps running on iAd are using it as their only advertising solution.  By utilizing customer data through iTunes, iAd is able to target users at a granular level most networks can’t even come close to.

InMobi

InMobi was started in India in 2007, and has since become one of the biggest mobile advertising networks on the planet.  It actually touts itself as “the world’s largest independent mobile ad network”, serving over 50 Billion monthly Ad impressions across the globe. InMobi also works across most all platforms including iOS & Android.

Jumptap

Jumptap was founded in 2004 and is located in Boston, MA.  They advertise to over 100 Million U.S visitors, and 156 Million worldwide visitors on over 25,000 mobile sites and mobile apps.  Jumptap is focused on the Hyper Targeting of mobile consumers through multiple points of proprietary and 3^rd party data.

LeadBolt

LeadBolt was founded in Australia and has offices in Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles, CA.  With a heavy emphasis on performance ad types, LeadBolt continually comes up with new advertising formats including signup forms, app walls, in-app alerts and most recently audio ads for mobile.  One of their main differentiation points is their focus on app promotion and discovery, which they have so far been very good at.

TapJoy

In terms of Mobile Advertising Networks listed in this article, the TapJoy product is different than most.  Founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Francisco, CA TapJoy offers consumers the ability to receive premium content by viewing targeted advertisements.  Their goal is to enhance the way people discover mobile applications. TapJoy currently has over 97,000 applications on their platform.  TapJoy has offices throughout the United States, Europe and Asia.

Millennial Media

Millennial Media brands themselves as “the mobile advertising and data platform”.  Founded in 2006, Millennial Media is located in Baltimore, MD and has offices in the U.S., Europe and Asia.  Millennial Media has a strong presence in Brand advertising, and has increased its reach to 59 Million mobile web users.

These are just a few of the mobile advertising networks across the globe, although not all of the networks function in the same manner, they serve both in-app and via mobile web and are thus considered and advertising network.  Others strong networks in the industry not mentioned in the article include Mojiva, Adfonic, Airpush and Trademob. As the industry grows and consolidates, I do anticipate this list changes over the next couple of years.

In the online marketing world, 2013 has ushered in a bevy of updates quicker than you can whisper “AskJeeves”. So far, marketers have been presented with an updated Facebook Graph Search Beta (January 2013) and the pending transition towards Adwords Enhanced Campaigns for all ads on Google. If your head is spinning, you’re likely not alone.

All of these changes got me to thinking about the current search ecosystem. Inevitably, I keep coming to the same question. When will Facebook stop kidding themselves and launch a standalone search platform? Sure, the new Graph Search may have marketers buzzing today, but it still feels like more of a curiosity than a long term solution to the Facebook marketing dilemma. Each time Facebook launches a new ad group, the same cycle seems to occur. First, it’s great (Have you heard of sliced bread? It’s BETTER!), then it is downgraded to “good”(but still better than Google), followed by “Hey look, Facebook is introducing something that is even better than______ (insert Deals,Gifts,Mail,Places,etc.)”

Graph Search is a step in the right direction, but may be too small a step. In case they haven’t noticed, Facebook is not going to replace the Internet (although they did almost break it recently) with their platform. In discussing with my colleagues, the consensus is that many users are slowly becoming more and more disenchanted with Facebook as a platform. Bored, even. Feeding ads into the stream, as well as alongside it, is more likely to drive away users than to make them think “Hey, I should shop here.”

It’s a problem of intent:

The opinion that no one goes to Facebook to shop has been beaten into the ground. There is some truth to it, of course, but the real issue facing increased ads is that Surfers using the search bar traditionally use it to browse places they’ve previously liked, or to reach out to one of their many contacts. Anyone with more than 50 friends on Facebook knows this is the easiest way to sort through your friends list. Users accustomed to navigating their Facebook accounts via this bar are not looking to buy. Adding a layer of ads is more likely to annoy that inspire purchases, and could actually result in increased invalid “mistake” clicks.

It’s a problem of poor SERPs:

Facebook locks everything down, even enclosing their SERPs within these social media accounts. The navigation could be cumbersome, at best, and presents a new set of issues. Specifically, how will Facebook justify sponsored ads outranking the actual entities you want to reach? If a user’s goal is to visit Target’s Fan page to take advantage of an offer on televisions, how will Kmart, Sears, Best Buy, HHGregg, and others ranking above the page I made a conscious effort to “like” be explained? Bidding against your competitors terms is acceptable(barely) in SEM. The practice would, however, actually diminish the value of the “like” long term. This is a win for Facebook, not their users.

It’s a problem of accuracy.

Marketer’s are enthralled with the possibilities Graph Search presents. Imagine a world where people liking your brand actually results in measurable conversions right from within Facebook. Social Media Professionals, rejoice!

Still, I can’t help but thinking about some of the “likes” I have in my account. Friend’s businesses, movies I’ve seen, Mountain Dew…I’m not to sure how much value my “likes” would provide to an advertising campaign. The there is what I like to call the “Wishful Thinking Effect” of Facebook. Consider those friends/relatives/people who owe you money that tend to “like” the finer things in life. Good luck trying to sell a Cadillac to the guy who drives a 1989 Chevy Cavalier!

Try as we might to look for the “next big thing”, Facebook would be wise to take a page for how Google is leveraging the social data they get from their Google+ users. They aren’t feeding ads down their throats. Instead, they are using this data to make their search product better. Google has also managed to make their services a passive participant in all things web, quietly collecting data while running in the background when you inevitably forget to sign out of Gmail, YouTube,Google+, etc. Ironically, the student may have already become the master.

A Facebook Search Engine, preferably not branded as Facebook, would address the first two issues straight away. People some to search engines for information, to research, and, yes, to buy. A search engine powered by this graph data will present a shot across the bow to all current search platforms, and an increase in earnings would quickly follow. Competition is a good thing, and the time for Facebook to throw down the search gauntlet is at hand. Maybe they buy Bing. Perhaps Yahoo is willing to sell their paid search operation to Zuck. Either way, the team at Facebook has the volume, data, and following to present the first serious challenge to Google that anyone has seen in this lifetime.

Will we ever see a Facebook Search Engine? That’s the billion dollar question.

It is imperative, as users begin to move seamlessly between multiple devices, that marketers can effectively reach these users on each.  To address this, Google has just launched Google Enhanced Campaigns.

What are Google Enhanced Campaigns?  They are Adwords campaigns that will replace your existing campaigns (I am being told that all campaigns will be upgraded to Enhanced Campaigns no later than June in Adwords – I suggest you look into before then).  These campaigns will allow you to have a “cross device search strategy” without having to build multiple campaigns to target a specific device, location or time.  These campaigns have three main features that I have addressed below: Bidding Features, Smart Ads and Advanced Reporting.

Bidding Features

According to Google, Enhanced Campaigns will give you the ability to customize your bids across devices, locations and time of day, or any combination thereof, through a single campaign.  By gaining the ability to adjust bids in any way across device and time, you are now able to target your potential customers at the times you want, on the devices they are on and wherever they are at.  Google likes to use the “Person Looking for Pizza” analogy.  The example below is broken in to two users, User 1 and User 2, looking for pizza at different location and times of day.

User 1 is on foot, walking downtown and plans on buying one slice of pizza for lunch worth a total value of $5.00.  Meanwhile, User 2 is at home, its dinner time and they are buying an entire pizza for the family worth a total value of $20.00.  Our ROI goal is a 40% margin on both consumers. Using a simple 25% click to conversion percentage, I would need to bid $0.75 for User 1 and I could bid up to $3.00 for User 2 and walk away with the same 40%.  This does not take into consideration “raw dollars’ and the effect they will have on your bidding strategy.  You will need to adjust you bidding strategy according to your own ROI goals and any customer data you may have or have learned.

Smarter Ads

Sticking with the same User 1 and User 2 example, you know you want to show different ads at different times of day.  Here is a continued example from above:

User 1 is on their mobile phone, downtown at lunchtime.  To target this customer correctly, you may show them a mobile ad with either a link saying “get directions”, a location finder or a click-to-call link on your ad.  Remember, this user is on the go, and you want to adjust our marketing message accordingly.

User 2 is on their laptop, at home at dinner time.  To target this user correctly, you may want to show them a desktop ad with a link saying “place an order online”, a link directly to their menu or connect them directly to log in page of your website.  Remember, you have determined that this user is stationary, at home, and have no plans on leaving.  You would want to serve them an ad that takes all of that into consideration.

Another feature with these new “Smart Ads” is the ability to schedule when Call Extensions show on your ads.  This is a feature not currently available in AdWords, and can only be accomplished through day parting of campaigns with different ads.  Here is an example of how they will work:  If your business is open between the hours of 8 am and 5 pm, create an ad with a call extension on it, not day part that ad for the hours in which you are open for business – in our example 8 am to 5 pm.  This new feature has multiple benefits, the most important being that you only pay for calls which you can answer.

Advanced Reporting

With consumers engaging and converting in many different ways now, you will need better reporting to determine ROAS (return on ad spend).  You will need to know if a user converted on our website, over the phone, in an app, on a different device than when they first engaged with us. Here is what I know of the reporting features that should be live with these new campaigns.

• Standard search conversion – tracked the same way as current campaign conversions are tracked.
• Calls – tracked in much the same way calls are tracked now in AdWords, maybe some slight variation, but I don’t anticipate much.
• Digital downloads – you will be able to track app downloads as conversions, and will soon be able to track books and music downloads as conversions.
• In Store purchases – offers saved while online, and then redeemed offline will be tracked soon.
• Cross Device conversions are also coming soon.  I expect all of these measuring capabilities will be available in the final product launch sometime within the next few months.

There are a few things that are not changing with the migration over to Enhanced Campaigns. Account hierarchy will still be – campaign, ad group and keyword.  Keyword match types will continue to be, exact, phrase, broad and modified broad.  Quality score will continue to be device specific and keyword level bidding and network targeting will also remain the same.

To get better prepared, you should do an account audit soon.  If you feel this is out of your realm, hire an outside agency to come in and do a complete account audit to get you ready.  Although final migration won’t have to happen until June, you are free to migrate over at any time between now and then.  You can find all of the information you need at the Google Enhanced Campaign website or you can contact your Google representative for further information.

eMarketer Mobile Ad Spend Projections

In fact, many companies now are looking at Mobile First Strategies. What does this mean? Well in short, a Mobile First Strategy means building out your mobile channel first. Focusing on building your mobile website, launching your PPC marketing for that mobile site and optimizing that mobile website for ranking on the various search engines.  Of course, that is a very simplistic answer to an extremely complicated process, but one that I feel gets the point across quickly.  Another way to put it is this, do everything you would do to build your company’s presence on desktop – but do it on mobile, and do it on mobile first.

Mobile Site

The first thing you will need in your Mobile First Strategy is a mobile optimized website. According to Google’s Mobile Playbook, 57% of users surveyed said they won’t recommend a business with a poorly designed mobile site. The same report also stated that 40% of users turned to a competitor after having a bad mobile experience. Knowing this information, it is imperative for you or your design team to come up with a functional and appealing website for your users. In my opinion, start with functionality and move over time into appealing. The first and most important thing to remember when building a mobile site is, ease of use. Everyone who comes to your site should be able to find what they are looking for in a few clicks. You will get a good idea of what your site should look like by using the free mobile website builder from Duda Mobile. Even if you don’t want to create your mobile site with Duda Mobile, you will find examples of what good mobile-optimized sites should look like. You may also want to look at your competitors, go to their mobile sites and see what you like and dislike about them.

Marketing Your Mobile Site

Now that you have your mobile site built, you need qualified visitors to come to your website. Of course, it would be great to show up in the first position of the natural listings right away, but that may take some time. To start, and being on the askppcblog we should all know this, the quickest way to get qualified traffic is through PPC campaigns. However, since we have a mobile site, we are not going to just launch PPC campaigns, we are going to launch mobile targeted PPC campaigns. There are many types of mobile PPC ads you can advertise including, but not limited to, mobile search, mobile click-to-call and in-app. We will leave in-app alone for now, and focus on mobile search and mobile click-to-call. We are going to build campaigns in much the same way as we would our normal desktop campaigns, but target them much differently. The first and main differentiating factor would be targeting by device. I have found the best practice for targeting by device is to be specific to that device. So, if you built a mobile optimized site for smartphones, target your PPC campaigns to smartphones. If you have optimized your mobile site for tablet devices, than by all means target tablets. If you built and optimized your site with both smartphones and tablets, then build campaigns for each, and see which perform better – than adjust (both site and campaigns). The point is to build your campaigns for the mobile site you developed.

You may not have the in-house developers or time to build both mobile and desktop websites.  Or, you may not have the time, expertise or money to build and market campaigns for both mobile and desktop. We pick our battles as we see fit, or as opportunities present themselves.  For these reasons, and many others, a Mobile First Strategy may be the right approach for you at this time.

It all seems simple enough. The medium is designed to deliver qualified prospects. They come to you! For many online marketers, a strategy of “create the offer, add funds, and go!” is even be considered plausible.  Just sit back and watch the money pour in, right?

Maybe back in 1999

More often than not, this style of advertising morphs into a financial black hole.  Many marketers “solve” this problem by pouring even more money into their campaigns, ignoring optimizations that, if initiated, can help their offers succeed. One solution, A/B Split Testing, is a key component in the optimization process.

For the uninitiated, A/B Split Testing allows marketers to create multiple versions of an ad to test specific factors for effectiveness. Analysis of performance data helps to maximize conversion potential. Keep in mind A/B Split Testing is, at its core, a scientific experiment. This means that it is necessary to establish a “base” or control ad to compare our modified version to. It is also a best practice to test only one variable at a time to help determine the best version of an offer. Most large advertising platforms feature an automated process to rotate the ads automatically.

However, the title of this post is Surviving the 2nd Tier: A/B Testing & 7Search, and the reasons for writing this post are obvious. 7Search does not currently feature the automated ad rotation needed to perform a traditional A/B Split Test. What the platform does support, which many online marketers may not be aware of, is the potential for Sequential A/B Testing, utilizing their Ad Scheduling feature. The feature is not available by default and needs to be enabled your account manager (email their Customer Support to request.) Your offers can be compared by isolating different blocks of time (or days) for your them to run independent of each other. The conversion data compiled can then be analyzed to help optimize your ad. Not a perfect solution, but a necessary compromise to ensure the best possible performance for your ads on this platform.

No matter which version of A/B testing you choose to try, it is important run your comparisons for the entire duration of the test. Cutting your test short can lead to skewed results which, in the end, do little improve the effectiveness of your offer. Keep in mind, also, that there will always be different elements to tweak when searching for the right offer for your target customer. Times change and you must keep your web properties fresh to appeal to an ever-changing demographic. It is also important that you respect the test results, no matter what your “gut” instinct might tell you. This collected data can prove invaluable to understanding the behaviors and priorities of your visitors, providing insight to optimize your page design and, ultimately,improving the profitability of your business.

Want to learn more about this opportunity? Contact me at cleo@askppcblog.com to discuss.

While programs offer varying payouts, the key to success is to generate as many leads for as little out of pocket as possible. How can Affiliate Marketers succeed in such a hectic industry?

I suppose the real question is not “how” but “where”. Everyone’s favorite answer machine, Google, is famously unfriendly to Affiliate Marketers. While their perspective is (understandably) on the quality of the surfer experience, Google is notorious for removing Affiliate Marketers from Adwords for the even the most minor of infractions. Affiliate friendly, Google is not.

After removing Google from the equation, marketers cycle through the usual suspects: Bing (low traffic volume; similar position on Affiliate Marketers as Google), Facebook (clicks = yes, purchases = debatable), Twitter ( to drop links), or article writing. Once these avenues have been exhausted, affiliate marketers inevitably turn to the second tier engines (notably 7Search, Clicksor, Advertising.com) in the quest for riches. These platforms are much more Affiliate friendly, in many cases allowing direct linking of offers, generous keyword limits, and incredible keyword values. They are also, as you likely suspect, incredibly saturated. How can a marketer get ahead?

As it turns, by looking to an oldie but a goodie; keyword misspellings.

The use of misspelled keywords has fallen out of vogue in recent years due to improved keyword mapping by search engines.

We recommend a great free tool provided by SEOBook.com, the Keyword Typo Generator. Use this tool to quickly create relevant lists of misspelled terms which can be an excellent source of low cost traffic. True, most paid search platforms map many common misspellings, but there are still countless variations that are not mapped and could provide another avenue of low cost conversion for your offers. In affiliate marketing, low cost leads are, after all, the name of the game.

Do you regularly utilize misspelled keywords in your campaigns? Please share your experiences with our readers below!