Choosing the Right Selling Point to Turn Your Website Visitors into Customers

In the world of online marketing, different traffic sources for your website are popping up every day. Because of this, it’s becoming increasingly simple to generate high traffic volume to your website in a short amount of time. However it’s not all good news. With the increasing popularity of online marketing channels, more and more business owners are focusing their marketing dollars onto online, meaning the competitiveness of online is only going one way – up!

The ever-increasing competitiveness of online marketing channels poses a number of problems for your business:

• With added competition, the cost of highly relevant, targeted traffic is increased. This is particularly noticeable with channels such as PPC / Google AdWords where you’re forced to bid against your competitors to get the kind of exposure you want on search engines like Google & Bing.
• Online marketing allows potential customers to comparison shop very easily. Your competitors are only a ‘back’ button away.
• Giving your customers something they can’t get from anywhere else, and really making your business stand out is becoming increasingly difficult and requires more creativity than ever.

So getting traffic to your website is one thing, but in today’s competitive online space, how can you ensure you’re doing your best to convert as many of your website visitors into paying customers? The answer really comes down to your selling points. This is what gives potential customers a reason to do business with you and separates you from the hundreds ofother businesses that they have access to.

Below are some points that cover off some of the possible selling points you could highlight within your website along with tips on which would be best suited to your business:

Free (or cheap) delivery

If you’re selling products online, delivery cost is almost always going to be a concern for your potential customers. Delivery cost can have a massive impact on the customer’s final price for your product – particular with small value products. If you’re in a position where offering free delivery is viable for your business, I would strongly recommend doing so as this will certainly have a positive impact on your conversion rates. If you can’t offer free delivery, even highlighting “cheap” delivery could help get visitors across the line. Transparency is important here so the more information you can give your customers about delivery costs, the more comfortable they’ll feel about making a purchase from your site.

Fast delivery

This kind of selling point is always going to appeal to online shoppers – especially for impulse buyers (such as myself). However, this selling point will have varying levels of importance depending on the product(s) being offered on your site. For example, electrical goods such as a flat screen TV would most likely be something that customers are willing to wait for – there’s no immediate need for a new TV for the majority of people out there and being a large product people would assume they’d need to wait a bit longer for something like this. However, if you were an online florist for example, delivery speed would be one of the most important selling points for you to highlight. A lot of people looking to buy flowers online require the flowers to be delivered on a specific day & time, and if there are many people like me out there then chances are they’ll be waiting until the night before expected delivery to make the order.

Pricing and/or discounts for your products

Low prices are always going to appeal to potential customers so if this is something you can offer then great! However, there some things you need to be wary of when lowering your pricing. Firstly, if your competitors are on top of their game they’ll be performing regularly analysis of the prices being offered by their competitors such as yourself, and if you have any concern at all for keeping your profit margins high the last thing you want to do is enter a price war. Secondly, low prices could potentially impact the confidence potential customers have in

the quality of your products. This will not be an issue for a lot of businesses but when product/service quality is of high importance, you’d be better off focusing on things like customer testimonials, awards, industry recognition etc. etc.

Seasonal offers

This is something that every business should consider as different yearly holidays/events are approaching. Whether it is a “Free delivery for Xmas” offer, a 10% discount for Mother’s Day, or an end of financial year sale, anything you can do to make the most of these yearly events will have good potential to boost your overall yearly sales volume.

Customer testimonials

Testimonials should be a highlight of any website offering a product and/or service; however they are vital for particular businesses where product or service quality is important. Testimonials are the perfect way to build confidence in your brand and ensure website visitors that they’re likely to have a positive experience when dealing with you. I’d recommend putting a very strong focus on testimonials for any service based business – whether it be a plumbing service, an off-site payroll contracting business or anything else. If you’re running an e-commerce business, a good alternative to testimonials would be product reviews.

Awards &/or industry recognition

As with testimonials, mention of business awards or any other sort of industry recognition on your site can give a massive boost to the confidence of your potential customers in doing business with your company. Be sure to include any award/industry recognition logos or banners within your header or footer so that they’re hard to miss when visitors are looking at your site content.

Product &/or service quality assurance

This can include things like guarantees/warranties to ensure your site visitors that the product and/or service being offered is going to be of value. Making an purchase on your website is a pretty big leap of faith for a lot of people – they’re handing over their credit card details or committing to a service before even speaking with another human being in most cases. The more you can do to build trust with your site visitors as quickly as possible, the better your conversion rates will be.

A great example from Crate and Barrel – focusing a visitor to attention to their selling points.

Conclusion

As you have probably realised by now from the points above, the selling points you should be focussing on your business really will depend on the kind of product/service you’re offering. You need to have a long hard think about what kind of questions and concerns your potential customers would have before deciding to do business with your company. If you’re selling a product online, delivery costs and speed would probably be a big issue. If you’re a service based company, then the focus would probably be on quality of work. The winning formula is never going to be exactly the same for every business so the most important thing to do is to test different selling points to highlight over time and figure out exactly what works best for your business.

From Choosing the Right Selling Point to Turn Your Website Visitors into Customers By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Writing Killer AdWords Ads – How to Blow your Competitors Out of the Water

In the world of PPC, the most important metric to optimise (with exception to your conversion metrics) would most definitely be your CTR (or ‘Click-Through-Rate’).  There are two main reasons for this; Firstly, having a high CTR means that you’re getting a larger share of website visits from the impression volume available for your keywords, and secondly, CTR is the main factor that Google looks at when determining your account quality scores – having a high quality score can reduce your keyword CPCs (‘Cost-Per-Click’) dramatically so if you have any interest in running a marketing campaign efficiently then this should be reason enough for you to want a high CTR.

So how do you go about ensuring your CTR is as high as possible? Well, there are many small ways of ensuring that your account CTR is high (such as removing underperforming keywords, setting a high keyword bid, etc. etc.), but unless your ad copy stands out from the crowd, your competitors will probably outperform you.

Below are some tips on how to write killer AdWords ads that will blow your competitors out of the water:

1) Highlight your selling points!

Once you’ve given a clear description of your product and/or service (and I make those singular as you should under no circumstances advertise more than one product or service with a single advert), the most important thing to include in your ad text is a selling point – something that gives your audience a reason to click your advert instead of the many others listed on their search page. Your selling point may be a pricing discount, a free shipping offer, etc. but even if you cannot offer these things then do a bit of research on what your competitors are offering and have a think about what you might offer that they don’t. Have you won any industry awards? Are your products or services of premium quality? You can create multiple ad variations and do some split testing to see which offer your audience responds to best.

2) Research what your competitors are offering.

In order to create AdWords ads that stand out from the crowd, you obviously need to know what type of ads the rest of the crowd is using! Spend a bit of time searching Google using the main keywords that you’d be using in your own campaign. Analyse the selling points being used by your direct competitors and do your best to try and out-shine these selling points. In an age where comparison shopping is as simple as clicking the “back” button, you should at the very least be able to match the offers of your competitors.

3) Make good use of ‘Ad Extensions’.

The AdWords team over at Google have been very busy adding a lot of new functionality to the platform in recent years – especially when it comes to creating visible extensions for your AdWords ads. These Ad extensions will often result in your ads taking up a much larger percentage of the search page real-estate which can help CTRs, and they also promote a greater user experience for your site visitors by making the information they seek a lot easier to find. Below is a brief summary of some of the more popular Ad Extensions:

SiteLinks – This extension allows for up to 6 additional links on your AdWords ad that you can use to send visitors directly to particular pages within your website. For example you could send people straight to your contact page, your testimonials or even your top product pages.

Location Extensions – This extension allows you to create an expandable link which supplies viewers with your shop and/or office location. You can manually enter your address, or even link your AdWords account to Google Places and have it done automatically!

Call Extensions – Particularly useful for mobiles campaigns! Rather than making your visitors have to search through your website to look for your phone number, this extension allows you to add a link on your ads where a phone number is supplied upon being clicked. Clicking the link will even make the call for the user.

4) Make a connection with your target audience.

This can be done in a number of ways. The most obvious would be location – if you’re targetting an Australian audience for example, mentioning something like “Fast Australia Wide Delivery” can do wonders for both your CTR and conversion rate.

5) Address the potential concerns of your target audience.

The concerns that your potential customers have will really vary depending on the products and/or services you’re offering. If you’re an E-Commerce website selling products online, common concerns would probably be things like shipping time, website security, product quality etc. etc. If you’re running a service based company, common concerns would include work quality (which can be addressed with mention of awards you’ve done, quality guarantees etc.) & price. The more of these concerns you can address in your ad text, the more likely your potential customers will be to visit your website to get more information.

So there you have it! With the above points in mind you should be armed with enough knowledge to really stand out from your competitors on the Google search page.

– Jeremy Decker

From Writing Killer AdWords Ads – How to Blow your Competitors Out of the Water By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 Rules of Thumb That AdWords Experts Should Live By

In the world of PPC and online marketing in general, certain strategies can yield a very different result from business to business. Although there is no set strategy that is going to work for everyone, there are rules & formulas you can apply to pretty much any online business to see a strong conversion rate for your website. This is particularly important for AdWords experts due to the fact that every website visit costs money, so which online marketing ‘rules of thumb’ should we follow to ensure we’re getting the highest return possible out of our AdWords budget?

Below are 5 online rules that all AdWords experts should live by in order to see success in their campaigns:

1) Make decisions based on data, not gut-feelings. While your ‘gut feeling’ may sometimes lead you to make the right decision, you should always make sure that this feeling is backed up with hard data whenever possible. If what your data is telling you conflicts with your gut feeling, then go with the data. As long as your sample data is of significant volume then this is the absolute best insight you have into what is going to work for your campaign moving forward.

2) Never be satisfied with your current conversion rate. I don’t care if you’re generating a 5%, 10% or even 20% conversion rate for one of your AdWords campaigns – there’s always room for improvement. Even if you think you’ve made every AdWords campaign change that could possibly impact conversion rates (which I seriously doubt you have), there will be countless landing page changes you can make to see what impact they have on your conversion rate. The phrase of the day is “test and learn”.

3) Constantly test your ad creative. There have been countless occasions where I’ve logged into an AdWords account for the first time only to find that the client is running only 1 advert per adgroup at a time, with no split testing having been undertaken. In a world where CTR (‘Click Through Rate’) is so important for numerous reasons (Increasing quality score, maximising traffic volume etc.), you should be testing at least 2-3 different adverts for each keyword to see which message your audience responds to best. If you’re only running 1 advert, you’re setting yourself back and missing out on an easy way to improve your campaign performance.

4) Stay focused with landing page content – address customer concerns ASAP. It doesn’t matter if you have the best AdWords campaign set-up in the world – if your landing page doesn’t address the key questions your audience have in the first 5 seconds of them arriving on the page, you’re going to lose a significant amount of visitors that could very well have resulted in a conversion for your campaign. Potential customers will generally have questions such as “What does this website offer?”, “Why should I trust purchasing off this site?”, “What selling points incentivise me to buy here rather than on another site?”, etc. etc.

5) Don’t spend money for the sake of generating traffic. Getting traffic to your website is great, but does traffic alone generate revenue for your business? Probably not. Instead of measuring traffic volume and deciding whether your campaign is worth it’s spend, focus your attention on conversion volume, conversion rates and CPA. If you want to seek additional traffic volume in the hope that it leads to greater conversions, my recommendation would be to create a separate campaign with a tightly controlled budget to do this. That way your existing campaigns that are focused on conversions will not be negatively impacted by your new test campaign.

By following these 5 rules of thumb, you’ll be doing best to ensure that your campaign conversion rates are strong and on the right track to see an incline in the future.

Post by Jeremy Decker

From 5 Rules of Thumb That AdWords Experts Should Live By By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Make Bulk Campaign Changes Using the New AdWords Editable Reports

If you’re looking for ways to save time managing your AdWords marketing campaign, then it seems Google had you in mind with their latest update!

“Editable reports”, the latest feature added to AdWords, is a bulk edit feature which allows downloaded reports to be edited within Excel and then re-uploaded into the AdWords system. This removes the need to spend tiring hours in your account making changes to individual keywords ‘row by row’.

So how do I use this new feature?

Google have made the new editable report feature very user friendly. The steps below outline what is needed to firstly run an editable report, and then make the necessary changes before re-uploading your edits:

1) Log in to your account and go to the “Keyword” tab.

2) Select your desired date range, and then click the ‘download report’ button. When the download box appears, you should see an additional tick box labelled “editable?” – Tick the box next to it.

3) Once you’ve downloaded the report, the distinctive difference you’ll notice between this excel spreadsheet and a regular report is a blank column labelled “Action”.  This is the field you’ll be using to tell AdWords exactly what changes you’re trying to make for each keyword row:

Once you’ve gotten this far, the next steps you take will depend on exactly what kind of changes you wish to make to your AdWords account. There are three commands that you can enter into your ‘Action’ column – ‘Add’, ‘Set’ or ‘Remove’.

Using the ‘Add’, ‘Set’ and ‘Remove’ commands to make bulk changes to your account

Add command – This command is used when you wish to include a new keyword in one of your existing AdGroups. To include a new keyword, all you need to do is add a new row to your report, making sure to use the ‘Add’ command in your Action column. The mandatory fields you need to include in this row are the “keyword” and “AdGroup ID” columns and all of the rest are optional.

Set command – The set command is what you’d use to change things like your max. CPC bid, landing page URLs or even your keyword status. Making most of these changes should be fairly straight forward – simply include the “Set” command in your action column or all relevant keyword rows and then edit the relevant column whether it be changing your max. CPC bid, changing the keyword status from ‘active’ to ‘paused’ etc. etc. In the case where you wish to remove a specific landing page for a keyword, you’ll need to add delete_value into the destination URL column along with your set command.

Remove command – This is probably the most obvious one. You’d use the remove command whenever you want to delete a keyword from one of your AdGroups. To this simply enter the “Remove” command into the Action field for any keyword that you want remove from your account.

Uploading your edited report

Once you’ve made all the appropriate changes to your editable report within the excel file, it’s time to upload your new changes into the AdWords system. Once all of the changes have been made to your file, save it somewhere onto your computer and then follow the below steps:

1) Once your report is saved onto your computer, log into your AdWords account and access the “Reports and uploads” page located on the left hand side navigation menu:

2) On the “Reports and uploads” page you’ll notice an “Uploads” tab. Click this tab and then click the “Browse for file” button to select the file you’d saved your report in. Once you’ve selected the correct file, click the blue upload button:

3) Now that you’ve uploaded the file, you should be given a status update on the upload page to show you exactly what changes were made. Be sure to review this to ensure that there were no problems and then you’re done!

This new feature would be welcomed by anyone managing moderate to large size AdWords accounts, and I for one am glad to see that Google are still trying to help save the time of those working with their advertising platform. Let’s hope there’s much more to come!

Post by Jeremy Decker.

From Make Bulk Campaign Changes Using the New AdWords Editable Reports By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

The following article is a guest post from Patrick Del Rosario from Open Colleges, one of Australia’s pioneer and leading providers of Business management courses and Human resources courses. When not working, Patrick enjoys blogging about career and business.

What You Need To Know For an Online Business Expansion

These days, expanding your business couldn’t be easier, and most businesses, from the local privately owned ones to the national and international giants, have some type of online option set up for their increasingly tech-savvy customers.

Bill Gates predicted that by the end of 2002, there would only be two kinds of online businesses—those with an Internet presence and those without any business at all. While he may have been a bit premature with his predictions, the fact remains that the Internet plays a huge part in business today, and one can no longer afford to lag behind.

If you haven’t yet established an online presence for your business, now is the time to make it happen. Following are a few things you should be aware of before you make your move and launch out into the World Wide Web.

Doing business online will not make you rich overnight

Despite what the Internet gurus might tell you, expanding your business online is not a quick way to make an easy buck. Like any other business venture, it takes time, hard work and expertise.

Just because you are using the Internet to promote and sell your products, doesn’t mean you will see the returns overnight.

The success of your online venture will depend on a number of things, including your particular products or services, your marketing strategy, your determination to make it work and how much you are willing to put into it.

Expanding online will cost you money

Another big myth about starting an online business is that it won’t cost you anything and you can do it without any starting capital. True, starting an online business means you don’t need to find and pay for a physical location and deal with all the expenses that come with opening a new branch, but you still need to be prepared to spend money if you want to make money.

Unless you are lucky and happen to know a lot about web hosting and design, you will have to pay experts to design your website and get it properly SEO optimized. Aside from this, you will need someone who knows what they are doing to manage your website, especially if you are going to be selling things online.

Then you will need to organize customer support options to deal with the inevitable complaints and issues that will crop up once you have generated enough traffic to actually be making online sales.

Your website needs to be mobile-friendly

Simply having an online presence is no longer enough, you now need to be mobile-friendly as well. Today, there are almost 1.2 billion mobile web users throughout the world, which means that if your website is too slow or just not set up for mobile use, you could miss out on a lot of business.

Tablets and smartphones may have larger screens than mobile phones used to, but a regular website will still be difficult to view and require lots of scrolling up and down. Large images that may load quickly with broadband will be sluggish on a mobile connection and video clips that run with Flash may not run at all on many handsets.

This sheds bad light on your business and prevents users from understanding your key message. To avoid this, it is important that you work with a qualified design company that understands what you want to convey and knows how to bring that across to your target audience.

Your website should be a constantly evolving product

You should never think of your website as “finished” because a website that isn’t evolving, changing and being updated with new content daily or at least weekly, will not generate much traffic, despite your best efforts with keywords and design.

Try to find ways to keep your website fresh and attractive to new customers. Some businesses opt to keep a blog as part of their website. This is a great way to keep customers updated and add new content as often as possible.

Also, it’s a good idea to give your customers a place where they can comment on your services or products, the design of your website, etc. Many people shy away from doing this, for fear that customers will leave bad feedback.

However, as a business owner, you should be welcoming all feedback, both good and bad, because it will help you to improve your service and keep your customers happy.

Besides, these days there are plenty of other online places where people can vent if they want to, so it’s better to have it where you can see it, react to it and hopefully learn from it.

None of this is meant to discourage you from expanding your business online, as it can be hugely profitable and you will certainly earn back the money you spent. It is simply to make you aware that expanding to the online market place will cost you time and money, no matter how you look at it.

If you are prepared for these challenges, your online expansion will give your business a huge boost.

photo credit

From What You Need To Know For an Online Business Expansion By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Tips for diagnosing a sudden website conversion rate decrease.

Nothing in online marketing should be taken more seriously than a sudden dramatic drop in conversion rate. Now I’m not talking about quantity of conversions but the actual percentage of visitors to your site that are making a conversion action. In a scenario where you see a drop off in conversion volume, chances are you are experiencing a drop in traffic, which you will see in Analytics allowing you to work backwards to looking at your traffic sources.

However what do you do when you see a drop in conversion rate for the same traffic under the same seasonal conditions? Below are some tips to help with this process.

1. Check your conversion process

The first thing to check when diagnosing a conversion rate decrease is your actual conversion process and ensuring this is functioning correctly, there is a good chance there is nothing wrong but without confirming this is ok, you shouldn’t really move to rolling back any design changes.

Top things to look for are:

• SSL functionality – Ensure there is no insecure content on your secure pages and remembers that every browser handles this differently. Also check to see your SSL hasn’t expired.
• Malware – Check your webmaster tools for warnings about your website. Also perform the conversion action mimicking the exact path a user will take from different source. Some malware is only shown from certain referrals so check your analytics to check exactly what conversion path is showing the decrease, also check manually.
• Browser compatibility – Perform your conversion actions in different browsers, especially older versions of internet explorer and safari.
• IT related problems – Check your server sendmail is functioning correctly, ensure you aren’t graylisting your own submissions, check form validation by trialling the conversion from a number of different users and email addresses.
• Call your own 1300 numbers – Check that these have been renewed and also check that these are functioning correctly.
• Audit conversions – Perform a full audit of conversions to ensure that your reporting is accurate. Ensure no internal systems have fallen over and your staff are following systems put in place.

While the above seems like a fairly obvious first step, these problems are quite often the cause of conversion rate drop and sometimes go un-diagnosed for a long time causing a huge loss of business.

2. Audit your design changes

It can be the tiniest of changes that can affect conversion rates. Sometimes these have nothing to do with copy or offer but the removal or addition of a graphic element or conversion process that causes the most damage. While utilising split testing to verify design and process changes is best practise, sadly this is overlooked a lot of the time. If design change logs are not available you can always check on this site http://archive.org/web/web.php for archives your website.

Top things to look for are:

• Broken links and URLs – Pretty obvious first step, but ensure that your site hasn’t had any recent changes to URLs and all your links are working.
• User account creation – Has there been any changes to this process, does this now require more action from a visitor than previous.
• Billboards and banners – Any major changes to your main images should really be tested prior to implementation; however, if these have been changed it can be a good thing to assess.
• Trust icons and testimonials – Have any of your trust and credibility icons been removed? Are your testimonials now harder to find?
• Offer and unique selling proposition – Check for any major changes to your offering, for example has something like “free shipping” been removed or was there a USP added or removed.
• Headline relevance – Any changes to headlines that do not represent the ad the visitor came in on can drastically reduce conversion rate. Check any changes here.
• Functionality – Check if any changes have been made to any search forms or catalogue functions.
• Navigation – If there have been major changes to your top level menu items, these should be reassessed.
• Above the fold changes – Generally any changes to what a visitor will see without scrolling should be taken very seriously. Look for anything that has changed.

Making design changes to a successful website should be taken seriously. It can be quite fickle what will cause your visitors to stop converting; even a simple spelling mistake in a headline can be all it takes.

3. Have a good look at your Google organic listing

Google is often changing how your information is displayed and you cannot be certain that the way your website link is presented will be forever. Even if your rank position hasn’t changed there are factors here that can cause conversion rates to drop.

Top things to look for are:

• Different locations – Use Google Ad Preview tool to check your organic listing from different locations and check there is nothing strange happening to your listing.
• Reviews – Google maps and places collects user reviews and will display them under your listing, ensure that if you have had poor reviews they are addressed. Remember these may not affect traffic but certainly visitor confidence.
• Sitelinks – If Google has added sitelinks to your listing, ensure these links are relevant and aren’t going somewhere strange like a PDF file or a broken link.
• Delivery page – There is a chance that Google will change what page of your site is delivering on its search engine. If the page is far less relevant, then of course conversion rates will decrease.
• Title and description – Google doesn’t guarantee to deliver the exact title and description you have chosen to its search engine listing. If the title and description mis-represent your service or offering this could be a factor.
• Bad press – Look at the other listings on the search result for anything that can be affecting visitor confidence.

If ranking and keyword traffic has been removed from the equation the above ideas hopefully get you thinking about other factors that can come into effect.

4. Go over your paid search campaigns

If your paid search campaigns are generating a significant percentage of your overall website traffic, then even a minor change to your campaigns settings could result in a noticeable drop in overall site conversion rates.

Some common causes of a reduced PPC conversion rate are:

• Landing page – A change of landing page that your AdWords campaign directs traffic to.
• New keywords – The addition of new keywords which generate a high amount of traffic.
• Ad creative – Removal of a special offer or selling point from your ad creative and/or landing page content.
• Campaign level budget caps.

It would be a good idea to run a change history report within your paid search account to see exactly what has been changed around the time your conversion rate has dropped. This will tell you whether paid search could be the cause of the decrease in overall performance.

Conclusion

A business owner’s greatest concern can be a sudden drop in conversions. When it happens, nothing is more frustrating than not knowing exactly what has caused it, and once traffic, season and competition is removed from the equation the task gets even harder. If this has happened to you I hope the above tips help.

If you have any comments or questions please feel free to leave in the comment section below!

From Tips for diagnosing a sudden website conversion rate decrease. By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Understanding Online Marketing

These days it can be hard to determine exactly what types of online marketing will give the best value for your business and how you should weight budgets across the different areas.

In this post I will cover the more popular methods of getting your name out there, detail their strengths and weaknesses and a give a few tips. This post is not meant to be overly comprehensive, but links to other resources will be provided at the end for those still keen.

The key areas and disciplines of online marketing;

1. Search Engine Optimisation
2. Paid Search
3. Display
4. Email
5. Social
6. Content
7. Optimisation and Testing
8. Other worthy mentions

1) Search Engine Optimisation

Search engine optimisation has the goal of increasing traffic to a website by improving the position that a link to that website appears within natural search results.

When you engage an SEO consultant they will usually be tweaking your website with the goal of improving its overall quality and conformity to website guidelines. Depending on the strategy agreed to, this may be by increasing rankings of selected keywords or increasing the number of keywords your website is being listed for.

One of the key areas used when performing Search Engine Optimisation is what’s known as ‘off-page’. This is the process of either obtaining directly or baiting backlinks (links that are on other sites that point to yours). These links are important as they are (still) a key indicator to search engines of the importance or relevance of a website. The strategy of where to obtain these backlinks from is a large part of search engine optimisation.

The goals and subsequent tasks can be very varied when performing SEO and most SEO consultants will tailor the service depending on these requirements. This can also encompass social and content as below where required.

Why would you do it: Increasing your website traffic will have the obvious benefits of increasing the potential clients, leads and sales you obtain via your website.

Positives: Great return on investment, ability to camp rankings once obtained without expenditure.

Negatives: Not an overly reliable source for the long term as your placement is not guaranteed to remain, limited flexibility in messaging, very labour intensive.

2) Paid Search

This can allow your site to rank highly in the search engines, while waiting around for your SEO work to start delivering results. It can also be an effective stand-alone strategy. Paid Search, AKA PPC, AKA Search Engine Marketing, is the name given to the “sponsored links” advertisements you see on all of today’s major search engines. The reason for the name “Paid Search” is that the system works on a PPC (or “Pay-Per-Click”) model where users place a particular bid on each keyword which determines how highly their advert ranks on the search engine. Each click delivered to the advertiser’s website from a particular keyword will cost the bid price for that keyword.

Although results are much quicker with paid search when compared to SEO (or “Search Engine Optimisation”), quality management of your campaign can be quite  labour intensive. In order to get the best results. You will need to perform regular bid adjustments, monitor in-depth reports within your management interface and optimise your advert & keyword list based on the data your reports provide.

Why you would do it: To quickly deliver highly targetted traffic to your website for the purpose of either direct response or brand exposure.

Positives: Instant results, transparent reporting, complete control over advertising cost.

Negatives: You pay for each click, Profitability is highly dependent on the quality of the landing page and market pricing, can be highly competitive.

3) Display

Anyone who uses the internet has no doubt come across those annoying banner advertisements that have the aim of stealing your attention whenever you’re looking at a content driven website, whether it is a blog, a news site or even YouTube. This is probably the oldest form of online advertising and it’s called “Display”.

Display advertising is basically the use of any visual advertisement to capture an audience across online 3^rd party properties – static images, GIFs, video adverts and more are all considered display advertising. The outcomes of this channel can be very different to that of either SEO or Paid search, due to the fact that users are generally not actively looking for your product or service. Instead, you’re attempting to intercept users that are accessing content which may or may not be related to your product/service.

Why would you do it: Display advertisement has huge reach potential and thus is great for getting your message seen by a large audience. Display is a great way of getting brand exposure because of this.

Positives: Great for branding & exposure as well as getting particular sales and/or giveaways known to the wider public.

Negatives: Due to the fact that users are generally not actively seeking your service or product, conversion rates are typically not as high as those seen with search marketing.

4) Email

One of the most effective ways to get content in front of qualified prospects is via Email Marketing but building the lists of appropriate email addresses can be a much more difficult task.

Email marketing these days is usually handled by specialist providers that utilise custom servers to deliver your message to your contact list. They have ability to manage the list, perform auto updates, segment contacts, and handle unsubscribes ensuring that you are complying with legal requirements. Added to that, if you sent thousands of emails via your normal ISP you would run into the possibility of being black-listed.

Content delivered in an email marketing strategy can be promotional or informational depending on your strategy. The key factors to seeing success in this channel are to deliver content to lists that are interested, and ensuring your message (especially the subject line) is clear and enticing, otherwise you will find most of your list unsubscribing from your service. You also want to ensure you aren’t over-delivering or abusing your list.

Why would you do it: With email you can keep in touch with your current client base and you can quickly get a message to any interested party about your business or promotions.

Positives: Great for getting in front of prospects, very inexpensive, short creative time, fast measurable results.

Negatives: Can be hard to build a qualified list, can cheapen a company’s image to its most important clients if the incorrect message is sent or the frequency is too high. Also be very wary of buying lists.

5) Social

This is relatively new, but can be extremely effective for the right product. Social Media Marketing can drive your brand, products and service right through peoples social groups.

Social Media Marketing works on the simple principal that if a person’s peers use or recommend a product or service then the chances of that another person engaging, or making a conversion are much higher.

Most people these days use some form of social media to interact with peers, whether it be through Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Google+ or some of the more obscure products out there. The idea is to build a following by interacting with people on these platforms and hopefully encourage them to share your messaging across their followers, friends, fans or circles. While often overused and abused, in some markets a social presence is essential to complete a business’s online presence..

The key to cracking social media is to develop content that correlates with natural conversations about your brand engaging users to communicate on your social media page (basically, it’s your house and you’re inviting everyone to the party). Most social media platforms have a monetisation model where you can also advertise on them for a fee, similar to the paid search and display model above.

Why would you do it: Control the conversations already happening about your brand or business, drive user engagement and get in front of people that are likely to convert.

Positives: Awesome for consumer industries, low cost to start, limitless possibility for viral growth if you are very lucky.

Negatives: Can be almost impossible to get people excited about certain industries, does not really suit B2B businesses where you can feel like you’re talking to yourself for a long time.

6) Content

Content marketing encapsulates all of the above, because without some form of content none of the above would work, However, in this definition let’s look at blogs, e-books and video style content.

The concept is quite simple; generate specific content targeted to people in the process of making purchase decisions, at the research stage. Some of world’s biggest companies rely heavily on content marketing to drive sales but it can also be executed well by any sized business. Common strategies involve giving away free advice to prospects by creating ‘how-to’ videos, e-books,  articles, and even providing news and reviews.

Content marketing can also be a great strategy to build an audience and to start conversations between the business and potential client, but remember, content marketing is not about pitching or selling, it’s about providing very valuable specific information that isn’t biased, with the ultimate reward being loyalty and sales.

Why would you do it: Increases your brand profile and trust, establishes your business as an expert on a subject, and provides great qualified prospects.

Positives: Great return on investment when executed properly and can become the core function in your marketing campaign that feeds all the above disciplines.

Negatives: A fairly large time investment is required to see the full benefits of this, even to the point of requiring dedicated staff. Short term, it can be hard to measure.

7) Optimisation and Testing

While this is a large part of all of the above, it is separated here as it is one of the key disciplines in online marketing. The process of making changes, introducing experimental marketing to a control group, then taking your findings campaign wide is essential to improve (and sometimes just maintain) your online marketing performance.

This can involve watching the conversion rates of a website and modifying or introducing elements to it to encourage a higher conversion rate, trying to segment out higher performing paid search sectors and allocating more time and budget to them, or running a series of short term or members only promotions. The goal in any testing or optimisation process is to obtain data and knowledge from a control group that you can then introduce to your main campaigns with the hope of improving overall performance.

An important process in online marketing is the weighted A/B split test. This is running a test over a period of time where you may serve 1 in 10 visitors with a different version of a web page, ad or email and look at the results, if the data confirms the optimisations are better, then the new version can be rolled out.

Why would you do it: Constantly optimising your marketing efforts will help you stay ahead of your competitors and help to continually improve your results.

Positives: Gather great data that you can use to boost performance.

Negatives: Need to set aside a budget, time and labour to set the experiments, monitor and roll out.

8) Other worthy mentions

While the major areas have been covered, worth mentioning are:

1. Mobile apps: Creating and promoting your business by having your very own app allows prospects to easily access your material by downloading an app to their phone. These are getting smarter every day with push and location based notifications being proactive in getting your message out.
2. Community: Creating a community that encourages like-minded people (basically all your prospects are like-minded people) to share information, post questions and start discussions about your products and services. There are some great examples of companies seeing massive success through this channel.
3. Network: Being a business owner and an active part of an online network (such as LinkedIn) can help drive great referrals. Remember it works the same way as traditional networking; if you’re not referring people on then don’t expect anything back. Also these networks provide a great forum for you to demonstrate your experience by answering questions and providing resources.
4. Video: Included here even though covered briefly in content marketing. Video can convey much more of your message, information about your products, and provoke emotional responses. A good video marketing strategy will also give you exposure on video search engines, such as YouTube, the 2^nd biggest search engine in the world.

9) Some great links for further reading

SEOmoz’s beginners SEO guide

Search Engine Lands SEO guide

Building and structuring and adwords campaign properly

6 Facebook metrics marketers should be measuring

Google display network, do it the right way

25 Email marketing experiments

5 Content marketing mistakes even the pros make

I hope you have enjoyed this overview on some of the different areas of online marketing, if you have found it useful please don’t forget to share. If you have any questions or comments please leave below.

From Understanding Online Marketing By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Google Announces Update to AdWords Trademark Policy In Australia

This week Google have announced a pretty significant policy update which has the potential to have a big impact within the online marketing landscape. According to the announcement from Google, The AdWords team will no longer be preventing advertisers from selecting a third party’s trademark as a keyword in ads targeting Australia (among other countries – see the link above for the full list).

What does this mean in plain English?

Basically this update to Google’s policy means that AdWords advertisers are no longer able to prevent competitors from bidding on their brand terms. For example, if Pepsi want to display on Google whenever a search for “coke” is made, there is now nothing stopping them from doing so, whereas previously Coke would have been able to file a trademark complaint with Google to have Pepsi prevented from displaying ads for this term.

But what about the use of trademark terms within ad text?

This update has left Google policy on the use of trademarks within ad text untouched – if an advertiser has submitted their trademark term to Google and requested that no other advertisers use the term within their ad text, then this will still be enforced by the Google team. This recent change is only specific to the use of trademarks as keywords.

What does this mean for me as an advertiser?

This could be a good or very bad change to Google’s policy depending on your situation. It means that you can now bid on your competitor’s brand terms, potentially leaching off their brand recognition and therefore effectively stealing traffic, but it also leaves the possibility of this being done to you by your competitors. This will almost certainly result in increased CPCs for your brand terms which could result in an increased CPA (‘Cost-Per-Acquisition’) for your campaign.

So do I need to make any immediate changes to my AdWords campaign?

If you haven’t already, my advice would be to separate your brand traffic from your other traffic by creating a brand-specific campaign within your AdWords account. This will allow you to closely monitor the CPC you’re paying for brand traffic. If you’re already ranking first for your brand terms in organic traffic & paying a high CPC in AdWords as well, it may be worth deleting or at least minimising your AdWords brand traffic. I’d also recommend keeping a close eye on the search results to see whether some of your competitors are bidding on your brand term – if they are, you might want to return the favour and bid on theirs!

(the above image is not an actual search result, but could be.)

What are your thoughts on this policy update by Google? 

From Google Announces Update to AdWords Trademark Policy In Australia By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns – What does it mean for me as an advertiser?

If you’re reading this, then chances are you’re currently running an AdWords campaign – if that is the case then one of Google’s major 2013 AdWords updates “Enhanced Campaigns” is going to greatly affect how you structure & also optimise your campaign.

So what is ‘enhanced campaigns’?

AdWords Enhanced Campaigns is a new feature being rolled out across all AdWords accounts from now until mid-2013. The feature basically removes the need to create duplicate campaigns across numerous devices (PC/Tablet/Mobile) & locations, by giving you more control over ad text & keyword bid amounts at the device or location level. Say for example if you’re running an Australia wide campaign, and want to appear in the top position for all users in Sydney specifically, you could alter your campaign bids so that you’re paying more for each click that is delivered from a Sydney user vs. the rest of the country. The same applies for devices – most advertisers will want to pay less for mobile traffic, so this new feature gives you the ability to set device-specific bids all within the one campaign.

How can this feature improve my campaign performance?

This will largely depend on how your campaign is currently set up, as well as the product/service you’re advertising. You’re going to need to monitor your segment reports very closely to identify trends in which geographical locations convert best & worst for you, as well as which devices. While looking at your geographical reports you may notice that Sydney traffic converts at a CPA of $100, while Melbourne converts at a CPA of $500. In this case, you’d want to set a reduced bid for Melbourne traffic to reduce your CPC for this traffic, while setting an increased bid for Sydney to get as much of this cost-effective traffic as possible.

And is there a downside to using this new feature?

Unfortunately yes. With the introduction of Enhanced Campaigns, advertisers are no longer able to advertise on mobile devices specifically which could negatively impact campaigns that work better on mobile vs. PC. However for the majority of advertisers, PC will convert at a better rate than mobile traffic anyway so this should not be a major cause for concern.

Have any questions about enhanced campaigns? Leave in the comments below!

Jeremy Decker is the SEM Manager at one of Australia’s leading Search Agencies, Click Click Media. He has worked in paid search marketing for the last 8 years, having worked on a vast variety of campaigns such as PayPal Australia, Apple Australia, Yellow Pages & much more. http://www.clickclickmedia.com.au

From AdWords Enhanced Campaigns What does it mean for me as an advertiser? By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Get the Most out of your Marketing Budget – Maximising Your AdWords Performance

Life is not so easy for online business owners in today’s marketing landscape – or not as easy as it once was, at least. Gone are the days when a few hours of quick link building would get your website ranked on the first page of Google organic rankings for practically any keyword of your choice, and gone are the days where you’d pay no more than 30 cents for an AdWords click via practically any keyword of your choosing.

There are two big reasons for the added complexity in today’s online marketing world – 1. There are many more competitors in the online channel and 2. Business owners in general are quickly coming to the realisation that online is where the majority of consumers are spending their free time in today’s world, and thus online is where the majority of marketing budgets should be allocated.

The fact that Google’s search engine results are becoming increasingly competitive makes seeing success via SEM a lot harder than it once was; CTRs (‘Click-Through-Rates’) are lower, CPCs (‘Cost-Per-Click’) are much higher, and as a result positive ROI is something unseen by a lot of new advertisers. But does this mean that it’s impossible to see success with AdWords? Absolutely not! It just means that more attention needs to be paid to the finer details of your campaign. Below are some tips on ensuring that you’re getting the most out of your AdWords budget:

1) Ensure landing pages are optimised to convert. In a day and age when each click to your site can cost a significant amount of money, it’s becoming more and more important to do your best to make sure that every one of your AdWords clicks are as likely to convert as possible – This means having a landing page that answers every possible question your potential customer would be asking inside their head when considering purchasing from you. These questions will of course vary depending on the product and/or service being sought after, but will generally be along these lines of the following:

1. Is this website selling the exact product and/or service I’m looking for?
2. Why should I buy from this business rather than one of its competitors?
3. Does this business provide/deliver the advertised service and/or product within my area?

2) Your selling points must stand out from that of your competitors. Before investing even a dollar into an AdWords campaign, you should first do some heavy research into what kind of selling points your fellow AdWords advertisers are listing on their adverts & websites. These are the people you’ll be directly competing with, and due to the fact that a lot of your AdWords visitors will be doing some comparison shopping between you and your competitors, it’s vital to ensure that your selling points at least match that of your main competition.

3) Live inside your search query reports. A report found within your account’s ‘Keyword’ tab, the search query report is a report that allows you as an advertiser to see exactly what terms and phrases people are typing into Google to see your ads. This data helps you expand both your regular keyword list & your negative keyword list, and will help you identify whether there are particular terms which are generating traffic for you but not necessarily converting into paid work for your business. Keywords such as this need to be quickly added as negative terms to ensure that they waste no more of your advertising spend.

 4) Monitor segmented reports regularly.  Segmented reports allow you to breakdown your traffic data into almost any way you’d want to see it – You can break the data down by device (i.e. PC/Tablet/Mobile), traffic network (Search/Search Partners/Display etc.), Hour of day & much more. To make the most of the huge amount of control AdWords gives you over who and where you display your ads, segmented reports should be analysed very regularly. For example, you may look at a segmented report by location and notice that a particular state within your target country is generating 50% of your traffic, but only 10% of your sales. This state is obviously bringing down your conversion rate, so you’d probably want to look at either excluding this particular state from seeing your ads, or at least reducing bids for this state so that you aren’t paying so much for the traffic in the future.

5) Make use of newer AdWords features to ensure that poor performing keywords are identified quickly. There is an array of new features introduced by Google over the last few years that make it very simple to identify under-performing keywords within your campaign, and then take action to reduce their activity. Features such as “Automated Rules” and more recently “Scripts” are automatic features crawl your keyword data based on a set of criteria specified by you, and then make changes to the keywords that fit within your specific criteria. For example, if your target conversion rate is 5%, you could tell the “Automated Rules” feature to run a weekly report where it will reduce CPCs for any keyword that generated a conversion rate of less than 5% throughout the previous 7 days. Find a comprehensive guide on automated rules here.

Although there are literally hundreds of ways to optimise your AdWords performance, following the above points is a great place to start in ensuring that you see success with your campaign. Please feel free to leave any questions in the comment section below!

Jeremy Decker is the SEM Manager at one of Australia’s leading Search Agencies, Click Click Media. He has worked in paid search marketing for the last 8 years, having worked on a vast variety of campaigns such as PayPal Australia, Apple Australia, Yellow Pages & much more. http://www.clickclickmedia.com.au

From Get the Most out of your Marketing Budget – Maximising Your AdWords Performance By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

10 Common Online Marketing Mistakes Business Owners Make

All of our team see these same mistakes daily when it comes to reviewing a potential clients marketing efforts, and a lot of the time (lets face the facts), the business owner is directly to blame. Taking too much notice of fad marketing strategies, looking for short-cuts or trying to oversimplify marketing efforts (not to mention ignoring this channel entirely). But who really has time to stay on top of their online marketing? Especially small business owner who are usually incredibly time poor and although they may be experts in their field, most are fairly naive when it comes to online marketing.

Below I’m listing the most common problems we see with businesses online marketing strategies and, after that, show you how you can easily set measures to stay ahead of the game.

1. Doing nothing

Yep, pretty self explanatory. Not working towards any goal or a general lack of direction will continue to leave you behind. Lets face it, one of the sure ways to fail is to not market your business.

2. No tracking or goals

Excellent online marketing isn’t an accident. It comes from careful analysis of your tracking and working at a set plan to achieve your goals. Give a strategy time for testing and if it doesn’t work, objectively look at the results and set a plan in place for conquering the desired results. It is extremely rare for a small business to approach us and say ‘our current conversion rates are 2.18% with the following season variations and we have noticed a 0.5% decline over the last two years’. Sadly, being able to track this information is very easy.

3. Too much emphasis on copying the competition

So your a lawyer and you notice that your competitor is running Google AdWords, this must work because they are doing it! I want my phone number in my ads because Johns Law has it (even though testing proves it has little actual conversion effect and your better off using the space for your USP, or call extensions). Trying too hard to emulate your competitors instead of actually thinking what value your business has over theirs and designing a marketing campaign that makes your business stand out is where your precious time is better spent (rather then trying to click off their ads lol).

4. Not updating your web content and assets

Your website, when marketed correctly, is probably your businesses best asset and an ongoing source of sales and leads at the fraction of the cost of employing a salesperson. Yet, so many business owners neglect their websites. You wouldn’t park your car out on the street for two years to rust, why would you leave your website sitting there with the same old content and design? Plan on updating your site as often as you can afford to. Then look at an upgrade in design or implementing the knowledge learnt from your great website tracking every 12 months. This brings me to:

5. An out of date CMS (content management system)

If you can’t, or one of your staff can’t easily make changes to your website, get it changed to a new cms now. Not having a flexible CMS that you can easily change is a major pain point to most business owners. My personal recommendation for the majority of small business websites is to use WordPress, a community driven open source CMS. Check out these stats from Builtwith on how many of the top sites are making the move to WordPress. Having a CMS that you have complete control over, means you can easily and quickly make changes, install tracking and perform search and conversion optimisations.

6. Failing to understand your website visitors

Online behaviour is a simple yet often discussed concept. Without going into too much detail you basically have two types of visitors to your site. Research visitors there to get value out of your resources and commercial visitors looking to perform an immediate conversion. Depending on your goals most people would rather focus heavily on visitors that are ready to make a conversion. This means visitors that are reviewing your USP’s (unique selling proposition) and evaluating and gaining trust from your businesses credentials and testimonials. Often including a quick reminder (a call to action ‘CTA’) amongst your content and within your websites design is all that is needed to tip the scales in your favour.

7. Doing nothing post conversion

This is a really simple concept that many businesses don’t put into practice, if someone has engaged your website in any way, you should be encouraging them to connect. It can be to join an exclusive customer mailing list, connect to your LinkedIn page or share the fact that they have made a purchase. Then go even further into collecting feedback to understand why they took the action and potentially leave you a positive review about their experiences with your business and website. As a business owner, you will learn more about the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts this way than any report or chart can show you.

8. Accepting suspicious proposals

Be very wary about who you engage for advice and work. This is a relatively new industry with little control over the quality of work people can offer. The long term damaging effects as a result of poor online marketing practices can be detrimental, from suffering a Google penalty, to sending your most valuable client list an email littered with spelling mistakes. Putting careful quality control measures and taking the time to understand everything that is happening with your online marketing is more important that most business owners realise. Regardless of who you engage, make sure you keep in regular contact with them and get and provide the necessary communication to ensure your goals are being worked towards. Also, keep work reports of everything you have had someone to do for you, if something goes wrong it will give your next consultant a good idea what it was.

9. Fad online marketing strategies

There aren’t any overnight solutions and you would be surprised what kinds of business have tried marketing in online channels that will rarely provide a good return (eg. who wants to share the Facebook posts of a brand of herpes cream). Remember your target demographic and if you decide to stray from it, keep budgets light and be willing to abandon a channel if it isn’t working.

10. Being realistic

So the internet is a large free community and anyone can publish basically whatever they want, therefore anything goes with what you are advertising and marketing. However, have you thought much about how your online marketing efforts are contributing to this community? What value does your web assets offer that isn’t a phone number and an enquire now button? does it provide original content that gives away your experience or expertise? Is it an open forum where like minded people can discuss interests? Does it provide web apps, tools, calculators, templates, charts, videos, tutorials etc? Remember that as a business owner, your website has a commercial intent and if you are looking to make a good ROI (return on investment) above your competitors, you better have the best site and offering within that sector. Out of all the searches done on any one particular day, only a fraction would be searches with a commercial intent, and you have only one chance at getting the conversion over your competitors.

Basically if your going to offer light content on a poor design with no trust, USP’s (unique selling propositions) or CTA’s (call to actions) that market broadly outside your target demographic don’t expect a great ROI.

How to take charge of your online marketing in 5 minutes a day

So, how do you go about taking charge of your online marketing and work towards a successful ongoing, marketing campaign, that not only bring in new business, but increased brand profile and awareness? Simple, follow these few steps and start taking control and actively manage your online marketing.

1. Subscribe to authority blogs

Do it, join up with search engine land, search engine journal, seomoz and search engine watch, subscribing is a great way to force content in front of your face. Even if you don’t read it and delete more then half of them you will get an better understanding of online marketing (also make sure your marketing staff are across these great resources).

2. Set up Google Alerts

This is another great tool that forces you to look at what’s happening on Google. I would recommend setting up a brand name alert (to monitor your companies mentions on other websites) along with a few keywords that you think are highly relevant to your sector. Go to Google Alerts here.

3. Install tracking

Ask your webmaster to install Google Analytics and not just for page-view tracking. Insist on getting important events tracked with event tracking and set up goals and conversion tracking. Also, ask them to set up an automatic report (available easily within the Google Analytics interface) to be emailed to you monthly. Also consider getting call tracking on your website, or at least a specific phone number where you can track exactly how many phone calls you receive from your website each month.

4. Why not set a goal?

So you have completed the above and are getting relevant information about online marketing and you have your tracking in place. Why not set a goal? Consider setting smaller goals at the start and make sure your consultants and staff are across these, maybe 5% more enquiries within 3 months or a 10% increase in overall traffic. However you go about setting your first online marketing goals, make sure your see them through, just hoping is not going to achieve the results, so, maybe trial changing a web page, create a blog, answer a few expert questions on LinkedIn. The funny thing about measuring and setting goals is the more often you do it, the more you will learn. Remember you can learn just as much by not achieving a goal.

5. Take the time to talk to experts

Do not be afraid to approach industry specialists. In my experience they live and breath sharing their knowledge and if you engage them, you will ultimately learn something from the process. If you are using the services of a consultant, ensure you keep in regular contact with them, their advice may seem daunting at first, but for every very successful online marketing campaign, there has been many small steps taken to achieve it.

6. Summary

So the key to my advice is, Learn, Discover, Track and Measure, Set Goals and Communicate. While I hope this advice isn’t too painfully obvious, I know it can be achieved at a very little time cost for any business owner.

I hope you have found this article enjoyable, please feel free to leave your thoughts and comments in the comment section below and if you are having any similar troubles with your online marketing please feel free to ask any question by connecting with me on LinkedIn.

Image Credit

From 10 Common Online Marketing Mistakes Business Owners Make By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Understanding The AdWords Keyword Tool

Before any AdWords campaign is set live, an extensive keyword research exercise should be undertaken by the advertiser. This helps to ensure that their campaign contains the correct keywords that their potential customers will be using to find their product and/or service. Keyword research may be one of the more basic areas of AdWords management for an experienced online marketing professional, however for many business owners it can be a major cause of poor conversion rates.

When it comes to creating a keyword list for your AdWords campaign, there’s a hell of a lot that can go wrong; you may include keywords that are completely irrelevant to your product, particular keywords may be far too broad, too specific (and therefore have no search volume in your target area) or they could even be far too competitive to be viable for your campaign. It is for this reason that you need to use absolutely every bit of data you can get your hands on in order to build your keyword list and then fine tune it. One of the most commonly used tools by advertisers who want insight into traffic & cost data for keywords relating to their business is a free online tool made by Google – the ‘AdWords Keyword Tool’.

The AdWords Keyword Tool is a tool which allows you to enter a generic keyword that may be related to your business, at which point the tool will provide 100+ keywords which it deems to be relevant to the keyword entered by you. Data such as approximate monthly searches and a competition rating are also provided for each keyword, giving you the insight you need to focus your AdWords campaign on the right areas.

So how do I use the AdWords Keyword Tool?

It’s simple! Below is a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

1. Visit the website – https://adwords.google.com/o/KeywordTool

2. Using your website content and/or the names of your products and services, enter a generic keyword in the box shown below (e.g. if you’re an online florist, a good keyword to use in the search box would be “flowers”).

3. Select the target location, language & devices for the users you wish to target with your advertising:

4. Hit the blue “Search” button (keep in mind you may need to enter a validation code)

5. You’re done! You should now see a list of similar terms being populated under the search button:

Although running the keyword tool is very straightforward, making full use of the tool is slightly more complicated. It takes a combination of experience and logic to work out which keywords should be included in your campaign, which should be added as negative terms and which should be left out altogether.  Here are some examples using the flower business mentioned earlier:

Buy flowers online – Add as regular keyword

How to water flowers – add as negative keyword

Flower – leave out completely (most likely far too broad to use)

Hopefully this article has helped you to better understand the AdWords Keyword Tool. If you have any questions or thoughts, please feel free to leave a comment!

From Understanding The AdWords Keyword Tool By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Why invest in optimising your Google AdWords campaign?

Continuous improvement. Those two words are the ultimate goal for any business owner, which is why we invest so much time into measuring, reviewing, tracking and deciphering our businesses key metrics. We know that we must continually move forward with the goals of improving quality of service, market share and turnover of our businesses.

The same thing applies to your Google AdWords campaigns

Allowing your marketing staff time to invest in experiments, multivariate testing, trialling new demographics and audiences will always provide information and ultimately pay off. This process of discovering the market and trialling different strategies should be part of your marketing team’s culture and they should definitely have a clear idea of budgets to allow for this work.

So what are the benefits of investing in optimising your AdWords campaign?

1) Continually making your campaigns more granular

Separating and segmenting your campaigns, especially in the higher converting areas will allow you to easily break down where your budget is best invested. Consider you may know that a certain campaign continually provides a $10 conversion rate. But how far can you break that down? Moving the best performing AdGroups into their own campaign will then allow you to open up budgets for that particular area meaning more conversions for less overall cost.

2) Rolling out new Google AdWords features

Still many campaigns do not take advantage of ad-extensions, let alone testing different ad extensions from each other. Also as Google is always changing its interface and even now have major changes released in the form of enhanced campaigns, it is definitely worth staying on top of these updates, knowing when they are coming and how to deal with them.

3) Staying on top of seasonal  demands

If your business has seasonal factors associated with the AdWords campaign performance you should be rolling out specific campaigns that specifically target this demand. Having a few paused campaigns ready for this is a must to stay ahead of your competitors.

4) Testing

Introducing new creative and ads constantly will ensure you are maximising your click through rate and ensure that your ads never look tired or out of date. Along with this, trialling different versions of landing pages will ensure you are maximising your conversion rates.

Consider also trialling other channels such as YouTube ads, search and display remarketing to discover new opportunities.

5) Setting and achieving goals

Most business owners have their measurement and tracking of their Google AdWords campaign down pat, however not many set goals for their campaigns.

Simply looking at area’s to improve your campaign such as click through rate, average CPC (‘Cost-Per-Click), conversion rate and setting small easy to achieve goals will help your overall campaign statistics dramatically.

Below is a spreadsheet designed to help visualise how dramatic the effect of small improvements to a campaign can be. Play around with it or use it to decide on goals for your marketing staff.

Click image to open – then select ‘File > Make a copy’ to edit.

I hope you have enjoyed this article and are convinced you should be investing more time into your Google AdWords campaign. If you have any questions or comments please leave below! – Click Click Media

From Does Investing in optimising your AdWords campaign pay? By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

A short guide to business website content

Way back in the past, business website content was copied and pasted from the company’s brochures and print media.  These days however,  the web is its very own medium and writing its content requires a slightly different approach, as reading habits on a website are different than print.

Here are a few short tips to consider when putting together content for your sales and service pages.

1. Your target person or client

Consider the most important factors that your target person or client consider when making a decision: are they looking to gain information to help them make a purchase decision? Are they looking for pricing, or are they trying to determine if your product or service fits with their requirements? Once you have that idea down, consider the language your target audience would understand and try to address their natural questions and address any ‘fears’ or ‘objections’ they would have.

2. Write to get a response

Consider what your businesses unique selling proposition is and lace that heavily through your content. If you know what features, statistics and points your target audience and/or clients respond best to, then make sure that is highlighted in your copy.

Be clear about your competitive advantages and don’t be afraid to repeat them in some form throughout your content, which brings me to point 3:

3. Calls to action

A clear call to action should be provided within each piece of content and not just at the bottom. Place your calls to action within your content even after your first paragraph and provide a link to your contact page. Don’t just rely on banners and graphics that may be a part of your site, but clearly state what your target should do to continue or enquire about your service. For example “for best results contact us on 9999 9999 and we would be happy to help, or click here to fill in our enquiry form”.

4. Formatting

Keep paragraphs short and summarize your content either before or after the main body of your content, use bold font to highlight key pieces of information and use lists and bullet points to detail important information and features. It is also critical to provide proper headings and sub-headings in your content so readers quickly know what each section of your content is about.

5. Update

There is nothing worse than having out of date information on a website. Check over your content regularly and look for improvements you can make. Remember to remove out of date promotions and update your offers and calls to action.

Remember, content should always be written for your target person or clients first, do not try to stuff keywords into your copy for the sake of search engines. Good quality content that is geared towards getting a response will always be better in the long run.

Hope you have found this useful, have any questions or comments, please leave below!

From A short guide to business website content By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 Key Metrics to measure for AdWords Success and a FREE AdWords Report Template

Starting a Google AdWords campaign can be daunting at first, but with practice and perseverance you can easily find day-to-day wins and performance increases. One of the most common problems is the lack of measurement and understanding of the key metrics to measure and gauge health and performance of a campaign. Once these are understood and regularly measured, changes to season, industry competitiveness or areas a campaign can improve on are easy to identify.

The 5 key Metrics to measure are

1. Conversions
2. Conversion Rate
3. Cost Per Conversion
4. Click Through Rate
5. CPC

Conversions

A huge problem with most campaigns is not having some form of conversion tracking. If you are running an e-commerce store you should be feeding back your sales data into Google AdWords. If your site is for lead-gen, subscriptions, etc. then you would want to be tracking forms or phone calls. Being able to look at your conversion volume over time and get an accurate picture of fluctuations can help in discovering areas to improve in. Not to mention your business’s key metrics, stock levels, pricing, ROI, profit.

Conversion Rate

Simply put, the % rate which you convert your visitors into sales or leads, this is important to assess both how well your landing page is converting visitors and how relevant the traffic you are sending is. Also demand can play a part in your conversion rates, for example during Christmas, an ecommerce store may have less visitors doing just research and more looking to make a purchase immediately.

Cost Per Conversion (CPA)

Any fluctuation in this can mean a number of things, is your campaign delivering effectively? Are your average CPC’s going up or down, has there been a significant change to conversion rate? Is there a new competitor on the market? Or are there seasonal reasons why this would change. This is also your metric to watch when deciding on profitability of product ranges or individual campaigns, AdGroups, keywords, placements and networks. This is a key metric to help you weight budgets, obviously more budget on the lower cost per conversions.

Click Through Rate (CTR)

Watching this within your campaign can help you identify tired ad copy or banners, refreshing and testing new ads in areas that are seeing a drop in CTR will improve your campaigns. This is also a factor in increasing quality scores, which lead to cheaper CPC’s for your current ad positions.

Cost Per Click (CPC)

This metric is where most people start with when optimising, however, all of the above metrics need to be considered prior to adjusting your CPC’s. Regularly measuring your average CPC can help you determine which areas to focus on in your optimisations. It is also a key indicator of increased competition. CPC is the best metric you’ve got to track the effectiveness of your account’s quality score, so regular monitoring of this metric is essential.

FREE Excel AdWords Report Template

Click here to Download.

Instructions

1. Go to sheet labelled ‘data entry sheet’
2. Enter your clients details and date (date in format dd.mm.yyyy)
3. Export your account performance report from the AdWords interface
4. Go to sheet labelled ‘data’
5. Copy and paste the exported data into column B row 1, copy the exported data completely including headers.
6. Drag down the formula found in column A so that it appears for all rows within your report data.
7. Right click one of the tables found on the ‘Report’ tab and click ‘Refresh’.
8. You’re done, go to sheet labelled ‘Report’ and view.

Hope you’ve found this article useful, please leave your questions and comments below!

From 5 Key Metrics to measure for AdWords Success and FREE Report Template By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

How to Build Your Own Social Media Dashboard

Last year wasn’t quite the year for building your own social media dashboard—it was more so trying to figure out how to use the new features of Google+ and navigate your way around the new Facebook and LinkedIn layout. However, once you have a good grasp on social media and how to use it to benefit your business, having a social media dashboard can be incredibly useful. It is an easy way to keep all of your accounts organized and open at once, not only so you can post your own content, but also so that you won’t miss something someone else shares.

Dashboards are really just virtual organizers that sync up with all of your different accounts, and this year more than ever businesses are getting custom by creating their own social media dashboards. However, it isn’t without the help of some online tools.

Some Pre-Made Social Media Dashboards

For many, creating a social media dashboard isn’t necessary because there are tools out there to help you. A few of these tools include Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Seesmic, and Cyfe. All you need to do is quickly download these tools, sign into your social accounts, and watch the analytics and posts show up for you.

So why should you create your own social media dashboard? The biggest reason is customization. If you have a good amount of time on your hands or someone to help you monitor all of the analytics that go with social media, you might want to have your own system. This way you are not confined to what the pre-made dashboards deem important.

How to Create a Social Media Dashboard

If creating your own, custom social media dashboard works best for your business, you’re going to need to follow a few steps, consider a few different options, and give yourself some time to make it happen:

• Ask yourself the basic questions regarding what you’re looking to see.

How large or small is your budget? Who will be using the dashboard? Will you need to promote your data or findings? Do you need a place for more than analytics? Does it have to be 100 percent accurate or will estimates be okay?

• Utilize tools such as Dundas and Tabelau software to keep things in order.

This software isn’t quite as easy to use as the ones discussed above, but it does help you keep all of your data organized the way that you want that data organized. These tools are not free; however they offer more advanced options such as an analysis of millions of rows of data in seconds.

• Consider using Excel or Power Point to keep your analytics in line, or hire someone to help.  

Both of these programs are key to keeping your data organized. Upload charts and graphs as well as data tables in order to help you see trends and make changes. If you need a little bit of help creating something this specific and detailed, consider hiring a professional SEO company. Social media falls under the “SEO” umbrella, so they are usually the ones who can help you create something custom. You can visit Higher Visibility for more information.

It’s also important to note that creating a social media dashboard won’t usually allow for you to compose and send out tweets and messages. For that, it’s best to use a dashboard like Hootsuite or Tweetdeck. In a sense, these suggestions will only allow you to stay organized with social media and not necessarily become active with it.

Have you ever created a social media dashboard and been successful? Unsuccessful? Let us know your thoughts in the comments blow.

Photo Credit: onlinehometours.com

Amanda DiSilvestro gives small business and entrepreneurs SEO advice ranging from keyword density to recovering from algorithm updates. She writes for the professional SEO company HigherVisibility.com.  

From How to Build Your Own Social Media Dashboard By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Master Google AdWords Automated Rules!

In late 2010, Google rolled out a new feature across their AdWords advertising platform which allowed users to set automatic account adjustments based on user selected criteria. This feature basically allows advertisers to spend less of their time on bid management and more time focusing on the strategy of their marketing. Although many third party companies have allowed for this sort of automated functionality long before it was introduced within the AdWords interface, this addition was a major added benefit to advertisers who do not have the time, budget or trust to allow a third party to integrate itself within their AdWords account.

Automated rules can make managing an AdWords campaign far less time consuming for most people, however the feature will be useless to you if the implementation of your rules is done incorrectly. To help give you a better idea of how to correctly implement this feature, below are some examples of how and when to use certain automated rules within AdWords:

Example 1

Rule name: Change Max. CPC Bids when..

Account Level: Keyword

Goal: Reduce account’s average CPA

Strategy: The “Change Max. CPC Bids When..” rule is designed to allow you to make automatic bulk bid changes to any adgroup and/or keyword that meets a specific criteria specified by you. Using this tool is a great way of adjusting bids to optimise against a particular conversion rate or CPA. For example, if your target CPA is $100, you could set this rule to make a 10% bid reduction across any keywords that have a CPA of $110 or more each day. Here’s a screenshot of what this rule would look like within your AdWords interface:

As you can see in the screenshot above, you’re also given the option to set the frequency of your rule. What you select here will really depend on the amount of data you’re obtaining from the account but for a rule like this I’d generally recommend setting your frequency to weekly.

Outcome: Assuming conversion rates remained consistent for these keywords even with the 10% reduction in CPC, a $110 CPA would be reduced to $99 for these terms in the future (as you’re paying 10% less for each click) which meets your $100 target.

Example 2

Rule name: Pause Ads When…

Account Level: Advert

Goal: Increase overall CTR (‘Click Through Rate’)

Strategy: One of the most important aspects of AdWords is ensuring that your ad creative is more compelling than ads used by your competitors. Ad performance is important for 2 main reasons; 1) The higher your account’s CTR, the higher your quality score meaning reduced CPC costs for your account (see my post, ‘improving your CTR’), and 2) Highly targetted ad creative can draw in the right traffic and help to filter out the bad, resulting in a more efficient performance for your account. Using the “Pause Ads When..” rule combined with the creation of a large variety of different adverts, you’re able to automatically improve your CTR over time. For example, if your average CTR is 5%, to improve this you could create a rule which tells AdWords to pause any ad variations that delivery a CTR of less than 5% at the end of each month. Once the system has paused one of more adverts, simply add some new ad creative to replace the paused ads.

Outcome: This strategy should make it much easier for you to see CTR increases, as all you’ll really need to be doing is creating new adverts to replace the paused ads at the end of each month. Ideally you’d want between 3-5 adverts running at any one time for each adgroup (note: you need to be careful to ensure that all of your ads are not paused at the same time with this rule. It’s best to review your top performing advert and select a CTR slightly below what this ad is delivering to set as your goal CTR).

Example 3

Rule name: Increase Keyword Bids to Top of Page CPC

Account Level: Keyword

Goal: Increase traffic generated by high converting keywords (therefore increasing conversion volume)

Strategy: The “Increase Keyword Bids to Top of Page CPC” automated rule is a great way of ensuring that top performing keywords are generating as much traffic as possible. The rule allows you to increase your keyword bids to ensure that any keywords fitting your selected requirements are adjusted to ensure that those terms are shown at the very top of the search results. For example, if you had an average AdWords conversion rate of 5%, and wanted to ensure that any keywords with a conversion rate of 7% or higher were getting as much traffic as possible, you could set this rule to ensure that any keywords with a conversion rate of 7% or higher automatically have their bids increased at the end of each week to ensure their top of page position.

Outcome: By ensuring that all keywords with above-average conversion rates are maintaining a “top of page” position on Google, you’ll be getting the maximum amount of traffic possible out of these keywords which should result in overall conversion rates increases without you having to lift a finger! Even if your competitors are bidding aggressively on your high converting terms, by setting this rule to run weekly (or even daily if you’re getting enough data coming through!) you’ll be maintaining a strong position consistently.

So there you have it! 3 very helpful automated rules that can save you hours a week in manual management of your AdWords campaign. What other ways do you use automated rules within AdWords?

Post by Jeremy Decker

From AdWords Automated Rules – Automate Your Workload! By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

10 Things you probably didn’t know Google can do

Searching Google is pretty straight forward; type in what you’re looking for and hit search. However, did you know Google has additional search options and tools that can help you discover those hard to find pieces of information, or even to search directly within a site for a page or bookmark you may have lost?

Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know you could do on Google Search.

1. Basic search rules
2. Basic operators
3. Show reading level results
4. Show recent results by time and sort by date
5. Verbatim search
6. Google calculator
7. Conversions
8. Other [ query: ] style searches
9. Find Creative Commons material
10. Searches to help with your SEO

1. Basic search rules

a) Google does not regard case in searches (eg ‘kEYwoRD’ is the same as ‘keyword’), however some of the operators listed below aren’t.
b) Google will remove stop words (the, I, a) from your search query.
c) If you type a basic search string in, Google will show pages with all words first, trying to find the words in order. This is modified when you use operators.
d) As a general rule, punctuation is ignored. ( + , @ , & , % , $ , # , _ are used as well as mathematics queries, more below)

2. Basic operators

Need to refine a search? Or search within a range of information? Below are the basic operators you can use to quickly find exactly what you are looking for.

a) [ “ ”] This is known as an exact match search and is very precise. Google will try to find the exact set of words in the exact order. Google recommends it for finding song lyrics and literature; however, also good for getting rid of Google Maps listings when you have a location search and don’t want to see them.
example search: “searching google”
b) [ – ] This will exclude the particular keyword or query from the search results
example search: search engine -bing –yahoo -google
c) [ ~ ] Can replace the word with a synonym
example search: best car ~travel
d) [ * ] The asterisk acts as a ‘fill in the blank’ or wildcard.
example search: smells like * spirit
e) [ OR ] Without the OR between words Google will try to match them both. Use the OR to indicate that either of them will do. Case sensitive.
example search: best wine bar sydney OR melbourne
f) [ .. ] If you are searching a number range separate the digits by two periods ‘..’
example search: haircuts $10..$20 australia
g) [ site: ] Use the site: function to search within a site, can also search within a range of sites or a range of domain types.
example search: site:smh.com.au big day out
or examples search 2: site:.gov.au big day out

3. Show Reading Level Results

After clicking the search tools box within your results page you can adjust the reading level of the pages shown within a search result. It also gives you a distribution of the content found at the three reading levels it filters for.

And on the other end of the specturm

4. Show recent results by time and sort by date.

Need to know the most recent bit of content published on a site, or published about your brand name, use a combination of operators with the search tools ‘time’ and ‘sorted by’ to filter your results to the most recent. Also great to see what is being published about a topic basically as soon as Google finds it.

Obituary censored

5. Verbatim Search

This tool found again under search tools allows you to perform a search without any personalisation, synonyms, similar and stem (eg ‘drive’ ‘driving’) terms getting in the way. Useful for searching very exact keywords or phrases.

Example normal search

Example verbatim search

6. Google Calculator

Next time some college steals your calculator try entering the calculation straight into Google. You can use all the basic maths commands + – / * % ^ as well as square root (sqrt) Trigonometry (sin, cos, arctan, tan, cosin) and much more.

example search: 13 + 6 + 9 * sqrt 81

7. Conversions

Convert almost anything to anything just type it straight into Google.

some example searches:

convert 2.5 cups to grams
convert 100 pounds to kg
convert 25 hectares to acres
convert 100 horsepower to kw
convert 50324 days to years
convert 1 meter into lightyears

Try out some of those searches along with almost any other conversion you can think of!

8. Other [ query: ] style searches

a) [ weather: ] to return the weather forecast for almost any town.
example search: weather: Sydney
b) [ define: ] to return the definition of a word
example search: define: pragmatism
c) [ movie: ] to check local session times for a film
example search: movie: the hobbit sydney
d) [ stocks: ] to check stocks
example search: stocks: goog
e) [ related: ] displays related websites
example search: related:www.smh.com.au
f) [ info: ] displays information about a website
example search: info:www.smh.com.au
g) [ filetype: ] searches for a specific filetype
example search: monthly tax table filetype:pdf

9. Find Creative Commons material

Looking for a piece of content  for your site? Be it an image, video, music or article finding great creative commons works is a excellent way to gather great material that ultimately benefit your websites visitors – Be sure to understand the different types of creative commons licenses here – http://creativecommons.org/licenses/

Within your search results window simply navigate to the advanced search button and choose ‘usage rights’ to filter for the type of license you require

10. Searches to help with your SEO

The following searches are especially useful to help you with your SEO. Check out your current efforts or explore your competitor’s strategies.

a) Use a combination of the [ site: ] and [ - ] operators to discover your website mentions on other sites and backlinks.
example search: www.smh.com.au –site:www.smh.com.au
b) [ inurl: ] searches show results with the query in the websites URL, also to expand on this query to all words use [ allinurl: ] example search: inurl:carsales
c) [ intitle: ] searches show results with the query in the websites title, also to expand on the query to all words us [ allintitle: ] example search: allintitle:it’s raining men
d) [ intext: ] searches show results that have the specific word within the text – not really that useful unless you have a very specific brand name, but, [ allintext: ] comes in handy quite a bit for checking for copyright infringement or duplicate content on your website.
examples search: allintext:Two households, both alike in dignity

A further note on discovering duplicate content.

Performing the search site:yourdomain.com can reveal some interesting facts about your website and show in order pages that are considered the most important by Google. Don’t forget to go to the end of the search results and click the “repeat the search with the omitted results included” to discover duplicate content issues.

I hope you have found this article interesting and if you have any other tips let us know in the comments section below.

By www.clickclickmedia.com.au – Google AdWords and website optimisation experts.

From 10 Things you probably didn’t know Google can do! By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 Quick tips for a great PPC landing page.

When running any paid search campaign one of the key factors to ensure its success is the careful investigation and optimisation of where you are sending your traffic. Your landing pages.

A landing page can make a huge difference to a campaigns performance. See the chart below where conversion rates increased by over 700% by introducing a simple page with a few key design and content elements that both build confidence with the visitor and prompt immediate action.

Here are 5 key points to building a great landing page.

1. Unique Selling Proposition
2. Call To Action
3. Design
4. Testimonials
5. Trust and Authority

A Killer Unique Selling Proposition

A persuasive, good value and unique selling proposition should be the first thing that greets your visitors; this of course should be tailored to remain as close and relevant to your ad or ad-text as possible. Try to keep it short and the offering very easy to understand and don’t forget to trial a few variations.

A Clear Call to Action

Explain clearly what you expect your visitors to do on the page; it can also be a good idea to show the next steps after they perform the action so it is easy to comprehend for your visitor why and how they should enquire / purchase. Creating a sense of urgency or a limited time offer can help. If you are offering a service, consider having an offer for your custom just for placing the enquiry (the basic one is ‘free quote’ but the more imaginative the better, ‘free t-shirt’, ‘%10 off online enquiries’, ‘Free Guide To XYZ’, ‘In home demo’).

Good Design and Directional Cues

Keep a good portion of your sales content above the fold (the part of your landing page shown without scrolling). Try and maintain a clear visual path to the desired action, use arrows, hand drawn notes, coloured buttons and almost any trick your designer can use to bring your visitors attention to the ultimate goal, usually an enquiry form.

Use a great looking banner or video of your product / service and try and include it being put to actual use. Photos of people usually work great, especially if you have a celebrity or similar authoritative figure in your market.

Testimonials, Case Studies, References, Press Snippets, Client Logos

Other people’s experience with your product / service will re-assure your visitors. It can also be a good way of adding content on how your product / service can be used and show some solution based sales content. Try to include a portrait photo of the person providing the testimonial to add even more trust. Remember from the above point ‘Design’ that people naturally look towards faces.

If you have any press snippets, industry reviews, client logos and case studies try to include them on the landing page, but keep it short to not bog your visitor down with too much detail.

Building Trust and Authority Elements

If your company has achieved any awards, certifications or recognitions include them on your landing page and consider adding your social media links and followers. If you are processing payments from your landing page include security logos and certifications. Show privacy policy, cookie policy, terms, shipping policy links on your landing page (though it is a good idea to have these shown up in light-boxes so you’re not driving visitors to another page).

Optimising and A/B Testing

Testing and optimising landing pages is quite a simple concept, run two variations against each other until a clear winner emerges. Rinse and repeat.

However…

Here is a pro-tip specific to people using landing pages for their Google AdWords campaigns. If you have segmented out your campaign properly, (see how to structure an adwords campaign) then you can run an AdWords experiment testing multiple page variations (on different URLS) against each other to find out how each landing page performs based on your campaign structure. Does one design work better in rural suburbs over cities? Does one variation emerge as a champion on your broad match campaigns? What about your search network and mobile campaigns?

What you may find is that there are clear favourites for each segment in your campaign, and an overall winner may never emerge, but a clear winner for each sector is found.

Summary

If you are not using a landing page for your PPC campaigns and you run a service based business, I strongly recommend you try one. I ensure you that when executed properly you will see a significant improvement in your lead generation efforts.

More on landing pages:
http://unbounce.com/landing-pages/perfect-landing-page-recipe/
http://www.formstack.com/the-anatomy-of-a-perfect-landing-page

Have you had experience with introducing landing pages to your campaigns? How did it go? Let me know in the comments below.

From 5 Quick tips for a great PPC landing page. By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 reasons to contact your web developer before your next PPC campaign

Pay Per Click (PPC) campaigns can be a great way to drive very targeted traffic to your website almost immediately and if your account is well managed often very cost effectively, but what happens once they get to your website?

You have just spent money attracting a new potential customer and getting them to come to your website so you want to make sure that your website is working as hard as possible to convert that potential customer into a lead or a purchaser.

So here are five reasons you should speak to your web designer / developer before starting your next PPC campaign:

Reason 1:  Performance and reliability

As you are paying to get a visitor to come to your site you want to make sure your site is up to the job. A successful campaign can significantly increase the amount of traffic to your website. The worst thing would be for your site to be slow or not working at all.

Make sure you speak to your web developer to let them know what you are intending and to make sure that your website is performing as best as possible. Your web developer should be able to optimize your site to run as fast as possible and to also ensure it is as reliable as possible giving the best experience to your visitors (and to Google – see Reason 3 below).

Reason 2:  The 10 second rule

Research shows that a site visitor will make a decision on whether to stay on your site within the first 10 seconds of arriving. Just to be clear, you have less than 10 seconds to:

• Reassure them they are in the right place
• Present the right image and feel
• Convince them to stay a while

The design of the page your direct the visitor to is absolutely vital in achieving this goal and a good web designer should know all the things required to make this happen.

Reason 3:  The hard Sell

Now that you have convinced someone they are in the right place and that they should stay a while you now need to get them to take some form of action.

This requires a well thought out and designed ‘landing page’ which performs the following tasks:

• It quickly and easily informs them of the product or service
• It provides compelling reasons to take an action (whether this be an enquiry, a sale or a download etc)
• It makes it as easy as possible to make that action
• It does not distract with irrelevant or unnecessary information

You will need to speak to your web designer / developer on how to achieve a landing page which delivers these requirements. While this is not rocket science there is a methodology and psychology to these pages which a good designer should be able to explain and implement for you.

Reason 4:  Google Quality Score

When running PPC campaigns Google applies a ‘quality score’ to your campaign. This is based on a number of factors including the relevance of the advert to the location the advert points to as well as the performance of the site as well.

If, for example, you point your ad to your home page it is possible the relevance of this page to the text in the advert might be quite low. A good web developer will be able to work with you to ensure the page you are directing traffic to is highly relevant to the advert. This is achieved in the design, wording and even the coding of the page/site itself.

Reason 5:  Knowledge

As part of your PPC campaign you will want to be able to track and assess the performance and impact of the campaign on your website and your business.

To do this you will need your site setup with an Analytics tool to provide tracking and statistics. Google Analytics is a great (and free) tool that can provide this functionality.

You will need to speak to your web developer to ensure that analytics software is installed on your website. Your PPC company will also provide you with some code which is used to track ‘conversions’. These are defined as the goals you want the advert to achieve (a product sale, an enquiry, a download etc) and are vital in determining the return on investment for the campaign.

In summary

We hope you have found this article useful. It shows how important it is to speak to your web designer / developer prior to running a PPC campaign to ensure that your website will perform as well as possible to deliver maximum return on investment.

Guest post by Ivan Slade from Flow Interactive. Flow Interactive is a professional web design and development company based in Sydney with extensive experience of optimizing websites and landing pages for PPC campaigns. If you would like a free consultation on how we can help you with your next campaign please contact Ivan on 1300 77 3569.

From 5 reasons to contact your web developer before your next PPC campaign By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

The following is a guest post from Kate Webster. Kate Webster writes for lead generation resource, ResourceNation.com. She focuses on a variety of topics including ecommerce web design. 

3 Tips to Improve Ecommerce Website Conversions

When a customer stumbles upon your ecommerce website in the shopping mall of the internet, your main objective is to convert the customer from a visitor into a buyer. According to the National Retail Federation, the average conversion rate in 2011 was only 2-3%.

As the owner of an online business, it is important for you to not only attract people to your website, but to get them to buy. Lowering prices and offering deals are reliable methods of raising your website conversion, but there are a few subtle web design tactics you can use to convince your customer to buy.

SEO Strategy

Using search engine optimization as one of these tactics will make your ecommerce site more likely to be picked up by your online shoppers. While developing SEO starts in the first stages of building your site, you can make these changes on an existing website, as well.

• Including keywords and internal links throughout your site will improve your chances of being the first link on a Google search.  Be sure to choose the keywords your website is hoping to rank for.
• Your site’s loading speed also factors into Google’s sorting algorithms. Make sure there are no lose ends that are slowing down your site.
• Be sure that your site uses a clear layout, with a sitemap and clearly defined pages, so that search engines can effectively screen your site.

Check-Out Design

Making an easy-to-use checkout page is essential for getting customers to buy your product. If they finally choose an item to purchase and then are confronted with a difficult or stressful checkout process, they are less likely to follow through– this is the definition of shopping cart abandonment. Here are some ideas about how to improve the design.

• Keep it clean. Don’t clutter the page with unnecessary links or bodies of text that could be distracting to the buyer. You might even consider removing the site heading and all other sales features to focus the customer on their payment information.
• Don’t have too many information fields. People hate filling out too many little boxes of information in a checkout. Have a box to click if the shipping address is the same as the billing address, or eliminate it completely if the content is digital. Offering PayPal creates a faster option for your customers.
• Show them where they are. Include a process indicator of 3 to 4 steps so that the customer knows how much more information they will be asked for.
• Make your customer comfortable by displaying SSL security badges.

Add Testimonials and Endorsements

According to Nielson Company survey, 57% of customers considered posted reviews before buying. Including previous customer reviews is a great way to increase your conversion rate.

• Include customer ratings and satisfied reviews and place them close to the checkout button. Online shoppers usually trust fellow shopper’s opinions over the merchant for truthful reviews.
• Positive press or news features can also help to convince customers to buy
• Endorsements from reputable companies or celebrities are also effective in converting your site visitors to buy.

Because the average conversion rate is so small on ecommerce sites, not only is it important to draw customers to your site, but to keep them purchasing once they get there. By including these practices and features on your site, you can increase your conversion rate and get more business on your ecommerce site.

Have any tips that help boost ecommerce conversion rates? Leave in the comments section below!

From 3 Tips to Improve Ecommerce Website Conversions By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Our Best AdWords Help Articles In 2012

Its time to round up our best AdWords how to articles, over the last year we have published some great advice for beginner Google AdWords users that cover good practise and introduces methods and tools that we feel aren’t used commonly enough. Hopefully we have helped a few people out. As the year is rapidly coming to an end, lets gather them all up!

How to Structure your AdWords Account
Account structure is important for both the accurate measurement and control of your campaigns. This article provides an exceptional overview of how to ensure your account structure is giving you the best chance for succes.

AdWords Change History Tool
Understanding what has happened to a campaign is vital to both troubleshoot and measure your efforts. This post covers where to find it and how to use it.

AdWords Access Levels
This extremely popular article on our blog dives into the details regarding AdWords account access levels. Knowing what the different access options means to you will help when working collaboratively on an account.

Labelling in the AdWords Interface
Labels are a relatively new feature of AdWords, but when put to use can allow you to segment out data and run performance comparisons, making it a very powerful tool.

Improving your Ad Text
Given that your Ad text is your business’s first impression, we move onto an AdWords optimisation article on the importance of your Ads.

Sitelink Optimisation
Expanding on the Ad text article is this great post on how to optimise your site links.

How to improve your Click Through Rate
Again relevant to the last two articles is one on improving your click through rate, which is an important factor in achieving a good quality score.

The Search Query Report
The first stop when optimising your campaign, this article covers how to find the search query report and how to effectively use it.

Finally, The 5 Most Common Mistakes in AdWords Campaigns
Finishing this article round up we have an article on the five most common mistakes we see. Deficiently worth the read for any new AdWords user.

Why not stay up to date and subscribe to our blog? Valuable weekly articles on Google AdWords, Websites, Optimisation and more!

Hope you have enjoyed this round up and found it useful. Do you have any favourite AdWords articles? Let us know in the comment section below!

From Our best AdWords ‘How To’ Articles for 2012 By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

The Hard Truth about Google AdWords Quality Score

Have you been staring at the quality scores in your Google AdWords campaign? Has an agency approached you with the promise of improving your Google AdWords quality score? Believe it or not, the quality score system in AdWords is not there just to traumatise you, or to provide marketing ammunition for PPC companies but it actually serves a very specific purpose and once you understand the underlying motivation you suddenly realise little ‘tricks’ are not going to work. At least not for very long.

Google’s Quality Score is used to maximise its profit on every single search.

So more clicks equals more money for Google. If you are aiming for exceptional quality scores, build a campaign that is profitable for Google. Obsessing over quality scores is usually done by people desperately trying to see how little they can pay for a click (usually making great competitors).

So understanding the above you can see that the biggest factor to your quality score is your Click Through Rate (unless you’re talking about quality scores of 1 or 2 which means Google considers your landing page or website objectionable and probably risky).

While we’re here, let me confirm that the quality score I am referring to in this post is ‘keyword quality score’ not ‘adgroup’, ‘campaign’ or ‘account’ quality scores which are hidden in the AdWords interface and all individually affect your campaign. Another reason account structure is so important (see this previous post).

Quality Score is a single number that needs to be viewed as part of the overall picture to gauge a campaign.

If a keyword becomes profitable, then saving a few cents per click is not going to help, sure may increase your ‘ROI’ but who cares? Don’t you want to spend as much as possible on it and increase the quantity of sales? Focus on margin and forget what SEM experts tell you about ROI gains from quality score improvements. Your bank balance will thank you for it.

The below two keywords are from within the same campaign we manage.

See the top image. The quality score of the 10/10 keyword is sitting at 80% of the maximum bid, but below the 4/10 keyword is only at 60% of the maximum bid. If quality score really meant a cheaper bid would you not expect that to be reversed? And increasing the quality score of the 4/10 keyword won’t do anything, the cost per click wouldn’t drop and the average position wouldn’t improve (can’t get higher than 1)

Someone has called me telling me that their system indicates I have a low quality score?

Firstly, don’t believe it, it isn’t possible to detect and even if they do have a tool that is “90% accurate” it would be relying on scrapers, (which, by the way, go against Google’s policy for partners). Secondly, if it was even possible, is doesn’t mean anything! The amazing thing about this sales tactic (and believe me, it is a sales tactic) is that you can create an instant fear that you are wasting a lot of money. While the marketing behind it is somewhat imaginative, the process is creating a highly misinformed consumer.

If you are running a campaign that is profitable, why wouldn’t you invest as much as you possibly can into it until you hit the traffic cap? Not fidget around with misguided attempts to save as much money per click as possible. In specific cases $30 – $40 clicks are returning 2-300% ROI. Remember in every qualified search there is usually only one clear winner, the website that got the conversion.

How you can improve your quality scores and do it the right way!

Improving your quality score is simple; just remember to do the following:

• Write compelling ads and perform consistent ad testing
• Segment and localise your campaigns, have different campaigns for different sections of the market eg. seasonal targeting, separate out mobile, tablet and desktop campaigns.
• Constantly add negative keywords and phrases to your campaign (monitor your search query report).
• Ensure your landing page relevance is good.

Lastly review your conversions at the keyword level, is the low quality keyword actually converting well for you?

Summary

I hope this article has moved your focus from quality scores as a dire metric to be measuring and from now on be taking them into account of the entire picture.

Remember – even if you only have one keyword you can bid on it many different ways, you may be surprised that there is a drastic difference in quality score for that one keyword.  Quality score does not mean profit.

If you have any questions or comments please leave below!

From The Hard Truth about Google AdWords Quality Score By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

The 10 Commandments of SEM

SEM (Or “Search Engine Marketing”) is a beast that can take a long time to master. There is a huge variety of ways to structure a campaign, countless settings to adjust, boxes to tick – and all of these things will vary based on the type of product or service you’re advertising, your campaign budget & geographical range. It’s for this very reason that a significant percentage of business owners and/or marketing experts waste thousands (if not more) of dollars during their SEM learning process.

While it’s unavoidable to waste some money learning the “in’s and out’s” of SEM, there are some main rules to follow that will ensure you’re giving your campaign the best possible start.

Below are what we consider to be the 10 commandments of SEM:

1. Thou must track online conversions

This is easily the most important part to any SEM campaign. Conversion tracking gives you the ability to see exactly where your keywords came from. Questions like; what keywords have resulted in online conversions? Which part of the globe/country are your conversions being made? What time of the day do most of your conversions occur? Which ad creative results in the highest conversion rate for your campaign? These are all questions that require answers if you’re interested in improving your SEM performance, and guess what – all of them can be answered with a simple conversion tracking installation!

2. Thou shalt not overcrowd AdGroups

Due to the fact that most SEM platforms work on a “quality score” system (in particular Google AdWords which is by far the most popular platform available today) one of the most important metrics to optimise within your campaign is your “CTR” or “Click Through Rate”. CTR is a percentage figure based on clicks divided by ad impressions (or “searches”), and the higher your CTR, the higher your keyword quality score will be. Having a high quality score benefits your campaign by reducing CPCs (‘Cost Per Clicks’).

If you have AdGroups that are crowded, containing tens or even hundreds of keywords, chances are your campaign isn’t going to be as targeted as it should be with your ad text. Ideally, you want your ad text to contain the keywords being triggered by your ads, and given that SEM adverts are extremely limited in text space, you can imagine how hard this would be with 10+ various keywords within a single AdGroup. The best thing to do is create AdGroups with very tight keyword themes, with no more than a few keywords in each AdGroup. This will ensure CTRs are at their highest potential, resulting in high CTRs and a better user experience for your customers.

3. Thou must constantly test ad creative

I have seen countless accounts that are set up using only a single advert for each AdGroup. All major SEM platforms give you the ability to create multiple adverts for each AdGroup, and this should be taken advantage of. Creating multiple adverts (3-4 per AdGroup is usually recommended initially) allows you to test different messaging against each other – once you have a significant volume of data for these ads, you’ll then be able to get an idea of which message your audience responds to best. You can then pause the underperforming ads and continue to test new variations of your high performing message! This should result in consistent improvements in CTR throughout your campaign.

4. Thou shalt not combine both search & display activity in the same campaign

This is an issue that is more specific to Google AdWords, as by default your campaigns are targetted to both Google’s search network and display network. This can cause problems for your performance, as search & display work in completely different ways and can serve different purposes depending on the goal of your campaign. While Google’s display network generates massive amounts of search volume, the conversion rates you generally see from this channel compared with search are quite low. In comparison, search network volume will usually generate lower traffic volume, but because of the fact that users are actively seeking information and/or a service/product provider conversion rates are usually much higher.

Due to the fact that display and search work in such different ways, it’s always a good idea to target them with different campaigns, as this allows you to edit their settings individually to better reflect their purpose. For example as conversion rates are typically lower on display, you may choose to set lower CPC bids for display, or minimise the time of day that you’re online.

5. Honour thy negative keyword list and make it extensive

If you have any interest at all at obtaining a strong conversion rate (which everyone obviously does) then negative keywords are a must. Unless all of your campaign’s keywords are set to “Exact Match”, your ads will often be triggered by searches that are similar not necessarily relevant to your service or product offering. For example if you have the keyword “accounting company” within your campaign, your ads can be triggered by searches such as “accounting company jobs” which you’d obviously want to avoid unless you were offering a job. Negative keywords should be used extensively to avoid this.

6. Remember the Search Query report and keep it holy

In my opinion the Search Query report is far and wide the most useful reporting function within the Google AdWords interface. This report allows you to see not just the keywords that are generating you traffic, but also the exact search made by Google users. So how can this benefit my campaign? Well this data gives you frequent ideas on both how to expand your keyword list, and also your negative keyword list meaning your campaign will become more and more targetted & refined as time progresses.

7. Thou shalt not forget to take advantage of Ad Extensions

One of the newer additions to SEM! Ad Extensions are a feature exclusive to AdWords; however, they’ve had a huge impact on the diversity of SEM campaigns. Ad Extensions come in many forms – SiteLinks, Product Extensions, Call Extensions… but what they all have in common is that they generally make your advert significantly larger, and also make it stand out from the pack. Because of this, Ad Extensions will usually result in some nice CTR improvements, which, as we know is always a good thing for your campaign. Along with helping to improve CTR, Ad Extensions also promote a better user experience by making particular areas of your site more easily accessible. So they’re a must if you want to get the best results possible for your campaign!

8. Thou shall take advantage of the various keyword match types

The default match type for the major SEM platforms is a type generally known as “broad match”. This match type is great for delivering high traffic volume, however you should also make use of other match types in order to further refine your campaign and improve your conversion rate. A newly added match type added to Google AdWords is called “Broad Match Modifier”. This match type allows you to keep the high traffic volume associated with broad match, but also allows you to be more targetted by giving you the ability to tell Google which words within a particular keyword MUST be found within a user’s search in order for your ad to appear. This is different to the standard broad type, where Google can show your ads based on searches that it deems to be related to your keywords. From this description alone you can see how Broad Match Modifier is a much more targetted way of advertising. To use Broad Match Modifier, simply add a “+” next to any word within your keywords that you think should be used in a user’s search when triggering your ad.

9. Thou must monitor segment reporting

Another point that is probably more specific to AdWords – segment reporting allows you to segment your SEM data based on geographical location, time, date, device, network & much more. It’s this data that gives you the knowledge you need to decide what settings to adjust, levers to pull etc. within your SEM account.

10. Thou shalt not send all traffic to the home page

You can have the most well-structured, advanced AdWords campaign in the world, but if you’re sending people to a poor landing page then your SEM traffic is probably just going to land on your site and then leave without taking any further action. Having a strong landing page is probably the strongest lever you have at improving conversion rate. Here are some features that every AdWords landing page should have:

• Clear description of product/service being advertised.
• Clear contact details (both email and phone).
• Service and/or delivery location.
• Testimonials.

There are obviously other features that will be required depending on the purpose of your site, however if you have the above 4 features you’ll generally see good conversion rates – as long as your AdWords campaign is doing what it’s supposed to do!

So there they are! The 10 SEM commandments of SEM that should help make your PPC learning experience as painless as possible. If you have any questions at all regarding the above points, please feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you!

From The 10 Commandments of SEM By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

What to expect from your AdWords Company. Google’s Third-Party Policy

It can be hard for business owners to know exactly what to expect when commencing work with an AdWords company, and even harder to understand exactly what Google does to police the exploitation of its platform.

To understand what to expect and what standards of quality are put into place you have to know a bit about the Google AdWords certified partner program.

The Google AdWords certified partner program is a certification that can be achieved by any organisation that has an individual who can show their expertise at manipulating the Google AdWords interface, and to a lesser extent the API which runs it all. The requirements for the certification are:

•  Have an MCC (or “My Client Centre” – multiple accounts linked under one umbrella account) with a total spend $10,000 over 90 days,
•  Have at least one individually qualified employee (pass a test) and,
• Adhere to the terms and conditions associated with being an AdWords certified partner. (http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=18572)

Once a company is an AdWords certified partner, they are required to maintain an employee with up to date individual qualifications and are required to comply with Google’s third party policy.

Since April 1^st 2011 Google, has been auditing AdWords partners at their own discretion. These audits may be initiated by complaints received against an agency or by Google themselves. The penalty for not completing a satisfactory audit against the third party advertising policy can be the removal of the AdWords partner certification.

The Google AdWords third party policy:
http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=152979

The Google AdWords advertiser guide:
http://www.google.com/adwords/thirdpartypartners/

This  advertisers guide is required by all partners to be shared to clients on both sales and renewals along with being available on a clearly discoverable part of an agency’s website. This has been in place since February 2011.

Breaking down the third-party policy and advertisers guidelines.

In Google’s own words:

“We’re always working to improve advertisers’ ROI and experience with AdWords, and we want to make sure advertisers — whether they work with AdWords directly or not — understand how AdWords is performing for them. We believe accountability is a core feature of AdWords. Focusing on what’s best for the advertiser is ultimately the best long-term course for third parties working with AdWords.”

From: http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2417693#0002

Put simply, the policy is in response to a problem that previously existed (and still does though to a lesser extent) where agencies would not disclose actual expenditure on AdWords. In extreme cases, agencies would mark up clicks into website by up to 100%. This gives advertisers a poor indication of how well AdWords is working for them and reflects on the platform itself, resulting in many advertisers abandoning the channel completely.

Google on how to work with a third party partner.

The third party policy encourages potential advertisers to search through the AdWords partner search database when selecting an agency to work with along with explaining that AdWords costs and management / agency costs are different charges.

Google recommends selecting an agency based on experience, which is a no brainer, but importantly suggests checking the agencies case studies from similar industries and audiences. Google warns against running multiple agencies against each other due to double serving rules, however this can still be done by allocating different agencies for specific states, services or products to run and checking performance against each other.

Google on what to look out for.

Google warns to watch out for agencies that will not share the actual costs of a campaign, make any guarantees to ad position, are over aggressive in getting you to sign up, claim they are from Google or offer ‘deceptive pricing’ (eg: packages and volume discounts on clicks).

There was a darker past to AdWords management companies where agencies would cold call people, say they are from Google, tell people they are selling number one position for $x per month then send them though a six month contract that collects credit card details.

Back then if you were a business owner this would seem like a great deal, but it would leave you with little understanding on what is actually happening and zero understanding on how it works. Margins on these deals were also very questionable, reporting was non-existent and the platform was rapidly getting a bad name.

Although this kind of selling strategy is nowhere near as prevalent in today’s market, it does still occur – so if you get one of these calls my advice is to run as fast as possible in the opposite direction.

Third party partner requirements.

Please check the third party policy, but here are the main points to look out for from your AdWords company.

1. Reporting is non-existent or not clear.

Google requires third parties to report at minimum to report on the actual AdWords cost, clicks and impressions at the account level each month.

Joe’s Plumbing — AdWords report for July 2010
Clicks: 1,400
Impressions: 12,000
Cost: $700

This is a very basic reporting requirement and you should either get access to the campaign yourself or receive a breakdown of account / campaign / adgroup and keyword levels of your campaign.

2. Engaging in deceptive or harassing sales practises.

If an agency is not spending the agreed amount on AdWords or are moving the budget into other channels without notification.

Claiming to have special pricing for keywords, auction, set position prices and bulk discounts.

Purposely not utilising AdWords features that were agreed by the client eg: location targeting.

3. Claiming to have a special relationship with Google.

Either claiming to be Google to implying a preferential relationship or influence with the organisation.

4. Making improper guarantees about Google.

Selling ‘permanent positions’, representing free services such as Google Places as having a cost, implying certain features of AdWords as having an additional charge from Google.

5. Improper use of accounts, account data and Google’s marketing.

Using one account for multiple advertisers, selling coupons, erasing or destroying account data of a client an AdWords company is about to lose.

6. Actions for Immediate suspension.

Phishing, any attempt to acquire credit card, usernames, passwords by misrepresentation. Essentially sending spam ‘Google AdWords warnings’ that attempt to collect this information.

Pretending to be Google, deceptively using the Google logo, contacting people saying you’re from Google.

And any other actions that Google deems to be harmful to Google’s advertisers or users.

How to complain about a Google Third-Party Partner.

The following link allows advertisers to submit a complaint about a third party partner: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/request.py?&contact_type=gap_complaint

I hope this information has been helpful and has given you an understanding on how Google goes about ensuring the quality of its partners. If you have any questions or comments please leave them below!

This information has been provided as an overview; please refer to links for actual details on the documents / policies mentioned. Post is relevant at time of publishing.

From What to expect from your AdWords Company. Google’s Third-Party Policy By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Google Advertising – What are your options?

It’s no secret that in today’s online landscape, if you want any kind of significant exposure for your brand and/or website, then you’re going to need to be involved with Google in some way. Due to the fact that the top 2 search engines (Google.com & YouTube.com) in the world are owned by the online giant, there’s simply no alternative that even comes close when it comes to audience reach.

So you know that you have to use Google to promote your brand and/or website, but seeing as there are so many different Google properties available – all with different functions and purposes, where should you spend time promoting your business? To help you decide, I’ve provided a list of Google properties below with some of their pros and cons.

Google Search

Google search is the term used for the Google search engine found at www.google.com.au, along with Google’s partner search engines such as www.AOL.com. There are two main forms of advertising within Google search:

SEO (‘Search Engine Optimisation’):

SEO is the process of optimising your website to ensure that it ranks highly in Google’s “organic” search results for a specific set of keywords. This method of advertising can take time to show results, however when results are seen you can usually expect to generate moderate-high volume of highly targeted traffic for your website. One of the big benefits of this form of exposure is that you aren’t paying for a set amount of traffic, so if done right you can see huge return for your effort.

AdWords (or ‘Search Advertising, SEM, PPC’):

AdWords is a ‘Pay-Per-Click’ advertising solution offered by Google which allows you to display adverts within the “sponsored links” area on Google search, seen at the very top and right hand side of the page. Although displaying ads in the sponsored links is free, you will be charged a certain amount (based on how much you’ve bid for the keyword used in search as well as your “quality score”) each time a user clicks on your ad and goes to your website via Google. This form of advertising is extremely targetted, offers in-depth reporting and allows you to be seen on Google almost instantly. However, due to the fact that AdWords is a ‘Pay-Per-Click’ model, there is potential to lose money on your investment if you haven’t got the set-up. It’s recommend that you contract an AdWords specialist to handle this for you as there are many different ways in which you can fail at running a successful AdWords campaign.

Google Display

Google’s display network is a feature available via the AdWords program which allows you to advertise on ‘AdSense’ enabled websites using either text or banner ads. Due to the fact that there are millions of websites within the AdSense network, this form of advertising has the potential to expose your brand to an enormous amount of web users. Although traffic volume seen on Google Display is large, conversion rates are usually quite low just as with other banner advertising so it’s important to closely monitor performance and ensure you aren’t generating a negative ROI. You’ll be paying for your traffic here (either ‘Cost-Per-Click’ or ‘Cost-Per-Impression’) so it’s important to ensure that your return outweighs your marketing investment.

Remarketing

One of the newest features to AdWords, Remarketing allows you to expose your adverts to users across the display network, but only if they’ve visited your website previously. This is a great way of re-engaging with your customers, and can also be a great way to try and re-capture visitors who came to your site but did not make a purchase and/or enquiry. There are two main ways that remarketing can be set up. You can install the code on your AdWords landing page so that all site visitors are exposed to your remarketing ads (useful if you want to try and re-capture lost visitors) and/or you can install the code on your “thank you for purchasing” page as well to create a filter that allows you to target only the users who made a purchase (great for up-selling or cross selling).

Google Places / Local / Google+

Google places allows business owners to create a page for their business where they can pin their business location on a map, provide business contact details & a business description, accept customer reviews & more. Places is also linked to Google maps & Google search, so if a user is searching for “dry cleaner Sydney” for example, a list of dry cleaners within Sydney will be displayed along with their location on a map. Google places is great for local business due to the fact that it’s so targeted, however traffic volume will generally be quite small compared to other Google advertising methods.

Google Merchant Centre

The Merchant Centre allows users to upload their products so that their products can be integrated into all of the different Google search engines. Whether it is organic or sponsored links, merchant centre can be easily linked to other Google accounts to ensure that your products are gaining as much exposure on the web as possible.

Although there are many other ways of promoting your website via Google properties, the above points lay down the foundation of Google  and should be a good place to start for all new business owners looking to get their brand.

Have you tried all these for your business? feel free to comment below!

From Google Advertising – What are your options? By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 Features that EVERY e-commerce website needs to have

It’s no secret – today’s online space is rapidly becoming more and more competitive as the years go by. With retail shopping seeing a general decline across the globe, more and more businesses are going online to avoid the overhead that is associated with having a physical store in order to create a more sustainable business.

The reduction in overhead costs, along with the fact that more shoppers are going online to buy their goods means that creating an online store is a no-brainer for any serious retailer. But with so many retailers coming online, how can your business stand out from the pack? How can you make sure that users coming to your website actually want to purchase from you instead of the hundreds of other competitors that are within their fingertips?

Due to the fact that just about every viable online marketing channel is now flooded with your competitors trying to sell their own products, it’s extremely important to ensure that every visitor you get to your website has the best chance at converting as possible. To help ensure this, there are particular features on your site that are needed to give your visitors the information, incentive & trust that is needed in order to make a purchase from your business.

Below are 5 features that every e-commerce website should have in order to ensure conversion rates are as high as possible:

1) Clear shipping information.

When a potential customer visits your website in search of a product, one of the major deciding factors in whether they buy from your website is how fast they can get their product delivered to them, and at what cost. Free delivery is always going to work best so if this is something you can offer then great. If you can’t offer free delivery on ALL purchases, even free delivery for purchases over a certain purchase amount can work well. Setting a minimum purchase amount for the free delivery could help to incentivise users to spend more with your site too!

2) Testimonials & product reviews.

If the rise in social media has taught us anything, it’s that people love hearing about what others think. Rather than being told by retailers what products they should by, consumers like to hear what other consumers have experienced with particular products when making a purchasing decision. Because of this, including testimonials and/or product reviews on your website can result in significant increases in conversion rate.

3) Multiple clear contact methods.

This is one feature that I notice many e-commerce sites leaving out. Even if you think that none of your customers would want to contact you, having a phone number & email address clearly listed on your e-commerce can promote a feeling of trust & security in your customers. By listing these details, your customers know that if anything happens to go wrong with their purchase, be it a problem with delivery, damaged goods etc., then all they have to do is visit your website again and speak to you on the phone or send you a quick email.

4) Money-back guarantee offer.

One of the biggest concerns that many people have with online shopping is the fact that you don’t actually get to see a physical product before making the purchase. This can be especially concerning for products such as clothing where there are multiple sizing and fitting options to choose from. To help alleviate the worries in this area, it’s a great idea to offer a money-back guarantee so that if a user finds that for some reason the product isn’t right for them, they can simply return the product and get their money back or exchange it for something else on your site.

5) Newsletter sign-up option.

By giving your website visitors the option to sign up for your newsletter either on your home page or while making a purchase, you’re essentially creating an (almost) free method of marketing for your business. Once you’ve got a member base for your newsletter, sending out a monthly newsletter which highlights any promotions or discounts you’re offering means that you’re promoting your site to people who you already know are interesting in your products. This can be a great way of getting rid of excess stock, promoting seasonal products (i.e. for Xmas, Mother’s Day etc.) or even just trying to boost your monthly sales figures!

Although these features will help you to convert as many website visitors as possible, there will always be room for conversion rate improvements. The most important thing to do is test different aspects of your website constantly to ensure you’re always getting the absolute most out of your online marketing efforts.

From 5 Features that EVERY e-commerce website needs to have! By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

New AdWords Feature – Shared Campaign Budgets!

Some pretty big news has entered the search world this week. It looks like Google has rolled out a new feature to the AdWords interface which has the potential to save many advertisers time and frustration!

This new feature allows users to set a daily budget cap to be shared across numerous campaigns within your account, whereas prior to this feature daily budget caps were only adjustable for individual campaigns.

So what benefit is this to you as an advertiser?

This new feature can potentially save advertisers time on monitoring their account to ensure spend levels are being hit. For example if you’ve got numerous campaigns within your account where a particular campaign has very low traffic volume, you may want to group this campaign up with a more popular campaign so that you don’t have to worry about particular budget caps not being reached each day – essentially it’s a way of doing more to ensure your full media budgets are utilised every day.

Are there are any possible drawbacks to using this new feature?

Possibly! You want to make sure that low volume/high converting campaigns aren’t grouped in with high volume/low converting campaigns, as this could mean that your high volume terms exhaust your entire shared budget before the low volume terms even get a change to deliver traffic. This could result in a reduction in conversions so use this feature with caution!

And how do I set up this new feature?

The new feature settings can be found under a “shared library” tab in the budget section. Screenshot below:

Although this new feature has been rolled out in Australia, I’m sure that we’ll be getting our hands on it within the next few months. I can’t wait!

More information can be found here – http://searchengineland.com/adwords-introduces-ability-to-share-budgets-across-campaigns-133508

From New AdWords Feature – Shared Campaign Budgets! By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 Common Mistakes Seen in Self-Managed Google AdWords Campaigns

Having worked within Search Agencies for a long time, the amount of self-managed client AdWords accounts that I’ve ran my eyes across would be uncountable.  Although there are a small percentage of business owners that do a great job of running their own campaigns, the huge majority of these accounts that I see will generally share some very major set-up flaws. This can be due to a lack of research, a lack of understanding on how AdWords works or even just a lack of time to commit to the campaign. Regardless of the reason, the outcome for the campaign is almost always the same – negative return on investment!

To help you avoid wasting your marketing dollars, I’ve listed 5 common mistakes I see being made in self-managed AdWords campaign.

1) No conversion tracking installed.

This is by far the most common mistake I see within a self-managed AdWords account, and funnily enough the mistake that can cost people the most money. Conversion tracking is so important because it allows you to see exactly which keywords & ads are converting within your campaigns. Without this data, you’re essentially shooting in the dark and this makes any effective optimisation almost impossible.

2) No ad testing.

Another common problem is that people new to AdWords tend to create only 1 advert variation per adgroup (and often only 1 adgroup for their entire account too). Creating 3-4 ad variations for each adgroup is always recommended, as this allows you to test different ad messages against each other to see which ad your audience responds to best. In a channel where CTR (Click-Through-Rate) is so important this kind of testing is vital.

3) Neglecting search query reports.

The “Search Query” report within AdWords is a report that allows you to monitor exactly what Google users are typing into the search engine to trigger your adverts. This report should be monitored very regularly as there will often be searches shown that are obviously not going to convert into a sale for your business. The search query report allows you to quickly identify these searches and then add them as negative keywords so that the searches will not trigger your ads in the future.

4) Over-use of broad match type.

Due to the fact that broad match is the default match type for AdWords keywords, people with little experience will usually only use this match type within their campaign. This can cause major issues, as broad match is basically telling Google that users don’t need to type in your exact keyword to trigger your ads – in fact they don’t need to type any part of your keyword into the search engine. All they need to do is search using a phrase that Google considers to be related to your keywords. The problem with this is that Google often get it wrong, meaning you can see significantly reduced conversion rates when using broad match instead over the other match types such as broad match modifier, phrase match & exact match.

5) Display network enabled.

By default, AdWords campaigns are automatically enabled to display your ads on both the search network & the display network. The Search network displays your ads on search engines such as Google.com, while the display network shows your ads on thousands of AdSense enabled websites across the internet that Google considers to be relevant to your keywords. Due to the fact that users sent to you via the search network are actively looking for your product/service using a search engine, this network is generally far more likely to convert for you vs. the display network. Because of this, it’s recommended that you disable the display network initially and then perhaps create a new campaign for display network traffic at a later stage. Initially you want to focus your budget on the high converting search network.

I hope that this article has given you some valuable information to improve your AdWords campaign. Feel free to leave a comment with any other commonly seen AdWords mistakes that you’ve noticed!

From 5 Common Mistakes Seen in Self-Managed AdWords Campaigns By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 ways to improve your AdWords CTR (Click-Through-Rate)

With Google AdWords (and PPC in general) becoming increasingly popular as more and more website owners notice the success that the channel can bring a business, it’s becoming more important than ever to do everything possible to try and gain an advantage over your competitors. So what’s the best way to do this, you ask? Well the very first metric you should look at is your CTR.

CTR (Or Click-Through-Rate) is the metric used to measure the amount of clicks your advert receives out of every hundred impressions. This number is given to you as a percentage within the AdWords interface, and it’s important for 2 main reasons:

1) Market share: Having a higher CTR than your competitors is a clear sign that you’re attracting a bigger slice of the market share pie. Obviously this is important as you’ll be given the opportunity to try and sell your brand to a higher percentage of people compared with your competitors, and if your website is doing its job this should mean more sales and/or leads.

2) Quality score: To ensure Google searchers are being exposed to only the most relevant & high quality adverts possible, AdWords accounts, campaigns, adgroups, adverts & keywords are awarded a quality score rating based on how well the system thinks they’re performing. The higher your quality score, the lower your average CPC (Cost-Per-Click) is likely to be, and, the most important  factor that determines how high your quality score will be is CTR. This should be reason enough for you to realise that getting your CTR as high as possible is extremely important to ensure your campaign is performing at an optimal level.

So now that you know how important it is to have a high CTR, here are 5 ways to ensure that you’re doing everything in your power to ensure your account’s CTR is reaching its full potential:

1) Ensure “Keyword to Advert” relevancy

This is the biggest factor in deciding whether your ad is likely to be appealing to Google searchers or not. For example, if you’re an online florist with the keyword “flower delivery Sydney”, set up your AdWords campaign to allow for your ad creative targeting this keyword to have “flower delivery Sydney” in the headline, and possibly even somewhere in the description lines as well. This will ensure that your advert promotes exactly what the user is looking for.

2) Create a highly targeted keyword list

The mistake that many AdWords advertisers make is adding a lot of generic keywords to their campaign. While this is good for attracting high traffic volume, it’s usually not going to result in a great CTR. At first, try to stick to only the most targeted terms possible. Using the example from the previous point, if you’re an online florist, you should try to avoid keywords like “florist” or “flowers”. Instead, focus on terms such as “online florist service”, “buy flowers online” etc. etc. This ensures that the people you’re attracting are those looking for your exact service, instead of people who may only be looking for information on products, florist employment opportunities, etc.

3) Experiment with different keyword match types

The default match type for AdWords keywords is “broad match” however this match type allows your adverts to be triggered by keywords not just found within your campaign, but also by searches that Google considers to be similar to keywords found within your campaigns. This can be a problem, as sometimes these search queries can be completely irrelevant to your service and/or product, resulting in poor CTRs. To avoid this, try using some of the more targeting match types such as “Exact”, “Phrase”, or “Broad Match Modifier”. A full explanation of these match types and their functions can be found here – http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2497836

4) Build an extensive negative keyword list

One of the biggest causes of a low CTR is irrelevant search queries triggering an advertisers advert. To ensure that your advert isn’t being triggered by search queries that don’t relate to your exact service or product, build out (and keep building!) a highly extensive negative list for your campaigns. Be sure to add terms like “free”, “photos”, “reviews”, “jobs” – anything that a user may search for to find information related to your product or service, but not necessarily targeted to purchasing your product or service.

5) Use of strong offers in your ad text

The use of strong offers or USPs (Unique Selling Propositions) is what will help potential customers to decide to choose your business over your competitors. Whether it be free delivery, fast delivery, 20% discount, or anything else – ensuring you clearly describe a strong offer in your ad text is almost certain to result in a significant increase in CTR.

What methods do you use to improve your AdWords CTR?

From 5 ways to improve your AdWords CTR (Click-Through-Rate) By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 common problems that you may face when setting up your Google Product Search listing(s).

A fairly new addition to the Google product list is something called “Google Product Search”. This product basically allows you to take your Google Merchant products, and set them up so that they have a chance of appearing in the Google search results alongside other organic & PPC ads. However, if you’ve ever attempted to set up a product on Google Product Search, you may be aware that it can be a major pain in the neck!

The issue with setting up Google Product Search is that the approval process can be very annoying. There are countless variables that can cause your product listing to be disapproved, however if you are disapproved for some reason, Google won’t tell you why – you’ll simply be told that your listing is disapproved. To try and help anyone who may be facing some of the difficulties I’ve faced with this product in the past, below are 5 common problems that you may face when setting up your Google Product Search listing(s).

1) Incorrect Pricing. To ensure that user experience is as good as possible, you’re required to match your product listing prices exactly to those listed on your website for any given product. This includes the product prices, any associated taxes, and also shipping. Here’s the exact guidelines from Google on pricing:

“Prices

• All membership sites must allow non-member purchasing and list their products at the non-member price. We do not allow listings for products that require a paid club or website membership to purchase.
• The price on the landing page has to be equal to the price on Google Shopping. It has to be straightforward for the user to find the right item and price. For example, for membership sites, the non-member price has to be the most prominent price for users coming from Google Shopping. Exceptions are granted on a case by case basis.
• For products sold in bulk quantities, you must submit the total price for the minimum number of items sold. This price has to be the most prominent price on the landing page.
• Landing pages must list prices in the appropriate currency of the target country. The appropriate currency has to be shown automatically if multiple currencies are available. Products must be displayed in and sold in the currency of the target country.
• If you are selling or shipping the product from another country, you must ensure that the buyer does not incur any extra charges or fees other than the actual price of the product and shipping charge.
• You may not submit any items with variable prices, such as in auctions. All products must be sold at fixed prices.
• Free products are not allowed.”

2) More than one buy button on your landing page. This one may not seem so obvious, but for some reason Google have a problem with your product landing pages having more than a single “buy” button. To ensure your product listings are approved, ensure that each relevant product page contains only 1 button allowing users to purchase the product.

3) Product title and/or description contains promotional text. To ensure your product titles and descriptions only contain information that describes your product, Google have disallowed any promotional text such as “buy 1 get 1 free” to be used. Guidelines from Google on this posted below:

“Promotional or boilerplate text may not be included in your store name and product data. All data needs to be a clear and direct description of the submitted product. Text related to shopping or store policies is not allowed. For example, “Free shipping” is not allowed.”

4) Incorrect use of spelling and/or grammar. This point should be fairly obvious but you’d be surprised at how many people let a slight spelling and/or grammar mistake within their product listing title/description slip past their attention. Double & triple check your listings to ensure you aren’t disapproved for this. From Google:

“Use standard spelling and grammar. Avoid any repeated, unnecessary or excessive use of punctuation, capitalization or symbols. Don’t use exclamation points in your product titles unless the official product title contains them. The use of symbols, numbers, and letters have to adhere to the true meaning of the symbol.

• The only exception to excessive capitalization is if your company name is written in all capital letters. In such a case it is permissible to submit your company name in all capital letters.”

5) Unacceptable product categories.  As with Google AdWords guidelines, Google Product Search disallows particular product categories from being displayed on network. While most of these are fairly obvious (drugs, counterfeit goods, etc. etc.), there are other no-so-obvious products that Google can disapprove. These include online gambling products, certain bodybuilding supplements (the legal kind!) & vehicles.

Hopefully this article has helped you better understand just how easy it is to be disapproved on Google Product Search, and what you can do to prevent it. For more information on the Google Product Search guidelines, see Google support here – http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=188484#AU

From 5 common problems that you may face when setting up your Google Product Search listing(s). By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Advice and opinions below may not be specific to your business or situation. But enjoy the read!

Google Advertising, Is an ageing campaign making you a target for your competitors?

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/katerha/

Creativity is a value often overlooked by businesses and staff these days, and with internet marketing becoming a ‘paint by numbers’ scenario for many agencies, business owners seem to be forgetting what were the core principles they had planned to truly set their businesses apart.

It’s all too easy to model your marketing based on your competitors, and yes, that should be a factor, but remember to be truly great in your market you must set yourself apart from the pack. Sure a well optimised AdWords and SEO campaign can both generate and save you hundreds of thousands of dollars each year, and also gives you a competitive advantage in cost and profitability which then allows you to invest more, thereby claiming a larger part of market share etc etc – but I’m sure we have covered all this before.

What I would like to do is highlight some pitfalls that you will encounter as your Google advertising campaign starts to age and the initial rush of activity and effort turns to burnout and exhaustion. Once your business starts to rely on this ‘black box’ that continually generates leads will the hunger and determination to be ‘different’ and the dreams written on your business plan whither?

Pitfalls

1. Complacency
2. Forgetting Good Business Practise
3. Too much emphasis on ROI not Lifetime Value
4. Is it time to try something new?

Complacency.

Remember when your website was under development or you first set out to create the ultimate offer, some landing pages, squeeze pages and sales funnels?

The excitement and collaboration within your business would have set a great atmosphere, a graphic designer toiling away, your marketing department pitching you promotions and offers, the whole business working together towards the growth and promotion of your business.

A couple of years down the track, are you staff still working on new ideas and designs? Are they still talking to experts, leeching advice and continually trialling offers? Does this process seem harder than it was before and is fear of making results worse holding your staff back?

Does your accountant say to you, “well, if we turnover another five percent (why is it always five percent with accountants? ) then you’ll be fine”? Guess what you do when you get that advice, you turnover another FIVE PERCENT. What would happen if your accountant had said ‘thirty percent’ to survive? How would you react to that? Small percentage gains are great, don’t get me wrong, but as your campaign ages and you are soley relying on this marketing channel, remember, there are new competitors out there developing fresher strategies, working with younger agencies and they could be your biggest threat.

Putting in place a system of exploratory and experimental marketing can be a great way to avoid complacency, and if your staff are not jumping on board as well as you like, start splitting your metrics putting less emphasis on what is known and measure heavily the efforts and results of the unknown. Remember some failure is inevitable, but it could be the best decision you’ve made.

Forgetting Good Business Practise.

It is pretty common to classify leads as they come into your business, A,B,C, etc. Your sales staff will fight over the A’s and the rest will fall into the queue. However, there can be a danger of preferring ‘quick and easy’ sales from your leads. If your staff are doing this they are leaving a large part of the market for your competitors to pinch, not to mention allowing your overall service level to drop. If your business is unable to service a customer immediately, even if it is referring them to another company, then it is time to reassess your processes.

Check your lead classifications and their metrics. If you are finding your staff are classifying a lot of leads as C’s and D’s then try to understand what in your marketing campaign is causing this? And even better, gear your business to better handle and service these leads. It is amazing how much potential business some companies are losing just because they aren’t imaginative enough to learn to service these leads (think financing, extended terms, affiliate agreements or expanding your range ).

Your leads coming from Google advertising are a new breed of sale to most businesses; these customers want quick and satisfactory results, and if not from you, they will find them from someone else. Worse still, is after someone buys into the buzz and offers you are presenting, gets excited, and then has a negative experience this can effect your overall campaign.

Too much emphasis on ROI not on lifetime value.

Most campaigns start out by gearing their success on return on investment. This is a great measure for a young campaign, but as your Google advertising starts to ‘get on a bit’ are these metrics still the best measurement? While Google themselves preach the benefits of ROI as the key metric to measuring Google advertising performance, I would also suggest careful monitoring of customer buying cycles and calculating customer lifetime value. This is not an easy metric to work on but even a basic understanding can help you make decisions in regards to your campaign and provide insight with some of your more imaginative and creative offerings such as loyalty programs.

What business owners seem to forget is there is instant ROI and ROI based over time. Think of your bank account, at an easily calculable 2% interest per annum, if you invest $10,000 and don’t do anything else you will get back after a year $10,200. Your annual ROI is 2%, but at six months it is 1%. ROI depends on the time frame you are using for the calculation. So is it time to look again at that brand campaign proposal?

Also don’t forget post sale and conversion optimisation. Can they / will they provide their custom again? What about referrals?

Is it time for something new?

Ok, so your Google Advertising is working well and you are capturing your market share of leads. Consider what would happen to your business if this channel was to be removed completely. Diversifying your efforts across multiple channels and even multiple products and services can safeguard against any new competitors coming into the market or (God forbid) Google suddenly loses its appeal. What you have learnt from executing a great Google advertising channel can be carried across to any online marketing channel, and here is where creativity really comes to play.

Would your business benefit from a mobile app? Is your qualified social media traffic healthy? Is there a web app or free tool you can provide? The possibilities are really only limited by you and your staff’s imagination. Remember that poor product or R&D project that has been collecting dust? Consider dragging it out and utilising your online presence to get it up and running again.

Call to actions and offers expire very rapidly. I’ve seen markets where the client has brainstormed an entirely unique offering and dominating paid search for a few weeks… Until all his competitors ads started reading the exact same thing.

Apart from continually optimising the above, I wonder if you could create a patented offering so unique that it defines your entire company, gets press, sends the blogosphere wild and leaves you lying on a sandy beach somewhere warm with waves of money rolling over your beautiful body.

image credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/mstrniste/

Thanks for reading, have you had any similar experiences? Please leave questions or comments below!

From Google Advertising, Is an ageing campaign making you a target for your competitors? By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Opinions expressed below may not be suitable for all skill levels and individual requirements but please enjoy our article.

While WordPress plugins can add extra functionality to your website, their use should be carefully assessed for your individual needs, and remember; loading your site with tonnes of plugins can have adverse affects in both performance and security.

Click Click Media is not affiliated with any of the plugins or developers listed below.

WordPress as a CMS

WordPress; It has been a revolution in how businesses and people publish content  to the internet. Its explosion onto the web development scene has been phenomenal, open source and backed by one of the internet’s largest communities, it is easy to see why it is so popular.

I am a fan of WordPress, having taught it to countless clients now, it is a CMS you can work with that a client will benefit from long term and as a bonus encourages good online marketing practice such as blogging and updating your content. I even beleive the fundamental use of the WordPress should be taught in our schools.

(Some interesting stats on WordPress use as a CMS here: http://trends.builtwith.com/cms)

5 Awesome WordPress plugins for your businesses website.

In no particular order here are five awesome WordPress plugins I find myself using on (almost) all sites.

1. Askimet
2. Yoast SEO Plugin
3. Better WordPress Security
4. Gravity Forms
5. WooDojo
   

1. Askimet (Spam Prevention Plugin)

Askimet is the default plugin deployed with all WordPress installations. All you need to do to deploy it is go to your plugins page within your WordPress CMS, click activate and follow the instructions.

Askimit is what I would consider one of the true ‘essential’ plugins for all WordPress websites, it is a hosted web service that saves you time by automatically detecting and deleting comment and trackback spam. Anyone with a WordPress website without Askimet would know the volume of spam comments a website can receive, the annoying process of receiving an email, checking the comment and deleting is all automated with this plugin.

While you can use this plugin for free, a small donation to the developer is I’m sure appreciated and you can do this during the sign up process.

(More on how askimet works here: http://akismet.com/how/)

2. Yoast WordPress SEO (SEO Plugin)

Easily remove hours of work when optimising your WordPress website. This plugin is great and has been great for a long time.

This plugin allows you to easily set titles and meta’s (along with creating template rules for both), manage indexation rules, disable archives you are not using, generate xml sitemaps, verify your wordpress website with Google, Bing, Yahoo webmaster tools and many other enhancements…

(Full feature list here: http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/)

One of the more valuable features (I find) is when tutoring a client how to creating content on their website is the visible title and meta description with the post / page editor can ensure a client understand exactly what the page will look like showing up within a google listing!

The developer also provides and guide to WordPress SEO with his plugin here: http://yoast.com/articles/wordpress-seo/

3. Better WordPress Security (Security Plugin)

Ok this plugin can do a lot, and some of the features shouldn’t be attempted without an understanding of what they do.

Luckily the plugin has an option to secure sites from basic vulnerabilities that can be done without worrying too much (called one-click protection). This simple function will significantly increase your WordPress website’s security.

This plugin allows you to rename database tables, hide your admin section, ban multiple login attempts, ban multiple 404 errors, prevent long suspicious url stings being entered, rename your content directory and limit admin access to specific times to your site.

(Along with a huge range of features: http://bit51.com/software/better-wp-security/)

While most of these functions can be performed manually (actually that is true of every WordPress plugin) and the developer of course doesn’t place any guarantees that this plugin will completely protect your site it will go a long way to making your WordPress website more secure against the more common forms of attack.

Again a free plugin with optional donation to the developer.

4. Gravity Forms (Forms Plugin)

Gravity forms is in my opinion the best form plugin for WordPress. The clients love this one as it makes creating and deploying forms to your website is exceptionally easy.

Gravity forms provides an easy to understand visual editor allowing you to create complex forms for both information collection and commercial transactions. Once your forms are created an additional icon within your editor allows you to easily select and insert the form into your page.

Other features I love within Gravity Forms is the simple integration with your e-marketing platforms, the ability to collect content straight into custom post types and the simple displaying of form views and form conversion rates.

(Tonnes of additional features: http://www.gravityforms.com/features/form-builder/)

Gravity forms is a premium paid plugin, but for ease of use, reducing development time and client satisfaction it is a great option.

5. WooDojo (Bundled General Enhancements)

WooDojo is a bundled collection of plugins that Woothemes deploy with their WordPress themes. It has a lot of great features such as social profiles, under construction page, login branding and the exceptional WooComerce (more on that in another post).

(Full features found here: http://www.woothemes.com/woodojo/)

I however think this plugin is awesome for the following inclusions:

Woo Sidebars

Post development a common change can be custom widget area’s for specific pages, be it a special landing page, new offer or offering information within widgets depending on product, services or pages. Woo Sidebars allows you to create new widget areas based on the rules you set.

You can create a new widget area for post type, taxonomy or specific post / page very easily and populate them as you would normally through appearance > widgets. Including this feature within your clients website will not only save time / money, but hopefully get them thinking creatively about the information they are including in widgets.

Dynamic Menus

Same as Woo Sidebars, modify what your menus are displaying based on a set of rules.

WooDojo Custom Code

This plugin gives you an area to easily prototype custom CSS changes and add additional HTML code into your websites head. This is great for ‘on-the-fly’ changes and if the client has some familiarity with CSS, you are giving them somewhere to play around before asking you to make the final changes to the stylesheets, and if things go wrong, they can easily delete the custom code with no ongoing affect to their website.

WooDojo is free to download and can be activated with registration to their site, also free.

What are your awesome WordPress plugins?

Got any great wordpress plugins you are in love with? have you had experience using any of the above you would like to share? Please leave your feedback and comments below!

From 5 Awesome WordPress plugins for your businesses website! By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

The following is a guest post by Stacie Chalmers (@staciechalmers).  Stacie is an Inbound Marketing Consultant, Owner and Founder of The Inbound Marketing Company. She loves to help business owners and marketers get better results from their marketing. Stacie offers a free Inbound Marketing Assessment via her website!

5 Important Facts Every Small Business Must Know About Blogging

Image credit http://www.flickr.com/photos/notionscapital/

I often get asked about the value of blogging for business, and to be honest, I just can’t stress the importance and value of blogging, especially for small business.  Hopefully, in this short article, you’ll learn enough about the value of blogging for business and be compelled to start, or continue.What would an increase in leads from your website mean to your bottom line? If I told you one marketing tactic could do all these things:

1. Increase organic search rank.
2. Increase traffic to your site.
3. Increase qualified leads.
4. Position you as a thought leader.
5. Decrease your cost per lead.

Would you want to learn more?

1. Your blog will increase organic search rank

• Firstly, make sure your blog is hosted on your website’s domain. This will give your website the SEO benefit. The url should be something like:
  Eg: www.yourbusiness.com/blog or blog.yourbusiness.com
• Each blog article you publish is counted as a page on your site. Google prefers sites that have more pages.
• Apply SEO best practices to your blog, just like any other web page.  Blog articles often show up in searches above static web pages.

2. Your blog will increase traffic to your site

• A well written article that addresses your prospects’ pain points and provides solutions are a valuable reasons for prospects to visit your site.
• Promote your blog article to your social network, and you’ll have the increased value of social media and organic search driving traffic to your site, via your blog. Make it easy for your readers to share the article with their network by including social share buttons on your blog.

3. Your blog will increase leads

• Include Calls To Action (CTAs) for lead generation offers on your blog.
• You can use CTAs as top banners, side buttons or at the end of your article.
• Here are some good ideas for offers: ebooks, webinars, free consultations, product trials etc

4. Your blog will position you as a thought leader

• Take the time to learn what problems, needs and frustrations your prospects have and how you help.
• Write articles that address these problems.
• Think about the questions you get asked when talking to leads and customers.
• Put yourself in your prospects’ shoes, think like a customer.
• Your blog articles should be educational, informative, think of yourself as a teacher or educator for your industry.

Don’t you prefer to buy from someone who knows their business well?

5. Your blog is your own PR

• Use your own blog to promote interesting news about your company; new products, industry updates, new employees, promotions, specials and deals.

Even Google says the best thing you can do to boost your chances of showing up in search results is to publish content.  Content your audience what’s to read about and share.

Now are you compelled to start blogging more frequently?

Has your business been blogging? Leave your comments or questions below!

From 5 Important Facts Every Small Business Must Know About Blogging By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

AdWords Labels, 5 Ways You Can Use Labels to Save You Time

Amongst the ever-growing list of features available within the Google AdWords interface is a fairly new addition to the platform. “Labels” is a feature that allows you to tag accounts, campaigns, adgroups, adverts & keywords with a custom label. On top of this, you’re also able to use your ‘Dimensions’ tab to then segment your report data by their labels. This feature has a huge amount of potential to save you time working your account. Here are 5 ways in which you can use the feature:

1)      CPA / Goal labelling. If you have specific CPA and/or conversion volume targets for particular accounts/campaigns/adgroups/keywords, then recording these targets using labels is definitely the best way to ensure that you’re keeping a close eye on targets and optimising your account to achieve these targets. This removes the need for a 3^rd party program (such as excel) to be used, giving you all of your required information in a single interface.

2)       Keeping track of budgets. While AdWords allows for daily budget caps at the campaign level, this cannot be done for accounts unless you’ve got a direct invoicing account with Google. To ensure you’re keeping track of exactly how much you should be spending each month on your AdWords activity, set a label at the account level which tells you what your budget is for the month.

3)      Identify problem keywords. If you happen to come across keywords that you have concern over, whether it be due to the CPC being too high conversion rate too low or otherwise, it’s a good idea to mark these terms with a label so that you can keep a close eye on them in the future. This will save you having to looking through your keyword list everyday having to remember exactly which terms you’d identified in the past.

4)      Identify focus keywords. Most AdWords campaigns will have only a handful of terms that generate the huge majority of their conversions. Creating a label for these terms will allow you to monitor their performance specifically, and identify whether you need to spend time improving these terms, whether you should increase their budget, etc.

5)      Segment data. Last but definitely not least, labels give you an extremely way of creating segmenting your account in almost any way you please. If you’re looking to compare the total performance of one set of keywords vs. another, simply assign a label for each keyword set and compare the data in your ‘Dimensions’ tab.

While labels are not a feature that is a necessity when launching your campaign, they do provide a great opportunity to drastically cut down management time for your campaign and should be used by anyone who is serious about their CPC.

Hope this posts assist you with working and managing your AdWords labels, if you have any questions or comments please leave below.

From AdWords Labels, 5 Ways You Can Use Labels to Save You Time By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

AdWords, Running a Search Query Report & How it can Benefit Your Campaign

Google’s PPC (Pay-Per-Click) advertising platform “AdWords” is well known for having a variety of reporting functions that give you extensive in-depth knowledge into your audience. One of the most beneficial AdWords reports when it comes to improving your conversion rates is the “Search Query” report. The search query report allows you to see exactly what users are typing into Google to trigger your ad, whereas regular keyword reports only allow you to see the keyword that Google associated with the user’s search.

Below are 3 ways in which you can use this report to improve the performance of your AdWords campaign.

1)      Expand negative keyword lists. This is the biggest area of potential for Search Query reporting. Regularly monitoring your search query reports will expose you to a lot of different kinds of search terms that people are typing into Google, and not all of these will be relevant to your product or service. For example, if you have the keyword “buy flowers” within your AdWords account, there is a chance that users searching for “how to grow flowers” will see your advert. If you do see this occurring within your search query reports, you can tick a box next to your “how to grow flowers” query, and simply hit the “add as negative” button to exclude anyone using this phrase to search in Google from seeing your advert in the future. This can greatly improve CTRs (Click-Through-Rates) and conversion rates for your campaign.

2)      Expand regular keyword lists. When you first build out your keyword list within AdWords, there is a very high chance that you’ve missed keywords that you could be using to improve your performance. Monitoring the search query report will allow you to see which keywords related to your product/service are getting high search volume. Google make it very easy for you to add keywords from the search query report too! All you have to do is tick the box next to the search term you’d like to add, and click the “Add as Keyword” button.

3)      Advert optimisation ideas. The search query reports can give you a lot of insight into the type of language the majority of people use when searching for your product or service. With this information, you can edit your adverts to better match the language used by your audience, which should result in increased relevancy (and therefore better CTRs (Click-Through-Rates).

Due to the huge amount of value that can be obtained from search query reports within AdWords, it’s highly recommended that you monitor the information within the report on a very regular basis – even daily if your traffic is in the moderate to high range. This can result in consistent improvements in your campaign & a better business outcome.

From AdWords, Running a Search Query Report & How it can Benefit Your Campaign By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

The following post is a guest post from Andrew Glyntzos of APG Web Studios. AGP was founded with the goal of growing small businesses via website redesign.

The 4 Key Reasons Your Business Needs a Website!

It never fails to amaze us of the amount of small to medium businesses still lacking an online presence. When I first founded my web design business, we had in mind to purely grow small businesses via site re-designs, logo & banner designs and monthly consultation services. But as we investigated the market more and more, we realised that so many businesses were outdated that the only way you could contact them was via phone.

Most small business owners we encountered lacked a website presence and it came down to them not understanding the damaging effects of having a business without one. It’s not something they thought a lot as profitable revenue for the most part was relatively adequate. For us, that mindset is not only detrimental but also complacent.

We feel very passionate about helping small businesses get started with a new website they can use to support their business growth. There are so many options as to what you can do with your website thus, creativity being your only limitation.

Here are 4 key reasons companies need a website:

• People will search for your business!:- When a potential customer or visitor types in your business after hearing about it, they search for your name on Google to be disappointed that you’re not found.  Potentially allowing your competitors who do have a website to snatch them up. Plus once your website appears on the major search engines such as Google for your products or services, your website has increased its awareness to more and more people.

• Presenting a professional image:- Having a website increases a business or company’s credibility. You are seen to be more of a professional in your field where you can easily promote your services or products to your chosen market. People expect great businesses to have a website presence available.
• Reaching new markets and opportunities:- There are many hundreds of thousands if not millions of people  searching for a particular product online via Google, Bing and many other search base platforms such as comparison shopping and auction based websites. If you’re a shop front retailer not offering an e-commerce solution online, you are not taking full advantage of your bottom line. A website selling products on the web reaches a far wider audience not attainable by a single shop front in a single location.
• Make it easy for customers to reach out to you:- In today’s world, calling businesses on the phone for products or services is not for everyone. A website with a corresponding social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other social networking sites is expected by consumers. Engagement with your customers and potential customers is a great way to build loyalty and establish a connection with the most important people that effect your growth and bottom line. People want to feel that their opinion is being expressed and by building a website that connects to the social world, opens up channels for customers to express their thoughts, feelings and emotions about your business, whereby you are receiving quality feedback.  

Websites are an extremely powerful tool in your overall marketing efforts. They can be used in any traditional and/or online marketing medium such as TV advertising, banner ads, brochures, online ads and a lot more.

Nowadays they are more important than any phone number can be and many if not all businesses seem to have one of those. Websites are the bridge that connects what you are offering to the outside world.

If you have any questions or comments please leave below!

From The 4 Key Reasons Your Business Needs a Website! By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

3 Ways poor Landing Pages can Let Down Your Google AdWords Campaign

In the time I have been in the Industry (7 years) I have been involved in the design and implementation of more Google Adwords Campaigns (Pay Per Click) than I could possibly count. Large amounts have been successful and smashed goals for CPA (cost per acquisition), CTR (Click through rate), CPC (cost per click), conversion rates, and of course, the measurement all AdWords professionals strive for, a good ‘Quality Score’. But, what sets a good AdWords campaign up to success right from the start, even before you’ve chosen keywords and started the copy for text ads? Landing Pages!

What is a Landing Page?

Let’s start of by understanding the purpose of a landing page. A landing page is simply a dedicated page you use to market your products and/or services for a specific product type. To explain further, we’ll start off by looking at the functionality of a landing page when in relation to an AdWords campaign for a service related business. Let’s start off with an industry I have been doing a bit of work for of late, Lawyers.

Lawyers have multiple types of services they provide. In the aspect of commercial, they could do Commercial Law, Property, Workplace Solutions, Insolvency, Litigation and Dispute Resolution, Business Ownership Agreements, and many more, including out of the commercial sector. For the sake of this, let’s use the above solely for this example.

Now, you decide you want to do Google AdWords, approach a good agency (see How to Choose an AdWords Agency), and you say, we want an AdWords campaign to promote the above services. If your AdWords agency follows the basics, then you will get Add Groups for each of your services, with Dedicated Keywords and Text Ads.

The agency writes great ads, targets great keywords, implements conversion tracking and uses split testing, and overall sets up a well-structured, great campaign.

First Mistake

The agency proceeds to direct traffic to your home page. The news with that is, your AdWords campaign has been set up to fail.

Why? Internet users want to make a decision, and make it fast. They don’t want to spend time searching around your website looking for their desired product / service information. If you make your potential customers work to find what they’re looking for, chances are they will simply do 2 clicks of a button (back button, Click on new link sponsored) and in the blink of an eye, you have lost a potential customer which has also cost you a couple of dollars (depending on industry CPC). A couple of dollars does not sound bad, but what about when it’s happening 10, 20, or even 30 times a month? Can your business afford that? Even worse, can your business afford the loss of a new client, or 10?

Second Mistake

Your landing page is heavily content driven, with heaps of “great” content intended to “educate” the client to make an excellent buying decision. The news yet again? Your AdWords campaign has been set up to fail.

Why? Well, when we look at the above example, what don’t potential customers want? We already know that within 2 seconds they can be on a competitor’s website. I’ll tell you. They don’t want to have to spend time sifting through and reading lots of content. Whether it is good, or bad content is irrelevant because most of the time, they won’t get more than a couple of sentences through it. Why bother when they can find what they’re looking for so quickly and easily? Don’t make your potential clients WORK any harder than they have too to make a buying decision.

Third Mistake

The landing page really has no content at all, and has limited information if any in relation to your business products and services.

Why? This one is obvious. Of course you don’t want to put too much content in front of your potential clients, but too little is no good as well as they literally have no idea why they would buy from you.

Now, here are a couple of questions potential clients are asking when they land on your website (a lot of time they don’t even know that they are) and how you can use certain things on your website to answer these questions, before they get asked.

Why should I buy/enquire from this website?

• Use Unique Selling Propositions (USP) – Free shipping, discount when you purchase over $100, 20% discount on their next purchase.
• Testimonials – You can place 2 / 3 testimonials on your landing page on either side of your content / Product information – This will provide social proof to potential customers, as in if another consumer like them had a great experience, so can they.

Will there be any problems if I buy/enquire from this website?

• FAQ Page – Frequently Asked Questions – There are a lot of questions a potential customer may have. Use your FAQ page to advise them information related to shipping, or working with you.
• Professional look – A professional look is great. I’m not talking modern design with crazy flash and artsy looking pictures everywhere. A beautiful website still may not convert near as well as a structured website with a goal, or an intention in mind.

So what is your intention? Get a client to make a decision to enquire or purchase in as little time as possible. Before those things in there head go RING RING “should I be making this decision?” There is always a reason for the client not to enquire. Don’t give them time to think about it.

Other things that help are embedding an enquiry form on your landing page. This is a small box with a field for Name, Contact Number, Email, and Comments. The one 90% of business have on their contact us page. Putting that there can grab snap conversions and help keep people away from thinking too much, or scrolling around your website when they don’t need to. Couple that with your USP, small but great content and you will be going a long way to getting more conversions where you might not have had a chance to before.

Happy Hunting!

From 3 Ways poor Landing Pages can Let Down Your Google AdWords Campaign By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

10 Quick Fixes for Common Omniture Site Catalyst Problems

In last 9 years, I have been a part of more than 100 SiteCatalyst Implementation Projects, and majority of these projects were either related to optimization of existing implementations or, integration with 3rd party vendors. All these projects were spread across different industry verticals i.e. Retail, Telecommunication, Insurance, Finance, Travel and Healthcare.

After being a part of this Web Analytics Industry for such a long time, and performing number of SiteCatalyst Implementations, there are certain fundamental problems that still need to be fixed in the organization in order to maintain the consistency and quality of the data month after month. Below mentioned are the Top 10 problems we usually encounter in every organisation along with few quick fixes.

1) Bad Page Naming Convention across the website

This is one of the major fundamental problems reported in the web analytics industry, and its product agnostic. The majority of the organisations we have engaged with in last 8-9 years have reported this as the major reason behind data inconsistency, poor quality and lower usage of web analytics solution in their organization.

The challenge is, most of the analytics solutions in the industry don’t offer smarter and efficient techniques to fix the legacy data, and once you fed your analytics solution with garbage data, you have to live with that, and there are no retroactive data fix techniques available in these solutions. Though, Adobe SiteCatalyst made an attempt few years ago to facilitate certain tools in their solution, which allows the business team to fix the undesirable page names without involving the IT, which means no development cost, but these tools are quite understated in the solution and often times organizations are not aware that they are actually present and quite easy to use.

The 2 tools are:

1. SAINT Data Classification – Using this utility you can fix the following issues with your page names by simply uploading a data feed with better and intuitive page names:
   i. Roll-up duplicate Page Names for multiple pages
   ii. Convert undesirable URL based page names to intuitive simple English names
2. Name Pages – Using this utility, you can fix the following issues with your page names however; this is not a best practice and also, doesn’t require any data feed work. You simply need to go to “Admin -> Name Pages”:
   i. Convert crappy and non-intuitive page names to intuitive simple English names
3. Challenges with “Name Pages” utility:
   • If two pages are given the same name, they will NOT be combined in reports. If you see two pages with the same name in reports, check here to see whether this is the cause.
   • Names given here are based on the original page name, not the page URL. If the original page name changes, the new name will appear in reports, even if the page URL remains the same.
   • Classifications are based on the original name, even though the name given here will show up in SAINT exports.

2) Overstated/Understated Micro-Conversions due to Visitor Navigation Behavior

Often times we meet certain clients, who are quite confident about their online visitor behavior, and how they engage with different section of the website, and result in various micro and macro conversions. Despite this great understanding, they are skeptical about data accuracy and often complain about overstatement or understatement of their micro and macro conversions. Here are some of the common concerns:

1. Why is our buyer conversion rate understated in SiteCatalyst compared to other analytics solutions?
2. How is it possible that on certain days we see a sudden spike in our number of newsletter subscriptions?
3. Why are we seeing such a high number of store locator searches on a particular day and how can we calculate an accurate number of searches per visitor?
4. Are there certain visitors on the website who are requesting for multiple catalogs/brochures per visit?
5. Why our checkout initiation number is so high, as compare to cart additions and checkout completions?
6. How do we know unique keyword searches per visit and avoid the overstatement of search performed count?

Above mentioned are some of the problems that can easily be fixed by a technique called EVENT SERIALIZATION in SiteCatalyst. You simply need to give a call to Adobe Client Care and ask them to enable SERIALIZATION BY VISIT or BY UNIQUE ID on any EVENT or METRIC of your choice. This technique would allow you to avoid OVER EXECUTION of an event per visit and maintain the uniqueness of the data.

SERIALIZATION BY VISIT is the safest and the most commonly used option while, BY UNIQUE ID works across visitors instead of visits, which makes it quite dangerous to use so; unless you can create some Unique ID per event per visit of a unique visitor, don’t use this feature.

3) Unable to calculate Page Value based on a Weighted Metric

Lately, we have started receiving lot of questions from our clients asking for a weighted metric in SiteCatalyst, which allows them to gauge the conversion potential of a page, and define a testing and targeting strategy considering that value as an input besides other relevant metrics.

Unfortunately, most of the clients are not aware that, SiteCatalyst offers a concept called “PARTICIPATION”, which allows the solution to assign a WEIGHTED and NUMERICAL value to each page, and help the analyst in determining the value of a page with respect to other pages.

For example, if the visitor comes to the website of Kenneth Cole to buy a BLACK DIAL LEATHER WATCH of $100.00, and browse through 10 pages prior to conversion then, all the pages would get $100 each as their participation credit during the conversion process.

If, you don’t turn on the PARTICIPATION then, the value of $100 would be distributed in a linear fashion to all 10 pages i.e. $10 each. This concept is called “ALLOCATION”. In order to enable participation on any metric, you need to give a call to ADOBE CLIENT CARE, and request them to enable PARTICIPATION on any metric of your choice.

The best practice is to enable it on REVENUE metric if, you are an ecommerce website. This would give you a new metric in the report suite by the name of “REVENUE PARTICIPATION”, and on choosing this metric as one of the column in the Pages report would give you a PERCENTAGE and CURRENCY value. Just ignore the CURRENCY value and focus on the PERCENTAGE prefix to it. For example, if the Home Page has a % value of 56% then that means, this page participated in 56% of the Revenue on the website.

4) Unable to see Conversion Numbers at the Demographic Level

Out of the box, SiteCatalyst offers GEOSEGMENTATION reporting, which usually gets enabled by making a request to Adobe Client Care. The GEOSEGMENTATION reporting allows the business team to determine the % of traffic coming from different countries, states/regions and cities. However, these out of the box reports, don’t allow the business team to add metrics of their choice i.e. Revenue, Orders, Email Sign-up, Lead Generation, Catalog Requested, Form Completion etc.

In order to make the above metrics available in the GEOSEGMENTATION based reports, the business team needs to make a request to engineering services to setup a GEOSEGMENTATION VISTA RULE, which creates a replica of the out of the box reports by leveraging CUSTOM CONVERSION VARIABLES, and would allow the business user to add any conversion metric of their choice in the above 3 reports. Since, you are making a request to engineering services, you need to go through a formal process and pay ADOBE for their engineering and consulting services.

5)  Unable to gauge the performance of Marketing Spend at Channel & Campaign Level

As the % of marketing spend is increasing in the APAC region, there is a significant interest among the business and marketing teams to gauge the effectiveness of their spend across channel, across campaign and across demographics.

Out of the box, SiteCatalyst offers TRACKING CODE report, which allows the IT team to extract the Marketing Query Parameters from the URL, and assign to the TRACKING CODE report but, as the number of channels and campaigns increases, it becomes quite tough to manage this report and interpret it in an efficient manner. For most of the clients we engaged with in last 5 years, it was like finding a needle in the hay.

Almost 18 months ago, SiteCatalyst added MARKETING CHANNEL reporting capability, which allows the Marketing Team to see the Conversion Numbers based on LAST and FIRST Touchpoint attribution. These reports have not been marketed well, and most of the implementations we audited in last 12 months, were not having these reports enabled in their report suite. So; we would request all the clients of Omniture to get these reports enabled with the help of their Account Manager, and configure them via ADMINISTRATIVE section. Prior to configuring these reports, you need to make sure; all the Marketing Channel URLs are associated with relevant tracking codes.

In order to see the effectiveness of marketing spend at CAMPAIGN LEVEL, you need to leverage the SAINT CLASSIFICATION utility. Using this utility, you upload all your campaign data via data feed to Adobe SiteCatalyst. This is in-fact a widely adopted approach despite of being quite manual and in-efficiently managed.

6) Why do we see “NONE” in every conversion based report?

After Page Names, this is the second most frustrating aspect of the SiteCatalyst tool. Almost every client we have engaged with in last 8-9 years, have asked us this question. Before we talk about how to fix this problem, let’s explore why this problem exists?

• One of the major reason why, the business teams sees this value quite frequently in the reports because, they are either choosing an incorrect metric or, an out-of-context metric in the report – For example, you are running a “SEARCH KEYWORDS” report which tells you, what the popular search terms on the website are and what is their revenue contribution? While configuring this report, you choose a metric as “# of Searches”, “Campaign Click-through” and “Revenue”. Among these 3 metrics, only “# of Searches” metric has a direct correlation with the keyword because, whenever the search is performed on the website, the search keyword gets captured and the “# of searches” metric gets incremented by “1”. But, for the other 2 metrics, the relationship is indirect. What does that mean? Let me explain. If you choose “Revenue” as a metric in this report, it would show you an additional row in the report with a keyword as “None” which means, these are those visitors who came to the website, and placed an order without performing any keyword search activity. And we both know that, this is quite possible because, merely 10% of the online visitors perform keyword search. But, if you choose “Campaign Click-through” as a metric, it would still show you the “NONE” as a keyword because, these are those visitors who landed on the website other than SEARCH RESULTS page, and we both know that, it’s quite possible because, SEARCH RESULTS page is not the popular landing page for the marking driven visitors. So to summarize; the NONE value here represents those INSTANCES where, the SUCCESS OCCURRED but, not relevant to the context of this report. THIS IS NOT A DEFECT.
• Second major reason why the business teams sees this value in the reports because, their IT Team is not triggering the relevant metric(s) consistently while capturing the contextual data – For example, you are running a “SEARCH KEYWORDS” report and you choose “# of Searches” as a metric. Let say, there are some visitors, who on performing a keyword search, redirects to the CATEGORY, BRAND or PRODUCT DETAIL page. In this case, if the IT team doesn’t capture the SEARCH TERM but, they trigger the “# of Searches” event, the value of the event would be attributed to a value called “NONE” in the report because, Omniture is confused and asking you, which keyword I should attribute this success and since, you are not passing the keyword value, the value gets assigned to NONE bucket. THIS IS A DEFECT.
• Third major reason why the business teams sees this value in the reports because, they are using the SAINT DATA CLASSIFICATION utility and not managing their feeds well – For example, you are uploading a weekly data feed comprising of your Product Catalog. In this feed, there are certain Products, that don’t have a BRAND, STYLE and COLOR attribute assigned to them. Now, you run a BRAND or a STYLE report and choose the metric as PRODUCT VIEW or REVENUE, the report would show a list of all those Product Brands which got viewed and purchased but, besides that, you would also see a value called “NONE” in the report which would indicate, those PRODUCT VIEWS and REVENUE, which got resulted by those products, that don’t have an associated BRAND and STYLE value. THIS IS NOT A DEFECT.

Quick Action Items for the Business & IT Teams to avoid the above problem:

1. Always choose the REVELVANT metrics for your reports, and if you don’t know what they are, please consult your in-house web analyst.
2. Give clear instructions to the IT Members that, whenever they execute an EVENT, it should be associated with a relevant DATA VALUE.
3. Do not upload any data feed with BLANK cell values. Always insert some relevant value to avoid this problem.

7) Frustrated with Non Availability of Visits and Visitors metric in the Conversion Reports

Majority of the companies we have dealt with in the past 3-4 years, have shown lot of frustration in regards to NON AVAILABILITY of Visits and Visitors as a metric in Conversion Reports but, they are not aware of the fact that, these metrics are available but, they need to be enabled with the help of Adobe Client Care.

So; if you are using Version 14.X or lower of SiteCatalyst, give a call to Adobe Client Care, and ask them to enable these 2 metrics for the Conversion Reports. In the version 15.X, these metrics are already enabled. The other difference you would experience while running a report in version 14.x and 15.x with VISITS and VISITORS as a metric in the Conversion Reports that, the version 14.X only shows the count of visitors who contributed in the success while, in version 15.X they show the total visitor count, which makes it more interesting and actionable.

8) Out of the box Search Engine based reports are way-off when compared with Search Engine Reporting Tool

In last few years, lot of clients have raised this concern that, SiteCatalyst out of the box Search Engine based reports are usually not in sync with their Search Engine Reporting Tool data so; they stopped relying on these numbers and just use them directionally.

There are 2 major reasons behind this frustration:

1. Out of the box reports are visit based instead of cookie.
2. Always attribute success based on Last-Click methodology.

Usually, the SEARCH ENGINE channel has a 30 DAY COOKIE, and if you are comparing these numbers with out of the box SiteCatalyst reports, it will never reconcile and you would always get incorrect picture of the data so; go for an alternative approach i.e. Capture the Search Engine Tracking Codes in “s.campaign” variable, and set the EXPIRY value as “30 DAYS”. This will bring down the deviation to a great extent but, if you are marketing across multiple channels with different COOKIE EXPIRY values then, the % of discrepancy would be wider. The other major problem with SiteCatalyst is that, it doesn’t allow the marketing people to configure an ATTRIBUTION MODEL of their choice so; you either go for LAST CLICK or FIRST CLICK. There is no WEIGHTAGE or TIME BASED Attribution Model, which is more reliable and actionable.

9) Absence of Key Conversion Metrics in the SiteCatalyst solution

Often times, we receive complaints from our clients that, SiteCatalyst lacks key conversion metrics in their metric list, which makes it, quite frustrating for us to analyze the data in an efficient manner. A FREE TOOL like Google Analytics offers so many metrics out of the box so; why can’t we get the same metrics in SiteCatalyst.

This is another mis-conception majority of the Omniture Clients has that; SiteCatalyst lacks key conversion metrics in their metric list. In fact, SiteCatalyst offers more conversion metrics than any other tool in the industry whether FREE or PAID. The problem is, the clients are not aware with the complete feature set of the SITECATALYST TOOL. When you click on “ADD METRICS” link on top of any report, it opens a METRIC LIST popup window. In that window, there is a dropdown on the Top Left with an option, CALCULTED METRICS. Using this option, clients can setup any metric of their choice using simple mathematics. Here are certain metrics that we usually setup for all our clients:

• Exit Rate – (Exits/Visits)
• Weighted Exit Rate – (Exits/Visits) * (Page Views/Total Page Views)
• Entry Rate – (Entries/Visits)
• Bounce Rate – (Single Access/Entries)
• Weighted Bounce Rate (Single Access/Entries) * (Page Views/Total Page Views)
• Buyer Conversion – (Orders/Visitors)
• Search Conversion – (Orders/Searches Performed)
• % Null Searches – (Null Searches / Total Searches)

10) Non Existent Governance Team is the major contributor behind Data Inconsistency and Poor Usage of Analytics Solution

Irrespective of how good your web analytics implementation is or how smart your team is, your web analytics implementation will become CRAP with-in 6 months if, you have not put the right data governance in place. In last 8-9 years, we have not seen even a single company, who has done a good job in this regards across different industry verticals, and that’s why, we have more frustrating stories in the industry and frequent switchover from one analytics solution to another. Here is what you can do to maintain the quality and consistency of data month over month:

1. Create a CENTRE OF EXCELLENCE in your company responsible for Web Analytics and Testing & Targeting solutions. Below mentioned are the proposed members of the team:
   i. Marketing Manager (1)
   ii. Content Manager (1)
   iii. Content Specialist (1-2)
   iv. Technical Lead (1)
   v. Developer (2)
   vi. Quality Analyst (1)
   vii. System Engineer (1) // Alternative to Business Analyst.
   viii. Web Analyst (1-2)
   ix. Web Analytics Manager (1)
2.  The above team has to take the following responsibilities on their head, and be accountable to the VP of Marketing
   i. Launch of a new feature or functionality on the website has to be reviewed by the above team and make sure, the relevant analytics tags are placed and the reports are configured.
   ii. Redesign of the website should be consulted with the COE Team, and without their involvement; the REDESIGN should not go to Production.
   iii. Launch of any new Content Page or Marketing Landing Page via CMS should be consulted with the COE Team.
   iv. Any 3rd Party Data integrations should be consulted with the COE Team.
   v. This team would be responsible for regular upgrades, and version controlling of the analytics solution.
   vi. This team would be responsible for maintaining data consistency and quality month over month and would be accountable for any data related issues.
3.  The COE team should reside in Marketing Department, and would be sponsored or financed by the Business, Marketing and IT Team.

All the above solutions we have shared with you are cost free except for VISTA RULE.

In case you have any follow-up questions or concerns, please share your valuable comments.

This is a Guest Post from Sushant from Conversion Path Marketing. Sushant is a certified Omniture Analytics Professional and founder of ConversionPath.

Click Click Media – Australia’s most trusted Google AdWords experts.

From 10 Quick Fixes for Common Omniture Site Catalyst Problems By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

How to Get the Most out of Your Google AdWords Site Links

The team over at Google are constantly adding new updates & features into the AdWords advertising platform, but every now and then one comes along that really stands out from the rest. One of these features that stood out from the rest came along in 2011 – “SiteLinks”.

The SiteLinks feature within an AdWords campaign allows the advertiser to create up to 6 additional links to be included on an AdWords sponsored link, and can greatly increase the size (and therefore noticeability) of the advertiser’s real estate on the Google home page.

Because of this, adding SiteLinks to your campaigns will usually result in significantly higher CTRs than what you’ll see without it. With this knowledge, I’m sure it’s obvious that you need SiteLinks within your campaign, but I’d also like to share some points on how you can ensure you’re getting the very most out of your SiteLinks venture.

1) Highlight points of difference.

Many advertisers tend to create SiteLinks with the intention of simply giving users the option of clicking straight through to a specific page of their site, and I’m sure this is what Google also intended the feature to be for, however this is not what you’re limited to using it for. If you’d prefer to send all of your campaign traffic to a single page, don’t shy away from SiteLinks just yet.

Instead, you can use your SiteLinks almost as an extension of your description lines, pointing our calls to action, sales, free delivery offers etc. There is no limit as to how many of your ad links can point to the same URL so if there’s only 1 landing page you want traffic sent to, simply enter the same URL for all of your links.

2) Link users to your contact page.

There is a certain percentage of your potential customers that will need very little persuading before choosing to purchase a product or service from your company. They may even get all of the information they need to make the decision within your advert, before visiting your site. Because of this, it’s a good idea to try linking one of your SiteLinks to your contact page. This way if a user gets all of the information they need in your advert, they’re only a couple of clicks away from speaking with you directly.

The easier you make the contact/conversion process for users, generally the more likely they are to actually complete the action so this can only help your performance.

3) Cross-sell & Up-sell.

If there are particular products that you’re trying to sell, and you think your pricing or offers for this product are strong, try including it as a SiteLink in your AdWords campaigns! As long as the SiteLink text is clear and accurate in its description, then this could result in increased sales for the product in question, while having no negative impact on your main goals for the campaign.

4) Be different from your competitors.

If you notice all of your competitors with the same (or very similar) SiteLinks, make sure that you do anything you can to stand out and be different. A general rule of thumb for AdWords is that unique adverts will almost always stand out among boring generic ads to users, so doing this can greatly help your CTR.

5) Test! Test! Test!

It’s very easy to “set and forget” when it comes to SiteLinks, due to the fact that they aren’t exactly thrown in your face every time you open your AdWords account (you need to go to your “Ad Extensions” tab and then select SiteLinks in order to view your SiteLinks as well as their performance), however it’s just as important to test these links as it is any other aspect of your campaign. Your ads are the very first representation of your business that Google users will see, and testing different messaging ensures that you’re SiteLink text is resonating as best as possible with your target audience.

As with most things, the best thing to do is keep trying new things with your SiteLinks and see what works in helping you meet your marketing goals but hopefully this information has given you something to think about. Good luck!

From How to Get the Most out of Your AdWords Site Links By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

“Nobody clicks on sponsored links on Google” you say? Don’t be so sure!

After working within marketing agencies for a long time, you’ll no doubt come across many business owners (and even sometimes marketing experts) that simply have no faith in AdWords for one reason or another. In my experience, these people will generally fall under 2 categories:

1) He/she does not click on sponsored links, and therefore has the opinion that no one else must use click the ads either.

AND/OR

2) He/she has attempted to run an AdWords campaign in the past, but has done so with no or very little knowledge or experience and has therefore seen very little success from the channel.

As AdWords specialists, we know that there is huge potential for Google’s sponsored link adverts to build your online business, however knowing that not everyone is easily sold, we’ve decided to share a great article found over at the Wordstream blog (found here – http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2012/07/17/google-advertising) which shows an infographic outlining some very interesting figures regarding the popularity of sponsored links on Google (see below).

Here are some interesting statistics (for the US market) that the infographic provides:

- For all “High commercial intent” searches on Google, 2/3 people click on a sponsored link rather than an organic listing. This means that for all searches made where the user has made it obvious that they’re looking to buy a product or service, users will click on a paid advert 64.6% of the time. In my opinion, this is most likely due to the fact that Google users have become more educated about what a sponsored link actually is – they know that someone is paying for the traffic and thus likely to be offering a product or service rather than just providing information.

- Organic results account for just 14.8% of the ‘above-the-fold’ pixels. Sponsored links will generally account for the first 3 listings on the left hand side of the Google search results, however the addition of ad extensions (such as Site Links, Product extensions etc.) has meant that these 3 ads are greatly increasing in size on the search page. I’m sure this is no accident by Google either – they’re paid for clicks onto sponsored links so it would make sense that they want users to click on these instead of organic listings.

- On average, the top 3 spots take 41.1% of 1st page clicks. Given that online shoppers tend to want their product/service yesterday, this statistic isn’t too surprising. It basically means that on average, just less than half of all Google users will only go as far as the top 3 listings on Google…. And these 3 spots are usually taken by paid ads.

If you were one of those people that were not completely sold on using paid ads before reading this article, hopefully it’s given you something to think about! Feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts on these figures.

Graphic by Wordstream. © 2012 WordStream

From “Nobody clicks on sponsored links on Google” Don’t be so sure! By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 Insightful Online Marketing Articles

The Click Click Media team are avid blog readers, so for this post I thought I’d grab a recent favourite article from each of our staff that they considered insightful, interesting and really impressed them. So here they are below, Click Click Media’s list of 5 favourite online marketing articles (in no particular order) for 2012.

12 Tips When Using Facebook Promoted Posts (by Andrea Vahl at Social Media Examiner)

Due to the huge impact social media has had in the online marketing world in the last couple of years, the introduction of Facebook’s ‘Promoted Posts’ feature has made quite a splash all over the web. This article runs through 12 tips that you should definitely know if you’re in the online marketing industry, or even plan to use the feature for personal reasons.

The article by Social Media examiner gives detailed instructions on what kind of posts can use the promoted posts feature, how to access reporting, and even the benefits in using the tool. Check out the full article here – http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/facebook-promoted-posts/

Why Google+ is an Inevitable Part of Your Content Marketing Strategy (by Brian Clark at Copy Blogger)

Google+ really is the next big thing in the social media world, and let’s face it; the fact that it’s a Google product means it’s probably see be around for awhile and more than likely see some strong growth.

This article goes into why you need to start implementing Google+ into your content marketing strategy, and how it can benefit your business. If you’re serious about your content marketing, make sure you check out the full article here – http://www.copyblogger.com/google-plus-content-marketers/

The Importance of Determining SERP Competition (by Eric Covino at SEO Book)

With recent Google updates like Panda & Penguin, which make it a lot harder to effectively “trick” the search engines into ranking your site highly, it’s more important than ever to ensure that your SEO strategy is as strategic, structured, and planned out as possible.

The article by Eric Covino, found here http://www.seobook.com/importance-determining-serp-competition explains in detail the importance of analysing SERP competition for your selected keywords. The amount of competition for a particular keyword can mean the different between success and failure when it comes to SEO, so for any website owners out there this article is pure gold. Take a look for yourself!

3 Common Landing Page Flops to Avoid (by Mona Elesseily at Search Engine Land)

Despite the fact that most, if not all business owners and online marketing professionals invest so much time and money into delivering high quality traffic to their website, there are still a huge amount of people out there simply ignoring their website and/or landing pages. The truth is, this is the area you should be investing most of your time into improving. When you see success with a landing page change, this success is shared amongst all of your other online marketing channels so it has huge potential in improving your overall performance.

The article found here by Mona Elesseily – http://searchengineland.com/3-common-landing-page-flops-to-avoid-124663 outlines 3 common parts of a landing page that a lot of people out there are getting wrong. If you’re spending time and/or money getting traffic to your website, or even just want an improvement in your conversion rates, then you need to check this article out.

An In-depth Analysis of Authorship, Google+ and Snippets (by Sujan Patel at SEOmoz)

This is a great article that looks at the importance of how your authorship pages are set up within website blogs, and how it can help boost your SEO efforts significantly – if done correctly. Due to the fact that SEO is only getting increasingly competitive, with search engine algorithms getting ever more complex, information like this is vital in ensuring that your website is doing everything it can to milk the search engines for every bit of traffic it can get.

Check out the article here http://www.seomoz.org/blog/read-but-learn-by-doing-an-approach-to-the-analysis-of-seo-issues-between-authorship-google-plus-and-snippets

Have you come across any other insightful online marketing articles so far this year? Feel free to share in the comments section!

From 5 Insightful Online Marketing Articles By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Understanding AdWords Access Levels

One of the not-so-talked-about topics when it comes to AdWords account management is account security. Any single AdWords account can have a range of individuals & companies that require access to it’ data, such as company CEOs, marketing departments, outsourced service agencies, website developers & more – and the larger the company is, generally the more people there are that will require access.

Although most business owners would like to think that those who are given account access can be trusted not to abuse the account in any way, you can never be too cautious. Because of this, it’s important to ensure that you aren’t giving users access to any data or account privileges that are not necessary for them.

Below is a detailed summary of each account access levels available within AdWords, and what type of person within your organisation they’d be most suited to.

Email-only Access

This is the most restrictive access level for AdWords, only allowing users to receive account alerts, reports and other notifications via email.

So who would use it? This access level would be ideal for users who do not need to make any changes whatsoever, and only need to see performance data. E.g. CEOs, SEO teams.

Read-only Access

With this access level, users are able to receive notification emails, view & run reports via the AdWords interface, view campaigns & campaign opportunities via the “Opportunities” tab, view the contextual targetting tab & also unlink a client manager from the account.

Who would use it? This access level would be suited to someone such as a CEOs &/or SEO teams, similarly to the email-only access, but one who would like to be a bit more hands on and actually have access to the interface to get a full feel for the campaign. However they’ll be unable to make any changes.

Standard Access

Standard access users are able to receive notification emails, view/edit/manage any part of the account and the campaigns within it; however they cannot change other users access levels.

Who would use it? Junior to mid-level SEM specialists within your organisation would probably be ideal for this access level as it allows you to completely manage an AdWords campaign, without allowing you to control access for other people.

Administrative Access

Admin access allows users to receive notification emails, view/edit/manage any part of the account and campaigns within it, and also give account access as well as change access levels for existing users.

Who would use it? Whoever created the account most likely! This is the highest access level and should really only be reserved for the person in charge of the account.

Client-manager Access

AdWords users are given the option to create a ‘My Client Centre’ (or MCC) rather than a standard account. The MCC allows you to link multiple AdWords accounts to your MCC, giving single-login access to all of the linked accounts. The MCC user has all the privileges of a standard user.

Who would use it? This access type is ideal for an AdWords management agency that looks after a number of different AdWords accounts. The fact you have one interface to access all of your managed accounts saves a lot of time compared with single account logins.

I hope this article has been helpful to your understanding of AdWords access levels and what they are for. If you have any questions or comments please leave them in the comments section below!

From Understanding AdWords Access Levels By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Can You Compete? Playing in Ultra-Competitive Google AdWords Markets

Let’s face facts. AdWords is getting competitive. VERY competitive. Gone are the days where advertisers can throw an unmanaged campaign onto Google, see almost no other ads appearing next to their own and paying a fraction of the costs that we see today while getting a healthy amount of website sales coming in each month. However, this doesn’t mean that you still can’t make AdWords profitable for your business.

Even with an extremely limited budget, the diversity of AdWords tools & reports available today means that getting the edge over your online competitors is very possible – you just need to work harder for it. Below are some tips on ways you can improve performance when competing in an ultra-competitive AdWords market:

Scenario 1 – My campaign’s first page bid requirement is too high! What do I do?

Firstly, if AdWords is telling you that your minimum first page bid requirement is extremely high, this may not have anything to do with your competitors at all! As any search marketer would know, AdWords delivers ad content partly based on something called a “Quality Score”. This quality score is a figure given to every keyword, advert, adgroup and campaign within an AdWords account, and this quality score determines how relevant your advert & landing page are to what your audience is looking for. The higher your quality score is, the lower you’ll pay for each click.

Because of the need for high relevancy, you might find that the need for a high bid is really just due to a fault of your own. Ensure you’ve got an account structure that allows for all of your keywords to be mentioned within advert headings, and preferably also in the ad description lines as well. I find that creating one ad group for each keyword allows you do this in the simplest way possible. You’ll also want to make sure that your keywords & landing pages are highly targeted to the product or service that you’re offering.

See our article on How to properly structure your AdWords account.

Secondly, if quality scores are not an issue and your ad & landing page relevancy are as high as possible, it could just be that your competitors on AdWords are willing to pay significantly more than you for their traffic. The very first thing you should do in this case is ensure that your landing page is converting at an appropriate level. Is your page content clear and concise? Do you clearly mention the product/service being offered, contact details, offers & even testimonials? All of these things will help improve conversion rates so that you’re getting the most out of your AdWords spend, but also look at what your competitors are doing to ensure that you’re not just suffering from an under-performing site.

Thirdly, if you’re dealing with some large competitors in your vertical then you might need to be smarter about how your ads are delivered. Thanks to the AdWords ‘Ad Scheduling’ feature, you’re able to tell Google exactly what times and days your ads are delivered. To avoid too much competition, try setting your ads to start later on in the day, or even spend some time researching the times and days that you see most of your competitors online/offline, then adjust your Ad Scheduling settings based on when competition is at its lightest.

Lastly, it may be that the keywords you’re targeting are simply too broad. Think of some longer, more targeted keywords that you might be able to use that are still highly targeted, but maybe just not so competitive. A good idea is to extend your keywords by adding suburbs & other locations for example “find a plumber in Sydney” rather than just “find a plumber”. The more targeted and specific keywords will generally have less competition.

Scenario 2 – My competitors are much larger than me and can therefore offer better prices. Should I bother with AdWords?

Absolutely! Although AdWords does easily allow for potential customers to quickly research the prices offered by each advertiser quickly, there still things you can do to stand out from the pack and get that much needed edge on your competitors.

Firstly, try and think of ways for you add more value that might make the additional cost worthwhile for your customers. Are you able to provide free delivery? A free initial consultation? Some sort of discount on their second visit/purchase? Think of anything that might catch a person’s eye as something that could be worth paying a little extra for.

Secondly, ensure that your landing page is optimised to convert. Even if your competitors are offering better prices, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re doing the best job and converting their audience. To ensure your conversion rate is as high as possible, make sure you have a clear description of products/services on your landing page, obvious contact details (give people as many contact options as possible – phone, email address, online enquiry.. even online chat if you think it’s appropriate) and of course a strong offer.

Lastly, try exploring new keyword areas that your main competitors may not have thought of targeting. This is becoming increasingly difficult with the huge increase in popularity that AdWords has seen over the years, but it’s still possible to find no-to-competitive terms out there. You can also further target your keywords to only appear on specific times of the day, when fewer competitors are active, or even getting more targeted with your geo-targeting settings. If you’re running a nation-wide campaign, you could try excluding major cities and only showing your ads in the less dense and usually less competitive areas.

Hopefully you’ve found this of some kind of use for your AdWords endeavours! If you feel like i’ve left anything out, i’d love to hear from you in the comments section!

From Can You Compete? Playing in Ultra-Competitive Google AdWords Markets By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

How to effectively integrate Paid Search with other Online Marketing Channels

With online marketing channels becoming ever more competitive, it’s becoming increasingly important to use intelligent strategies in order to get the most out of your time and money. Please note the suggestions below are directed towards more established companies especially advice regarding budgets and branding campaigns. Still well worth the read if you are a start-up or small business.

One of the most effective ways of ensuring high performance for your overall marketing efforts is by ensuring that your different channels are set up in ways that complement each other, after all, individual internet users will come across your advertising in all sorts of places during their online journeys.

Each online marketing channel has different strengths, and different weaknesses. For example, display advertising can be a powerful branding tool that gets your brand name (and/or logo) shown to millions of internet users who are visiting their favourite sites. In contrast, paid search advertising (eg. AdWords) major strength is direct response, with conversion rates on search traffic generally being much higher than that seen for display – this is due to the fact that search users are actively searching for a product/service/brand rather than randomly seeing your advert on a related website.

By having your different marketing channels work together in an optimal manner, you can combine their strengths to create an overall business outcome.

Below are some tips on how to ensure that your various marketing efforts are working together in the most effective way possible:

Identify your goal, weight budgets accordingly.

This is one of the most important aspects of ensuring that your marketing budget is well spent and your goals achieved. As mentioned above, certain channels will have a strong benefit in branding and some will perform best as a direct response channel. So you need to ensure that your budgets are weighted correctly to reach your goals best.

For example, if your marketing goal is purely to promote your brand, it would be a good idea to have a heavy display campaign running, along with a social media campaign to ensure the reach of your marketing message is as big as possible. You will then want to create an uncapped AdWords campaign set up with only brand keywords – that is, your brand name, your URL, and variations (be sure to use exact match and/or broad match modifier on brand terms to ensure all searches are relevant).

See this example:

Facebook Promotion

Creative

Search Results

The reason for this strategy is that people who see your brand message within display ads/ social media channels, or hear about it from people who have, will often open up their favourite search engine and do a quick search – either because this is their preferred method of entering a website, and/or probably to seek some sort of credibility in the brand by looking for reviews and customer feedback within the search results.You’ll more than likely already be appearing within organic search results, but by having an AdWords brand search campaign set up will ensure that:

• You’re covered on all brand variations and misspells.
• CTRs are as high as possible via the use of two pieces of properties on the 1^st page of the search engine, instead of just one.
• Ad creative can be instantly edited to reflect marketing messaging elsewhere, or promote current deals/promotions.
• Landing pages for brand terms can instantly be changed, based on where you want to send your users on any given day.

If you’re looking for sales rather than putting a focus on branding, then my recommendation would be to put a large percentage of your marketing budget into search and then complement this search activity with display – namely re-marketing (re-marketing is showing your display ads to visitors who have already been to your site). This will give you an opportunity to re-engage with users who visited your site but may not necessarily have made a purchase at the time (which could have been due to a distraction at the time, a browser being accidently closed, or simply a lack of interest).

Ensure messaging is consistent.

Consistent messaging across all of your marketing channels is extremely important; it helps in creating credibility for your selling point. Because of this, you want to ensure that your paid ads are in line with marketing creative displayed elsewhere – whether it is your organic search listings, display ads, social media and most importantly on your own website!

For example, if a user sees “Frank’s Keyword Research Software Is the Cheapest in the Market!” when they visit their favourite SEO site, and also when they do a Google search for “keyword tools”, and then again when they log in to Twitter – they’ll probably have a lot of faith in the fact that Frank’s software is the cheapest.

There’s an interesting article found here that has a more in-depth explanation of this point – http://brandperiscope.com/blog/2010/12/the-importance-of-consistent-brand-messaging/

 Use AdWords data to learn about your audience.

An AdWords campaign with moderate amount of historical data can potentially be a treasure trove of information into your industry. If you’re targeting the right keywords with your campaign, you’ll be able to use “Search Query” reports to see exactly what users are typing into Google to find your products, how popular they are in comparison to other terms & phrases and which are converting best for you.

This highly valuable historical AdWords data can be used in a number of ways, including:

• SEO keyword research. This is one of the most important aspects of any SEO effort, and with some good AdWords data behind you, finding keywords with high search volume and strong conversion rates is as simple as running a report.
• Seasonality. If you’ve got a mature AdWords campaign that has been running consistently for at least a year you should be able to get a fair indication of the seasonality of your industry (given that your budget has been consistent). This data will help you in budgeting for future months/years across all channels.
• Landing page engagement. AdWords is an extremely fast and simple way of testing the quality of the landing pages you create. AdWords should be used to test new landing pages before any other traffic is sent to these pages so that you’re sure the landing pages will be effective in achieving your desired goals. Once a sufficient conversion rate has been achieved with AdWords, you should then start to think about directing other traffic to your landing pages to increase traffic volume.

Hopefully this information has been useful you. Now that you’ve got an understanding of the importance of integrating your different marketing channels, the best thing to do is go out and test different strategies. After-all, your marketing should always be tailored to suit your business.

Look forward to your feedback!

From How to effectively integrate Paid Search with other Marketing Channels By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Is Your AdWords Ad Really Getting the Message Across?

Given the ever-increasing complexity of the AdWords platform with new(ish) reports such as dimension reporting, ad extension performance, device segmentation etc. it’s easy to spend all of our time looking at the in-depth details of our data…. But, what about the basics?

Your AdWords ads are the very first representation of your business that users see. Your adverts are the deciding factor on whether a user will be exposed to your website or simply move on to one of your competitors without giving you a second thought. Because of this, it’s extremely important to ensure your ads are set up in a way that tells users exactly what they need to know to:

a) Decide whether you’re offering the service or product they’re looking for.

b) Identify whether your product or service is appropriate for them personally.

c) Sell them on the fact that they should do business with your instead of your competitors.

In order to ensure you’ve got all of the above covered, here are some things you should always be sure to keep in mind when putting together your AdWords messaging:

1) Ensure “Keyword to Advert” relevancy is tight.

This is really a no-brainer, however given that it’s by far the most important point when it comes to writing an advert, I had to include it. Ideally you want to include a user’s exact search query in your advert heading. To cater to this, your AdWords account structure should contain 1 AdGroup for each keyword – or at the very most around 10 keywords. If possible, a mention of the keyword within one of the description lines will help too. This strategy ensures maximum relevancy to a user’s search which holds 2 benefits; You’ll see a strong CTR (“Click Through Rate”) meaning more traffic to your website, and you’ll also obtain a strong quality score for your account meaning lower CPCs (“Cost Per Click”) in the long term.

2) Highlight your points of difference.

Even if you have an advert that is perfectly relevant to what a user is searching for, chances are that the user in question has a Google search result page full of other relevant ads from your competitors. The key to incising users to click on your ads instead of your competitor’s ads is to offer them something that your competitors do not. Whether it be free delivery, a 20% discount, a particular accreditation or a money back guarantee, mentioning a point of different can have massive impacts on your advert CTR and even on your final conversion rate. Ensure all ads mention a point of difference!

3) Mention service and/or delivery location.

Mentioning service and/or delivery location in your advert is extremely important for 2 main reasons. Firstly, it makes your message more relevant to a user who is within your service/delivery range meaning people who can use your service or product are more likely to click your ad, and secondly it qualifies your traffic, potentially stopping people who do not reside within your service/delivery range from clicking your ad and thus wasting your marketing budget.

4) Constantly test different ads.

Once you’ve got all of the above points covered off, it’s important to create different variations of your ads to see which format your audience responds to best. For example, you might find that the ads which mention your point of different in description line 1 perform better than mentioning location first for a particular keyword, and vice versa for another keyword. In order to ensure that your ad format is set up in an optimal way for each AdGroup, It’s best to create at least 3 different ad variations for each AdGroup so that you can test their performance against each other, and then pause any of the under-performers.

Now that you’ve taken care of the above fundamentals, it’s really a matter of testing different things, such as use of particular symbols (e.g. “&” instead of “and”), explanation points etc. to see what best captures the attention of your audience.

If you’ve got any other ideas on how to improve AdWords ad messaging, feel free to let us know in the comments section!

From Is Your AdWords Ad Really Getting the Message Across? By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

How to Choose an AdWords Agency

Finding the right agency to manage your AdWords or PPC account is in some ways like hiring a new member of your staff. Apart from evaluating the agency’s experience and reputation there are a few key points to remember when selecting an agency.

1. Campaign Managers Experience

The complexity involved in the advanced management of an AdWords or PPC account means that years in the field tend to directly equate the rate of performance improvement your agency can provide. Stick to companies that have a minimum of two full time PPC managers who solely focus on search, you should also be allowed direct access to these people for questions about your campaign.

If you want to gauge the efficiency of an AdWords agency ring them up and ask this question to the first person that answers the phone:

“I recently noticed my conversion rate has taken a huge dive. No changes have been made to my landing page, keyword list or adverts but I have noticed my impression volume increase significantly. What could be the cause?”

A) Answered correctly immediately over the phone
B) Transferred to someone who can give you the correct answer
C) Answered correctly by return phone call
D) Answered incorrectly but close over the phone
E) Answered incorrectly over the phone or return call
F) No answer, no communication

Answer is: If conversion rates are dropping with no changes being made to landing pages, keywords or adverts, then a rise in impressions would indicate that a new search query is triggering your ads, and this new search query may not be relevant to the service or product, hence the drop in conversion rate.

- For example, your campaign might be advertising “voice to text dictation equipment”. With the sudden spike in searches for “the voice” suddenly occurring due to the TV show gaining popularity, Google might be delivering your ads for this irrelevant search as it’s similar to your keywords, resulting in an overall increase in impressions and a drop in conversion rate. This type of issue can be avoided up by regularly monitoring your “search query” reports.

2. Contracts & Pricing

Minimum term contracts have been for too long an unnecessary part of AdWords management. Seek out month to month agreements or performance based agreements. This will ensure you have the flexibility to trial an agency without being held down by a legal contract. This flexibility should also allow you to pause and resume campaigns, amend budgets to meet seasonal or market demands and (if you are a small business) go on holidays.

Remember that agency fees vary but these will pale in comparison to the costs of a poorly run campaign; seek out percentage based fees as these will allow your agency appropriate resources for your budget. Stay away from flat rates as these are usually outsourced.

3. Intellectual Property

Is the work done on your behalf actually yours? Ensuring that you can take your campaign with you when you go is essential to maintain your campaign history and quality. If you are forced to start again from scratch because things haven’t worked out between you and your agency it can be detrimental to your campaigns performance and it could be weeks until you get the same or better results from a fresh campaign (presuming the agency you leave hasn’t royally messed things up).

Ultimately you have paid for the work, it is yours by right and this is even backed up by Google. However there are still agencies around that baulk at, or flat our refuse transferring you back the campaign.

4. Support

Seek out AdWords agencies that actually let you speak to the campaign managers, not just sales and call centre staff. Make sure you understand what action has been taken, but don’t let yourself be overcome by jargon, find an agency that is willing to patiently work through with you what they are doing and explain it in plain English.

A good agency should also be able to offer you support services for all your web assets. Look for companies with Analytics Experts, Coders, SEO Programmers and can offer more than one PPC channel. This shows the company is dedicated to your business succeeding and in online marketing technology in general, not just computer literate.

5. Is your Agency is leading by example?

Stay away from agencies that get their business by cold calling. These agencies are normally working on selling on ‘fear’ and ‘unrealistic expectations’ with misrepresentations and unqualified analysis’s made by offshore call centre staff. Remember,

A) It’s not possible to analyse a campaign properly without access to the account, any statements about campaign quality are usually wild speculation.
B) Google will not call you directly to offer their services.
C) Your business is YOUR business. Chances are you know what your business is about and have had years of experience trialling many different channels and can provide insights that will significantly help any potential Agency – Don’t be talked down to by someone on $14.00 an hour.

If you are getting approached using 30 year old ‘boiler room’ lead generation techniques then how can that company honestly say it is an expert in Internet Marketing?

As I said earlier, find someone you would be happy to employ, search your local networks and seek out advice from other businesses that are successful, hunt down people on LinkedIn or simply search Google.

I hope you have found this article interesting or helpful; there are many good quality agencies in Australia that are very reputable and have a great history of delivering excellent, successful campaigns, Simply Google ‘AdWords’ or ‘Google AdWords’ for a list of Australian AdWords Agencies.

Have any questions or comments? Please leave them below!

From How to Choose an AdWords Agency By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

5 Tips on How to Run a Successful International AdWords Campaign

The size of your businesses service and/or delivery reach can play a huge role in determining how your marketing campaigns should be planned and implemented, and this is no difference when it comes to Google’s PPC (Pay-Per-Click) platform, AdWords.

When planning an internationally targeted AdWords campaign (or any online marketing campaign for that matter) vs. a more locally targeted campaign, there are certain questions you need to ask yourself in order to ensure that you’ve set yourself up for success. For example, will your audience respond to the same ad messaging around the world? Are there certain language barriers you need to overcome? Are your offers the same worldwide? No matter what the answer to these questions are, AdWords has a diverse set of targetting options you can take advantage of to ensure your campaign is set up in the best way possible for your audience.

Below are some tips to help you correctly plan & structure your AdWords campaign for an international audience:

1) Create separate campaigns for each country.

When running an international AdWords campaign, it’s extremely likely that particular countries will perform better than others. Because of this, it’s important to ensure that you have specific budgets set for each country so that you can put focus on the areas that convert best. To do this, you’ll need to create separate campaigns for each country within your AdWords account.

2) Make use of language targeting.

Some countries you target will most likely have a variety of different languages being used by its occupants, and Google users will have their language preference set in place when they’re using the search engine. This allows AdWords to give you the option of language targetting, meaning you can target users based on the language they speak. It’s extremely important to ensure you’ve got the correct languages targetted with your campaign to avoid unnecessarily low CTRs that are caused by ads being shown to people who cannot even read the language in which the ads have been created in. This setting is available at the campaign level, giving us another reason to create a campaign for each country.

(The image above shows the language targetting option within the “Settings” tab)

3) Ensure your ad text is correctly targeted to each country.

To ensure that your CTR (Click-Through-Rate) is as high as possible, it’s important to create highly targetted ad text for each country that you’re targetting with your campaign. For example if you’re selling a product, avoid creating adverts that simply state “delivery worldwide”, and create ads that target each country  specifically with this message (e.g. “Delivery Australia Wide”, “Delivery US Wide” etc.). You also need to make sure that you’re not using any slang, jargon or abbreviations within your ads that may be unknown or uncommon in countries other than your own. If your audience does not relate to, or even worse doesn’t understand your ad message, your performance will be impacted.

4) Create country-specific landing pages.

The key to connecting with your audience is ensuring that your content (both in ad text and site content) is as relevant as possible to the user and the product/service they’re looking for. Because of this, creating country-specific landing page can result in huge improvements for your AdWords campaign. Just like in point 3 where I’ve mentioned stating the each country within the content, landing page content should ideally be specific to the country in which each user is searching from.

5) Put extra time into keyword research.

Compared to a more local campaign, international AdWords campaigns will usually require extra time spent in keyword research in order to get the best results. People from particular countries may use completely different terminology compared to others when making a search, so your keyword focus may be entirely different for each country. You can use tools such as the ‘Google Keyword Tool’ to look at keyword search volumes for each country to make this task much easier.

Hopefully this article has given you some handy information to use for your international AdWords campaign! What other strategies do you use when putting together an international campaign? Leave a comment!

From 5 Tips on How to Run a Successful International AdWords Campaign By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Tips on How to Properly Structure Your AdWords Account

While the keywords, adverts and landing pages you select for your AdWords campaign are extremely important when it comes to the overall performance that you’ll achieve, you won’t come anywhere close to reaching your maximum potential if the structure of your account is not up to scratch. Among others, the types of problems that a poorly designed AdWords structure can cause include; poor quality scores for keywords & adverts, below average CTRs (‘Click-Through-Rates’), hindered conversion rates… the list continues.

Below are some tips on how to ensure that your AdWords account structure is set up in a way that ensures you’re getting the most out of your marketing dollars.

1) Separate brand keywords into their own campaign.

This is extremely important from an ease of reporting point of view. When brand terms are mixed in with generic search terms, the fact that other marketing efforts can impact the performance of your brand terms means that your overall SEM performance has the potential to be artificially skewed. You want to be able to report on brand terms and your generic terms separately, and creating an individual campaign for your brand terms makes this very easier. Additionally, some advertisers might not want to invest a large budget into brand terms given that you should already be in 1^st position on Google’s organic search, and creating a specific campaign will give you complete budget control over your brand terms.

2) Specific campaigns for each product or service area.

Creating specific campaigns for each of your product and service areas is extremely beneficial for a number of reasons, including:

1. You may only offer particular products and/or services in select locations, so creating a specific campaign for these areas will allow you to target your ads only to the locations in question, while showing your other service/product keywords elsewhere. This makes your campaign much more targetted and will help to improve conversion rates.
2. You may find that particular products or services convert at a much higher rate than others. Creating a specific campaign for each product/service will allow you to allocate specific budget caps to these areas, so if you find that a particular product is converting extremely well, you’ll be able to simply increase its campaign budget cap!
3. If you only want certain products to appear on PCs, rather than mobiles and tablet devices, this is a setting you’ll be able to adjust at the campaign level.

3) Minimise Adgroups to 10 keywords at the most.

 One of the most important aspects of an AdWords campaign is keyword to advert relevancy, and having hundreds of keywords within the same AdGroup makes it almost impossible to create ads relevant to each keyword. Because of this, I recommend creating an AdGroup for each keyword – or at least one AdGroup per 10 keywords. This will ensure that you can mention your keyword within your ad text, resulting in a strong CTR and thus a great quality score for your keyword list.

4) Create several ads for each AdGroup.

When putting together your adverts, ensure that you’re creating 3-4 ads for each AdGroup rather than just 1. This allows you to run several adverts alongside each other to test which king of messaging works best with your audience. This testing should be performed consistently throughout your campaign and will ensure that you’re constantly seeing improvements to your CTR.

5) Separate search, display, mobile & tablet targeting into individual campaigns.

When creating your structure, ensure that you have specific campaigns for each device and/or network. This will allow you to tailor ad creative – something that can make a big impact with devices such as mobile where ads with a local feel or shorter description may work best, as well as giving you the ability to edit settings such as geo-targetting, ad scheduling, daily budget cap etc. for each device/network. Often there will be particular devices that perform better in certain locations & at certain times so you ideally want the ability to edit these targetting settings for each device separately.

These are some of the main tips on how to correctly structure your campaign, however there are many more points that you’ll pick up along the way. The trick is to make your campaign as granular as possible, while ensuring that it’s easy for you to navigate & set up in a way that allows for maximum ad relevancy.

Do you have any other points that you think should have been included in this article?

From Tips on How to Properly Structure Your AdWords Account By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |

Why Adwords Experts Use Landing Pages for Their Campaigns

The humble landing page is an invaluable low cost tool that every Google AdWords manager should use to increase their campaigns performance and gather valuable information. For companies new to running Google AdWords campaigns it can be unclear to them why after spending thousands on their beautiful website exactly how a landing page can be so beneficial.

Here are the top 3 reasons to utilise landing pages with Google AdWords

1) You can clearly separate your products, services and offers to match your campaigns, adgroups, keywords and ad text.

Correct structure for your Google AdWords campaigns is important, but it is just as important to think about the users experience after clicking your ad. If you are offering a number of products or services is it a good idea just to drop visitors on the homepage?  99% of the time the answer is no.

Visitors arrive at your website from AdWords with a goal based on the particular search query they have entered, if they are arriving on a landing page showing exactly what they are after the chance of them leaving (without making an action) is significantly reduced, therefore the chance of the visitor converting is a lot higher.

If you are running seasonal or promotional offers in conjunction with your AdWords campaigns, by utilising landing pages you can reinforce these offers by matching the offer within your ad text to your landing page exactly.

2) You can easily split test your landing pages the same way you would split test your ad text

Continued improvement and testing of your landing page is essential in the same way that continued testing of your Google AdWords ad text is. The principals to this is as easy as it gets, test every idea for improvement that you think will work with your landing page, be it different testimonials, different media (images, videos ect), different offers or different layouts, colours and format. Eventually a clear champion will emerge from your trials.

Remember in this article I am specifically talking about Google AdWords landing pages. What works particularly well for your AdWords traffic may be entirely different from what works for your social, email and referral traffic. The beauty of creating landing pages is the flexibility you have to ensure that each traffic source has its own landing page and therefore you can run individual tests for each.

3) You can provide a clear call to action, objective and purpose to your visitors

This is point is extremely important for the success of your landing page, Google Adwords provides the most targeted traffic your web assets could hope for, however your company logo and information alone may not be enough to drive your visitors to make a conversion. Having a universal call to action throughout your website is good, but with a landing page you can get really specific about what they will receive when they convert.

Providing a destination URL that gives your visitors no real clear course of action can be detrimental to your campaigns health. Giving the visitor appropriate actions to take along with exactly what they can expect or are going to receive can really improve your AdWords campaign performance

Landing Page Health Checklist

Posted at ‘Unbounce’, a landing page hosting and testing service used by Click Click Media, is a great checklist for your landing pages. Click here for their article and to download the landing page conversion scorecard.

I hope this has helped your understanding of the usage of landing page with Google Adwords campaigns, if you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them below.

From Why Adwords Experts Use Landing Pages for Their Campaigns By Click Click Media - | Online Marketing for Australian Business |