Connecting to a Faster Paced Audience with a Message that is a Slam Dunk

Though Pickup the Ball was started on and has gathered some attention with grass root efforts, the scope of the vision and success of the mission required a more strategic approach. To make it possible to reach a new, larger online audience, Ted applied to Google Grants, the nonprofit edition of Google AdWords to receive funding for Internet advertising Having a strong search presence is a key strategy and online marketing is the place they those to invest.

“The people I am trying to reach come from all walks of life, from all over, and don’t adhere to any kind of reliable schedule,” explains Ted. “The only way to get information to and from them is through a well-organized, easy-to-navigate website.  Access to the site on mobile devices is critical, because a significant of my target audience doesn’t have computers at home.”

Based on multiple conversations with Ted, target research and our own experience, we provided two main solutions:

• Website Design focused on their Target Audiences
• Mobile Compatibility on their website
• Monthly Management of their Online Advertising through Google AdWords

Custom Web Solutions for a Unique Problem

Whether a potential volunteer or donor is visiting Pickup the Ball’s website for the first time or is a regular participant in their mission, Pickup the Ball must always leave an AMAZING impression. In beginning work on this project, we spent countless hours understanding their three tiered target base and designing an approach to bring in each group (Potential Givers, Facilities that need Maintenance and After-School Groups that need Programming).

Fort Myers After-School Programs are Just the Beginning

Because of their Google Grant Award, Pickup the Ball is able to invest heavily in online marketing, giving them the ability to not only reach southwest Florida, but the entire nation and beyond!

Through our pay-per-click marketing services, when local customers search for anything related to after school programs or basketball related phrases, Pickup the Ball’s website will be presented along with other relevant information, including:

• Program Information
• Phone Numbers
• Relevant Links

Join us in their Effort to Reach Area Youth

We’re extremely proud of this project and our dedicated team for making it happen! We look forward to our continuing work with Pickup the Ball while helping their mission grow and reach youth around the world!

For more information on Pickup the Ball and to check out their new website, visit www.PickupTheBall.org

Do you feel you’re spending too much on conventional advertising (yellow pages, print magazines, etc.) and not seeing a return? Struggling to get to the next level? Sick of being a slave to the stop-start cycle all small businesses go through – when it comes to sales and marketing?

I’ve heard in various circles that social media is the answer – but you’re completely wrong. 

Let me explain.

It’s been my experience that you don’t really care about the Internet. It’s flashy, sexy, we all spend too much time distracting ourselves on it – and very little of that time is productive (at least for me . However, when it comes to your business’ Internet presence there’s a lot of information – too much probably, and a lot of mis-information confusing everyone. You don’t want to worry about the web, you just need it to work for you – or at least I’m trying to convince you it will.

There are some very simple concepts you must understand in order to grow your business like you never thought possible. You want to step your business up to the next level, and the Internet is a perfect place to do that. Just probably not in the way you think.

First, understand your business is your website. 

Most people think their business is a part of their advertising/marketing plan – and to some extent I would have to agree. But, what we struggle to educate our potential clients and even current clients on is that as a whole – it’s really not. It is your business. Your website, is akin to your brick-and-mortar storefront. It’s where customers go to learn more about your services, but generally, in-and-of-itself YOUR WEBSITE IS NOT THE WAY YOUR BUSINESS GETS FOUND.

Your business gets found by the marketing/advertising plan you put in place, and all of the supplemental things you do on your website, and on the web – to point people back to your website. This is everything, your content strategy (or search engine optimization), paid online advertising (through pay per click ads, or banner ads on appropriate websites), social media, etc.

And most of you would think social media is important.

Although I’d agree that it needs to be a part of the mix – I would suggest it needs to be much lower on the totem poll of your business’ marketing plan for a couple of reasons:

• Generally Social Media is NOT How You Will Be Found By Your Customers
• Social Media is Expensive (at least in time costs)

Instead I’d recommend the following mix for any business: 

1. Website
2. Email Newsletter
3. Content Writing Strategy
4. Pay Per Click Marketing
5. Social Media -and/or- a mix of local review services

Website

This is the most important piece of the puzzle. Everything needs to point back to your website – even those magazine ads. Now-a-days people are going through what Google calls the “ZMOT” or zero moment of truth. It’s that stage where they hear about you, from friends, neighbors, or view an ad – and immediately search for you online – to learn more, read reviews, and investigate.

BECAUSE everything points back to your website, you must nurture it and treat it like a hub. Fill it with helpful information on your business, things your prospective customers need or want to know. Make sure it’s easy to navigate. And keep it up-to-date with timely articles that combine your area of expertise/industry with the concerns of your clientelle.

Email Newsletter

It’s old, it’s not flashy, and some of us are subscribed to far-too-many newsletters. But, hands-down enewsletters continue to be one of the best converting tools of any marketing mix. Here’s the best part – your website copy (say articles on your blog) can help you fill that email newsletter, and in a best case-scenario you can even have a newsletter that gets taken care of AUTOMATICALLY when you post something new on your site.

This is old-school customer “dripping” for the 21st century (although to be fair email newsletters were very popular in the 20th century).

Content Writing Strategy

Once the above 2 issues are addressed, working properly, and easy to navigate/signup for – the next step is a content writing strategy. Set aside time each week, twice a day, or once a month (whatever it is stick to it) to continually update your website with helpful information. Each event a company representative attends, each update in your industry, is an opportunity for you to be heard and for potential clients and customers to find you.

This is vital because the previous step (email newsletters) and the additional steps I’m about to go through can not only be handled with this one step, but it also is vital to a search engine optimization strategy. I’ll spare you the boring details about why content is important from an SEO perspective (being seen on search engines) but the bottom line is - the more you get on your site – the more you write – the more you’ll be found. 

Pay Per Click Marketing

After – and only after – the above steps are complete it’s almost ALWAYS our recommendation to do pay per click marketing. You have the opportunity to get in front of your prospective customers at the exact moment they search for their problem – of which your business provides a solution! Conversion rates for pay per click are amazing and costs are relatively low – and the best part – you ONLY PAY WHEN SOMEONE VISITS YOUR WEBSITE.

With the above considerations in mind (your website = your brick and mortar business) how much would you pay for qualified foot traffic into your business? Each and every person that walks in the door looking for exactly what you have to offer and ready to purchase?

There is no difference between this scenario on-or-off line – except the Internet makes this shortening fo the sales-process possible.

Social Media

Finally, and only after the above are complete – should social media be considered.

And here’s why – social media means doing much of the above all over again (if you don’t have a great website in place or a content strategy). BUT if you do – then setting these up – and populating them with content is as simple as doing what you’re already doing. For example – you can set up your website to auto fill in a tweet or facebook post EVERY TIME you write!

Also, Social Media is not generally how you’ll be found, it’s an extension to an old school newsletter – which continues to provide a far higher return and far less time to manage – for all of our clients that make it an active part of their marketing mix – as opposed to social media.

To conclude, social media is important, but it’s not usually a vital part of the marketing mix for our clients and should only be considered after you’ve reviewed the above 4 pieces for your business.

Google Maps: Helping Boat Buyers Get Up Close & Personal with Fish Tale

One of Atilus’ longtime friends and clients, Fish Tale Sales & Service, is one of the very first local area companies to add this form of technology to their online marketing mix.

A large Florida boat dealer (including Grady-White, Chaparral and Robalo boats) and boat servicer, Fish Tale Sales & Service will now offer users from all over the world the ability to see both the business and inside various boats. For a business such as Fish Tale, having a distinct and comprehensive online presence is key (I’d also like to comment on just how high quality these images are – it’s one stop short of actually being there).

While most boat buyers will likely not make a decision based solely on what they see on Google, it can be the first step in reaching them at their Zero Moment of Truth and getting them in the door.

Google Business Photos’ SEO Impact for Fish Tale

In addition to allowing users to see inside Fish Tale, implementing this type of marketing will also benefit when users search for the business. Thanks to Google, business owners can begin to take full control what’s seen when users search for a company. With the addition of Google Plus Local and now Google Business Photos’ 360-degree view/tour, what the users see is exactly what business owners want them to see first.  In Fish Tale’s case, when users search for “Fish Tale Sales & Service Fort Myers Beach,” the information below will be presented.

A Welcome Addition to an Already-Enhanced Online Mix

For a company that already participates in a variety of online marketing activities, being the first to offer this type of “inside peek” online will put Fish Tale at an extreme advantage among other businesses and will prove to be beneficial to the company as a whole:

“We’re excited that anyone in the world may now tour our dealership without ever leaving their home! With the shifts in behaviors towards more Internet research before a purchase, your first impression should be your best one,” explains Travis Fricke, Vice President of Operations for Fish Tale. “Giving an apprehensive customer the chance to tour our business without ever convincing them to visit us is invaluable. This is just one more way to build buyer confidence in what we’re offering!”

Here at Atilus, we’re definitely looking forward to seeing what this new addition will do for our friends at Fish Tale and to see which other local businesses take note! Want to take a peek inside? Click here!  

This article won’t really talk about how to remove bad reviews online – that’s really not possible. There’s no legitimate service or company you can pay to eliminate a review. Instead this article covers how you can turn that bad review into a positive marketing piece for your company, using it as a reminder of the world we currently live in – and the fact that you as a business owner of Director of Marketing can no longer ignore any space, or any customer interaction.

Over the past few years, we’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing clients, and more-and-more these businesses are asking us how to remove bad reviews on their business from the web. They’re great companies, but 1 or 2 bad client experiences have led to retribution online – and they fear it’s hurting their business. If nothing else these reviews are hurting their egos and every entrepreneur wants to please everyone In working through this issue with many clients we’ve created a frame work for which you can make sure the effects of these reviews are minimized and – even better – possibly grow your business.

With the below template Atilus was able to take a client who was concerned about some negative reviews online, grow their revenue by 30%+ (from an average of $1.25 million/month to an average of $1.6 million/month) all while minimizing the impact of negative reviews. This has happened on a number of similar projects.

Here’s a breakdown of how we attack each situation and help our clients to remove bad reviews from Google (or other places):

1) Remedy the Situation

The first step is trying to right your wrong. Sometimes, the company that’s hired us to try to remove the bad reviews has truly failed by their customers – this is unacceptable to us (Atilus), and no longer an acceptable business practice – as we all live in an increasingly digital world where are actions as businesses have far-reaching consequences. Sometimes however, it’s simply a communication issue (in fact many of the businesses requesting reputation management involve average consumers making highly technical purchases or decisions – decisions they are often unable to fully grasp). As a web development company we too struggle with this same issue – many times clients hire us because they feel good about the relationship, but have no grasp of the underlying tasks we are about to perform – it’s our job to constantly educate and inform our clients to ensure they have the best experience. Regardless of what has occurred, or why the relationship went south the – first step is always the same – determining what went wrong and trying to remedy it through a direct contact and good old customer service. This alone will speak volumes about the kind of company you want to be (at least to this individual) and will be important for later steps.

If the relationship can be mended – simply ask them to remove their bad review – or better yet – convert it into a positive one. Nothing speaks louder than when a company shows it’s diligence and converts a negative experience into a positive one. If you’re unable to find the contact information for the person, there are certain tools at a web developers and web marketers’ disposal that may be able to uncover the person(s) information, but hopefully your own records should reveal when such an issue occurred.

2) Contact an Attorney

If the above fails, and you truly believe the customer or client is in the wrong, is unwilling to work through the issue and is committing libel (written statements that are untrue and paint a negative image of your company) legal action may be permitted. Although this is the second step – it should be used with TREMENDOUS caution – as each communication by your attorney(s) may also be placed online and could dissuade other future customers with this heavy-handed approach. However, if all of the above instances are fulfilled, and you’ve truly tried to amend the situation – this may be a necessary step to remove the defamatory information from the web.

3) Be Amazing

This should go without saying, and is something every entrepreneur typically worries about – what are you doing in the world? Is your business, or product, or service as amazing as you want it to be? Massage your processes, coach your people, make sure that moving forward everyone at your organization understands that the experience they present to your customers will be echoed throughout the rest of time – online. This is only going to get worse, reviews will compound, information on your company will continue to grow – make sure every client or customer has a positive experience. EVERY TIME!

4) Write About the Issue

This is my favorite, and a way for you to reveal how much you care (and a way to get out in front of search engines for negative reviews or negative searches). Explain, in each case what happened and the steps you took to remedy the situation – literally on your website or blog. Talk about the situation at great length and show your current and future clients your dedication to them, by revealing what you did to remedy a situation that went sour. Make sure not to include any specifics about the person, their name, location, etc.

As an aside, I love the show Mad Men – in one of my favorite episodes Lucky Strike (one of Sterling, Draper, Price’s largest accounts) fires the ad agency. Instead of wallowing in this – Don Draper has an “aha” moment, crafting a full-page ad in the New York times – in the form of a letter – entitled “Why I’m Quitting Tobacco.” He then goes on to explain that the ending of the relationship is positive – as Tobacco is such a negative product, that doesn’t really need them anyway. Although I’m not encouraging you to be manipulative, or dance around the facts as Don Draper did, it is important to understand the context framing plays in your own marketing, and how – when you take responsibility and reveal the issue on your own terms – your own website or blog (and most importantly, discuss what you did to remedy it) your current and future customers will thank you.

5) Concentrate on Cultivating Positive Reviews

Google calls the initial process of selecting a business for a product or service the ZMOT – or Zero Moment of Truth. No longer will your customers initially encounter your product in the store – instead they’ll perform searches, and do research online encountering what OTHERS have felt about the experience of working with you and your company.

The information they find plays a major role in their decision to hire you or purchase your product.

And, although the business landscape as a whole is slowly rolling out reviews, the retail space is inundated with this information. It’s important for businesses of all sizes to take control of this aspect of their marketing and setup simple processes that will encourage people to leave positive reviews. After a service is performed for example, one technique we implement is a follow up with an automatic email thanking them for their business and asking them to leave a positive review for our client on our clients’ Google Local page. Remember, if the only review potential customers on your business find when searching and considering your business is one negative review (from 7 years ago) – that looks very bad. But if you have 1 negative review among dozens or hundreds of positive ones – future customers will understand, will read-between-the-lines, and will hire you.

6) Grow Your Brand Online (You Have to Take Control of Your Name Online)

Many times Atilus is asked to step in when a company learns of negative publicity (bad reviews) online. Time and again this is a problem for organizations that have done NOTHING to market themselves or grow their brand online. These companies have let their online brand to chance and haven’t concentrated on the web to grow or manage their business – at all. Much like the above step – if you’ve been growing your brand online the odds that a single negative review can hurt you will greatly reduced.

7) Advertise, Concentrate on SEO & Social Media

Part of the above step involves actually advertising your site, and going through the motions to grow your business conventionally, through online advertising and search engine optimization. The more places you have out there for your customers to find you – the more likely any negative reviews will be lower in search results – or simply harder to find. When a person does a search for your business – do you want them to find information you don’t have control over? Or would you rather them land on your website where you’re able to present them with the best version of yourself?

Again – see step 3 – this only works if you’re working hard to make sure your product or service is impeccable.

8) Let Go

If all else fails, let go. As my business partner reminds me – “you can’t please everyone.” Having run this business together for the last 8 years, we’ve been as equally blessed by the amazing people we’ve gotten to work alongside – as shocked by the number of people that like to suck our company (and our clients’ company) for everything they can – and then leave a bad review or leave displeased. There are those individuals out there, be it for communication reasons, personal vendettas, or simply because of the way they were raised that you will never be able to help – in which case you just have to let go – concentrate on making your business amazing, and encourage your great clients to publicize their experience with working with you.

Removing Bad Reviews Isn’t the Issue

With the above out of the way, it’s important to understand that removing bad reviews isn’t really the issue – the issue is that your clients are smart, but they’re lazy. If all they find about you online are bad reviews, you have a serious problem. People aren’t going to read the review in it’s entirety, and see it from all perspectives. They aren’t going to understand your process and the particular nuances in structure or communication that may have led to this customers’ bad experience.

Instead they’ll glance over it – ask “is this positive or negative” or just look at the number of stars next to your name – and make a decision about you.

But if you concentrate on growing your business and brand as a whole – using online marketing – and then more specifically – providing a method in which existing clients can leave positive feedback for you online – you’ll be amazed by how little those poor reviews mean, and how much your revenue grows.

1. All were trending topics on Twitter at some point this weekend.
2. All were topics I’d never expect to see trending on Twitter at any point.

As a Fort Myers native and recent graduate of FGCU (Class of 2012!), I’ve become accustomed to having attended a school that a lot of people haven’t heard of. While the local area knows FGCU, my school has been a tiny blip on the radar compared to other universities in Florida. Now? All I have to say is my school is in Dunk City.

A Company of Eagles

Atilus got its start at FGCU – our cofounders, Zach and Harry, meet in a class while attending FGCU. A majority of our team members are either going to Florida Gulf Coast or have graduated, Harry serves on the board for the FGCU Alumni Association, Zach was named FGCU’s 2012 Alumni of Distinction, and a majority of our team has either graduated or is attending – so, needless to say, we have some deep roots at FGCU.

I’m not much of a basketball fan, so when I tuned into the FGCU vs. Georgetown game Friday night, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m always supportive of my school, but the win caught me off-guard. What surprised me the most, however, was seeing my tiny university of 13,000 or so students trending WORLDWIDE on one of the most popular social networking sites.

FGCU continued to trend on Twitter throughout Friday night and then again on Sunday night through Monday. To see my school on every national sports website was (and still is) a bit of a shock!

What fascinates me most is the effect social media has on information, news, and fandom. Within the final minutes of the game, my Twitter and Facebook accounts were EXPLODING with FGCU support. People that had never heard of FGCU before Friday are now calling it the best school on earth.

Preparing for “The FGCU Effect”

Our client, Panache Desai, was featured as a guest on Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday back in February, and we saw a 157% increase in visits over the previous week.  We began prepping for this back in September, and the website handled all the influx in traffic extremely well.

FGCU’s website, however, did not fare so well. According to our local NBC affiliate, NBC-2, the FGCU Athletics Department website crashed a number of times due to the surge in traffic from Sunday night’s game versus San Diego State. In addition, FGCU’s main website received over 100,000 visits after Friday night’s game versus Georgetown. What we like to refer to as “The Oprah Effect” (a giant surge in traffic due to media exposure) can now be referred to as “The FGCU Effect.”

With the Eagles getting ready to battle it out with the Gators this Friday, we can only imagine the preparation going into the website to get ready for yet another huge traffic surge. It is the best school on earth, after all.

Go Eagles! 

We’re very excited and honored to have worked with our longtime friend and client, Panache Desai, to prepare his website for what will be the start of amazing web exposure. A thought leader in the transformative power of energy, Panache was a guest featured on Oprah Winfrey’s (yes, the real Oprah) Emmy© Award-winning series, Super Soul Sunday.

We’ve worked with Panache for many years and have developed a robust website, complete with a membership section, custom store, and custom shopping cart. Panache is able to spread his thoughts and ideas to people across the globe through free membership on his website that allows members to access live & archived webcasts, CDs and DVDs, and access to special guest teachers.

To be featured on one of the biggest shows in the country and interviewed by one of the most influential people in the world means having a website than can handle the enormous amount of traffic that is sure to come from that exposure. Every effort and resource available must be put into supporting the website and ensuring that it doesn’t go down.

To explain just how much effort goes into this, we’ll go into a little bit of detail about what makes websites go down and how we made sure it didn’t happen for Panache.

What Goes Into Preparing a Website for Oprah?

Websites are hosted on servers and their capacity is measured by connections. The amount of connections a server can handle is measured by a combination of a few things:

• Hardware (how many and how fast)
• Website (coding: JavaScript, CSS, images)

A smaller website can typically handle everything on one server, but as a website and its traffic grows, these duties need to split up into different servers. For example, one server is dedicated to handling a database for files, while another is used for applications. When there are multiple servers operating a website, a load balancer will direct users to a server that has free resources to support their activities on the site.

When preparing a website for an event such as this, it comes down to reconfiguring all the elements that play into the amount of connections a website can handle – that’s how we knew we had to begin preparation months ahead of time.

How We Handled Panache’s Oprah Appearance

We were informed of Panache’s appearance with Oprah in September 2012, and website preparation followed immediately in October – almost 3 months prior to Panache even filming. It required a great deal of time, patience, and expertise from our developers to get the website ready for what was sure to be the busiest day for the website so far.

Here’s what we did to prepare for possibly the largest amount of traffic ever seen by Panache’s website:

• Optimized the website hardware.
• Optimized the website’s code.
  • PHP
  • Database
  • Assets (Images, Files, MP3s, etc.)
  • Content Delivery Network Signup (CDN)

Increasing Website Hardware

Servers are at the core of a website’s performance, and upping the servers for Panache was a must. Based on our estimates, we didn’t have nearly 1/10 of the server capacity needed to support the impending spike in traffic. Ensuring that the proper infrastructure is in place to meet our clients’ needs is our highest priority – with or without an Oprah appearance.

Content Delivery Network Signup

A content delivery network is a service that offloads certain elements of the website (HTML, CSS, images) onto a separate server so a page can load quickly. When a user visits a website, they can typically download only 2 things at a time. A CDN will analyze where a user is and pull specific elements from the closest server to them, leading to quicker load times and a faster website.

Estimating Traffic from Oprah

The real question, however, was this: how would we know what kind of traffic to prepare for? When a third party (Oprah) has any effect on your website, it can be difficult to estimate and measure the exact effect it will have.

To estimate traffic we could see from Oprah, we turned to two Google tools: AdWords and Trends. In the few days after Panache’s Super Soul Sunday PREVIEW, we saw a massive jump in searches for Panache’s name (almost 10x the normal amount), which was a clear indicator that we could expect to see the large amount of traffic we had anticipated.

Measuring Traffic With Real-Time Analytics

Another way we used to estimate the load on the server was through real-time analytics. During the broadcast, visitors and pageviews increased at astonishing percentages. Active visitors and pageviews were roughly 7x higher than normal, which is what we had prepared the site for.

To illustrate just how much of a traffic increase Panache’s website saw, take a look at a few percentages (week post-airing versus week pre-show airing):

157% Increase in Visits

166% Increase in Pageviews

163% Increase in Overall Goal Completions

 And most importantly, on the actual day of the event:

Traffic spiked to nearly 30x (3,000%) the normal amount – or 60x (60,000%) what we were seeing in the same period last year.

Website Optimization & Preparation Success

Preparing a website for any sort of event, whether it’s a national television appearance with Oprah Winfrey or a local news broadcast, can make or break an event’s success. In this case, we kept our eye on the ball from day 1 to ensure a huge success for Panache and his message.

Had we not taken these necessary steps in the months prior to Panache’s appearance on Super Soul Sunday, the site would have likely gone down. For a contemporary thought leader like Panache, the ability to connect to worldwide audience comes down to having a great website.

We would also like to extend congratulations to Panache and his team! For more information, visit www.PanacheDesai.com.

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From Waterford Executive Centre -  Elegantly appointed and furnished executive suites in the Naples-Bonita Springs-Estero corridor of Southwest Florida. Waterford features an impressive board room ideal for large meetings, with three additional conference rooms, available for smaller groups.

Waterford Centre, together with AdSource and TLC Marketing have partnered with Atilus to launch a brand new website to showcase its beautiful suites in Southwest Florida. Atilus was designated for design, implementation and management of their online presence. In addition to website management and content development, we look forward into helping Waterford encounter the perfect clientele they are looking for. Check waterford-centre.com for more information.

Services

• Website Design & Implementation
• XHTML & CSS
• Internet Marketing
• Lead Generation
• Social Media integration

We’re very excited and honored to announce that Atilus has been chosen exclusively by Google to host a Google Engage live-streaming broadcast event, featuring talks from Google’s top thought-leaders, including their VP of Americas Marketing, Director of Agency Development, and Head of Channel Managed Agencies.

This 90-minute live-streaming event on March 5 will focus on topics that revolve around marketing a business in today’s ever-evolving digital world, including marketing to new customers, reaching new customers, and working with a Google Partner agency.

Google Engage for Agencies is a new program developed by Google to help top Internet marketing agencies stay current and offer innovative Google AdWords solutions to clients. This program includes direct access to an AdWords representative, exclusive marketing tools, and training to stay ahead of the curve.

We’ve been longtime advocates of Google’s advertising solutions and recommend them to all of our clients. When the Google Engage for Agencies program was created, we were quick to apply and now have the ability to access all the amazing tools Google has to offer.

We’re definitely looking forward to the upcoming event and to everything that Google’s new Engage for Agency program has to offer. Anytime we’re given the opportunity to learn from the best, we take it!

Google AdWords has long been the biggest player in the world of paid search advertising and has helped businesses of many sizes attract new customers through the millions of searches made every day.

There’ve been many discussions surrounding Google and their invasion of Internet users’ privacy. Through tools like Google Analytics, marketers and advertisers can track all kinds of data: location, time spent on a specific page, how a user got to that page, etc.

With AdWords, advertisers are able to target users based on the exact term they search for, their location, and language (among other factors). With Google announcing new “Enhanced Campaigns,” advertisers and searchers can expect to see an entirely new level of ad targeting.

Enhanced Ad Targeting

Specific campaign targeting in AdWords is a large task, and one that helps improve click-through-rate (CTR), conversion rates, and the overall performance of a campaign. Before enhanced campaigns, advertisers would resort to creating different campaigns based on different users i.e. a separate campaign for mobile devices. While this didn’t NEED to be done, doing so would help campaign performance.

Google has caught on with the new mobile movement and has introduced mobile campaigns to help advertisers target users not only by search terms, but also by all factors influencing a potential consumers’ decision – all from one campaign.

It’s also important to note that advertisers will no longer have the option to target campaigns by mobile device and that the new enhanced campaigns will integrate mobile and desktop ads regardless.

Say you’re the owner of a local hair salon. You want to set up an AdWords pay-per-click campaign, but have different targeting needs. With AdWords’ enhanced campaigns, you can have ONE campaign that will allow you to target consumers by the time of day and the device they’re using with different ads.  

User #1 on an iPhone at 2pm:

Walk-Ins Welcome!

Stop by Kristen’s Cuttery for a

Special Afternoon Deal!

www.kristenscuttery.com/afternoon-specials

User #2 on a Desktop at 9pm:

Make an Appointment Today

We’re Open 10am-6pm, Make An

Appointment With Our Form Here!

www.kristenscuttery.com/appointment-request

Staying Up-To-Date in AdWords

AdWords is an ever-evolving service that will continue to provide businesses with innovative advertising solutions. We’re huge advocates of AdWords and recommended it to most of our clients – we’re the only AdWords Certified Agency from Tampa to Miami, so we’re excited to see what effect this has on the entire paid search industry!

“You Can Still Dunk in the Dark”

This year’s Super Bowl will forever be known as the “Blackout Bowl” due to the power outage that followed the ending of the halftime show. The power on one side of the stadium went out, causing the game to be on hold for over 30 minutes – enough time to give the brand team over at Oreo to develop an entirely new advertising campaign.

With a social event such as this, millions looked to Twitter (including myself) to see what exactly was going on. Upon hearing of the blackout, Oreo’s team took to Twitter to display a unique advertisement stating ever so fittingly “Power out? No problem.” The ad you see has now been retweeted over 16,000 times.

Companies paid millions of dollars to have their brands exposed during the most-watched television event in the country – including Oreo. Their commercial cost much more to make and was completely outshone by their FREE message on Twitter (there’s still a little overhead there, but basically free compared to the cost of television advertisements).

In addition to the social media exposure, this story has also been mentioned in online articles all over, including The Huffington Post, The Inquisitor, and even Forbes. Other television ads haven’t received nearly as much exposure.

Newsjacking at its Finest

While Oreo’s recent tactic may seem like an entirely new concept, it’s actually been around for some time. It’s called “newsjacking” and is “the process by which you inject your ideas or angles into breaking news, in real time, in order to generate media coverage for yourself or your business.”

Oreo’s strategy displays newsjacking at its finest, there are many companies that struggle to find both the right way to use it and the right time. There’s been a lot of debate about appropriate newsjacking topics, many of which surround tragedies.

An example of this is when Hurricane Sandy struck the US last year – InStyle Magazine featured an article relating to a list of top beauty products to keep you entertained during the storm. This is a milder case, but many have pointed out that it’s wrong to newsjack stories of tragedy.

As we can see newsjacking is a successful strategy, but only if executed very carefully and at the precise moment – and as far as Oreo is concerned, they nailed it.