Whether you are a business owner, service professional or book author, effectively utilizing social media can get you in front of your target audiences.

First, though, it is important to understand what NOT to do when using social media to connect with prospective clients or customers.

Share information — do NOT sell!

In other words, you do NOT want to tweet “Buy my novel on Amazon” and include the link.  Instead you might tweet “My novel deals with a mother’s separation anxiety from her teenage son” and then include the link to Amazon.

Or, if you are a dentist, you do NOT want to tweet “My dental practice promises you the whitest teeth.”  Instead you could tweet a link to a blog post (not necessarily written by you but not written by a dentist in your same geographical area) that talks about how people with white teeth feel about themselves.

Or, if you are the head of a software company, you do NOT want to tweet “Our software will solve your database problems.”  Instead you could tweet “We were pleased to set up a client database that allowed easy access to prospective clients of an engineering firm.”

Okay, now that you understand the important distinction between sharing information and selling, let’s talk about targeting your prospective clients or customers.

Here are a few examples of where you can find your target audiences:

LinkedIn:

You can do a search on groups to find interest groups that might be interested in your products or services.

When you join these groups, you will remember NOT to sell.  Instead you will add insightful comments to discussion threads, and you can include a link to your website at the end of your comment.  (Note:  For LinkedIn you must put http:// in front of a URL to make it a hot link.)

Facebook:

 Search for groups or Pages (formerly fan pages) on which you can follow the same strategy as on LinkedIn.

Tip: You can start your own group on LinkedIn and/or Facebook.  Again, your goal is to share information that demonstrates your expertise and encourages your target audiences to trust your products or services because of the information you share.

Twitter: 

Search by topic to find people tweeting about your products and services, then follow these people.  These people may follow you back (especially if they check out your Twitter profile and see that your tweets share good information).

Blogging:

You can create your own informative content to share by blogging about your topic.

This is an excellent way to make your target audiences aware of areas that should concern them.  For example, perhaps you have a home repair business.  You could blog about topics such as furnace problems, water heater issues, and roof repair.  People reading your blog posts may become aware of potential problems in their own homes.

Pinterest: 

One of the newer social media sites, Pinterest is excellent if you have a business with lots of engaging photos.  Perhaps you have a clothing boutique with one-of-a-kind dresses.  You can “pin” individual photos of these dresses onto Pinterest to attract potential clientele.

Ebooks:

Want to demonstrate your expertise by writing a book?  Write an ebook, convert it to the different ebook formats or use a service to do this, sell it on ebook platforms such as Kindle and Nook, and then give free copies to your target audiences.

Of course, you then can use your social media participation to post announcements about your ebook.  Again, though, word your announcement so that you are offering information and NOT selling your business.

The question of time commitment is important when you are considering social media participation to promote a business or book.

If you are worried about the time commitment to participate on social media, start with only one site.  Then, as you become more comfortable with participating, begin to expand your involvement to other sites.

Do, though, set a time period commitment so that you regulate how much time you spend daily on these activities.  If you are not good at staying focused on a time limit, set an alarm to remind you when it is time to return to your work.

Additional tip: An added advantage of participating on social media is that you may learn information that you can use.  Shared information can be very valuable – and it can be information that you may otherwise not have learned.

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If your company is heading to an exhibition or trade show, either as an exhibitor or as a visitor, you want to get word out about this as much as you possibly can. Before the event, you can use Social Media, email marketing and blog posts to promote your attendance, but your activity should not stop on the day.

By liveblogging and/or Tweeting from the event, you can get word out to potential clients or customers who might also be attending, and if it’s an open event, you might be able to draw in a few more prospective opportunities to your exhibition stand.

It’s also a great way of keeping your fans and current clients up to date with news and developments from within your industry. If you sit in on a presentation given by an industry expert, for example, you can share the things you’ve learned with the people who follow you.

Liveblogging is a great way to do this. Although Twitter is more immediate and you can track event hashtags, you are limited to 140 characters. With liveblogging, you can set up a feed, and you aren’t quite so limited. You’ll still want to keep your posts fairly short – after all, nobody wants to wade through dozens of 250 word updates in quick succession, any more than you’d want to type them – but you’ve got a bit more flexibility if you want to make lengthier updates.

Preparing to liveblog an event

Make sure you’ve got all the gear you’ll need:

• laptop, tablet or smartphone
• chargers (just in case you run low on batteries)
• digital camera
• video camera (with a decent microphone for interviews)
• digital recorder

Also, make sure you double and triple check before the event that you’ll definitely have Internet access. And on that note, make sure that you know how much Internet access will cost – some venues charge you to use their connection.

Liveblogging applications and services

There are several applications out there that you can use for liveblogging. One of the most well-regarded seems to be Coveritlive. This is a free service, but has a lot of great features that make it ideal for liveblogging events, such as an iPhone app, and the ability to use Twitter hashtags.

If Coveritlive is a little too feature-heavy, and you want something a bit simpler, there’s Wordfaire, which supports text and images. If you have a Facebook page, try the Livestream plugin, which allows users visiting your site to share activity in real time.

If your website is built on WordPress, this too has a liveblogging plugin.

Some things to keep in mind when liveblogging

Don’t think that you have to be the first to report on everything. Of course, being the first to blog about some exciting industry story or development is great, but if your post is poorly written and ill-informed, people aren’t going to bother reading more. Take the time to be sure of your facts, check your post thoroughly, and make sure that if you can’t be first, you’ll be the best.

Another very important thing to bear in mind is that liveblogging does not mean “real time”. Unless you can type at Superman-like speed, there’s no way you’ll be able to blog in real time. Just focus on the things that you think are likely to be of the most interest and benefit to your readers. Have a plan, and stick to it.

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Freelancers are free from the watchful eyes of a manager or supervisor, who is constantly making sure that the work is done. Instead, freelancers work by their own time frame and schedule, taking advantage of all the freedom it entails. However, this opportunity is not without its disadvantages; one common problem that plagues many freelancers is poor time management. The inability to keep track of projects and deadlines can have a detrimental effect on the freelancer’s business, resulting in lost clients and contracts.

5 Tips to Help Freelancers Manage Their Time

Achieving good time management habits is a skill that requires dedication and practice. However, there are a number of ways by which the freelancer can maximize the hours in the day. The following tips can help freelancers make the most out of their valuable time:

1. Follow Deadlines

One reason why freelancers fail at time management is because they set vague goals or deadlines. They make excuses when they don’t meet goals, pushing them back to a further time. However, this can have a negative effect, hindering the freelancer’s ability to meet client demands. Therefore, freelancers need to set clear deadlines that are realistic and manageable. Make sure that you give yourself enough time to meet the tasks, but not enough to motivate procrastination. By clearly defining deadlines, freelancers can better manage their time.

2. Use Time Tracking Tools

Time tracking tools gives freelancers a number of advantages, including the ability to understand exactly where their time has gone. Many time tracking tools keep online records of time spent in the past, offering freelancers insight on how to improve time management. In addition, freelancers are able to carefully budget their time, monitoring the duration of the project throughout the day. By keeping track of time, freelancers can better manage and allocate their responsibility among various projects.

3. Prioritize

A busy freelancer has multiple projects and dozens of tasks on his or her plate, constantly juggling between them. Prioritizing is a useful way to increase efficiency and make the most out of the freelancer’s time. While creating a “to-do” list, consider which projects are more important, and which can take a more relaxed schedule. There are a number of factors that play into the priority of a project, ranging from deadline, budget, and the preferences of the client.

4. Remove Distractions

Regardless of whether a freelancer works in a coffee shop or a home office, they are bound to be surrounded by distractions. Noisy conversations, children, phone calls, the Internet – all these distractions tempt the freelancer away from his or her work. However, these distractions can quickly sap time, leaving freelancers wondering where the day went. Therefore, one helpful tip is to manage the interruptions in the environment, and avoid distractions as much as possible.

5. Take Breaks

Poor time management are not necessarily associated with slackers; even workaholics can suffer from the inability to effectively manage their time. Many freelancers work long hours, often overworking themselves to the point of exhaustion. Personal and social life can suffer while the freelancer spends more and more time in the office. Therefore, it is important to take breaks, in order to make long work hours more manageable. Give yourself some freedom, so you can re-approach work with a rekindled spirit.

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As a small time freelancer just starting out you’ve probably wondered how you can ever begin to compete with the big-boys of your industry.

This is understandable, since the big names tend to offer a solid reputation, a large team of professionals and an impressive set-up for client meetings. No-one can blame you for wondering what can a lone, works from home in their pyjamas and drinks endless cups of tea could do to compete.

Yet the truth is, while there are many things you can’t offer, it’s rarely those things that are most important to clients.

So what do clients want?

They want to be able to trust the work will be completed to the highest standard – and without a shadow of a doubt, that’s one thing you can do, can’t you?

Compete by offering a personal service:

What’s one of the key problems with large firms? Their clients rarely know who’s actually carrying out their work. They might regularly talk with the ‘big boss’, they might even have a dedicated ‘account manager’, but chances are the company employs throes of ‘little people’ who are the ones actually doing most of the leg-work.

Why is this a problem?

Because the more people involved in a project, the bigger the chance that something may go wrong.

What can you offer?

A firm reassurance that it is you and you alone that does all the work. This means you are in control, and if something goes wrong, you are in the position to fix it instantly.

What’s more, when a client calls with a question or problem, you have the knowledge and resources to answer. None of this ‘I’ll try to find out and call you back later‘ nonsense that frequently occurs in large firms.

Compete by offering value for money:

While the big firms will tell you that you have to pay big bucks to get the best, small-time freelancers know this isn’t true.

There’s nothing to say that just because someone is a one-man-band that they don’t have the skills, knowledge and experience to deliver results.

And what else can you deliver? The results of minimal overheads; e.g. a far lower cost than your biggest competitors could ever dream of charging.

Compete by showcasing your professionalism:

Don’t be fooled into thinking that because you work alone from home you can act less professional than your suited-and-booted competitors.

While clients value a personal touch, and the ability to talk to the same person about their project each time they call, they also value professionalism.

An unprofessional approach to working life is one of the areas that lets many freelancers down, and is one of the signals a potential client will be watching out for when they are deciding whether or not to hire you.

You might know that you spend your days sprawled across the sofa in jogging bottoms and a t-shirt, but you don’t want your clients to know this. Ensure your website, pitch, emails and phone manner all scream PROFESSIONAL!

Compete by specialising:

If you try to be ‘all things to all men‘ you’ve got a high chance of falling flat on your face. Instead, choose a niche within your niche that you’re going to become the best-of-the-best at.

Use LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs and industry forums to showcase your expertise and use this as your biggest USP. Your competitors might have twenty staff members working round the clock, but what they probably don’t have is hard and fast evidence of speciality knowledge and expertise.

And finally…

Compete by marketing your USPs:

When you market yourself you need to emphasise the above. Tell potential clients that by choosing a freelancer (you) they’ll be getting the kind of service and attentiveness lost on companies as soon as they start employing staff members. Demonstrate your professionalism. Send examples of previous work showcasing your incredible expertise. Show them how you can offer true ‘value for money’.

Image Credits: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.

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Social Media has become an integral part of many marketing campaigns and as it is a cost effective way of getting brand exposure, so why not?

A problem that is facing a lot of companies or entrepreneurs is that they don’t fully understand how social media works and waste time ‘box ticking’ to the point of it becoming a redundant process with little return.

Social media is instant and mistakes can be made so how do you protect your brand when flippant Tweets could land you in hot water?

Social Media

The internet has revolutionised the way people live and businesses market themselves, marketing and advertising is no longer a performance but a discussion. Social media gives people a voice, for better or worse, and companies now have to engage in this to improve their services and protect their brand.

Social media has its place and most companies can find a social media platform that is suitable but many companies will just set up a Facebook page or Twitter account and assume that is all they need. If your target audience are not active on Facebook then why waste time on there?

Find out where the conversations are and engage with them, photographers should be on Flickr, professional agencies should look at LinkedIn, there are blogs and forums in almost every industry that could benefit from your presence if this is where your target audience is then you should be there.

Un-sociable media

Giving people a voice can have its rewards but it can also be dangerous to you as one bad review or negative comment can spark a discussion that explodes into a hate campaign. Un-sociable media is how I describe social media that is negative, counterproductive or in some cases just hateful.

Negativity about you

Your website, blog or business is an online brand and you will want to protect this but with any online presence you are exposing yourself to both praise and criticism.

For anyone wanting to make money online then trust is important, this may be from selling a product or service online or your website may make money through affiliates or referrals. If visitors don’t trust your website or you, then they will not spend money or value your referral enough to spend money. The same applies to offline sales but with online it has a much quicker and more detrimental effect.

Social Media can make or break a websites reputation and you cannot control what people write. The biggest areas you need to monitor are review sites, Twitter, Facebook fan pages, forums and blogs. If someone is unhappy with you they can vent their anger online and quickly change someone’s opinion of your site.

If you see a bad review do not rise to this but contact the post author to listen, react accordingly and sympathetically and see if you can get an update on their review. Most people are reasonable and the feedback can sometimes be beneficial long term to your business.

If you find a malicious review from a competitor then most review sites will remove this if you apply to them and can prove it is not a real review. Do not get into a war over reviews and false reviews are often quite obvious and say more about the person writing it than the victim.

Being negative yourself

Instant updates on Twitter and blog posts can be very damaging to your website.

We have all had moments of frustration when you want to shout to the world that someone has given you bad service or you are annoyed with something or someone but putting your views out into the public domain can lose you a lot of respect.

A quick 140 character update in anger from a Twitter account can make you look unprofessional and immature. You may be justified but negativity breeds negativity, if you are really unhappy with a service then the internet is not always the best place to vent this anger. It is not always helpful as subjective comments may cause people to retaliate and you end up in a social media battle in front of potential customers.

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Unlike the previous year, it is the Google which claimed the top position all over the world. It simply pushed back Facebook, the previous global leader. It was the survey and study of Byte Level which conducted the 212 Web Globalization Report Card in which it reviewed 105 websites on a global level. In the entire survey, 17 industries participated that included most of the three quarters of Interbrain’s Best Global Brands.

Changes in the study

A new and refreshing occurred this time while conducting the popular study which was about the inclusion of different class or segment. Yes, in this global study, the company thought of including the mobile applications and mobile users for much better understanding. It was done in order to know the fact how these companies balance the needs of global websites and mobile strategies.

Although Apple is more popular when it comes to thorough analysis and critical evaluation of the standards of different websites the recent survey did not included this company even in the list of top 10 websites. It is truly a fact which raises concern over the decreasing web traffic and popularity of the company against its rival, Google.

Criteria for evaluation of web globalization

• Reaching approach to the consumer world – As the websites reach the global consumers via different set of languages, it was kept at the top position while analyzing the index. In the current report, almost 32 languages were kept in the list.
• Ease in navigation – The consumers should find it easier to locate their personalized search items irrespective of the languages they know and speak. It was also about the quickness or time taken to find the most favorite content on the internet.
• Architecture of mobile or website support – Different web companies offer a wide variety of architecture support to the visitors. Mobile devices are also accessing the websites while maintaining the language parity. The responsiveness of the websites, compatibility of the mobile applications and easy customization were also kept in mind.
• Socialization and localization – The local sites should certainly promote the number of searches on weekly basis. The user should always find the website and its contents quite suitable and excellent in context of the local dialects and culture.

Where is Apple?

Although Apple is quite dominant in the digital space and portable global market yet it has failed to regain its top position in this survey of 2012. One of the reliable and well posted employee from the survey agency suggested that he was asked the same question in the previous year, too. How could a company with bank balance of $100 billion not score in the top 10? It is quite surprising but it should be taken the other way around. It is supposed that the company did not capitalize on the translation spending. No one knows how the iPad or iPhone behaved with Hebrew or Arabic languages. This was in fact, treated as the most favored cause for its failure.

It is needless to say that Apple has support for fewer languages on the web as compared to the mobile devices.

Summary: - This is simply the concept of language parity between the system and mobile phones that have kept Apple on the back foot. Google has scored the top position in the latest survey for web globalization and its support of more mobile applications and wider variety of languages.

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Have you ever thought about what the similarities are between an IPhone and an online survey panel? If you are a normal person, my guess is no………until now. The truth is, IPhones and online panels are more alike than one might think.

Information Age

Let us start with the information we have before us. We are in the midst of an information age. With an IPhone (or any smart phone for that matter), and a good internet connection, we can download more information in an hour than you could digest in a lifetime.

How do we know that the information we consume is accurate and not just a hodgepodge of unproven facts? Answer: we don’t. Not completely at least. We must reference other authors who’ve written on the same subject matter, and compare and contrast what has been written until we gather what we feel is the general consensus on the subject at hand. Just as we can do that with subjects online, we can do that with the market research we do through online panels.

Survey Panels

With online panels, often times a market researcher will gather a sample large enough to be statistically significant with a 5% margin of error or smaller. With the kinds of studies that are done, people’s preferences and feelings are brought to the forefront.

What if one person’s answers to the questions presented are quite biased according to their preferences and not in line with the masses? Answer: Duh, of course they are. ☺ It is for this very purpose that an average is tallied for people’s responses and the market research being done can be applied to an entire market.

Comparison Between Iphones and Online Surveys

The second comparison we would like to make refers to how fragile both IPhones and online surveys can be. All it takes is one broken piece to bring a well oiled machine to its knees.

A few months back when I was updating my operating system on my iPhone, I apparently didn’t load the software properly and when I thought I was done I had no contacts saved in my phone I couldn’t even make a phone call to anyone.

My expensive new phone had become an obsolete worthless paperweight without the correct software. It felt like one of those dreams you had as a kid where you see the scary man and try to run away from him, but you’re stuck. He catches up to you and just before he gets you, you scream and wake up from your nightmare. That’s how it felt with my phone, and that’s how it feels with online panels when your survey isn’t set up correctly.

Using Quality Data

Much like my obsolete IPhone, online survey data become obsolete when we use poorly worded qualifying questions (Qualifying question-defined as a question used at the beginning of a survey to ensure that the respondent matches the surveys requirements for respondents). Respondents can be screened out of the survey at this point or loaded or misleading words or phrases.

In fact, a poorly worded or misinterpreted qualifying question doing this kind of market research can bias an entire study essentially nullifying the conclusions reached in a study. By using a poorly phrased or misleading question, you wouldn’t even know if the respondents were really qualified to participate in your study from the beginning.

Summary

In summary, both with our IPhones, and online panels we must be careful that the information we gather truly reflects the opinions of the majority, and that we’ve prescreened correctly in our panel so as not to nullify the accuracy an entire sample of responses.

If we fail to do either of these things, we can’t claim that the results of our market research has done much of anything other than create a fancy “paperweight”.

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SEO for Small Businesses

SEO practices for small business should involve a number of simple steps which need only take a little time and effort without costing anything. Search engine optimisation involves building a website that is easily accessed and navigated by search engine robots (crawled) and structured in a way that makes sense to your visitors.

Site structure, including correct title tagging is very important to SEO for any small business because how well you build the foundations for your site will determine how easy it will be to develop.

Think of your website as a library book that you want to be perused by readers that could become your customers. Now think of the search engines, especially Google, as the librarians. You need to give the librarian a reason to recommend your book above others which includes making it easy to read with a well-structured contents page and full of helpful and relevant information.

It’s all about Content

Search engine robots consistently crawl the internet looking for search terms that are requested by searchers. They use domain name relevance and also scour through the content to see if there are any terms that stand out as being related to a particular subject.

The domain name should ideally give an indication as to what is contained within the site for easier indexing by Goggle, Yahoo or Bing. This is not a must, but if you are building a site from the ground up it would be better to find a domain name that has relevance to your area of business. There are free SEO tools that can help you to choose a domain name which contains relevant keywords.

Your website content should, however, be written for humans and not just for search engines. By stuffing in too many keywords or search terms this can ultimately do your site a disservice. In general, use relevant keywords around 4% or 5% during content writing and use them carefully in title tagging. Google likes to see relevant content added often, so updating your site content should be done weekly at the very least. Updating does not mean changing pages but means adding pages so that your website grows with time.

Popularity Building

A website with no visitors is like a book in a library that no one knows is there. SEO involves trying to replicate normal human internet behaviour, but over a shorter period of time. A certain percentage of internet users will naturally link to your site from other sites if your content answers questions that they think or know will help others. Discussions in forums often include links to helpful sites by users just trying to help other people. That is the nature of the real internet user with specific interests and a charitable spirit.

Over time, Google sees that people elsewhere on the internet are linking to your website and can see this favourably if the site where the link is placed has a good reputation. Your website popularity begins to increase if this behaviour continues. SEO tactics just try to speed up this process by placing relevant links on related sites to yours although these links must look as natural as possible.

You can help improve your website’s popularity by getting involved with discussions on quality forums that cover your area of business and offer free help and advice. In turn you will be allowed to add your signature below each one of your posts with a link back to your website. If you contribute regularly, the forum administrators may allow you to place links within your text but don’t just place links back to your site with no helpful comments. You should direct people to a page on your site that answers their questions. If you do not have such a page, then build one. Now you have more ideas on the type of content for your website.

Social Media and SEO

Never underestimate the power of social media to your website’s progress. More and more people are using their smartphones to access their Facebook accounts and often link to websites suggested from Facebook pages. One of the first things you should do when working on SEO for your website is to get a Facebook page to use for regular announcements and product launches.

Even though Facebook back links are ‘no follow’ links in that they are not meant to add to the popularity of web pages, it has been reported that a significant number of people buy a product or service as a result of seeing it on Facebook. Also, a backlink from Facebook could lead to someone bookmarking your page and spreading your content virally which does have a great SEO effect.

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Google+ maybe a late entrant into the phenomenon that is social media, and like many people you may initially wonder why you even need to use social media in your business, but the problem is can you really afford not to?

As an example – is there a day that passes when you do not see a company advertising its facebook page? Commonly it is more unusual to see an advert (Even on television) without a social media link of some form on it, than one with it. The ubiquitous twitter and facebook icons can also be found on nearly every website you come across.

And for business networking, we have seen LinkedIn make large inroads and carve out its own niche in the past year.

So why does your company need Google+? Well make no mistake Google has not entered this market with the intent of just being a bit player on the peripheral of things.

Get There Early

Now is the ideal time to start building your business pages on the service, as it has been proven time and again on other forms of social media that those who get onboard early reap the biggest benefits. Although the service has been public for a few months now, it’s still not too late to be one of the early adopters and biggest benefiters of the new social platform.

Firstly if you wait then you may find that by the time you go to register your business page on Google+ that someone else has already registered it, and by then there will be little that you can do about it, unless they have blatantly abused your company name, but if your company name is generic you will not be able to wrestle the page back off the other party.

Increase Your Company’s Visibility In Search Results

Also various parties on the Internet all seem to agree that Google+ can have an impact on your search visibility, with those pages that are rich in content appearing more frequently in search results, thus resulting in more traffic.

Also when you sign up for a Google+ badge, it automatically signs your company up into its “Direct Connect” program, so that if anyone searches on your company name with a + sign in front of it, they get directed straight to your Google+ page, making your company immediately accessible with just one click and no scanning down pages of search results.

Whilst it has many similarities to Facebook, such as Facebook has a like button; Google has a +1 button.

Google+ has ‘circles’ allowing you to just share information with certain friends and not all of them, whereas facebook has ‘smart friends.’ You can also create multiple circles of friends, which is a big advantage.

They both also feature options enabling chat between users.

Why Google+ Works – A Core Of Integrated Users

Where they differ is that Google+ is an application, and it has been designed to integrate with the vast amount of Google applications people already use, such as Google Apps For Business, which includes email, calendars and document sharing. And you only need one Google account to access everything, this means that you only need to login once to access your email, schedule a meeting with a client, and place an update on your Google+ business page, and of added benefit for businesses is Google checkout, which can be used as payment processor.

You can also link business pages to Google Maps, which show up in search results whereas facebook places (Maps) do not.

So as you can see whilst Google is a late entrant into the market it potentially has a lot more to offer to businesses as a one stop shop, and thus it well worth considering joining Google+

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Remember the feeling when you went on your first ever date? Sweaty palms, uncomfortable silences. Did you wish you had a second chance to make a first impression?

Google Adwords Remarketing

With Google’s contextual advertising network Adwords, you now get the chance to reposition your advert to someone who has previously shown interest or as google call it remarketing your ads.

It works like this. If you have your ad on the Google Display Network and someone clicks your ad but doesn’t actually convert into a sale/lead you can choose to have your ad re-pitched to them. Not very intuitive in itself you might think. But let us say your visitor went through 4 pages before getting to the price and then exited, you can be quite sure that they left because they didn’t see value. You can then choose to show them a different advert, re-positioning your pitch to show the ROI they can expect. This is all done automatically and it is incredibly powerful.

Let Google Turn Your Visitors To Buyers

The visitor has shown interest and in order to close the sale, Google will virtually chase them until they surrender (or your ad credit runs out). It’s as if we had the following conversation.

Visitor: I like your product but your price is excessive.

Google: You might think so but here is the ROI you can expect.

Visitor: Ok that is fair, but it wasn’t engaging enough.

Google: Well look here, we have a community section where we constantly interact with our clients.

It’s like you have your own personal closer, one who will chase the sale for up to 18 months on your behalf.

The Process Of Setting Your Adwords Ads For Remarketing

The setup level is intermediate, first login to Adwords and click on “Control Panel And Library” under the list of campaign folders, on the left-hand side of the “Campaigns” tab. Then “Audiences” and “Create a New Audience”.

Next,  you pick a name and description for the list, and set the membership duration, then tags. I don’t know how you feel, but I wouldn’t like to be targeted for 18 months seeing the same advertisement, but be aware that you can set it that way if you wish.

How Google Adwords Remarketing Really Works

It really is laser-targeted advertising. The system will track their page views and see where they exited and base the next advert on their onsite behavior. Examples might be as such:

• If they visited your pricing page then exited, you can show them an ad with their projected ROI.
• If they read about the product but then exited without going further you can show them a competitor comparison ad.
• If they visited the support section you could reinforce your commitment to customer service.
• If they signed up to your opt-in list and then exited, you could show an ad referencing the mailing you will be sending them.

Hopefully you will now see the power of the system, you can tailor their user experience in such a defined manner that they can’t help but be impressed, it seems like all their queries are being answered without even interacting directly with you.

You are going to need to tailor the list so that if they visit your site a second time they are removed from the first list and entered into a second, otherwise they will be seeing the same ads when they have already been influenced by them.

The Google Display Network is more suited to image adverts rather that textual ones and re-marketing also applies to images so you certainly should utilize this option, especially if you are happy with creating and editing images.

Summary

You just do not get this kind of laser targeted accuracy with other advertising networks. Once someone has shown an interest in you, the chance to follow it up rather than lose the lead altogether is absolutely invaluable. With the system being in a relative state of infancy, you are going to be among a select few who are using it, giving you the necessary marketing edge.

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• PPC & CRO: Balance your efforts to optimize your campaigns and generate revenue
• 4 Ways To Increase Your AdSense Earnings
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