Semple Ideas

Hurricane StrIKEs, Conversion Rate SpIKEs

Audra Jackson — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 21:06:48 +0000

Just over a week ago, Hurricane Ike decided to make landfall and inflict destruction on the Texas Gulf Coast. For most of us, things are getting back to normal, and we are once again enjoying life’s little luxuries: electricity, running water, fresh food, etc.

Despite all the mayhem of the last couple weeks, one benefit of living in Houston is having clients located within the Houston/Galveston area. While Ike may have hurt some of them (many restaurants and retail businesses have not yet reopened and may not for weeks), he has been quite kind to others, particularly those in construction-related businesses.

One client, Houston Siding, has seen been happy to see such an increase in traffic over the last couple of weeks. As I checked my work email from home over the hurricane weekend, I noticed the client had begun receiving more leads through its web site than usual. As more and more residents began to regain electricity and internet access, the number of leads went up even further. So, as a keen marketing specialist looking to capitalize on the current conditions, I began writing ads for my client targeting customers whose homes have suffered damage from Ike.

I then analyzed the affects of those new ads on our PPC campaigns. The results? Natural disasters are undeniably good for business!

Houston Siding has seen its click-through rate triple and conversion rate quadruple:

Pre-Ike:

CTR: 2.45%
Conversion Rate: 6.33%

Post-Ike (w/ old ads):

CTR: 1.67%
Conversion Rate: 13.33%

Post-Ike (w/ new Ike-related ads):

CTR: 6.67%
Conversion Rate: 25.00%

The example below shows a comparison of the original ad I was testing and the new Ike-related ad for one ad group Houston Siding’s campaign. Clearly, the Ike ad has so far been a bigger draw for customers as its click-through rate is almost double that of the original ad, and the conversion rate is up to an impressive 50% in just a few days.

In conjunction with the PPC changes, we have also updated our home page calls to action to reflect the ads in the hope that the changes will further increase our conversion rates. Time will tell how successful our changes will be, but so far the stats bode well for Houston Siding’s post-Ike success.

Obviously, we could have predicted an upward swing in traffic and conversions based on the increase in demand for these services after the storm. However, our decision to create compelling ads and include relevant imagery and copy on our site has helped ensure greater exposure of our client. Through our efforts, we have shown prospective customers that Houston Siding is not only aware of their problems and can offer services to help, but we give visitors a visual and emotional reassurance that our client understands their issues and how seriously they have been affected.

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Blogging For Business at HTC

Pop Labs — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:33:54 +0000

Last week, I had the chance to participate in the latest installment of the Houston Technology Center’s educational seminar series - Blogging for Business. The seminar’s focus was the use of social media in a business environment. The panel consisted of myself, Steve Latham and Katie Laird and Kelsey Ruger. Sounds like overall we got good feedback. I included a link to my presentation hosted on Slideshare.net. (This is the updated version that I presented at the PKF University this week).

View SlideShare presentation (tags: houston technology center htc pkf texas pkftexas)

In true social media fashion if you have any feedback, you can comment here, Join me on facebook or LinkedIn and of course follow me(Kelsey), Steve and Katie on Twitter.

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SEO Rapping for Biz Kid$

clewis — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 17:02:03 +0000

Teaching children to be entrepreneurial is a task that should be taken more seriously. I have 3 children and I’ve always pushed them to try and educate themselves on other things that they may be interested in. I try to make them believers of saving money and being economical. It wasn’t until I met one of the producers from the Biz Kid$ show that I realized I should also be encouraging them to think of new ways or improve older ways of making money.

Biz Kid$ is a show dedicated to the entrepreneurial kid. They feature successful kids and teenagers who are business owners or done something worthwhile that was lucrative. They also teach proper methods of starting and running a business. Some of things they have done are remarkable. This is more than your front yard lemonade stand. Working on their next season of episodes, they decided to include the internet as a medium of making money and starting a business. How can you present proper website building, search engine marketing and social media consulting in an entertaining way? Duh…you find the SEO Rapper!

The producer contacted me and shared her vision about what they wanted to accomplish. How could I resist? I love kids, rapping and the internet. They are based in Seattle Washington and she offered to fly me there for a few days if I was willing to compose a Biz Kid$ focused instructional rap about using the internet to start a business. Interesting task. I was glad to do it. I contacted Dre Dubb Entertainment, one of my favorite music production teams (also produced Design Coding) for a track to the rap I was writing. I received the track, completed the rap and went to the studio to record it. A few weeks later I was on a flight to Seattle. I finally met some others from Biz Kid$ who showed me a great time. The video shoot was awesome. It went a little longer than expected but I had a blast doing it. Touring Seattle was great. I had a chance to walk around and take lots of pictures and next time I’ll remember that if you walk down a hill and you parked at the top of the hill, you have to walk back up the hill. The Biz Kid$ episode is supposed to air on PBS sometime in January. Stay tuned…

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Set-It and Forget It: Why Ronco’s Showtime Rotisserie Can’t Run Your Marketing Campaign

Jillian Fortin — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:20:00 +0000

Hello, my name is Jillian.

I am a shop-at-home-a-holic.

My first at-home purchase was made when I was in high school: Debbie Siebers’ “Slim in 6″ training program. I saw the infomercial, picked up the phone and after six to eight weeks of sheer anticipation, there it was – the solution to all my problems. The key to ultimate fitness. The program that would jumpstart my new life as a size two in “no time at all!” Debbie Siebers’ DVD sealed my fate. From that point forward, I was addicted to shopping at home.

Two Joy Mangano products and a tub of Oxi-Clean later, my eyes fell upon Ron Popeil’s Showtime Rotisserie. This thing was a beaut. I likened it to the fireplace at Christmastime- you leave it alone and the next thing you know, you’ve got a present waiting for you. I knew I was destined to have this appliance. It had to have been engineered with me in mind. There was absolutely no question about it.

I had meat on those spits the second I freed my Rotisserie from its plastic wrap straitjacket. I poked my chicken a bit with the handy dandy solid flavor injector, made sure the non-stick drip pan was firmly in place, and carefully slid everything back into the appliance. Then, in a moment of fanfare and coronation, I set my Showtime Rotisserie and smiled with satisfaction as I saw the happy, heated, rotating magic take place before my eyes.

Then… I forgot it, like I thought I was supposed to.

I had expected the roast I placed in my Showtime Rotisserie to emerge juicy, succulent and tender. Instead, the Rotisserie spat out a dry, charred mass of nothing, topped with a whole lot of gross and a side of yuck. I had done everything I was supposed to—I set it up just as I was told, taking extra care in the actual marinating and seasoning process. If it had been fashioned to succeed, why oh why did I end up eating Lean Cuisine that night?!

Like all horrible memories, I quickly pushed that experience to the dusty part of my brain and forgot all about my Showtime Rotisserie (pun totally intended). It wasn’t until I switched careers from amateur, shortcut cook to project coordinator at an online marketing firm that Ron Popeil entered my life once more.

A lot of my clients come to me after running their own pay-per-click campaigns for x amount of years. They had fastidiously built out the keyphrases in their ad groups, down to types of matches and relevant geographic terms. They had conscientiously set their daily ad budgets, remembering to set day parting and turn off their campaigns on the weekend. And, after all was said and done (and might I add — very, very typical of this behavior), they sought the assistance of an online marketing firm, because, as so many argue, “they don’t know why they weren’t getting results!”

The answer is simple. Many search engine marketing specialists can give it, and so can Ron Popeil.

“It’s because you SET IT and FORGET IT.”

As business owners, it’s easy to set up a pay-per-click campaign and subsequently forget it. Many traditional forms of marketing follow this model. You set up a direct mail campaign… then you forget it. You film a television commercial… then you forget it. You’re supposed to forget it, just like you’re supposed to forget about a pot roast in the Showtime Rotisserie. But that’s what sets online marketing apart from traditional forms of marketing… and that’s also why it works better.

Anyone will tell you that the more attention you give any item you cook is proportional to how savory your dish is. It doesn’t matter what new, fangle-dangled appliance you use; it’s still a good rule of thumb to follow. Search engine marketing is the same way. Pay-per-click campaigns are a new notion compared to radio ads, television spots or the Yellow Pages, but just because you’ve heard one or two testimonials about how effective they are doesn’t mean you can “set it and forget it.”

It is absolutely essential to keep an eye on what you’ve got churnin’ and burnin’ if you want to get your desired end result. Watch your pay-per-click campaigns. If you’re losing a lot of juice, make sure you’re basting. If it’s losing flavor, make sure you’re seasoning. If it’s charring the sides, turn down the heat. Do what it takes to make sure you get what you want. At the end of the day, we all want an appetizing pay-off. We can have one if we want one—only when we realize that it takes more than setting it and forgetting it.

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Pop Labs Launches Site for IS ‘08

Jillian Fortin — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 19:48:31 +0000

We recently launched a website for our good friends at the Houston Interactive Marketing Association (HiMA), promoting the Second Annual Interactive Strategies Conference.

IS ‘08: Secrets Exposed will be held on Thursday, September 18, 2008 at the Angelika Film Center of Houston, TX. Attendees of this conference can expect to be enlightened as key players in this industry unveil the secrets to success in digital media.

Big ups to Melissa Garcia on the web design and Sal Baldovinos on the production!

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idre.am at Startup Weekend San Antonio

Audra Jackson — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 15:00:26 +0000

When I started at Pop Labs, one of the first things I heard about was Startup Weekend. After a little bit of digging, I found out about the Startup Weekend that happened here in Houston. From then on, I knew I wanted to participate in a Startup Weekend. Being from San Antonio, I jumped at the idea of building a startup in my own hometown.

SWSA took place May 16th-18th, and if you ask anyone who participated all three days, you’ll know the fire is still burning. By the first day, everyone had split into three teams: ForceXchange, which is an auction site to allow soldier, patrols, etc. to exchange, buy, and sell their own gear; Rentescapes, a network for owners and renters of vacation property; and finally, idre.am, where I almost exclusively was, a site that lets you share your dreams and opinions with the Internet. By the end of Startup Weekend, idre.am and ForceXchange launched, while Rentescapes pushed back their launch date.

idre.am originally began one morning last month when I forgot a dream I had before waking up to get ready for work. The night before, I had been reading up on dreams that inspired artists such as Yasunori Mitsuda, who attributes the music of the video game Chrono Trigger to his dreams. I wanted to build a site that could post dreams and give a community creative inspiration. By the time the idea made it to Startup Weekend, it had turned into a social site where users could anonymously post dreams and receive feedback on their dreams. Three all-nighters later, at least one dream became reality.

The idre.am team consisted of nine enthusiastic people with noticeably different skill-sets working cooperatively to produce this site. My personal role (other than the idea itself) included front-end development, assisting with backend development, and providing as much sarcasm and quick quips as possible. We started out with simple features: we wanted idre.am to not only allow users to post to our site from our site, we also wanted users to submit their dreams via Twitter (to @idreamed) and Facebook.

If you talk to the idre.am Team, you’ll find out this was all but simple. Building idre.am within one weekend required daily all-nighters, careful planning, good communication, and an effective team who knew how to tackle this project and present it in a way that it looked like an easy site to create. This enthusiasm and effectiveness has already stirred up some great press and an excited user base, which includes Startup Weekend representative Erica O’Grady and SWSA Organizer Jennifer Navarrete. By Monday, we had also set up our corporate structure and began to spread the word about idre.am.

Even though SWSA has ended, the dedication of our team is still prevalent as our main developer, Jess Martin of Raleigh, NC, continues to work diligently to add more features and I, obviously back in Houston, am not only working on idre.am, but also calling all with the enthusiasm and interest in web design and development to make their dreams a reality by participating in the Startup Weekends to come. but also writing entries about it at work and telling all who want to tell their dreams.

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Speed Networking at Small Business Unleashed

Kelsey Ruger — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 17:02:35 +0000

On April 22nd and 23rd Search Engine Guide will be hosting the first Small Business Unleashed Conference here in Houston at the Northwest Forest Conference Center. Pop Labs will be sponsoring Charity Speed Networking Unleashed! which will be held on Sunday, April 20th - 6pm to 9pm the night before the conference starts. The event is open to the public with proceeds going to the Youth Development Center. There will also be a silent auction with some awesome items to bid on. If you would like an opportunity to meet the speakers before the conference starts come out and join us.

I am really looking forward to this event because it’s one of the few times a conference that wasn’t planned by someone in Houston, was held in Houston. I first met Jennifer, the Editor-in-chief for Search Engine guide at Got Social Media in January and I know first hand that she has been working really hard at making this an event that you will want to attend. The sessions all look really interesting.

If you would like to attend the conference there is still seating available so register today. Friends of Pop Labs can get a discount by using the code POPLABS.

Check out the Youtube video for more information on the conference.

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Fear is a Path to the Dark Side

Nate Campbell — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 21:48:12 +0000

Thank God for Spike T.V. finally having the guts to play the number one anticipated event in all of television history- the entire saga of Star Wars! I wouldn’t consider myself a nerd, but I just love this story. This saga is a visionary epic and George Lucas is da man! It’s amazing how a movie based on so much fantasy has multiple applicable real-life meanings. So of course in preparing myself for a hectic work week, I spent my entire weekend watching this series for the 800th time.

Lucky for me, I also took about ten minutes out of my busy weekend to flip through an old dusty book or two (of course, applicable to my client services role at Pop Labs). Don’t we wish our kids were invested so heavily in their future too? Too bad George Lucas didn’t make a movie about those books.

I recall reading about educating your clients on new products and services as well as new uses for existing products. In fact, the book went so far to suggest that anyone in the client services industry that didn’t educate their current happy clients about new products and new benefits for existing products actually does that client a disservice. After all, if the client is happy paying you for Service A and you roll out the brand-new Service B, why wouldn’t you want to offer him service B and contribute just that much more to this client’s happiness and satisfaction?

Lightning strikes and magic happens. It was as if Obi-Wan just handed me my father’s light saber! This whole concept is completely applicable for online marketing as well. The past is the best predictor of the future. If you manage online marketing campaigns or PPC advertising, then you know when your PPC campaign can absorb more clicks. If you have a benchmark for performance and your PPC campaign is a well oiled machine that is consistently turning out ROI, why wouldn’t you offer your client the opportunity to expand their business by asking for a bigger budget?

That’s a rhetorical question young Skywalker…the answer is fear! Is your fear of failure greater than the excitement of success? Fear of sales, fear of the almighty NO, fear of everything this side from death. So below are a few Jedi mind tricks to help get past that fear and moving towards the direction of more profitability, productivity, and success for your clients, Google, and you:

Love your Clients! - Clients could care less about what you know until they know you care.
Serve your Clients! - If you’re selling something that the client doesn’t need, then you probably shouldn’t be selling it at all. If they do need it, then you’re not really selling, only consulting through educating and persuading. Remember- people hate being sold, but they love to buy!
You are Yoda! – Just as every Jedi goes to Yoda, your clients come to you because you have the omniscient, all-knowing Yoda type of knowledge that is responsible for them paying you in the first place.
Encourage New Ideas! – Keep a questioning nature and always remember that business owners know more about their businesses than you do. So shut up and pay attention…
Get Hungry! – A closed mouth doesn’t get fed if you want things to happen. You have to initiate the action!

Remember, if you manage online marketing/PPC campaigns for your clients, wouldn’t it be to their benefit if they were willing to give you whatever budget you needed to help grow their online presence? Especially after you have a benchmark for success based on past behavior (e.g. daily budget runs out)? After all, once you establish that you truly care about their business, wouldn’t it be a shame if they decided to spend their advertising budget elsewhere in another form with someone who didn’t care as much as you do? I’d wager to guess that the answers to these questions are “yes,” in which case you have one solution. Get to explaining, educating, and asking for additional budget to support your clients’ business growth.

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The Human Side of Social Media

Audra Jackson — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 22:28:58 +0000

What is social media? Is it a conversation? Is it web PR? Is it YouTube or Facebook? If you work in this industry you have your own ideas on how to describe social media, but if you’re one of our potential customers it may be a bit more of a mystery. This is where I usually go into my description of what it means to leverage human assets.

Everyone has people, customers are people and employees are people. These “human assets” have talents that should be tapped into for social media. You’ve probably done this to some extent by asking your customers for referrals and then posting them on your website or touting your employees’ education/background. While this may have been a good start, we need to go a step further and leverage specific talents for the sake of social media. For instance, Pop Labs employs a search marketing specialist by the name of Charles Lewis (aka The SEO Rapper, M0 Serious, Poetic Prophet, Chuck). Chuck has the ability to rhyme, to flow—if you will, and has turned this ability into a way to get virally marketed content viewed online, resulting in branding himself and Pop Labs as experts in our industry. Chuck has developed very good content on topics such as link building, design coding, and conversion closing, to name a few. The important part to remember is that he’s transferred this content into something that people actually want to pay attention to: rap videos delivered through YouTube. Probably not the best for every target audience, but you have to work with what you’ve got.

While Pop Labs could have deposited this very same content onto our company website as its very own page or maybe even into this blog, we looked to take it a step further by getting creative and leveraging Chuck’s talent as a rap artist to produce something entertaining and fun that was appropriate for our goal: brand Pop Labs and get exposure from other well-known entities. Sometimes you just have to throw it out there, but you have to be prepared for the feedback you’re going to get… the good and the bad. Transparency is crucial for social media… which is why Chuck not only delivers these rhymes, but he writes them as well—not a hired gun.

Not every company has an aspiring rap artist to utilize and that’s okay. What you DO have is experiences and relationships and other talents that set YOU apart from everyone else, from your competitors. Once you have those figured out, the creative way in which to deliver your message should start to become clear. Good luck!

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My SMX-ellent Adventure

Guliz Sicotte — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 23:11:52 +0000

Pop Labs was at the SMX West Search Marketing Conference last week. Several people had excellent coverage of the sessions and some really hot discussions are still happening even after the event, so I’m going to stick with sharing my personal experience overall.

SMX West was huge. Conferences this size can be intimidating for newbies trying to network with strangers or simply ask questions to the experts. I thought Danny Sullivan and his team did a phenomenal job creating an interactive atmosphere with SMX Connect. Attendees were able to connect, send comments, and even make their own schedule prior to the event. I personally loved the scheduling feature. During the sessions, we were able to submit questions online. Ten times better than the moderator walking around from one side of the room to the other with a microphone in hand. Why doesn’t every conference do the same, really?

SMX Eat & Meet lunch tables brought people with a common interest together. Food was delicious; discussions were not as fruitful as I wanted. Too many people at a table make it harder to share an intimate conversation. Nevertheless, it was well organized. My husband-approved geek crush, cat lover, and glorious spam fighter Matt Cutts stopped by the Google Engineer table. I had a chance to explain why his signed drink ticket at Pubcon didn’t end up on Flickr. It’s ok though because this time Matt Cutts signed my SMX Meet & Eat reservation. Whoo-hooo! Now I need to make him a member of my “Cat lovers in search marketing” Flickr group. Maybe he will after he sees the group icon.

Back to more serious observations…

I have to say standing at the booth all day talking to people non-stop is absolutely exhausting. But, well worth it. Initially we thought two people can stay at the booth while another is attending a session. Yeah right! We were so busy that we quickly realized having 3 people at the booth is a must, especially on the first day of the exhibit hall. If you’re ever exhibiting in one of these huge events and want to get the most out of your money, make sure you have enough people representing your company and attending the sessions at the same time.

Pop Labs booth was quite an attraction for many. “What does your company do?” was the number one question. Well dear visitors, if you can’t really tell from the long bullet list of services in gigantic fonts, then we’re a laboratory for building, testing, optimizing, ranking soda pops and lollipops. Soda-POP, Lolli-POP, LAB-oratory. Pop Labs, get it?

Schwags were plentiful. I get a kick out of watching people comparison shopping. Not to sound like I’m bragging or anything, but people really loved our Pop Labs pins and lollipops! Honestly at first, my nit-picky, skeptic side thought the lollipops looked kind of cheesy, but oh-my-God, they taste good! I ate six or seven myself. It never ceases to amaze me how much people love candy and how easy it is to start a conversation over something sweet.

Conferences are an excellent venue for people to gain insight on best practices or be inspired by some of the exceptional speakers in the search marketing field. In my opinion, networking is as valuable, if not more. I follow Andy Beal on Twitter and I enjoyed chatting with him face to face at SMX. Not only that, but I got a signed copy of his new book “Radically Transparent”. Ha ha! (I just started reading it, will save the book review for another post.) My point is where else can you get to meet all the experts or talk to just about anyone in this field?

If you’re wondering where Pop Labs is going to pop up next, I suggest you check us out at SXSW Interactive, March 8-11, and SES New York, March 18-19.

Sicotte Out!

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