Before I get into test-taking specifics, you might be asking a few questions:

What’s up with the new exam format?
If you are reading any information related to the AdWords exam that is dated earlier than December 2009, the information may be obsolete. Around this time, Google phased out the old Google AdWords Professional (GAP) Exam and replaced it with the Google Advertising Fundamentals exam as part of the new AdWords Certification Program.  From what I’ve heard from people who took the old exam, it used to be heavily focused towards the interface and technical aspects of AdWords.  How is the new exam different? Simply put, it’s harder. The test now focuses more on strategy and real-world applications (read: lots of hypothetical situations). To boot, the passing score was raised from 75% to 85%.  Although a little intimidating, you should embrace these changes because passing the exam will carry a lot more weight and prove that your AdWords knowledge is relevant. Plus, I’ll be giving you some great tips to help you ease your worries about the test.

How Do I Prepare for the AdWords Exam?
The main resources you’ll need to prepare for the exam are the Google Advertising Fundamentals Exam Learning Center and an AdWords account.  You should read all 9 lessons that will be tested on the Fundamentals Exam and know the information well. Some of the lessons have interactive presentations, which are useful tools to practice applying the knowledge you’ve learned. I would also strongly suggest navigating a Google AdWords account for familiarity, as you won’t get a good understanding of the interface by simply reading about it.

Where Do I Take the Adwords Test?
You would think signing up for the test would be the easy part of this process, but  surprisingly, finding the link and registering to take the exam was a challenge in itself! (Hint to Google - put a link to the test in the learning center!). Once you are good and ready, the test awaits you at http://google.starttest.com. Before taking the test you’ll have to track down your Candidate ID number, which you can find in the “My Exams” section after you sign-up with the Google AdWords Professional program. The exam costs $50, which is a good motivator to be prepared and pass the first time around. You can take the test in any setting you’d like, but remember that it is timed. You will have 120 minutes to complete 120 questions - once you start you will NOT be able to pause the exam and come back later.

What are Some Tips on Passing The AdWords Exam? How Do I Prepare for the AdWords Exam?
Check out my preso to find out what you need to know to pass the Google AdWords test. I’ll tell you more about the test specifics and give you my two cents on the areas you should really concentrate on when studying for the exam.

Oh, and if you find this totally daunting and want nothing to do with managing your own AdWords of PPC campaign, well, talk to me! The JAR Group actually likes doing this stuff, and we’re good at it. Get in touch with me at askjar@thejargroup.com if you want to find out more about how we can help you reach your online advertising goals.

Good Luck!

We did a bit of research and found a lot of…interesting techniques people have used to get noticed by prospective employers.

Here’s a bit of further reading on the topic:

• Strange But True Job-Hunting Tactics
• Weirdest Job Seeker Stunts
• Strange But Efficient Job Hunting Techniques

Let us know how you go about getting noticed and email jobs@thejargroup.com for employment inquiries, or, if you’re brave (and want to really make a statement) send *delicious* gifts to:

The JAR Group

45 Main St. Suite 410

Brooklyn, NY 11201

Direct Traffic

This type of traffic represents mostly those coming back to your site who have already been there. They get there by typing in your URL to their web browsers, or clicking on your page that they’ve previously bookmarked.

Referral Traffic

This traffic is from people clicking a link from another site that connects them to your site. Keep in mind that this excludes Search Engines, so rather it would be a link from a blog, for example.

Social Media Traffic

Though Sponder gives Social Media traffic its own genre, I would put it as a subgroup of Referral traffic. This traffic comes from social networks such as blogs, a photo sharing site like Flickr, message boards, Twitter, Facebook, etc. Generally this traffic is very targeted to a specific piece of content, and doesn’t immediately convert.

Search Traffic

This traffic is from Search Engines, whether from paid (PPC–Pay Per Click or CPC–Cost Per Click) results, or organic (non-paid) results. On a corporate site, about 50%-70% of the traffic results from search.

1. Determine valuable traffic that you’re not aware of.

You can do this by looking at site analytics to find traffic you didn’t know about. Also look for unusual patterns in your analytics. If you look further down the list you can find potential traffic to build relationships with (for instance, via Twitter or Facebook). You can also create a custom segment for social media traffic (in Google Analytics at least). This will help you determine where exactly your traffic is coming from.

2. Learn to take action from traffic you do have.

Take note of your landing pages–look at your paid vs. organic keywords and consider whether or not the right keywords are driving traffic to your site. The trick is finding the right keywords.

3. Set up better tracking by knowing what to ask for.

Keep in mind that certain types of traffic are harder to track than others, for example: flash-rich media doesn’t generate referral traffic and won’t show up in most analytics without additional work.

4. Use social media to take action and increase quality traffic, revenue, and leads.

Identify those major players in your community or within the community you connect with. Find the influential top blogs and/or bloggers and connect with them if possible.

Ok so the key takeaways are:

• Different types of traffic have different value for your site.
• Look for unusual traffic coming to your site in referral logs and segment your traffic by type.
• Make good decisions of your traffic based of thresholds and goals.
• Certain kinds of site traffic need to be tracked in a deliberate way.
• Use social media to find influentials and engage with them.

There you have it! Now go analyze and make your inbound marketing better!

Update: I’m now Hubspot Certified! Thanks to everybody for following my little series based on the Hubspot IMU courses!

Over 40% of their annual sales come in the last two months of the year, and retailers need to stock the right inventory if they want to have a profitable season. Zhu Zhu Pets were a hot seller last year, and retailers that bet big at Toy Fair 2009 on these little hamsters sold out their inventory. But that big bet could have been a dud if they selected the wrong product.

The challenge is to predict the trends eight months ahead of the holiday season. In such a competitive market, manufacturers need to show buyers more than just a good product. There are many good products, but marketing can make a huge difference in a product’s sales. While traditional advertising (TV, Radio, Print Ads) is a key factor for mass market toys, specialty toy manufacturers need to assure buyers that they have a strong PR plan, social media outreach and brand recognition.

The JAR Group works with several toy industry clients, including Corolle Dolls, ASTRA (American Specialty Toy Retailing Association) and RosieHippo.com, so I had the pleasure of attending the 2010 Toy Fair.

A few noteworthy trends from the 2010 Toy Fair:

Increasing Online Focus: I heard from multiple manufacturers that online sales are their fastest growing segment. Manufacturers are shifting money into social media campaigns, but social media is maturing as well. At the 2009 Toy Fair, manufacturers told me that the felt they “had” to have a Twitter presence.  Last year, manufacturers wanted to “test” the new technology. Now, they talk about the importance of “measurable results” from Twitter, Facebook and Blog Outreach. Many manufacturers, including our client Corolle, were actively tweeting during Toy Fair to create buzz about their products.

Specialty toy retailers who have lost business to sites such as Amazon.com in recent years are fighting back with improved websites and innovative curbside pick-up programs. Despite the economic downturn, they are investing in search engine optimization and social media campaigns. As one retailer explained, “Investing with an agency is equivalent to paying rent and opening a new location, but it may be more profitable.”

I agree with her assessment because I have seen our efforts in search engine optimization, search engine marketing, media buying, social media, affiliate marketing, email marketing and web-design increase our clients’ revenue. Working with a marketing agency is an investment. Clients have found that The JAR Group’s focus on performance marketing makes us a safer investment because we are personally invested in meeting revenue numbers.

The First Lady of Toys: While magazines laud Michelle Obama’s trend-setting style, her influence on the toy industry hasn’t gotten much coverage aside from articles on Ty’s controversial Sasha and Malia dolls. Play Things But Michelle Obama is a trend-setter. Her organic White House garden made appearances on Sesame Street as well as a hyped episode of Iron Chef America. And she is actively promoting her campaign to prevent childhood obesity on TV shows and with personal appearances.

It’s not surprising that toys designed to prevent childhood obesity and to encourage gardening were hot this year. And manufacturers were pushing the Michelle Obama connection when demonstrating their products. A highlight to me was meeting two-time Olympic Gold Medalist Gigi Fernandez, who was unveiling Baby Goes Pro.

Green Innovations: Toy Fair had several green initiatives- including the first ever “Earth Friendly Product Zone.” I was excited to walk the floor with Kim Bloom, CEO of RosieHippo.com and a JAR Group client, as she selected several exciting new products to add to her eco-friendly store.

My favorite innovation was the Virtual Totebag Virtual Totebag for exhibitor materials. I hope to see this technology at future tradeshows.

Technological Marvels: Do you miss your dog while you’re at work or school? With Mattel’s Puppy Tweets (available for pre-order on Amazon), you’ll be able to follow your pooch on Twitter. Simply attach the Puppy Tweets tag to your pet’s collar, and you’ll get a tweet when your pet moves, sleeps, barks. With 500 phrases, this collar isn’t sophisticated as those worn by the dogs in Disney’s Up, but it’s a good start.

I was particularly impressed by Roboni-i, the world’s first programmable gaming robot. Roboni-i can navigate on its own, avoid obstacles, play games and do tricks. Like many popular toys, Roboni-i also has a virtual world where users can control their robot avatar.  Users can customize their robot using the Command Center to control its actions in both the actual and the virtual world, and any mods users make will work both online and offline.

Blogger Backlash: Manufacturers recognize the power of bloggers, but the proliferation of review blog sites is a challenge. One manufacturer told me that they get such a high volume of requests from bloggers asking for samples of their DVDs and software for review and giveaway that they delete all requests. A year ago, they provided samples to every blogger who requested one, but they were disappointed in the poor quality of the reviews and the low ROI. But ignoring all blogger requests isn’t a solution as the company’s traffic from referring sites has dropped. Clearly, neither approach is ideal.

The JAR Group works with its clients to measure the influence of bloggers and to identify the right bloggers based on a client’s goals, budget and demographic targets. At times, a client’s budget has not enabled us to send a review sample to every requestor, but we respect their time and their professionalism. The key is to be upfront with the blogger. As a result, we are able to maintain a strong relationship and are frequently able to involve that blogger on a subsequent campaign.

Want more Toy Fair insights? Contact bizdev@thejargroup.com to set up a meeting. We’d like to learn more about your 2010 marketing goals and any challenges you may be facing.

If you are a specialty toy retailer, we recommend that you join ASTRA and attend their Marketplace and Academy in June ASTRA Toy. I will be leading a Retailer Session: “Marketing Strategies & Media: Retail Marketing Goes High Tech.” Here’s the session description: In the face of tough competition from big box stores and online powerhouses such as Amazon, retailers need to think beyond traditional marketing and PR strategies. This session will focus on online marketing techniques that boost sales and attract new customers. Social media, Twitter, Facebook, SEO, CPC Advertising, CRM and affiliate marketing can positively impact your brick & mortar store as well as your e-commerce efforts. We’ll help you decipher these buzzwords and offer strategic and practical solutions to your marketing challenges.”

The other nominees from much larger firms are all incredibly worthy candidates (I’ve met, spoken and worked with many of them; I’ve even been in the trenches with both Rob Garner and, the one and only, Jeffery Pruitt, for various clients), but they are not the only faces of our industry.

Go to affiliate summit or pubcon, check out any of the bar camps, follow the blogs, dive into into real time data streams, you’ll see so much insight being driven from individuals, small companies, and startups. This is changing our industry. Search marketing is being driven from opportunities that larger companies can not always take advantage of. At the JAR Group, we are part of this, we work with our clients to drive value and the reason we know we are is that we share much of their risk by building performance based  relationships. I would help drive a wider range of value for SEMPO’s membership by bringing my experience building a small firm and also the knowledge of what it is like to have been part of some of the largest interactive agencies over the past two decades.

Lastly, SEMPO needs to give back and create more opportunities for the individual members and employees of corporate members.

I was very lucky to have participated in many Taproot Foundation volunteer engagements. Here, at the JAR Group, we work pro-bono, with a great group of not-for-profits. We’ve been very lucky to have the opportunity to work with them, but these opportunities have given our team the opportunity to grow themselves. We have salespeople leading eCRM engagements, strategists developing online communities, and creatives being creative. OK, two out of three, ain’t bad. As our industry’s leading voice, SEMPO should be helping worthy organizations with the amazing talent we have and giving opportunities for those of us who are just learning.

So, if you are a member of SEMPO, please feel free to read my profile online with the other nominees’, otherwise feel free to peruse my profile and ask me any questions you may have.

And, please remember to vote (if you are a SEMPO member)!

General Background/Bio:

A.J. Lawrence has been a professional digital marketer since 1992 (and an amateur since 1982). He is experienced in developing multichannel marketing communications and search based efforts with equal focus on e-commerce, online lead generation, and brand development. A.J. founded the JAR Group in 2006 with the mission of creating an interactive agency that can provide a deeper level of thought, strategy and service to client engagements without “big agency everything else.” The JAR Group has advised small businesses as well as Fortune 500 companies. A.J. has managed, developed and marketed many major corporate digital brands from GE, Citibank, Cable & Wireless, Fairmont Luxury Hotels, Marvel Entertainment through MTV amongst many others. When not working, he can be found chasing his son and daughter, planning for the zombie invasion, and playing rugby in Prospect Park, Brooklyn.

He is also on the steering committee of NYU faces (Finding a Cure for Epilepsy and Seizures), a major epilepsy research and outreach foundation.

What major contribution will you bring to SEMPO and its membership?

Throughout my 18-year career in the online marketing industry, I have worked at both large and small interactive and search marketing firms like CKS, USWeb, MarchFirst, eXceed, Webstakes and iCrossing before founding my own search agency, The JAR Group, in 2006. I have bootstrapped the JAR Group into a 20 person (and growing - we’re hiring!) firm, with net revenue of over $3 million in 2009. As a result, I have big agency experience, but I also understand the challenges that small growing agencies face. As a member of the SEMPO Board of Directors, my main contribution will be to improve SEMPO’s infrastructure in order to foster inter-agency cooperation on research and increase opportunities for agencies to collaborate and connect with qualified freelancers and resources. I believe that to be relevant to its members, SEMPO needs to be on the cutting edge of the search industry. My experience and knowledge of search provides me with the ability to not only stay on top of industry trends, but also to help shape them. Ihave seen the evolution of search services and have been able to consistently adapt to them by providing innovative performance marketing solutions. With the founding of The JAR Group, an online marketing agency focused on SEM, I work to transform the traditional agency model by integrating search with services like affiliate marketing and social media, all on a performance driven basis for my clients. I am committed to bringing my experience of building a small but successful agency to SEMPO and will work to provide innovative solutions to internal industry challenges.

Why should people vote for you?

You should feel confident voting for me because I will represent the needs of small agencies and freelancers, while my experience with large agencies will enable me to find common ground between the two groups. I will bring you more value for your membership by increasing training, recruitment, and networking within SEMPO. My experience in social media and technology will allow me to suggest community improvements as well as applications to make it easier for members to get answers to industry questions. In this current time of economic uncertainty, I have led my company in developing very successful performance based efforts for our clients. I will help the SEMPO community and its members take advantage of performance based marketing as the issues and opportunities continue to develop.

Where do you think the organization should be in the next year?

My vision for SEMPO in the next year involves greater outreach to performance, affiliate, and social media marketers. As search converges with other areas of online services, I’d like to see SEMPO broaden its reach to include new members that will provide value to the organization, such as freelancers. I want to see an increase in networking and mentoring, as well as increased emphasis placed on joint research projects on the state of search engine marketing with more opportunities for individual members to contribute to projects.

Lastly, based on the successful pro-bono efforts of The JAR Group, it is my goal to introduce educational opportunities for the staff of SEMPO members by creating a volunteer program that will enable members to work with relevant not-for-profit communities that lack the capacity to invest in search marketing, but could greatly benefit from them.

Here is some of the latest news about our quickly expanding affiliate marketing business:

Donna McCarthy, our Director of Performance Management, was invited to serve as a pioneer member of the LinkShare Outsource Program Management (OPM) Advisory Board and participate in a panel discussion during last month’s LinkShare Symposium West. 2010 marks the inception of the LinkShare OPM Advisory Board, a forum for thought leaders in the space to discuss evolving trends and technology in the affiliate industry. Donna was a natural candidate for the board, as she has specialized in the affiliate marketing channel for the past 5 years and has received numerous honors and awards, including the LinkShare Best Overall Distribution Strategy and the LinkShare Deal Make Merchant Award.

Donna’s performance-based marketing experience and her grasp of current and emerging affiliate marketing trends brings invaluable direction to our clients and to our team. LinkShare could not have asked a smarter person to be on the OPM Advisory Board!

In January, Donna was also featured as a speaker at Affiliate Summit West. She presented in a session titled “Increase Search Revenue While Protecting Your Brand,” in which she provided affiliate managers insightful tips and best practices surrounding affiliate paid search bid policy.

Debbie Bookstaber, the V.P. of Strategy at The JAR Group, has also recently been in the affiliate industry spotlight. In December Debbie headed to Los Angeles to present at Affiliate Marketing Convention, a 2-day conference focusing on how to optimize and improve affiliate marketing business. As a panelist on the topic “Affiliate Marketing and Social Media,” she presented valuable insights about social media best practices for affiliate marketing.

We are also excited to announce a new addition to our online affiliate marketing team, expert online marketer Aprile Parella. In her new role, Aprile will serve as an Performance Marketing Manager for our Outsource Program Management services. Prior to joining The JAR Group, Aprile managed multimillion dollar affiliate programs in the financial sector, with experience with such industry giants as JP Morgan Chase and Bank One under her belt. She brings to the table her unique methods of communication strategy, brand management, social media marketing.

On top of the expansion of our affiliate marketing team comes the announcement that we will be opening a second office location this month in Carneys Point, New Jersey. We are very excited that we are growing and expanding our services. The New Jersey office will allow us to tap into the Philadelphia and Wilmington markets, as well as expand our efforts in the Tri-state region.

Our JAR South office will help us to better meet the future needs of clients, and we couldn’t be more excited!

To find out more about our affiliate marketing and OPM services, check us out online or email askjar@thejargroup.com.

To read the full press release, you can download it here.

So what is email marketing all about?

Well, like everything else seems to be, your current and potential clients! To be successful you must deliver professional communications to an interested audience with information they find valuable. It provides you with an opportunity to speak out to your consumers; it’s all about taking your brand and your essence and delivering it.

Ok, why email marketing?

Well, for starters, it works because almost everyone your business needs to reach reads it. It’s also cost-effective. You’ll be spending a fraction of the money sending emails that it takes to send direct mail, which means you can also do it more often.

The Big Three

There are 3 main concepts to keep in mind when thinking of email marketing campaigns.  You need to focus on making connections, informing those connections, and growing your business.

Making Connections

The thing to start with is building a quality email list, and make sure you have quality over quantity! There’s no point in having 100 emails in your list if you know 75 of those people are not interested in the topic you’re writing to them about. Collect names of people who really want to receive your information.

Three basic questions to ask yourself when building your connections are:

• Are you collecting contact information at every customer touch point?
• Are you asking for permission as well as contact info?
• Are you clearly describing your email frequency and content?

Informing Your Audience

In order to inform your audience, like blogs and your website content, focus on creating valuable email content. And when creating that valuable content keep in mind your objectives and what you want to happen. Do you want to promote your product or business? Inform people about your industry? Increase loyalty? Knowing your objectives will help you figure out how you’re going to measure success and figure out what information you want to collect and track. Now decide what email format would be most effective for you.

Newsletters usually have educational content, a small amount of images, and lots of text. The calls to action are pretty soft, saying things like, “learn more,” or, “read more.” And newsletters are typically sent out monthly or quarterly. Now, a newsletter can contain an unlimited number of articles, but Groves reminds us that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

Promotions/invitations/surveys have more images and less text and are sent out monthly if not more frequently.

Announcements on the other hand are sent out very frequently for save-the-dates, thank yous, etc.

Keep it concise! Host large bodies of content on your website, in a pdf, or in a longer archived version, not in your monthly newsletter. Email only essential information.

Getting email ready. When people look at a message to determine whether or not to open it, the two key factors are typically the “from” line (do I know you?) and the “subject” line (do I care?). In your from line, depending on what your consumers are most familiar with, use either your name or your brand’s name. But be consistent in whatever you decide to go with. For the subject line, if you have “monthly newsletter,” that’s no fun, and it’s certainly not exciting enough to make anyone care. Grab their attention and tell your consumers what the value of your email is in the subject line.

Growing your business

A great tip is to have a “forward to a friend” option in your email so that people can forward your great, valuable content to a friend easily.

You should also try to understand bounced and blocked email, as well as nonexistent addresses (check for misspellings, try to get new address). For undeliverable/mailbox full/email blocked messages, try resending, correct temporary issues, or obtain a new address if a recurring issue is present.

By tracking click through rates (or the “open” rate–who is opening your emails) you can spot trends that you can capitalize on, whether it is the time people are opening the emails and capitalizing on that to get a greater open rate, or seeing what topics you are writing on that are the most popular.

So go get out there and start a great email marketing campaign! And don’t forget to check back next week for Analyzing Inbound Marketing.

Affiliate Summit was my first stop on two leg trek to pay homage to “affiliate conference-land”. True to form, Missy Ward and Shawn Collins put together a great cast of speakers and forum events. Among my favorites was Jay Berkowitz’s 10 Golden Rules of Online Marketing. Jay’s presentation was dead on. I was scribbling like a court reporter trying to get it all down. It was fun too- Etrade baby…hmm the ideas were churning like a steam boat in Old New Orleans. What impressed me most about Jay, not his nice suit and great tie (Joseph Abboud maybe?), his love of lists! and being a women I instantly tuned in. Here are Jay’s Golden Rules..pay attention now..

1. There are no ‘rules
2. The Internet is not television
3. Create a UVP
4. If you build it they won’t just come
5. Subscription Models Survive
6. Remember the 4 P’s
7. Trust is Golden
8. Use the right tactic
9. The Best Never Rest
10. Lead the Trends

My most favorite is #7: Trust is Golden. It’s the one I consider not just a rule but a responsibility. I believe we create more than clients - we forge lasting partnerships. Their success is my success, hands down!

Next stop, Linkshare Symposium West. Wow, what a tour de force of speakers and forum panels! I was very impressed with just how much Linkshare’s network platform has come just over the last year. They really have “Useability” in mind– with Pay Per Call, Media Buying capability, Borderless E-commerce, and the new Agency login where agencies have a dashboard to their clients’ performance and trends all in one place. I thought “Great, more tools in the arsenal to better service our clients.”

I hit the cell immediately! (where I could find a signal!, I was hanging over window sills just to get a signal bar.. can you hear me now?) Had to share the word to clients that more great services from The Jar Group are on the way.

The response from clients has been great! They are just as excited as we are to embark on some of the new adventures on the horizon.

Won’t you join us?

We encourage everyone to make Valentine’s for Veterans and drop them off at a Veterans Hospital near you. In conjunction with this great project, one of our clients, DollarDays will be donating $50 retail value in clothing for every post about the project, plus $50 more for each post that receives at least 10 comments.  So blog, facebook, and tweet away to inspire others to take a few minutes of their time to say thank you to our Veterans! And we’d like to give Dollar Days a big thank you for their generosity and goodwill!

Dollar Days is also providing clothing worth thousands of dollars in retail to Sew Much Comfort in honor of the National Salute to Hospitalized Veterans Week. Sew Much Comfort provides adaptive clothing at no cost to support the unique needs of our injured service members from all branches of the military and national guard. This clothing fits around medical devices and prosthetics and gives the service member and medical personnel ready access to injured areas.  Through the volunteer efforts of seamstresses and donations of money, clothing and fabric, Sew Much Comfort has been able to provide over 75,000 pieces of adaptive clothing and comfort. More information about volunteering and requesting adaptive clothing can be found on the website, where you can also find a list of needed clothing and fabric if you wish to donate.

You can show support for the team of bloggers by leaving comments on these blogs to help each earn an extra $50 for Sew Much Comfort:

• Fairly Odd Mother
• Life with my Special Ks
• The Ever Changing Life of a Military Wife
• Health, Beauty and Family
• Cora’s Story
• Army Wives Lives
• Mamanista

The next day one of the biggest highlights for me was listening to Rakuten CEO, Hiroshi Mikitani, as he spoke about the success of Rakuten Japan and the global opportunities available for LinkShare merchants with their Borderless eCommerce platform solution. Very very exciting stuff!! The second half of the day started off with a panel discussing Mobile Commerce. The various panelists discussed everything from how they’re using mobile technology for their businesses to how they’re creating new tools to be used in the Mobile space. It seems like the biggest take-away from this session was that there’s still a big need for the industry to find a solution for consumers to be able to order directly from their phones. The day then wrapped up with a Deal Maker networking session. This is always a great opportunity to meet with top publishers and talk directly to the various LinkShare teams about the new tools available for LinkShare merchants. I can’t wait to test out their Per per Call and Media Management tools. If you’d like to hear more about all the amazing conversations that took place and topics that were discussed, check out the official event wrap-up. I’m definitely looking forward to the LinkShare Symposium East in June!