Image from Roy Morejon

Google’s display network is vastly larger than search. Search inherently works, and it’s the place every new advertiser should start. However, after a while you might not be able to expand how much traffic you receive from search. When this happens, it’s time to turn to the Google Display Network.

The display network works much differently than search. With search, someone has to type in a search query in order to see results. With display advertising, there is no search involved. The ads are shows based around keyword themes, topics, user interests, or even based upon previous user behavior on your own site.

Overall, people spend less than 5% of their online time with search results. The majority of the other 95% of time online is spent interacting with content sites. This is where the display network is typically shown. If you are reading an article on the New York Times, looking up a recipe on The Food Network, checking the weather at AccuWeather, or watching videos on YouTube, you are in the display network.

There are several display networks, among them; Google is one of the largest with an amazing reach (source):

• 80% Internet User Reach
• 4.3 Billion Daily Page Views
• 1 Billion Monthly Visitors
• Over 1 Million sites

There are several ways you can use the display network, and today we’ll examine the most common methods of targeting.

Display Keyword Targeting

With the display network, your keywords act much differently than search. In search, you can define exactly how your ads are triggered with a combination of match types and negative keywords.

With display, each word does not matter. Google examines your keywords as a whole and determines your theme for an ad group. When a page in the display network matches your theme, then your ad can be displayed. This is the most common method for using Google’s Display Network, but it’s not the best method to start with as you are limited in control over where your ads are shown until you learn all the control mechanisms available.

Managed Placement Targeting

Image from Search Engine Watch

Managed placements are the best place for new advertisers to start when they are first using the display network. With managed placements, you can pick the sites where your ads will appear. There is no guesswork involved in picking keywords and trying to match them with themes.

The term used is ‘placement targeting’. Your level of control often extends beyond the site to picking the exact ad slot where your ad will be placed. For instance, you do not have to choose all of the New York Times, you can choose the New York Times business section bottom left ad slot.

However, for large sites, such as the New York Times, the business section has a significant amount of daily visitors. Often your ad will not be appropriate for every page. Therefore, with the display network you can combine managed placements and keyword to create enhanced campaigns.

Enhanced Placement Targeting

With enhanced placements you can define both keywords and placements for your ads. This gives you an unprecedented level of control over your ad serving.

For instance, the New York Times business section is quite large, but it does have excellent inventory so it might be a place you wish to advertise. However, your main goal is to just reach consumers interested in buying stocks, not the general populace who is reading non-stock articles. Therefore, you can tell AdWords to only show your ads to consumers who are on an article about stocks in the New York Times business section.

The more controls you add to your ad serving, the fewer impressions your ads will receive as fewer people will match all of your criteria. If you want more general reach, you can use topic or interest targeting.

Topic & Interest Targeting

Topic and interest targeting have the largest possible reach across Google’s display network. With these two targeting options, you can pick a user interest or site topic and have that as the only ad serving criteria. This allows for a large reach, but a less targeted one.

Reach versus targeting is one of your first considerations when creating display campaigns. With AdWords you are not limited to one choice. You can make one campaign with a very broad topic reach to display your ads all over the web to increase the awareness of your site, and a second, very targeted campaign to increase the numbers of sales to your site – just make sure you are tracking sales.

Very few consumers buy upon their first visit to a site. It is common to see several visits before a conversion occurs. To make sure you are showing ads to those who have previously visited your website, you can use remarketing to show your ads across the display network.

Remarketing

Image from Search Marketing Wisdom

Remarketing is a unique targeting type as you are not targeting keywords or user interest; you are targeting those who were previously on your site. This is a fantastic way of reminding consumers about your product, or even to offer specials only for those who did not convert on your website.

The way remarketing works is by adding a code to your site, or even a single page. When someone visits that page, a cookie is placed on their browser. Then in AdWords you will define ads for those users. Now, when that visit is somewhere else on the web; you can show an ad to that person.

As with all the display options, you can be very complex with remarketing. You can show a different ad for each product, for those who converted versus did not convert, or even just to those who abandoned your shopping cart. As with keywords, you can have both positive and negative remarketing lists.

All Your Campaign Settings Apply

When you create a campaign in AdWords, you can define your geographic reach, time of day when you want ads to be displayed, budgets, and more. All of these settings apply to display campaigns. Therefore, it is possible to only show an ad to someone who meets these criteria:

• In the New York Times
• In the business section
• When the article is about stock brokers
• The user is currently in Los Angeles
• Using an iPad
• On a Monday morning
• Between 6am- 8am

When you define this many different criteria, your ads will rarely be displayed due to how few consumers will meet that scenario. Choosing just a few criteria can help you narrow down where your ads are shown from 4.3 billion page views across the display network to just your target market.

Ad Formats

With search, you are limited to just text ads. That is not true with the display network.

The display network supports image, video, rich media, and yet more ad formats. A picture is worth a thousand words. A text ad can only be 120 characters. When you want to explain your business in a visual or interactive format, the display network can give you those options.

Conclusion

Every new advertiser should start with search. Search fundamentally works and most companies find success with search marketing. With display, it can be more complex in choosing your audience, websites, and defining all of the criteria necessary to ensure that you are finding new customers from display.

However, the display network is so large that it should not be ignored. Once you feel comfortable with search, then try display. If you are new to display advertising, then start with just managed placements.  If you have a long buying cycle, then test out remarketing ads.

The display network can help your business expand your advertising reach significantly. Just make sure to first list your goals, and then pick the display advertising method that will help you reach those goals and grow your business.

Brad Geddes is the Founder of Certified Knowledge, a PPC Tools & training company; a regular blogger, Official Google AdWords Seminar Leader and author of Advanced Google AdWords. He is also an active Udemy instructor and teaches “Introduction to Adwords“ 

1. Omnigraffle

A favorite among developers, Omnigraffle is a great tool for Mac OSX. This program produces graphics, diagrams, fast mockups and page layouts for your site creating a result similar to what the final product will look like.  It has an extended option for stencils to help you further create a more detailed mockup.

Best used for:  Detailed realistic website layouts and mobile mockups. From $99.99.

2. Balsamiq

A fun, basic tool to use for non-complex mockups. Balsamic uses sketch-like icons and images to create the layouts you need. Unlike Omnigraffle, this tool has a more playful approach, has simple drag and drop actions and is amongst the most widely used tools for designers and front-end developers.

Best used for:  iPhone mockups and website layouts. From $79.00.

3. Lumzy

This web based tool has the look and feel of a Microsoft product, though it’s fairly intuitive and clean. Lumzy has a similar drag and drop experience as Balsamic but with straighter edges and realistic images and icons.

Best used for: Website layouts. Free.

4. Mockflow

Web-based with a ‘sketchy’ look, this tool comes equipped with user generated templates. Simply use the templates found in the mockup store by importing them into your document. Choose from iPad, iPhone and website components.

Mockflow is also great for inserting images from your computer with simple scaling size tools.

Best used for: Mobile applications and UX design. Free for one mockup, $69/year for the premium version.

SPECIAL UDEMY OFFER: The first five readers who email MockFlow@produle.com with the subject line “Udemy12” will receive a 10% discount off the premium package.

5. Pencil Project

This downloadable platform (for Mac OSX, GNU/Linux, and Windows), is a a great tool to create website and diagramming prototypes. You can quickly and easily create a page of any size and start adding images and text. Like Mockflow, the Pencil Project has prefabricated buttons and tabs (and other icons) you can quickly select and paste into your project. You can also easily copy and paste web images straight into your work.

Best used for: Website and diagramming prototypes. Free.

There are many other mockup tools available online (free and monthly). Though we couldn’t review and test them all, here they are for you to check out:

Many of the tools are great, some more complex than others, but the platform you chose really depends on the job at hand. If it’s a quick iPhone mockup, try iPhone MockUp or Balsamic. If it’s a more detailed web page try Mockingbird or Mockflow. They all have their special features and benefits. And most are reasonably affordable. Tapping into enterprise tools can quickly become costly (some at $4,900!). Be sure, when selecting your tool, that you understand what, why, and for whom you are building.

Have we missed any mockup tools? If so, please feel free to share or comment on the tools you prefer the most.

Before you start your next Udemy course, it’s best you get a good nights rest. Here is why:

Meet Ed. He prides off thinking he only needs five hours of sleep a night. He claims to get more done after everyone else is asleep. What he doesn’t realize is that in the first few waking hours of the day Ed’s cognitive function already starts to dissipate. He hunkers down for a few more hours, grabs three more cups of coffee and gets back to work. In this stage his mind and body start to shut down, reserving energy for core body functions, not including learning or remembering. Ed, you may not have known, was a poor student. He got C’s at best in all his courses. Two more hours of sleep a night would have easily brought his grades up one to two levels. Today Ed cleans luxury cars for a living, alienated from the dream of ever being able to drive one, let alone own one in his life. Ed, go to bed!

That was an extreme example, but it’s a fact, lack of sleep does not do your body good. And worse, it has a reverse effect on your brain and makes cognitive functions much more difficult. Both your body and mind need sleep to rest and recuperate from the day. It needs the time to slow down, digest, repair and re-establish energy for the following day.

When it comes to learning, sleep deprivation impairs spatial learning including memory and simple tasks like how to get to a specific destination. It also impairs:
1. Cognitive function
2. Attention Span
3. Reaction time
4. General health
5. Immune system
6. Increases hallucinations

You see, learning itself helps to rejuvenate the brain and lack of sleep deprives the brain of this function. Historically, scientists believed that the main function of sleep was directly related to learning and memory.  Today that notion still holds true.

“Sleep is a fascinating field. Every single organ in the body is affected by sleep and can be improved by sleep.” – Jaime Boero, M.D., Ph.D.

Sleep directly effects your learning. The more you sleep (7.5 hours or more), the more ‘cognitively awake’ you are and the better you can perform. By losing sleep, you learn less, make worse decisions, accomplish less, are more rude and angry, eat poorly, are more prone to major errors and completely undermine your intellectual power.

A detailed 2002 study done by the Harvard Medical School demonstrated the effects of lack of sleep on some participants. They concluded that a good night sleep results in a 20% increase in motor speed without loss of accuracy, while in the same period of time during wake provides no benefit. Since sleep helps keep new brain cells alive in the hippocampus, a deficiency would ultimately impact overall cognition and eliminate the potential benefit of new learning, therefore decreasing the ability to learn and retain information. And since we are all lifelong learners, the more information we can retain, the larger our capacity to learn and do. [Going from a beginner Python developer to intermediate and eventually an expert, can happen more efficiently if you take care of yourself and get some rest.]

REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement), one of the deepest parts of sleep you experience typically during the last two hours of sleep enhances emotional memory and learning retention. For those who cut their nights rest shy by about 2-3 hours lose out on REM sleep and ultimately their chance to learn and remember throughout the day.

So before you go pressing play on your Udemy course, or before attending a seminar , conference or an investors meeting, make sure you clock your sleep hours. You need it for body and mind!

Whether you want to test an app you hacked together over the weekend or are about to launch a VC-backed startup, you first need a few brave souls willing to try your buggy, unfinished product.

Turning over your baby to the unwashed masses can be frightening. However, it’s a crucial first step to finding and learning about your future customers. You’ll learn more from the first five strangers who use your product than from months of internal testing. The most honest (and useful) feedback you can get is from people you don’t know.

Here’s how to find them.

1. Paid Advertising

AdWords

At 11+ years old, AdWords is the grizzled veteran of internet marketing. While not as cheap as it once was, Google’s search advertising platform remains one of the best sources of targeted, trackable traffic.

Use Google’s Keyword Tool to find relevant, specific keywords to target. Don’t worry about low search volumes, just focus on relevance. During your beta, finding the right users is more important than finding lots of users. Plus, long-tail keywords are typically cheaper.

Make sure to link your AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, tag your ads’ URLs, and set up conversion tracking so that you can measure which ads performed best and which keywords led to signups.

Products that perform best on AdWords already have existing search traffic. If your product is creating a new category, which doesn’t have any demand yet, find users searching for solutions to the problem you can solve.

Facebook Ads

If your product is best suited to a particular demographic or psychographic group, Facebook ads may work well.

You can target users by location, demographics, and interests to reach as specific of a group as necessary. Facebook is great for reaching customer segments like college students who love knitting or middle aged women who surf.

Just like with AdWords, be specific in your targeting, even if it narrows your potential reach. A small, but highly targeted, audience will lead to higher-quality leads for less money.

The ads themselves should use eye-catching images or pictures of faces, particularly faces resembling your target audience. The text of the ad should draw the user in further but still leave him wanting to know more. Make sure to tag your links so that you can measure which audiences and images work best.

StumbleUpon Paid Discovery

You probably wouldn’t expect StumbleUpon ads to be very effective at signing up users since most Stumblers are looking for eye-catching photos, funny videos, or interesting articles. I used to think the same thing.

Then I read a case study detailing how hypetree, a music discovery tool, used StumbleUpon ads to attract 6,000 signups for $0.03 each in one week. Three cents!

Clearly, the right product can go viral on StumbleUpon. You may want to test this channel if your startup targets 18-34 year olds (the bulk of the StumbleUpon audience) and is entertaining.

Hypetree did well partially because a music app is fun and sharable. Startups outside of the entertainment industry could have stumbling potential if they have entertaining content, like a demo video or infographic, that users would want to share.

Reddit Ads

Our last advertising suggestion is the often-overlooked Reddit ad platform. Reddit ads work well when targeting a tech-savvy audience that’s willing to try new stuff.

The most important tip for advertising on Reddit is to not treat it like a direct response ad. Redditors do not like to be sold to. Instead, show them what you’ve made and invite their feedback. Redditors are more than happy to share feedback, however snarky it may be.

Ads on Reddit function just like regular posts, except that they have a more prominent placement on the page. Since ads are just like posts, Redditors can leave comments and have discussions. Your ad’s comment thread is a great way to get feedback and engage with users. If you don’t have a thick skin for pseudonymous internet comments, Reddit ads may not be for you.

Gabriel Weinberg wrote a great analysis of his success with Reddit ads for Duck Duck Go, a privacy-first search engine.

2. Forums

Forum postings can be a great way to get your product in front of large groups of people with similar interests. For example, if you’re targeting internet marketers, share your new tool on the Product Reviews section of WarriorForum. If your startup can help moms save money, post it in the Frugal Mom Forums.

Remember that forum users will be much more receptive to your post if you’re already an active member of their community. If you joined just to post something self-promotional (even if it could benefit the community), you won’t get a very warm reception. However, if you’ve contributed to previous threads, users will be more receptive to your message.

You can find high-traffic forums for any audience or niche. Reddit, while not strictly a forum, does have subreddits (categories) for thousands of topics. Hacker News, run by startup incubator Y Combinator, is a great place for any tech company to share their latest innovation.

Hacker News

The best option for feedback from the tech community is Hacker News. A popular “Show HN” thread can send your site a flood of traffic and garner dozens of comments. Showing your latest project to Hacker News is a great way to get feedback from some of the smartest and most influential members of the tech community.

For an example of a great Show HN post, see “My 4-hour project, already profitable” where Loren Burton outlines how he built a website selling “I Survived Snowpocalypse” t-shirts that was profitable four minutes after launching.

His post was extremely popular: 313 points and 141 comments. What can we learn from its success?

First, great headlines attract clicks. His headline drew users in by demonstrating that he was making money off of minimal effort. The thread wouldn’t have been nearly as popular with a generic title like “New t-shirt website.”

Second, the initial post includes details on where the idea came from, how he built the site, and where he found his customers. Hacker News readers love to learn, and being transparent with real data is the best way to teach them by example.

Third, Loren was active in the thread. He left plenty of additional comments (18 on the first page alone), which provided more information and answered people’s questions.

When writing a Show HN post, make sure to craft an eye-catching (but not over the top) headline, to provide numbers about the project or startup, and to respond to comments in the thread.

Reddit

If you don’t have the money for the Reddit ads outlined above, simply posting to Reddit can be an alternate solution. Keep in mind that a post is different from an ad and should be even less self-promotional, unless you want flamed by Redditors. As with any forum, being an active member with lots of karma will buy you more leeway when asking for something.

Post your project to r/startups or share it in the most relevant subreddit when looking for testers and feedback. Redditors like to try out new stuff but will provide blunt feedback, especially if they think you’re trying to advertise.

3. Beta Directories and Services

Beta directories are a great place to share your startup and to recruit eager early-adopters.

Free marketplaces connecting startups and beta participants may seem ideal, but there’s a reason that they were not our first suggestion. These sites can only connect you to one type of user: curious techies.

This audience is great for products that thrive in the Silicon Valley echo chamber (Foursquare, Path) but not the right target for companies that can find better footing elsewhere (Pinterest).

Because these users are signing up for a variety of betas, they are not very loyal, so you aren’t likely to reach the most engaged users.

Depending on your target audience, you may benefit from listing your startup in a beta directory. In addition to testers, you’ll also get some SEO benefit from the links these directories provide.

Beta Directories

• The Museum of Modern Betas
• Beta List
• BetaCandy (coming soon)
• inspiredBeta

Beta Services

In addition to directory submissions, you can also use more formal beta management services like the recently launched BetaBait, which takes a more active role in facilitating the marketplace between companies and testers.

If you need more advanced, end-to-end management with detailed feedback, you can use a full-service provider like Prefinery, uTest, or Centercode. These systems are more advanced than most early stage startups will need.

4. Startup Directories

Once you’ve officially launched, you can add your company to startup directories that regularly publish information about and reviews of the newest startups. These sites are followed by the early adopters on the cutting edge of technology who want to know what the new new thing is.

Start with these sites:

• MakeUseOf
• Killer Startups
• Go2web20.net
• YouNoodle
• StartupTunes
• StartupLi.st
• StartUpLift
• SubmitStartup
• Amazing Startups

5. Coming Soon Pages

Now you have a laundry list of ways to find beta testers. Is your product ready?

If not, you can still amass an army of potential users in preparation for a big launch or, in true lean startup fashion, gauge interest in an idea before building it.

A great coming soon page can help you easily sign up future beta testers. Don’t worry, these aren’t the blinking construction sign gifs of yore. The new generation of launch pages collect email addresses, incentive social sharing, and provide detailed analytics.

The most popular tool for creating a coming soon page is LaunchRock, which you can use to generate a custom page on your own domain in minutes.

You can also use similar tools like KickoffLabs or, if you’re launching a product through a blog, Launch Effect, a WordPress theme that functions like a launch page.

Next Steps

Now you know where to find beta testers, how to recruit them, and, if you’re not ready for the spotlight yet, how to collect their info with a coming soon page.

All that’s left is to squash a few more bugs and move your product out of alpha. You do have a product already, right? Good. If not, time to start building.

Now that you have created your keyword list and come up with some amazing blog post topics, it’s time to start shaping that content. First, consider your target audience. Whose problem does your product solve? What works for a group of high school kids might not be helpful to a group of business professionals. Create 3-4 audience ‘buckets’ to target.

The Udemy blog, for example, focuses on social media, design, programming, and startups. Most of our audience is likely to read articles about at least two of these topics. Going back to our small business accounting example from the keyword post, we know that their demographic includes small business owners, startups, and bookkeepers. Always keep your demographic in mind when shaping your content and titles.

Create Pillar and Viral Content

Your content should be 80% pillar posts and 20% viral posts. Pillar content is tutorial, how-to content that teaches your audience how to solve a problem. It keeps people coming back to learn more.

Viral content is more ‘bubble gum’ content that’s sticky and shareable. It might not be directly related to your core focus but has elements of facts and humor.

Flowtown, for example, a social/gift marketing company published an infographic called ‘The Evolution of the Geek’. It had no direct relation to their service but got people asking what Flowtown did and had an astonishing 24,000 Facebook likes. It was a perfect viral post. But note, again, that most of your content needs to be directly related to your focus.

Collaborate

During the process of creating your content, think ahead of all the people that may be interested in collaborating on the piece. If you’re creating an infographic on small business accounting, think of the big players in the industry that could compliment your promotion.

For example, if you have a well-known startup as a customer of your small business accounting software, reach out to the founder and ask if they would be interested in sharing the promotion of the piece. In return, you could include their logo or mention them in the infographic. The purpose of collaboration is to expand the post’s reach. The more people you have involved and sharing, the more likely it will go ‘viral’.

Prime the Pump

Get your team to share the content from your blog before you send it to media outlets. Having more tweets and likes will give the content social proof and make readers more likely to share it. If a large publication interested in working with you sees that a few people have already started sharing the content, they will most likely share it as well.

Seed the Content

There are many ways in which to seed your content. You can offer an exclusive with a larger publisher for the first 24 hours. Then, open it up to anyone to re-post. Share it with your friends via email and ask them to share it also. You could even post a link in a relevant Quora thread or in a comment on a related blog.

The most important thing is to create a repeatable seeding model. You can do this by:

1. Creating a shared Google doc with your entire team so they know the process for sharing the content.

2. Emailing the entire team to start sharing the content immediately, directly from the post.

3. Reaching out to your influential blogger list a few days before the post goes live to ask if they’d be willing to re-post or share it. Giving them exclusivity may make them more likely to help.

4. Using Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Digg. You can start by submitting your posts to these sites, but be weary, if the same five people are consistently submitting all the content, it can severely affect its chance of virality. In this case, make a list of all the possible people who could share your content including your team, vendors, and friends. Then have them take turns submitting your posts.

Use Hashtags

Tweet much? Start using your keywords as hashtags in your tweets. For example, #SmallBizAccounting. Start by searching current active hashtags to see what others are using and either use those as well (to participate in the current conversation) or create your own. Whichever you decide to do, be consistent and only switch up between a few different ones.

Use Amazing Images

There is nothing more eye-catching than a really great image. Make sure that the photos you use are fairly large and relevant to the content. Co.Design, Fast Company’s design blog, does a great job of this:

As does SocialFresh:

BIG & CONCISE HEADINGS

The above examples also show the importance of big headings. After your image, the heading is the next thing readers will see. Sure, the photo may get their attention, but the heading is what makes them stay as they’ll know what kind of content to expect.

Keep your headings short and concise. Headings that work best include:

1. How-to’s

2. Numbered lists [7 Ways To Increase Your Twitter Followers]

3. Social proof headings [Social Media: Will It Change Your Business?]

4. Threat plus a solution [PR Nightmare: Tactics to Quickly Fix A Disaster]

Creating great, shareable content is time consuming but well worth it. It’s better to post fewer really great articles than to post many ok posts. You want to be respected as a knowledge leader in your industry, and the only way of getting there through content marketing is to have the best content possible. If you are not a writer and don’t have any on your team, consider outsourcing this to a professional and working with contributors known to create great work.

Before you start spending money on PPC campaigns, you should have specific goals in mind for what you want your marketing to accomplish. If you do not have a goal set for your marketing efforts, then you can never tell if you will be successful or not.

What is a Good Goal?

A goal should be specific and measureable. The most common goals are:

• To make more money
• To sell more stuff

Unfortunately, these goals are not specific enough. Do you want to make $1 more each month, or $10,000 more? Your goals should really be:

• Increase total revenue $1,000 each month for 12 months
• Get 100 new email subscribers per month at a cost of $5 per subscription
• Attain a $15 CPA for new leads with a minimum of 50 leads per month

Many companies will set multiple goals. You might have some for social followers, email subscribers, lead generation, total revenue, etc. Having many goals is great, however, your marketing budget may not allow you to attain each goal so it’s important to put them in order of importance.

This is a very brief look at goals, you should have a lot more thought about why you are marketing and what you would like to attain.

Above all, you must find a way to track the goals you set out to achieve. Here are three common ways to track goals for PPC, which we will examine.

How to Track Your Goals

AdWords & AdCenter Conversion Tracking

Both Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter have scripts that you can put on your site that will let you see exactly what ad copy, keyword, placement, search query, geography, day, time, etc received a conversion.

These are easy scripts you can install:

• Navigate to the conversion section in the PPC engine
• Create a new script
• In the script wizard, define what a conversion is worth. This step is optional; however, if you define it then you can see that a keyword costs you $100 and it make $150 or you can see that you spent $1000 sending people to a landing page that only made $500.
• Install the script on your confirmation page. This is important. The script only gets installed on your ‘Thank you’ page. If you install it across your entire website, then you will be tracking page views.

Once the script is installed, then you will be able to see exactly how well your PPC account is performing and take actionable steps to removing data that does not convert, increasing spend in areas that do convert, and easily conduct tests to try to increase total conversions.

The advantage to using the PPC engine’s script is that you will see data inside your AdWords or AdCenter account. It is very easy to tell where you are making and losing money as well as make bid decisions upon the data.

The disadvantage is that you will have to login to another system to see conversion data from your email, SEO, and other marketing efforts.

Call Tracking

Many conversions take place on the phone. If you get a call, take an order, and then hang up the phone – the person finished the conversion offline, and therefore your AdWords conversion script cannot work.

If you are creative, you can get the script to work. For instance, you can generate a travel itinerary or receipt online. Then when you are done with the call, direct the user to the online receipt page. Since this page is online, you can fire the PPC conversion tracking script.

However, that can be more technical that most companies can implement. The simplest way to track phone calls is to use phone call tracking.  With phone call tracking, you install a script from a call tracking provider where your phone number is displayed on your website. Then, when someone visits the website, the call tracking provider will see what phone number should be displayed based upon the referring data. [Try out Mongoose Metrics - a Google Apps for phone call tracking]

For instance, you could use one phone number for SEO, one for PPC, and another for email campaigns. Or you can display a different phone number for each ad group or keyword. The more numbers you want; generally the more expensive call tracking becomes.

The features of call tracking can vary widely by provider. Some will record calls, others have search with call data features, others have automatic routing based upon the referral data, etc. It’s best to first make a list of what data you need to make good marketing decisions, and then find a provider that offers your features.

The advantage of call tracking is that you can track conversions that occur over the phone and then use that information to improve your PPC accounts.

The disadvantage is that it can be costly and will add to your monthly bill. If your company does a lot of business on the phone, the cost is usually offset by the better marketing decisions you will make with this additional data.

Analytics Tracking

Every company should be using analytics. It doesn’t matter if it’s a free service like Google Analytics or an enterprise service such as KISSMetrics. You need analytics. Analytics gives you much more than conversion data – it can give you insight into user behavior, referral data, and technology used across your entire site.

With analytics, the tracking can vary; however, this is the general order of setup for most analytics systems:

• Install the analytics system across the entire site – every page should have the script
• Inside the analytics interface, define your tracking goals. Usually this will be the URL of your ‘Thank you’ page [End result]
• When you define your goal, also define the value of a goal. Just as with the PPC engine tracking scripts, this will let you see how valuable visitors are based upon a plethora of characteristics

One of the main advantages of using analytic tracking is that once analytics is installed on the site, the rest of the goal configuration occurs within the analytics interface. Therefore, you do not have to wait for your developers or designers to add more code. You can define conversions at will.

You can also define different types of conversions with analytics. PPC engine scripts do not record time on site or pages per visit. With analytics, you can set an interaction goal in addition to a URL goal.

Another big feature of analytics is that you can have all your conversion tracking data in a single place. You can see organic, referral, email, and PPC campaigns from one interface.  In fact, there are call tracking providers who will import data into analytics systems so you can even see your call tracking data there.

The disadvantage of analytics is that it often disagrees with your PPC data depending on how it is configured.

For instance, Google Analytics looks at the last entrance to your website in attributing a goal. PPC scripts look at the last ad copy, keyword, landing page, etc clicked on before the conversion.

To put this in an example, let’s say this is how a visitor converted:

• Monday: clicked on a PPC ad
• Wednesday: came back to your website directly and converted

The PPC engines will tell you that the ad copy clicked on Monday received a conversion. Google analytics will tell you that a direct traffic individual converted. if you add up your conversions across all of the tracking systems, it appears you have two conversions, when in fact you only have one.

My Personal Preference

I always use the PPC engine scripts and analytics. If more than 20% of the business comes via phone calls, then I will use phone call tracking. If less than 20% comes from phone calls, then I will occasionally use call tracking just to attribute the additional conversions to a source (PPC, SEO, etc).

The reasons to use both the PPC engine script and analytics is that you will use them in different ways.

The PPC engine scripts make testing very easy. Even with AdWords tight integration into Google Analytics, it is difficult to see ad copy testing results inside of Google Analytics. The PPC engine scripts make setting bids and testing very easy.

Analytics can give you additional data points to work with that the PPC engine scripts do not provide. The PPC engine scripts only report conversions. If you want to see how engaged someone is with your content (time on site, pages per visit) analytics can give you this data. This is especially useful in managing placements and display campaigns for Google AdWords.

There are other ways of tracking conversions. What you must do is to first set your goals, and then find ways of tracking and measuring those goals.

If you run a PPC campaign without conversion tracking – you will make bad decisions. By installing conversion tracking, you can see exactly where your money is going so you can use the data to increase the profits from your PPC accounts.

For more information on using Adwords, check out Brad’s course on Udemy ‘Introduction to Adwords‘.

Brad Geddes is the Founder of Certified Knowledge, a PPC Tools & training company; a regular blogger, Official Google AdWords Seminar Leader and author of Advanced Google AdWords. He is also an active Udemy instructor and teaches “Introduction to Adwords“ 

To help you navigate these stormy seas, we’ve created the infographic below. Read on to find out where you stand in the startup food chain.

(Click to enlarge.)

Looks like you survived! Hope the next time you’re out there raising capital or navigating the rocky waters of startups, startup hiring, or the startup ecosystem, you’ll know who’s a predator (and who’s your prey!).

Whether you’re still brainstorming or already generating revenue and looking to scale, the right advisor’s insights could mean the difference between failure and success for your business. If you’re reading this article, you already know the benefits of bringing in an advisory board.

If you don’t have the right advisors in your immediate network, you’ll need to branch out and proactively find them. LinkedIn is a great way to streamline that process.

Why Use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social network dedicated to connecting professionals. With over 41 million monthly active users, you have plenty of resources and people with whom to connect. The network is commonly used to find a job, become a subject matter expert, and find clients.

Today, there is yet another reason to use it: to find advisors for your startup. If you’re skeptical, consider this method a supplement to the rest of your efforts. One of the most unique aspects of connecting through LinkedIn is getting guaranteed responses. For more info on this, skip to the “LinkedIn InMail” section below.

Your LinkedIn Profile

Your potential advisors will be curious about what you’re interested in and what you’ve achieved. Make sure to choose a professional profile picture and to fill out the Summary and Experience sections. These are all essential. Having them may not guarantee a response, but not having them almost guarantees you won’t get a response.

Here are some expert insights on how to build and refine your LinkedIn profile:

• Write Your LinkedIn Profile for Your Future by Chris Brogan: http://www.chrisbrogan.com/write-your-linkedin-profile-for-your-future/
• 5 LinkedIn Tips for Effective Personal Branding by Dan Schawbel: http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/04/07/5-linkedin-tips-on-effective-personal-branding/
• Tools of the Trade: LinkedIn by Keith Ferrazzi: http://www.evancarmichael.com/Entrepreneur-Advice/357/Tools-of-the-Trade-LinkedIn.html

How to Search on LinkedIn

If you don’t have any potential advisors for your startup in mind yet, you can use Google to figure out who has relevant experience and who pulls the strings in your industry of choice. If you can find out more about them through their social media profiles, you will have an idea of what common interests and passions you both share. You can then include these common interests or an accomplishment you genuinely admire about them in your introductory message.

If you’re seeking an advisor with a perspective outside your industry or if your industry is still in its infancy, here are some resources on what to look for in a potential advisor:

• The Best Start-up Advisors are in the Trenches (Inc. Magazine): http://www.inc.com/eileen-p-gunn/the-best-start-up-advisors-are-in-the-trenches.html
• Selecting an Advisory Board (Entrepreneur Magazine): http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/71684
• Don’t be an idiot: Find a great Startup Advisor (HumbledMBA): http://www.humbledmba.com/dont-be-an-idiot-find-a-great-startup-advisor

Once you know what you’re looking for in an advisor, you can use LinkedIn to search according to industry, location, or past companies. If you upgrade to LinkedIn Plus, you can go deeper with your search and sort results according to seniority levels, function, or years of experience.

Using LinkedIn search, you’ll be able to sort through increasingly specific pools of people until you narrow it down to a select few. You may want to consider also doing a Google search and finding out a lot more about someone, including from third parties, especially if you want them to get involved with your business. Their advice could be the difference between boom and bust.

Getting Introduced

The best way to be introduced on LinkedIn is through a mutual connection. This method allows one of your LinkedIn connections to put you in touch with your potential advisor. Free users are allowed to use this feature five times before upgrading.

Using a “warm intro” is a great way to increase the likelihood of a response. Through LinkedIn, you can write a message to your potential advisor and one to the connection who is introducing you. Your connection will then be able to provide context and talk about how great you are to your potential advisor.

This method may not be feasible for those of you new to LinkedIn but is great for those of you with already bustling networks. If you’re new to getting introduced, make sure you nail it!

LinkedIn InMail

If you don’t have a connection to your target advisor, contact him or her directly through a service called InMail. InMail allows you to send direct messages to people, like your potential advisor, through LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is so confident in this service that it guarantees a response within seven days, or it will grant you another InMail credit to send.

Each InMail costs $10 to send, and you can buy up to 10 InMail credits with a Basic Account. I only recommend this option if you plan to buy no more than two InMail credits.

Upgrading your account grants you a monthly amount of InMail credits. If you need around five InMail credits, you can upgrade your account to Job Seeker and get them for $29.95/month. In contrast, you’d only get 3 if you chose not to upgrade your account. By default, the Job Seeker badge is off and should not appear on your profile. If it finds its way there somehow, you can turn it off in your Account Settings.

If you think you’ll need 10 InMail credits, you can sign up for a Sales Navigator account for $49.95/month.

Now to Compose Your InMail…

The composition of your message is not that different from cold e-mailing. Keep it short and simple. Here are some points you may want to touch upon:

• How you are familiar with his/her work (or what makes you curious about his/her work)
• Commonalities
• Who you are, and what your idea/company is
• Next steps: what you need advice on, or if you just want to chat

If you’re an article junkie and really want a link to read though, have a look at The Art of the Cold E-mail from Startup Café.

Let’s Get It!

Don’t wait until tomorrow to start. Spend five minutes taking that first step right now.

If you don’t have a LinkedIn profile, create one and start finding people you know. If you do, start finding potential advisors. If you have potential advisors, start drafting your InMail messages and figure out how many you’re going to need. Best of luck on your search!

What’s easier and faster to use is not always the best option.

Below we highlight three of today’s most popular programming languages. Whether you’re looking to Learn PHP, grab that hot new Python Tutorial, or finally Learn Ruby and conquer Rails, this infographic compares how they differentiate, who uses them, and their popularity.

Think you know who reigns? You may be surprised.

For more, join the conversation on Digg.