Aug 27, 2008
Two Ways to Sell Business Cards (or not)
I’m an idiot. I tend to leave things to the last minute. So it should come as no surprise that I’m getting on a plane to speak in Fiji tomorrow & don’t have any business cards to take with me to the conference! Told you - idiot!
So I do what any normal Aussie does in this situation: call in a favour & jump on Google.
The favour was to an excellent graphic designer (if you need a website designed, artwork done etc let me know & I’ll put you in touch with Karl - he doesn’t want me to link to him here).
Google was to find a 24 hour business card printing service. What follows are two examples of how to sell & how not to sell online. And once again the winner is the little business not the big corporate.
Aug 20, 2008
How much should you spend on AdWords?
That’s the question we get asked all the time! Want to know the answer… whatever you want to.
There’s a great post over at Lunametrics about Starting Small with your PPC marketing - and for many clients that’s the key. Start with what you can afford. Test the waters. Then increase your budget once you can see some results.
Google has some great tools behind the scenes that will help you make the decisions a bit easier: one is the Daily Budget tool shown above. Google watches how many impressions & clicks you get for your money (in this example a $40/day budget), then it tells you how much traffic it thinks you could be getting & what the budget needs to be to get 100% of it.
Read more »
Aug 18, 2008
Great to Meet You & Welcome to WebSavvy!
Due to the wonderfully successful event that Andrew & Daryl Grant put on in Sydney this weekend there are lots of new readers here this week - so a quick welcome message to all.
Come on in. Take a look around. Make yourself comfortable.
Best places to start? The free 5-day course (top left of your screen) has over an hour of pure content teaching you everything you need to know to get started with Google AdWords.
The links on the right hand side are the most popular posts from the past year: we’ve got mindmaps, cheatsheets, videos & more - so grab a cup of coffee & start exploring.
For those that weren’t in Sydney that are looking for ‘an Australian version of StomperNet’ check back later this week - we’ve got something cooking that you are going to love!
(My presentation is available on Google Docs here - it may not make too much sense on it’s own without my words (I use a lot of pictures!), but the video will be up here by the end of the month, so check back then. Also the formatting gets a little confused on Google Docs, but it should still be readable)
Aug 4, 2008
Google AdWords - A Change in Display Tactics
Nothing about this on Inside AdWords yet, but it looks like Google are testing new ideas for AdWords.
I have text links set NOT to underline on my browser (I just think it looks neater) but as of an hour ago Google are underlining the search keywords in the AdWords results. Note, they’re not making any changes to the SEO (left side, organic) search results, only AdWords results.
This is an interesting change presumably one that will increase Click Thru Rates (CTR%) - but make sure you kep an eye on conversions. More clicks won’t necessarily mean more leads/sales.
One thing it does mean you should do - make sure you have the keywords in your headline! More than ever this is so important now. Take a look at the screen grab to the left… which Ads jump out more? Having the search term your prospect used in the Ad will now make a bigger difference on CTR.
How do you do this? Lots of different AdGroups (each AdGroup has a few closely related keywords) with a couple of Ads in each one.
How do the Ads look in your country? Is this just Australia for now??
Aug 4, 2008
Beware Google AdWords Phishing Attacks
I wrote recently that there have been a number of emails going out to AdWords account owners of late supposedly from Google, saying that “your account balance is running low” or that “we were unable to process your payment”
DO NOT click this link - if you think the account might be running low, log into your account via the AdWords main page (www.google.com/adwords) but do not click this link.
Sadly a client did click the link in the email on Friday & they’ve been hit with $250 of fraudulent charges. We’ve asked Google to refund this – I’ll let you know how we go!
It could have been much worse. The client realized his mistake & cancelled the credit card linked to the AdWords account… the fraudster had set a daily budget of $9800, so if the credit card had had a big limit this could’ve been ugly.
Lesson: don’t click links, ask your account manager to check if you’re unsure and at a minimum, log into your account via the web, not via an email link.
Jul 24, 2008
Is Your Landing Page Broken?
I’ve been researching keywords for a new client today & discovered that the Google Keyword Tool thinks I’ll need to pay $10.21 for the broad match ‘free credit check’.
From this we can tell that a decent, benefit-driven Ad highly relevant to that keyword & a decent Landing Page will probably cost about $3-4 per click at the top of the page.
And yet 2 of the top 5 results are for American sites (complete with American credit check jargon that most Aussies wouldn’t begin to understand) and another site is broken - see image.
How to avoid a broken AdWords campaign:
1. Check your Landing Page regularly - at least once a month - on all 3 major browsers (IE 6 or 7, Firefox & Safari). There are websites that will show you what your site looks like if you don’t own a Mac
2. Ensure that your list of countries (in your AdWords account) is limited only to those countries that you regualrly sell to. Once you know your account has a great ROI, then by all means extend your reach - but do so with a different campaign, a specific landing page, no jargon & ideally a domain name for that country. A .com.au domain for an Australian AdWords account will make a huge difference to your CTR (how much? it varies by industry, but we’ve seen accounts triple their CTR overnight with a .com.au & that’s without further testing)
3. Ensure that you can actualy sell to the countries that are on your list! If your only payment option is PayPal, are residents of those countries even allowed to open a PayPal account?
4. Use Google Analytics to check your Bounce Rate regularly - at least monthly, if not weekly. A higher than normal (whatever normal is for your site) bounce rate indicates that visitors are not getting what they expected. GrokDotCom has an excellent post on this topic this week.
5. Commonsense is sadly under-rated! As often as you can, sit down at a computer with someone that’s not a staff member & look over their shoulder as they navigate through your site. Try to stay silent & just watch! You’ll learn a lot. Do this often.
6. Install ClickTale & watch movies of your visitors trying to use your site - probably an eyeopening experience.
7. Hire an expert to look over your site & give you objective feedback.
Did I miss any? Feel free to add more below in the comments. Thanks, Mike
Jul 23, 2008
Looking for a New Book?
A friend just asked for my top 10 ‘must read’ books - I thought I’d share:
1. purple cow - seth godin
2. meatball sundae - seth godin
3. the star principle - richard koch
4. the 80/20 principle - richard koch
5. cashflow quadrant - robert kiyosaki
6. re-imagine - tom peters
7. getting everything you can out of all you’ve got - jay abraham
8. unique ability - catherine nomura
9. 4 hour work week - tim ferris
10. the seven day weekend - ricardo semlar
11. secrets of internet entrepreneurs exposed - dale beaumont 
plus, more web related:
don’t make me think - steve krug
waiting for your cat to bark - bryan eisenberg
the long tail - chris anderson
the irresitible offer - mark joyner
web analytics an hour a day - avinash kaushik
Jul 21, 2008
Another reason NOT to use GoDaddy
Regulare readers will know that I’m not the first to jump up & down to recommend GoDaddy - quite the opposite.
Just in case you were still considering using them, here’s Ian’s tale of woe & woeful mismanagement
Take a peak around his site while you’re there - some excellent info
Jul 21, 2008
AdWords Editor - New, Faster Version
Great news for AdWords Editor users. It just got a lot faster to manage your account stats. You can now download stats for selected campaigns and adgroups - no longer do you have to wait 5 mins for the whole account to be updated.
Also when you upgrade from an older version of AdWords Editor, all of your current unposted changes (including comments) will transer to the new version as well.
If you’re not already using AdWords Editor to manage your account, give it a try
Jul 18, 2008
Take Care with New Placements Tab in AdWords
A new feature added today is pushing the content network & placement targeting much more than we’ve seen previously.
It allows you more control over the content network, by adjusting your content bids based on the sites where your ads will show.
Sounds like a great feature & it should help improve cost per lead/sale.
The only slightly worrying thing
Read more »
- Google AdWords MindMap
- Setting up Google AdWords
- Part 3 - Using AdWords to get better SEO results
- AdWords Cheatsheet
- Moving Domains From GoDaddy – CheatSheet
- Improving Your AdWords Ads
- How to (Quickly) Move Keywords between AdGroups
- Google Analytics Settings
- Setting Up A Google Account - Video
- AdWords - Campaign Settings