Error Forum Blog

Here’s a pretty good list of Top 10 Adwords Mistakes.

1. creating a long list of less than targeted keywords
2. failing to identify unique aspects of your product or service
3. a lack of keywords in your ad text
4. directing users solely to your home page
5. creating single ad groups
6. utilizing single campaigns
7. using broad match only
8. failing to optimize ad serving for your ads
9. failing to track results
10. entering the content network without modifying bids

Like all lists, take these rules with a grain of salt. For me, number nine is the most important. It doesn’t really matter how people approach Adwords, so long as the results are positive.

However, I think the most important factor has been left out - know who the audience is, and what they want. The marketing side of PPC is often down-played or omitted, but it is the make-or-break factor for search marketing campaigns. Without that knowledge, PPC campaigns can quickly become very expensive.

You can run profitable campaigns by knowing your market better than the other guy. Here’s the Wikipedia entry on market segmentation. The most important aspects as far as SEM is concerned are the readiness-to-buy stage (especially important for affiliate marketing) and sales effectiveness (i.e. focus resources on prospects most likely to buy your product).

“Over the next 30 years, most countries will undergo huge growth in the number of 50+ citizens, along with a corresponding decline in the number of youth. This group is living longer than any other generation, and collectively they are rapidly becoming a huge economic force�

Baby boomers are/were big on investment. As they reach retirement, they are going to either pass that massive pool of wealth onto their children, or they are going to spend it. One way or another, trillions of dollars will be released from fixed investments, and will come flooding back into “circulation�.

There will be huge opportunities in luxury travel, adult education, vacation and retirement homes, and much more. Anti-aging products, cosmetics, cosmeceuticals and more.

Time to do some more market research on the 50+ segment, methinks…

Are your visitor stats really accurate? How do really you know?

There’s an excellent post at Marketing Experiments that looks at the issues of data tracking, particularly online marketing
metrics. They advocate testing across various technologies are comparing the results.

In summary:

• Relying on inaccurate metrics can give you a very misleading picture of the performance of your site and adversely effect future marketing decisions.
• By using two or three different solutions, you can compare results and at least identify where you have problems.
• Don’t rely only on metrics from a PPC engine or any other third-party provider. Always use a back up web analytics solution to verify the dat

In the distant past, around August 2005, it was announced:

“Yahoo’s long-awaited self-service contextual ad network will launch in the United States in a limited beta test today, extending the reach of Yahoo! Search Marketing ads through small and mid-sized publishers�.

It still doesn’t include publishers outside the US, of course.

Meanwhile, Yahoo! appears to be flat-lining, while the competition looks lively indeed.

One of the things that annoys me about podcasts, and obviously this isn’t anyones fault - it’s the nature of the medium - is that you can’t quickly scan through them and decide if the content is relevant to you, or not. Transcripts would be great, but they can be impractical. However, I think this show by Shoemoney, and the first part, are particularly good because they contain a lot of specific advice and strategy that people can use to increase their revenue from PPC.

Content on the podcast includes:

• Barry provides a roundup of search news
• Chris Jones from Pepperjam Search explains how those with low budgets can get into PPC
• Chris would encourage people to build landing pages so they can test and make changes
• Do due diligence on the offers, and the market
• Rotate designs to see which one converts the best
• Go through the Adwords and Yahoo! free training programs
• Replicate winning strategies - uses an example of American Idol and ringtones
• Advice for large PPC budgets of 10K to 100K per month - use good infrastructure, use multiple offers and paths. Invest in detailed, sophisticated analytics and tracking at the keyword level
• Long tail theory - creating paid clicks for every product available
• Harnessing product feed technology
• Adnetworks - create blogs around specific offers, create campaigns around specific offers
• The value of offline advertising, like Google Print
• Bid-surfing and bid-shadowing (programmatically following and emulating a leading merchants strategy)
• Get certified on Adwords and Yahoo - there’s a lot of great tips in the tutorial programs

Searchenginejournal reports that Yahoo Search Marketing advertisements are beginning to be shown on some result pages in eBay.

Curious. I guess Yahoo! need to extend their distribution network, and Ebay are probably coming under price pressure from free competitors, such as whatever-Google-base-is.

On the topic of free competitors, The Paradigm Shift Blog has a provocative post about emerging Web 3.0 style companies:

“The “Free Site Revolution�  is going to turn many million dollar industries into  $50,000 a year industries.  I think we can sum up web 3.0 as  �Good bye Venture Capitalists� and good bye “Paid Services� and good luck existing if your company has more then 5-10 employees.�

I’m not sure “free� is the answer to everything, because what sites really need to make them work is an active community. After all, there are plenty of free auction sites, with no buyers, and thousands of Web 2.0 community sites with…erm…no community.

However, combine “community� with “free� and there is a lot of potential to unseat cash-hungry, larger operations.