By Bob Speyer and Kristin Tomlinson, Web Success Team

Internet marketing gossip is exploding  — and the line between fact and fiction is blurring. If gossiping is a crime, then every blogger and Internet savvy professional needs to be incarcerated for this misdemeanor. What was once an indulgence is becoming a dependency as more and more individuals are turning to various social media outlets to extract their daily dose of breaking news and scandal. Today, people are simply taking a quick glance at their updates on Facebook and Twitter to squeeze out the latest juice. Social media marketing is the driving force behind this Internet sensation, and businesses everywhere are taking notice of its impact on consumers and using it to their advantage. They’re spending less on print ads and relying more on word of mouth through online marketing to establish their web success.

He Said… or Did He?

It’s no secret that a small whisper can turn into a loud buzz through emails, blogs and tweets. Like Michael Jackson’s tragic death or the shocking fabrication of the demise of actor Johnny Depp, gossip is an unstoppable force and it’s making a special guest appearance on every text, tweet, and chat room. Whether imported or formed domestically, hoaxes and factual stories alike are making the evening news. As Mark Twain once said, “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” This was a giant wake up call for marketers who underestimated the power of the digital word to deliver their message. Companies are quickly fanning this fire by to turning their words into actions by using Internet medias to promote their brands, goods and services.

What Happens in Vegas, Goes on the Web

If you want to save a marriage before it’s even begun, do yourself a favor and delete last week’s bachelor party pictures from your camera. Today nothing is safe from the prying eyes of the Internet. When pictures and comments get posted on Facebook, they will go viral on other sites like Flickr, Twitter and YouTube. Even Google is jumping on the bandwagon by indexing Facebook Updates. You can bet your dirty laundry that friend and competitor will read it. With so many social media sites itching to be the first ones to deliver the breaking revelation of the day, nothing ever is kept hush or in the dark anymore. So it is a good practice to discriminate what you post — from a corporate or personal standpoint.

Rumor Control

With Internet gossip running rampant, things can spiral out of control. You may not be able to stop it but you are not helpless either. Managing your reputation is important, especially when your business relies heavily on online marketing to deliver your message. Good communication has always been effective and holds true in this digital era. Be honest, transparent and consistent. Address your detractors online and promote your brand.

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By Bob Speyer, Web Success Team

Is Your Brand Being “Heard”?

There’s a new marketing tool in town you should know about. It’s in Beta testing but it is not only free but produces mountains of great marketing information to help you improve your website. It’s called “Heardable.com,” and quite simple it is the easiest and most efficient way to measure how your online brand is perceived, performs and stacks up against your competition.

Just enter your URL in the free tool and you get a Heardable Score in return. The six measurable sub-scores that will help you determine you brand’s success against your competition are:

1) Portable: Is your site optimized for mobile search? The better positioned you brand is to take advantage of mobile, the higher your ranking and site’s effectiveness. Portability is determined by detecting auto redirects for the four top mobile device platforms; iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Windows Mobile.

2) Shareable: Sharing is a reciprocal exchange, giving and getting. Heardable scans for RSS feeds with the more feeds the more you are likely to share content and thus more engaged in social activity. The more you share, the more you will be picked up and shared as well. Social media is all about engagement.

3) Measurable: Does your website have analytics that track, monitor and optimize site activity, including on-page performance, ecommerce and online advertising? A low score would indicate you need to set up more tracking indicators for your marketing efforts.

4) Actionable: Does your website interact with your visitors and connect with them using visitor focused words? A higher ranking is achieved if your website speaks in personal tones to customers, using ‘you’ or ‘your’ as ways to connect with them. A low ranking focuses more on brand information and corporate policy.

5) Sociable: Word of mouth marketing is becoming a major player in brand image and how consumers react through the power of the purse. Make sure you have a brand blog set up with at least a few employees making regular contributions. Set up social accounts on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg and YouTube immediately and participate on a daily basis.

6) Searchable: Ranking in this category depends on search engine visibility, number of inbound links, and local search determinants. Keywords, original content and linkage to your site will improve your site’s performance and searchability.

Facing Down the Competition

Business is all about competing and the goal is gaining market share and customers. Heardable can give you a powerful tool to find the answers about improving your business and achieve web success. It provides you with real time data that you can use to make better marketing decisions, and turn them into an action-based plan backed by indisputable metrics. Your boss wants proof, well show them the stats!

Brand Comparisons

Heardable’s extensive research of category brand leaders mirrors a Heardable Score. This means you can now get the statistical intelligence to help you dramatically improve your site’s performance and take the lead of your chosen category of business. Heardable Category Overviews factor in over one million URLs covering seven critical areas of analysis.

Learn from the Best Brands

The Heardable 100 is a sort of gold standard of online branding. They share with you the best of the best and what makes them tick. Heardable takes the features and functions that these 100 online brand leaders have in common. There are plenty of take-a-way lessons in this batch to give your site that needed marketing boost.

Make Your Website Heard!

In today’s competitive environment, online branding is critical to building your business online. Getting qualified visitors is a marketing imperative. Tools like Heardable are critical in understanding your site’s performance and visibility. The Web Success Team can analyze and optimize your website, increase your Heardable Score to make it ‘Heard’ throughout the Internet. Contact us today for an complimentary analysis of your website and the effectiveness of your online marketing efforts.

Images: from Heardable, Inc.

The Web Success Team specializes in developing and marketing direct response websites that take full advantage of the latest developments on the Internet. The Team has an arsenal of effective web strategies, online marketing tools and proven customized social media techniques to promote your products and services. And we’ll show you ways to increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site.

For more tips, tools and articles of interest, become a fan of the WebSuccessTeam Facebook page and learn more about online marketing, SEO and social media. Visit us at http://www.facebook.com/WebSuccessTeam. Contact the Team today for a complimentary consultation to your web success!

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by Bob Speyer, Web Success Team

The human mind is a remarkable thing, but it can also be fooled. Everyday, whether we want to or not, we are bombarded by advertisements and marketing in magazines, on TV, radio, billboards, etc. Almost everywhere we look, we see ads and brands telling us what we need, adding to our own views and preferences even creating a placebo effect.

Perception Is in the Eye of the Beholder

Stan Reents, PharmD writes in his article “Don’t Underestimate the Power of Suggestion” about how placebos affect the human mind in various studies. One example was a taste test study on different types of vodka. The subjects were asked what their favorite vodka was before the test. However, the results showed that many rated their favorites poorly. Why did they insist that one brand of vodka was their favorite when their taste buds said differently? The answer can be said in two words: brand loyalty.

Brand loyalty is when a consumer buys and continues to buy a specific brand, because he or she believes the product’s features are better. This can be done either consciously or unconsciously. This explains why some people in the above study preferred certain brands of vodka over others despite their liking to them. Those brands favored must have had the right images, features and prices to create a higher perceived level of quality.

Establishing Your Own Online Identity

Creating an online brand will give consumers an image of your company and add interest to your products and/or services. The job of an online marketer is to try to break the habits of the consumers that buy your competitor’s products by offering something fresh, new and better. If you suggest that your product is better, it puts the possibility out there.

Now I’m not advocating lying to potential consumers or offering products and services that are of poor quality. The idea is to sell the best quality that you can offer and to market a specific image in order to attract potential clients.

You want to distinguish your brand from your competitors but in an interesting, positive, and memorable way in order to leave consumers wondering if they should give your products and/or services a chance. Once you have a clear and strong brand image, your products and/or services become something more, a brand. They stop being items and start being something better, different and not something that can be imitated.

Momentum Marketing

Having established a branding, you now need to deliver your message online and keep the momentum going. Obviously your website is “brand central” but you still need to actively promote your brand through direct response marketing and the various social media network marketing channels like Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and YouTube. Also you need to support your brand by blogging and article marketing where you can write and post informative content that positions you as an expert in your field. Set a realistic budget for marketing and promotions. If done correctly, it will be well worth the return on investment and move you closer to web success.

The Web Success Team specializes in developing and marketing direct response websites that take full advantage of the latest developments on the Internet. The Team has an arsenal of effective web strategies, online marketing tools and proven customized social media techniques to promote your products and services. And we’ll show you ways to increase the amount of qualified traffic to your site.

For more tips, tools and articles of interest, become a fan of the WebSuccessTeam Facebook page and learn more about online marketing, SEO and social media. Visit us at http://www.facebook.com/WebSuccessTeam. Contact the Team today for a complimentary consultation to your web success!

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Ask yourself which is more powerful when you are deciding on a purchase: a referral from a friend or colleague; a printed advertisement; or a sales person.

Not to second guess you, but I bet overwhelmingly it is someone you have direct contact with, someone who has actually purchased the product or service, or has heard good things about it from a trusted friend. Recommendations are sales gold.

This senario falls into the realm of social media networking. It is powerful, it is convincing and it is proven. Companies have spend millions of dollars to promote their brand and to deliver the right message to consumers through traditional advertising. Now the statistics are in and they are moving more of their marketing dollars to the digital/social media arenas.

Here are a few social media facts and figures:

1. 300,000+ businesses use Facebook
2. 300 million people are active Facebook users
3. 100 million viewers are on YouTube
4. 14 million Twitter users
5. 346 million people read blogs; 184 million bloggers

Your new and current business will depend more and more on social media marketing. That’s were the hearts and minds of your customers will be focused. They are relying more on input and personal experiences in decision making that having some Madison Avenue wag influence your decision where to spend your hard earned money.

The paradigm has shifted. Power to the people. As James Frley, CMO Ford stated, “You can’t just say it. You have to get the people to say it to each other.”

Here are just a few real life examples:

• Naked Pizza set a one-day sales record using social media marketing. Using Twitter, they increased sales 67% of which 84% were new customers.
• An organized tweet-up for Susan G. Komen for the Cure netted 11,000 visitors in 24 hours and countless donations.
• Web host provider Moonfruit spent $15,000 on social media and increased their traffic by 300% — translation, a sales bump of 20%.

These stories are not uncommon. Creating and implementing an effective social media marketing plan is as essential to your business as your telephones. Implementing one is a must. There is no getting around that social media done correctly takes time and resources, but the return on investment is there for the taking.

The New Buying Reality

Buying habits have changed. Selling has to catch-up to this new reality. The better news is that it is affordable, considering its reach and appeal. You are building lasting relationships that will continue to pay dividends, or in business terms, profits. How’s that for a return on investment.

Get started today. The Web Success Team can tailor a social media marketing plan to fit your company and to promote your brand.

Source for this article: Socialnomics

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I recently came across an article in Advertising Age about re-branding Time Warner Cable.

In my very recent past Time Warner Cable was one of my accounts on the creative services side. Being tightly controlled by the large Madison Avenue Advertising Agency. Creativity was very limited.

In this day and age with all the social media avenues Time Warner Cable can find a viable avenue to re-brand the company and its services.

We are a client of Time Warner Cable and find that the company is “stuck” in the last century, as you can see by the comments on the Ad Age post.

They are competing with the Dish, Netflix and many other more “modern” avenues like watching TV online. Customers are their lifeblood and they need to do a better job taking care of them.

I would STRONGLY recommend that Time Warner get a Facebook page and a Twitter page and USE them for customer complaints and suggestions. That would be a start. Then follow what other strong customer oriented brands are doing. Starbucks, JetBlue and others are using Social Media to better communicate their services, offer discounts or specials, field and resolve complaints, and to gain valuable customer feedback. They gain loyalty and repeat business.

Here is one of many “Time Warner Sucks” pages  that I found on Facebook. It has over 1,000 members.

A Lesson for Your Business

Throw a rock in a pond and watch it ripple. The bigger the stone, the bigger the consequences. But what does this mean for your business? Do not underestimate the value of social media. It is a unique way to reach out to current and new customers. Business is about building relationships and trust. Keeping open new and popular channels of communication will help grow your business online. And it is a good way to defuse negative press before it gains momentum.

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James Cameron’s Avatar has touched a nerve in our collective psyche. Much in the same vein, Social Media has exploded into our digital world, changing the landscape on how we think, react and do business.

What does Avatar and Social Media have in common? They are both brave new worlds that have captured our imagination and have connected us to each other. In a world gone wild with war, natural disasters and the human condition, we all yearn for a place (real or digital) that will give us meaning and a way to express our individuality and our humanity.

Our Primal Need

One of the most striking comparisons of Avatar and Social Media was the interconnectivity of the Na’vi to their natural habitat and to each other. Their umbilicus was a synaptic nerve cord emanating from their head in the form of a long pony tail. When physically connected to another life form, they had pure communication of thoughts and emotions, and could have a symbiotic influence on each other. Social Media networking is fulfilling that primordial need to be connected, to make our presence felt and have the ability to influence and be influenced. In essence, make our voice or vote count. We are not living and breathing avatars, but our digital networking is connecting our avatar to yours.

A modern day analogy happened in the 1960s when the youth felt disenfranchised from our society and found meaning in the proverbial “love-ins.” As the beat poet of that generation, Jerry Rubin, so eloquently noted, “Don’t trust anyone over 30.” Those words resonated around the globe. The youth were connected through rock n roll, the Beatles, the Vietnam War, and flower power. They influenced generations and these baby boomers are still a force today.

The Bonds that Influence Us

Trust is another comparison worth noting between the Movie and Social Media. It is the glue that holds both systems together. The hero in Avatar, Jake Sully, needed to understand the rules, the customs and learn how to move in an alien world. He needed to gain the trust of the Na’vi, not just live amongst them as a intelligence gathering project. But something happened once he truly felt engaged with his mentor and love-interest, he changed and the world changed with him. Social Media has its rules of engagement and if you are to be successful you need to understand that the process takes time. Watch, learn and build trust. Be a part of an online community and actively participate.

The effectiveness of Social Media is in building relationships, making your presence felt in positive non-exploitative ways. Establish your brand of influence, offer content, suggestions, advice, reliability. In Avatar, the Sky People (aka humans) saw “gold” and wanted to mine it, regardless of the environmental impact. Bulldozing your way through the jungle with purely self-interest objectives is counter productive. Short term gains, long term angst.

Standing Ten Feet Tall and Blue

Social Media enhances your brand image and makes you stand out from your competition and be that 10 foot tall blue Avatar. Take the time to understand it, cultivate it and fall in love with it. Enjoy the experience.

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Note from Web Success Team: Here is part II of the article published on January 7th. When we run into an article that has practical application value, we want to make it available to our clients and our readers. This Guide takes the mystique out of PPC and offers excellent short-cut strategies to maximize your PPC budget and its effectiveness in driving more qualified traffic to your website.  — Bob Speyer, Web Success Team

Creating Killer PPC Ads

1. Include your keywords in your ads (on every line if possible) for higher QS and lower cost per click.
2. Use your headline to grab attention, the first line to mention the top benefits of your products and the third line for a clear call to action. You can use the URL line for including keywords and calls to action as well.
   
3. Use Digg.com to come out with killer headlines. Look for the headlines with the most diggs.
   
4. Tie your ad copy to current events.
   
5. Always split-test ads. Have two ads that look almost the same except for one element. Find a winner and then write a new ad to beat it. Keep doing this again and again to constantly improve your click-though rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CR). Start by testing the big stuff (offers, guarantees, marketing message) and move down to the small details. Changing one single word can double or triple your CTR, so test everything. This is a nice tool that allows you to calculate if you have enough data to make a good decision.
6. Avoid Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI). This is a feature that includes your keywords in your ads. I used to love it but then I realized that it made some of my ads look really bad if the keywords people searched for weren’t relevant to the ads. Stick to one keyword and one ad per ad group and you’ll do great.
7. Use numbers and special characters in your ad ($, #, ®, ©, ¼, &, etc.) They’re a great way to get people’s attention.
8. Call your readers. For example, “hey you, skinny man” or “hey you, bankruptcy victim”.
9. Use negative ads. For example, “Is Bob’s New Book a Scam? Don’t Buy Bob’s Book Before You Read This”
10. Try news-style ads. For example, “62 Year-Old Woman Happy with Husband’s Performance”
11. Try tease ads. For example, “The One Secret to Reduce Taxes by 87%. Get It Here for FREE”
12. Ask questions: “Are You Sick of Spider Veins?”
13. When you write ads for the Content Network, you don’t need to include your keywords. Your goal here is to grab people’s attention, so get controversial, use weird characters and get their attention in any way you can.

The Perfect Landing Page

1. Use landing pages; don’t just send people to your home page. The goal of a landing page is to capture leads. After that, you’ll need to do a good job to monetize those leads.
2. Avoid big headers and navigation menus. If you need a navigation menu, you can have it in the footer.
3. Have an attention-grabbing headline.
4. Use bullet points to get your point across.
5. Have 1 clear call to action. Make it clear what you want people to do.
6. This post will give you copywriting tips.
7. This post will help you understand how the subconscious mind works.

How to Optimize Your PPC Campaign

1. The best way to ensure you pay as little as possible for your clicks is by using negative keywords effectively. Read this post on PPC negative keywords.
2. Eliminate keywords with no impressions after 7 days.
3. Eliminate keywords with no clicks after 14 days.
4. Eliminate keywords with low conversion rates after 30 days.
5. Eliminate keywords with low CTR or write better ads to increase the CTR.
6. Eliminate keywords that don’t appear on the first page or increase their bids so they make the first page.
7. Use the Opportunities feature to get ideas on how to improve your campaign.
   
8. Put keywords with a lot of traffic in their own ad groups and write special ads for each of them.
9. Use Google Website Optimizer to test elements on your landing pages (headlines, calls to action, graphics, bullets, guarantees, etc.) This is the best way to increase your conversion rate.
10. Pick your winning ads and write new ads to beat the winners.
11. After 45 days, once your campaign has built a good record of high CTR and QS, lower your bids by $0.03 every couple of days and keep an eye on your traffic to make sure it doesn’t drop. Most of the time, once a campaign has a good record, you can lower your bids without losing any traffic.
12. Look for the “Campaign Limited by Budget” message. If your budget is limiting your campaign, set it extremely high. If you absolutely need to have a budget, lower your bids so you get more traffic for the same amount. Keep lowering your bids until the”Campaign Limited by Budget” message disappears.
13. Look for new traffic segments. For example, if you’re a chiropractor and a lot of people see you for their back pain, create a landing page addressing that issue and create a new ad group with back pain-related keywords and ads.
14. Compete with yourself. If your campaign is doing great, create a new website (in a new domain) and get almost twice as many leads/sales.
15. Buy several domains. Some domain names get 2-4 times as many clicks as others. Keyword-rich domains always win. Domains are only $9/year, so buy a bunch of them and see which one has the highest CTR.
16. Don’t limit your campaign to Google. Yahoo!, Bing and Ask.com also have PPC programs. They’ll send you a lot less traffic, but the conversion rates are usually higher.

How To Ensure an Excellent Quality Score
QS is extremely important. If you have a high QS, your ads could get twice as many clicks as your competitor’s while you pay only half of what he’s paying. In fact, having a poor QS is the reason why most people lose money with PPC, so pay attention and follow these guidelines:

1. Have links to a contact us page and a privacy policy page on your landing page.
2. Include your keywords in your ads as much as you can. This is where having one ad per keyword makes a lot of sense.
3. Include your keywords in your landing pages, but don’t overdo it.
4. SEO factors on your landing page are very important. Have a relevant page title, H1 tag, meta description and meta keywords.
5. There must be a connection between your ad and your landing page. If your ad promises a downloadable report and your landing page tries to sell a widget, you’ll be in trouble. You can offer whatever you want, just be upfront about it in your ad.
6. Avoid “trouble” words like “offer”, “guarantee”, “buy now”, etc. Put these words in images and call the images 1.jpg, 2.gif, etc. Don’t put the trouble words in the images alt tags either.
7. For all those images that don’t contain any of the “forbidden” words, use descriptive alt tags.
8. If you’re going after very different markets (such as “beach vacations in Costa Rica” and “ski holidays in Colorado”), have individual landing pages for each of your markets so you can keep your QS high.

I hope you guys enjoy this post. It took me a long time to put it together but it was a lot of fun. – Zeke Camusio.

Source: Zeke Camusio http://www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog

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Note from Web Success Team: When we run into an article that has practical application value, we want to make it available to our clients and our readers. This Guide takes the mystique out of PPC and offers excellent short-cut strategies to maximize your PPC budget and its effectiveness in driving more qualified traffic to your website.  — Bob Speyer, Web Success Team

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By Zeke Camusio

This is a very challenging post. I’ll try to explain my step-by-step Pay per Click (PPC) system in one single article (and I want to keep it short). This is the same system we’ve used to get millions of qualified visitors for pennies. I’m really excited about writing this article and I think you’ll love it.

Keyword Research

1. Use the Google Tool ( https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) to get keyword suggestions for your site.
2. Run the same tool on your competitors’ websites!
3. Use the same tool for “Descriptive words or phrases” as opposed to the “Website content” feature.
4. Use WordTracker ( http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ ) to get more keyword ideas.
5. Use SpyFu ( http://spyfu.com/) to find out what keywords your competitors are using and get ideas from their campaigns. Looks for the 800-lb. gorilla in your market and run SpyFu on their domain. They’re very likely to have a huge budget and a very optimized campaign. Let them do all the research, spend the money and learn from them.
6. Get synonyms from Synonyms.com ( http://www.synonyms.com/ ), Thesaurus.com ( http://www.thesaurus.com/ ) and Quintura.com ( http://www.quintura.com/ ).
7. Get misspellings using this tool: http://tools.seobook.com/spelling/keywords-typos.cgi. Almost nobody bids on misspellings so you can get clicks for very cheap.
8. Bid on competitors’ URLs. They’re dirt cheap and extremely relevant. A lot of people do a Google search for YouTube.com instead of typing www.youtube.com in the address bar.
9. Another way to get cheap clicks is by having geo-targeted keywords, such as “Seattle chiropractor”. Make sure that you only bid on the keywords for the areas you serve and that your landing pages contain those keywords. Otherwise, Google might think you’re not relevant and that will hurt your Quality Score.
10. Bid on action keywords, like “FIND local chiropractor” and “BUY PlayStation 3″.
11. Consider the buying cycle. “Costa Rica beach condos” will get you a lot less traffic than “Costa Rica” but it’ll be a lot more qualified if you rent beach condos. Because you’re paying for each click, you only want qualified traffic.
12. Consider “side searches”. Side searches are needs that you can fulfill but so can other products or services. For example, if you have beach condos in Costa Rica, you might want to bid for “honeymoon destinations”.
13. A lot of people recommend starting with thousands of keywords. I don’t think this is a good idea because when a campaign is too big, it’s really hard to manage it. Start small. Ten percent of your keywords will drive 90% of your traffic anyway.

Keyword Research for the Content Network
You’ll need a different approach for the Content Network. Some ideas:

1. Bid on thought strings. If you sell weight loss pills, try strings like “[brand] didn’t work for me”, “has anyone tried [brand]?”, etc. Look for things people would say in forums, blogs and discussion boards.
2. Bid on popular article titles. If there’s a very popular article out there called “The 4-Minute Formula to Lose Weight Eating Chocolate”, bid for it. Your ad will be displayed every time the article gets syndicated on a site running AdSense.
3. Do the same thing with book titles.

Campaign Structure and Settings

1. Have separate campaigns for search and content networks.
2. Have separate campaigns for broad and long-tail keywords. You’ll want to pay less for broad keywords.
3. Use the Google AdWords Tracking code to track your campaign performance.
4. Choose to show your ads more evenly so it’s easier to split-test them:
5. Choose the right geo-location for your campaign. This might sound obvious but you’ll be surprised by how many people ship products to the US only but advertise all over the world. If you are a chiropractor who serves the Seattle area, have two campaigns; one targeted to Seattle with keywords like “chiropractor” and “pain treatment” and another one targeted to the whole world with keywords like “Seattle chiropractor” and “pain treatment in Seattle”.
6. Choose “Accelerated ad delivery”. The Standard option spreads out your ads throughout the day. That’s not good because when prospects search for your ads, they might not be there. By choosing Accelerated Ad Delivery, your ads will show every time until you hit your daily budget. That way you know when you need to increase your budget.
7. If you know that most people will buy your product between 10am and 5pm on week days, use ad scheduling.
8. I set my budgets as high as possible. If a campaign is making me more than $1 for every $1 I invest, I want to invest as much money as Google is willing to take from me. If my campaign is not making me money, then I just kill it. There’s no reason to limit a campaign that is printing you money. Only limit your budget at the beginning, when you’re testing the campaign.
9. The best way to figure out how much you should start bidding is by using the Google Traffic Estimator Tool ( https://adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox ). Enter different amounts and see how much traffic you can get for each amount. Run your numbers and figure out what is the perfect bid. If you pay more than “the perfect bid”, you’ll be paying too much and you won’t make a profit. If you pay less than “the perfect bid”, you’ll be leaving a lot of profitable traffic on the table. There’s a sweet spot in between and Google’s tool will help you find it.
10. Bids should end in 2 and 7 ($0.12, $0.17, $0.22), etc.
11. There are two factors that determine how much you’ll pay for each click: your maximum bid and the Quality Score. The QS is a grade that Google gives to each of your keywords based on how relevant your ads and landing pages are to that keyword. The higher your QS, the lower your cost per click. You need to have your keywords in your ads and the best way to do this is by grouping your keywords into ad groups and writing one ad for each ad group.
12. Ideally, you should have one keyword per ad group. But, this is very time consuming. If you have a lot of time, go ahead and do it. If you don’t, this software ( http://www.speedppc.com/)can do it for you. All the pros use tools like SpeedPPC, but if you’re on a budget you can do it manually the first time. If you don’t have time nor money, you don’t absolutely need one ad for each keyword, but try to group your keywords in groups as small as possible; don’t just throw all your keywords into one ad group.
13. Put the three match variations of each keyword into each ad group. For example, in the ad group “Costa Rica Vacations” you want to have the keywords “costa rica vacations” (use quotes for phrase match), [costa rica vacations] (use brackets for exact match) and costa rica vacations (don’t use any special characters for broad match). More on keyword matches ( http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6100)here.

Look for part II of this article on our next posting “Creating Killer PPC Ads“

Source: Zeke Camusio, http://www.TheOutsourcingCompany.com/blog

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The Web Success Team has scored a touchdown (and a few extra points) in helping promote a premiere event during Super Bowl Week, called Taste of the Game. Our clients, Entertainment & Sports Plus (ESP) and Sports Entertainment Team (SET) are hosting five exclusive events that will benefit charitable causes and educational institutes, as well as entertaining prominent business, sports and celebrity and VIP attendees.

To date, corporate sponsors include: Bacardi, CRN Digital Talk Networks, WealthTV and boingo.

A Website Sporting Good Causes

In collaboration with The Heart Truth®/Red Dress campaign, a portion of the proceeds from The Red Heart Gala and Taste of the Tropics events will benefit Athletes for Life and WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.

In collaboration with our clients, the Web Success Team helped developed the event logo and website to give it a flavor of Miami and give the potential attendees a taste for the game’s activities. Branded to reflect the Super Bowl Miami location with a football themed logo, the site is geared to reflect the 5 exclusive events: Business of Sports Summit, VIP Welcome Reception, Red Heart Charitable Gala, Taste of the Tropics, and End Zone 44 wrap up party.

The site is constructed for ease of use and navigation with events clearly presented with its own page descriptors, sponsorship opportunities with downloadable pdf package, the standard about us and contact us pages, along with celebrity hosts and prominent celebrities and VIP Guests, including actresses Vivica Fox and Kym Whitley, former and current NFL players Willie Gault, DeShaun Foster and Michael Boley.

A Brite Way to Promote Ticket Sales

The lifeblood of any event is ticket sales and the Web Success Team set-up the Eventbrite site to help manage, promote and sell-out the event. The Team branded Taste of the Game on the Eventbrite engine so those going to purchase tickets to the various events will experience the continuity of the branding and event descriptions while making their decision/purchases.

Since Social Media is now an important component in any online marketing plan, Taste of the Game is no exception. The home page has all the social media networking icons so visitors can connect with the clients and spread the word about this exciting star-studded event.

TeamWork Brings Web Success

The Web Success Team can help develop, manage and promote your event through the power of online marketing and social media marketing. Our experience and knowledge can be a valuable resource in this new economy to get the most traction out of your business or event and achieve web success. Contact our Team to learn how we can get you wired into your target markets and make an impact on your bottom line.

The Web Success Team has scored a touchdown (and a few extra points) in helping promote a premiere event during Super Bowl Week, called Taste of the Game. Our clients, Entertainment & Sports Plus (ESP) and Sports Entertainment Team (SET) are hosting five exclusive events that will benefit charitable causes and educational institutes, as well as entertaining prominent business, sports and celebrity and VIP attendees.

To date, corporate sponsors include: Bacardi, CRN Digital Talk Networks, WealthTV and boingo.

A Website Sporting Good Causes

In collaboration with The Heart Truth®/Red Dress campaign, a portion of the proceeds from The Red Heart Gala and Taste of the Tropics events will benefit Athletes for Life and WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease.

In collaboration with our clients, the Web Success Team helped developed the event logo and website to give it a flavor of Miami and give the potential attendees a taste for the game’s activities. Branded to reflect the Super Bowl Miami location with a football themed logo, the site is geared to reflect the 5 exclusive events: Business of Sports Summit, VIP Welcome Reception, Red Heart Charitable Gala, Taste of the Tropics, and End Zone 44 wrap up party.

The site is constructed for ease of use and navigation with events clearly presented with its own page descriptors, sponsorship opportunities with downloadable pdf package, the standard about us and contact us pages, along with celebrity hosts and prominent celebrities and VIP Guests, including actresses Vivica Fox and Kym Whitley, former and current NFL players Willie Gault, DeShaun Foster and Michael Boley.

A Brite Way to Promote Ticket Sales

The lifeblood of any event is ticket sales and the Web Success Team set-up the Eventbrite site to help manage, promote and sell-out the event. The Team branded Taste of the Game on the Eventbrite engine so those going to purchase tickets to the various events will experience the continuity of the branding and event descriptions while making their decision/purchases.

Since Social Media is now an important component in any online marketing plan, Taste of the Game is no exception. The home page has all the social media networking icons so visitors can connect with the clients and spread the word about this exciting star-studded event.

TeamWork Brings Web Success

The Web Success Team can help develop, manage and promote your event through the power of online marketing and social media marketing. Our experience and knowledge can be a valuable resource in this new economy to get the most traction out of your business or event and achieve web success. Contact our Team to learn how we can get you wired into your target markets and make an impact on your bottom line.

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