04.14.11
Measuring social with Omnitue Site catalyst
Here’s a useful PDF from Omniture on the benefits of using social and how to track social specific KPI’s using Omniture.
visit here for the Omniture measuring social pdf
11.22.10
Best web design practices validated by solid research
Here’s a great usability article that backs best web design practices with reputable research results such as eye-tracking studies, reports, analytics, and usability surveys.
A few of the topics covered include
- Forget the “Three-Click Rule”
- Google Golden Triangle
- Page load speed
- Below the fold myth
- Site navigation myth
02.28.08
Adwords Max Budget nightmare
As you may have heard, the Adwords team recently devised a new way of increasing each Adwords account spend by introducing a few feature called “Automatic Matching”.
Basically, if you are not spending your daily budget, Google will read the content of your landing page and automatically bid against keywords it encounters on your landing page which you didn’t originally specify within your account. The performance of this new feature is currently being tested by selected Adwords clients. Although automatic matching has good intention, it will cause more overhead for the SEM Manager which will now have to.
- Adjust his/her daily budget and most likely reduce ad exposure.
- Keep track of each keyword which was automatically added by the system.
- Continuously add negative keywords to prevent bidding on unwanted keywords.
- Optimize campaigns due to changes in Quality score
This is a brilliant move from Google to increase ad spend for less experienced PPC managers, but unfortunately it will create more overhead for the veterans. Maybe Google will listen to the outcry of many SEM Managers and add an opt-out option similar to the content match option.
Read the email Adwords sent out here.
01.27.08
America’s most wanted Email Spammers
For anyone doing email marketing, here is a site you should definitely bookmark. Register Of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO). SPAMHAUS provides FAQs on email marketing, glossary of industry related terms, Scam alerts, a lookup directory of known spammers and very useful email tools. My favorite is the top 10 worst ROKSO spammers section.
01.12.08
Essential Competitive PPC Tools
Here are a couple great competitive Pay per click tools, if you haven’t already adopted them.
Spy FU
This is a great Pay Per Click competitive software. Although the pay per click cost and traffic estimates are not exact, at least they provide a fuzzy idea of the competitive landscape.
Spy Fu also plots keyword search trends and provides the ability to export your results into an Excel file.
KeyWord Spy
KeyWord Spy is another excellent competitive Pay Per Click tool. Keyword Spy helps you analyze your competitor’s PPC click campaigns by providing approximate Adrank, ad variations and number of competitors at the keyword level. This is a very useful tool if your considering entering a certain market or if your staying on top of new competitors initiatives. Another use of this tool is the ability to easily spot affiliates bidding on your restricted keywords.
One couple of unanswered questions I have yet to find out regarding these sites are.
1. How are these sites getting this competitive information?
I’m assuming that they are screen scraping the search results.
2. How are they accommodating for personalized search, and search history?
Even if they are not accommodating for personalized, these sites still provide useful information.
competitive pay per click competitive ppc keyword spy keyword tool spy fu11.20.07
Software not to invest in
Here are a few software packages I would stay away from. The spammy website, the ridiculous claims and no support number are only a few of the items that raised a red flag when visiting this site. To top it off they don’t provide a trail version of the software. I’m always skeptical of software that doesn’t offer a trail download. If you’re confident in your product you need to provide a demo.
10.24.07
Effective Tracking - Maintaining competitive advantage
One of the beautiful aspects of advertising online is the ability to track at a very granular level. Because it is so easy to track online advertising, it is easy to over look something very obvious.
I’m sure you’ve seen this on many sites you’ve visited and you may have not even thought twice to select the proper choice from the drop down menu. It’s perfectly fine to ask your customers where they saw your ad, but not in the online environment. This information is not only available to your customers but it’s also available to your competitors.
There are many free software packages available which will record unique tracking links by campaign. If you have a lower budget use Google Analytics. If budget isn’t an issue, Omniture Site Catalyst is the best solution.
Here another mistake many advertisers make
This code was on the confirmation page an advertiser’s site. As you can see the code is very well commented. From the code any one can tell that this company is advertising on Quigo, LinkConnector, Net Traction, Oridian and ShopAtHome. Now, even if the code wasn’t commented, a savvy marketer would immediately be able to identify each tracking pixel. Hiding the tracking pixels doesn’t take much effort. One quick way of accomplishing this is placing all the tracking pixels in a Javascript file. A better way of keeping your advertising sources anonymous is to only display that pixel code when appropriate. This can be accomplished with a few lines of programming.
In a competitive environment, it’s essential that you keep a competitive advantage. If you learn from other people’s mistakes, you don’t have time to make your own.
LinkConnector Net Traction online advertising online environment Oridian Quigo ShopAtHome10.16.07
Successful Affiliate Campaign Strategies
Building a close relationship with your affiliates could be the difference between the success or failure of your campaign. Building a relationship is fairly easy, but requires a little time allocation, and consideration. Here are a few tips to help you kick start that relationship.
Try to touch base with your top 10 affiliates at least once a month. If you are using Commission Junction, you can accomplish this with a custom email to your top performing groups. Draft the message so it’s personalized. Consider sending a custom email to your top 2 affiliates. This will give them a pleasant surprise, because they are not accustomed to personal recognition. Be sure to discuss certain areas of their site or site design to let them know that you have visited their site and you approve their marketing tactics. Also, in your custom email, be sure to include your phone number and email address. Don’t worry; they will most likely not contact you. A majority of affiliates are doing marketing on a part time basis and they have other full time commitments.
Be appreciative of your affiliates. Every once in a while send them an extra bonus. What’s an extra $100 or $200 when that affiliate has made you $10,000 that month. The extra money will be greatly appreciated especially around the holidays. You may also want to consider inviting them to the office. If your paying an affiliate more than $2,000 a month, that’s comparable to someone’s salary. Make them feel as a valuable team member.
In addition, you may also want to consider changing their payment terms. It’s always nice to receive your money quicker and not having to wait 30 days for transactions to be validated.
These are a few tips that every successful affiliate campaign should strive to adhere to. A little upfront investment will save you time in the long run recruiting new affiliates.
recruiting new affiliates10.14.07
How to identify a spammy affiliate
- They bid on your trademark terms and your competitors’ trademark terms
- They want to host their own forms.
- They are interested in co registration.
- They want to post leads into your system
- They have an incentive site
- A majority of their site isn’t in the language your customers speak
- They have popups
- They authored a “get rich quick” book
- They are reluctant to tell you where their traffic originates from
- They have dollar bills on their website
- When you click on their site, it redirects you somewhere else
09.06.07
Tracking multiple lead sources contributing to a sale
Many marketers track performance and revenue based on the final sale, but overlook or don’t know how to track all campaigns leading up to that initial sale. For example, let’s say your company is well saturated on the web. You have banner ads, affiliate campaigns, email campaigns, Pay Per Click as well as SEO campaigns. As you know, there is much overlap between the above advertising channels. Analyzing each channel individually may not be favorable for certain channels, however before you start cutting your budget in curtain areas you should investigate into how each channel contributes to the performance of another channel. You may find that certain channels that you discontinued a while ago were actually exposing your products to a wide audience that wasn’t quite ready to complete the sales process. This is most apparent in banner and contextual networks.
Tracking multiple online channels that contributed to a sale is very easy with Omniture. Omniture provides a plug in called campaign stacking that performs this. The integration is quick and easy and usually only involves updating your s_code.js file. You may have to request the updated javascript code from your account representative in order to implement this.
affiliate campaigns banner ads campaign stacking contributed to a sale email campaigns Pay Per Click
