I was caught off guard this morning when I read Dave’s RedFly Marketing Blog post:

Free $100 Facebook Coupon Courtesy Of Visa

So I signed up - and you should too! It’s free and you get $100 in free Facebook ads!

Simply follow the instructions found in Dave’s post or visit the official Visa/Facebook network page and watch the intro video to find out more.

Now there isn’t a good excuse not to give Facebook Ads a shot to see if they will work for your clients or business!

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David Szetela, of Clix Marketing and SEW fame, interviewed me today on WebMasterRadio.fm’s PPC Rockstars show - it was an awesome experience.

I think the show will air at 4pm EST!

After it airs, I’ll post a more detailed video including the slides we talked about on the show and a walk through of some of the techniques we discussed.

The topic was “Keyword List Management”.

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So I thought I would share something I found - the problem is, I don’t remember where I found this tip so if you know the source, please send a comment my way!

We’re newbies to link building and we won’t even pretend to really know what’s up in the SEO/Link Building world but we have posted a tactic or two in the past and we think you might like to hear about this…it’s so simple, a ppc pro can do it.

First, go to Google News or Google’s Blog Search…and perform a search on the query you want to do link building on.

Second, look at the menu on the left side of your screen:

Number 1 - Pick a time frame…if you’re in an industry that does not have too many search results or too much web activity (hard to believe…but could be true) you will need more time so you capture all the most recent stories in your industry.

Number 2 -  THE GOLD! The golden ticket is this - subscribe to the RSS feed or sign up to get email alerts on that subject and you will have daily opportunities to make relevant comments on news stories and blog posts where you might be able to include a link in your ’signature’ that isn’t ‘nofollowed’…

Finally, keep it up - sometimes a nofollow link is really followed - I’m not convinced that the search engines attribute zero value to nofollowed links because I regularly see them in link profiles…they must count for something…anyways, you simply can’t give up - link building is a long term task and it can be tedious. The end results are fantastic when you get to pocket bigger paychecks every day because your website is ranking for some competitive terms.

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This is a work in progress…

But here it is!

The SEM Daily Reading page at semvironment!!!!!

I plan on adding 15 - 30 of the top blogs in the industry to this page - obviously leaning towards pay per click marketing with a healthy dose of SEO.

Yes - it is similar to p*purls while significantly different. What do you think?

Visit every day for your daily SEM fix…enjoy!

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Aaron Wall, the guru behind SEO Book.com’s SEO Training Course and SEO Tools, posted a blog post a few weeks ago about guest posting for a number of his readers. We were one of the lucky ones that he responded to with an in depth PPC interview. He was very complimentary and we’re excited to share his answers to our questions. Enjoy!

On what percentage of your websites do you use PPC? How do you decide whether or not to use PPC on those websites?

At one point or another I like to think I use it on all of them. Most my sites are ad driven or affiliate driven though, so I don’t compete on the core most competitive commercial keywords via PPC for all of them, but I try using PPC for link building in some cases, and use it in others just to get mindshare in the marketplace…you don’t know what single piece of marketing will stick, but if you are doing 10 things in parallel I think they start to feed off each other. Lots of push marketing (and/or viral marketing/public relations) is crucial for a new website or brand.

Do you believe PPC can be both a short term and long term strategy? More one than the other? Why or Why not?

I think for it to be longterm you need to have an efficient sales cycle and a decent brand. If you do not have a well known brand then the branded competitor will likely have fatter profit margins, and can basically take market share from you at will. And if you are working without a brand, quality scores  are helping the competitor and crushing you…tomorrow if not today.

Do you use any secondary ppc platforms like adbrite, miva, business.com, others? Any favorites? Why/why not?

I tried many of them a few years back, but typically have seen ~ 0 volume or lots of volume (driven entirely by click fraud). Based on that experience I never really went back to the 2nd tier engines much…I figured there was more value in refining Google / Yahoo! / Microsoft campaigns, and in brand building or business model improvements rather than hunting out cheaper clicks. Having said that, on some rare occasions I have seen a Searchfeed ad listing or AdBrite ad unit on a page that ranks well in Google’s organic search results and found that to be a cheap way to arbitrage Google traffic, but that is a rare lucky good deal.

Some of the 2nd tier engines have seen that I own BlackHatSEO.com and have made me custom ad offers to spam Google in exchange for a nice cut of their revenues (going so far as sending me spreadsheets of their top paying keywords), but since many of their ad buyers were affiliates it did not make sense to go from Google to me to _____ to affiliate to merchant…it would be just as easy for me to sign up for the affiliate program directly. If I was using click fraud then it might make sense to sell them clicks, but how hard is it for me to clone what the affiliate was doing and cut those two out of the transaction?

A friend of mine who was in the forex space swears by some of the second tier engines, but in most markets I think time is best spent optimizing your campaigns on the big 3.

Can you summarize where you think PPC advertising tactics, strategies and ROI are going to be 5 to 10 years from now?

I think many companies are already willingly lose money to buy market share. And I think that trend will only grow as time passes. The days of direct response short term 300% ROI search ads will be over (other than for a short period of time for stuff like the new ring tone reverse billing fraud of the day).

As marketing gets more sophisticated PPC will get too competitive for many small companies to compete. I see search becoming a brand buy more and more as time passes, rather than having such a focus as a direct response medium. Plus some people will be willing to pay to give away what looks like free information, but is essentially a sales message wrapped in fancy value add formatting that does not feel like an ad…much more content of the Teaching Sells variety.

What is one secret to PPC success that you haven’t ever shared before?

My affiliate code for signing up with Google is… oh that is the wrong answer. I don’t test PPC stuff anywhere near as well as guys like you do. I don’t really have any PPC secrets beyond using PPC as a link building technique…I think that is overlooked far too often.

Finally, what kind of a time and capital commitment do you recommend a brand new website invest in PPC compared to SEO? What about a 2 year old website? 5+ years?

I think off the start you have to do a base level of link building to get the site going…so that takes about a day and maybe $1,000. From there it is critical that you really find out what keywords convert well such that you can create content around them to optimize your site for them.

One site at the 5 year point might be more screwed up than the next site is at a 5 day point. But no matter where your site is you should keep using PPC to buy mind share and market share, and to test how well your site converts and refine your sales cycle.

If PPC ads seem like they are too expensive then there are likely some issues with your sales cycle or value proposition.

Any additional thoughts about pay per click advertising?

I think you guys know a lot more than I do about PPC. Not sure what I can say to you as a tip! :)

Thanks for sharing Aaron!

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1. How-To Customize Your Google Analytics Dashboard

First, log into Google Analytics and view your dashboard. You can close several of those default metrics if you do not want to use them as your KPIs.

Second, find the report you want to display on your Dashboard. For our site, semvironment.com, we added these reports: Reverse Goal Path, All Traffic Sources, Goals Overview for each goal, etc.

Finally, when you are at the report that you want to see in your dashboard, simply click on the “add to dashboard” button underneath the report title. Now you can see the report in your dashboard!

2. Google Analytics KPI Gadget for iGoogle

YouTube Intro:

Analytics KPI for iGoogle - Without having to log into your Google Analytics account, the widget provides a snapshot of your key performance indicators using the red and green indicators you are used to from Google Analytics.

3. SAP Business KPI Community

YouTube Intro:

KPI Wiki - In today’s business world benchmarking has become increasingly important. That means that virtually every company wants to compare its performance to the market leaders. As a result you need a common KPI language.

4. KPI Library

KPI Library - The free KPI Library is a community that provides an extensive library of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

5. Visual Revenue

The difference between a KPI and a Metric - How does one decide if a Metric qualifies as a Key Performance Indicator? and if so, what are the characteristics of an excellent online marketing KPI?

Online Video Analytics - KPIs - These online video metrics affect your KPIs but are not KPIs by themselves.

6. VKI Studios

Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for e-commerce websites - Quick list of the most effective and actionable KPIs for an e-commerce website.

7. Wikipedia

Key performance indicators - Key Performance Indicators (KPI) are financial and non-financial metrics used to help an organization define and measure progress toward organizational goals…

8. Visitask

Using key performance indicators (KPI) for effective project management - Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable measurements that reflect the critical success factors of an organization. Based on beforehand agreed measures, they reveal a high-level snapshot of the organization.

Developing key performance indicators in projects - Key performance indicators should preferably meet the following essential criteria: Be direct (no complex calculations), Be objective, Be adequate, Be quantitative, Be practical, Be reliable.

Bonus PDF from the Web Analytics Association (WAA)

Web Analytics Key Metrics and KPIs (PDF) - In the interests of discussion clarity and Web site reporting standardization, this document defines key metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Web Analytics.

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Sometimes a marketer makes a mistake by pulling the trigger before aiming. We have all done it - I know you’re lying if you tell me it hasn’t ever happened to you.

Does this cycle happen more often than we would like to admit?

Perform Minimal Research -> Launch A Campaign -> Decide It Isn’t Working -> Try Fixing It With More Research -> Implement New Actionable Findings -> Now It Works…or Not?

The problem is that this approach can REALLY hurt a business if your random shot wipes out your most basic limited resources (time and money.) The opportunity costs could be too big to ignore.

I believe marketers are typically very smart individuals/organizations and I would argue that we know the right way to approach marketing - we simply choose not to do it that way.

I suppose that is why the famous John Wanamaker quote still stands true today - but it is only half true with paid search marketing: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

We have tools and tactics that accurately quantify our expenditures in search marketing. We are in control. Perhaps half of the advertising money that is “wasted” is not wasted but is dedicated to continued innovation and creativity with a client account in the paid search industry.

Here is a quick version of what we do to get READY to market a product/service:

Research

Competitive, Customer, Internal, Behavioral, Economic, Demographics, Sociographics, Psychographics, News, Keyword Intent, Keywords, and more. Research would never stop if we didn’t dedicate a set amount of time to the project dependent upon the client’s needs. More information equals better decisions that should translate into better results.

Profile/Persona

We create a generic customer profile of who we ideally wanted to target using the findings from our research. With the recent blog posts about personas, we decided that we will be adding more to this part of our process by developing multiple personalities and tying them to actual people.

After we feel adequately prepared to AIM, we do the following:

Review

We review the most important findings from our research with the client, customers (if possible), and any other stakeholders.

Some of the key questions we ask at this stage are: Please tell us if this is a good profile of your current customer? Does this fit in with your overall strategy and plan? What would you add? What would you take away? How can you help us understand the needs of your target market? Please give us a lot of feedback.

Organize

Based on the feedback we get, we reorganize ourselves and take better aim…of course we usually circle back to the review stage for the “ok” to fire!

FIRE!!!

Launching everything is really fun but the best part for us is seeing the results. We rarely strike out…but we are always susceptible to making quick changes and adjustments as we move forward. Testing never stops - we are always trying to improve based upon the newest, freshest data coming in.

The biggest key to this process is simply being over prepared to succeed right away. Success the first time makes success the second time even easier!

We found that starting with a very efficient campaign forces us to be better informed and gives us the ability to make great decisions and good decisions help us consistently outperform ourselves every month, quarter, and year.

Ready….Aim….FIRE!!!

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