ROI Revolution Attends 3rd Annual GAAC Summit
Hey, look! It's a gaggle of GAACs!
Not all of our time at Google is spent jumping around on trampolines and pegging each other with balls. For four days, Google Partners from around the world convene in Mountain View to talk about the state of analytics and optimization, learn from one another, and push the limit when it comes to supporting our favorite free analytics platform.
Click for a rundown of what we covered...
Day One: Google Website Optimizer
- Dan Siroker, former director of analytics for the Obama Presidential Campaign and founder of the online multiplayer game CarrotSticks, talked about how his team used Google Analytics, Google Website Optimizer, and other free tools to help Obama win the presidential election.
- Sandra Cheng, Product Manager of Google Website Optimizer, and Trevor Claiborne, Product Marketing Manager of Google Website Optimizer, talked about the future of the free website testing and optimization tool. There's some exciting stuff coming, not least of which were the recently announced over-time charts and the experiment management API.
Google Analytics Product Marketing Manager Eva Woo and her magical margarita machine. I want one for the ROI office.
Day Two: Google Analytics
- The keynote, by Avinash Kaushik, was, as always, eye-opening and in-your-face. We <3 Avinash.
- Phil Mui, senior product manager for Google Analytics, discussed the roadmap. He touched on engagement goals, mobile reporting, and multiple custom variables, all announced a week later.
- What am I most excited? Analytics Intelligence, an algorithmic intelligence engine for Google Analytics to provide automated alerts for significant changes in your site's metrics. We've been using it in beta and we're glad we can share it with all of our clients!
- After all of the announcements, we headed to Sky High Sports in Santa Clara and did our trampoline dodgeball. All of our practice paid off when we were unceremoniously destroyed in the first round.
Day Three: More Google Analytics
- Hal Varian, Google's Chief Economist, talked about using Google tools to "predict the present" and glean important intelligence about the current economic situation. Very cool stuff.Lots of discussion on the Google Analytics API, as well as some exciting developments in the works for Google Analytics and advertisers. We can't say much yet, but it's really a great time to be using Google Analytics!
Day Four: Urchin
We heard some awesome news from the Urchin team on the development of the Urchin software. Stay tuned to the blog for more news as it comes!
That's about it. In spite of our crushing dodgeball defeat, it was a great time and we were glad to chat with analysts from all over the world. We can hardly wait 'til next year. We're all secretly hoping next year's event is Slamball.
Slamball.
Yeaaaah. Not so much.
Adwords Broad Match Magic
Right click here and save target as to download “Adwords Broad Match Magic – a Paradoxical Method for Carving Out Your Slice of High Volume, Ultra Competitive Keyword Markets in AdWords and Beyond!”
COURTESY NOTICE: This FREE 14 page special report contains what most AdWords marketers will perceive as a serious breakthrough. You should download and read it right away, because I plan to remove it shortly and turn it into a PAID product. (So consider yourself rewarded for being a loyal subscriber). In this report, you’ll see, for example, the technique I plan to use to brazenly enter the extremely competitive weight loss market.
BIG DEAL COURTESY NOTICE: On November 1st, or when I’ve hit 1,000 active paying members (whichever comes first), I’ll be raising the price on the Hyper Responsive Marketing Club again. (If you hadn’t noticed, I’m systematically raising it until I’m at least on par with what others are charging… I presently deliver 6 to 12 hours of high quality “look over my shoulder while I break into a competitive market” education for less than half of what others charge for only one or two hours, plus I’m not talking theory, I’ve run a real advertising agency and seen hundreds of business models, I really DO know what works)
Ignore this one at your own risk please 
(And pass the PDF along if you don’t mind, as a personal favor to me)
Use ALL 3 Google AdWords Keyword Match Types for Google Search
One pattern we often see when conducting an AdWords account audit and strategy session for an advertiser, or when beginning work with a new client is that there are only broad match keywords throughout the AdWords account.
Ideally, you should bid on all three match types of every keyword you decide to include in your account for Google Search. To see why, read on....
To quickly review:
- Using broad match keywords allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations. If you are bidding on the keyword: buy flowers, your ad may show on searches such as: flowers, purchase flowers, buy daisy flowers.
- Using phrase match keywords allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase. You are bidding on the keyword: "buy flowers", your ad may show for: I need to buy flowers, buy flowers online, buy flowers for my wife.
- Using exact match allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively. You are bidding on the keyword: [buy flowers], your ad will only show when someone searches for: buy flowers.
Broad matched keywords are great for capturing a lot of traffic, but as you can see from the example, your ad may show up for many different search variations on Google.com. In the example above, you may be an online flower shop but you do not offer daisies. By only bidding on the broad match, your ad may end up showing for irrelevant searches, therefore potentially being clicked on and costing you money for no return because you simply do not have what the visitor is looking for.
Phrase match is more targeted than broad match, yet still allows flexibility. In the example above, by bidding on: buy flowers, these two words have to always be together and in this order for your ad to display. Clearly, the searches: I need to buy flowers, and buy flowers for my wife are still relevant to your keyword.
Exact match is the most targeted option available. Your ad will only show when a user of Google.com searches for the exact query that you are bidding on as a keyword. This match type guarantees that you get the exact traffic you are hoping to receive from Google.com. The negative impact of using this match type is that it can reduce the amount of traffic to your website, because your ad does not display nearly as often as it potentially could.
You should keep in mind that each of the three match types provides a different way for a Google.com user to interact with you. Broad match will give you the greatest amount of traffic but potentially not the most qualified and action oriented visitors. By using phrase match, and especially exact match, you're ad will show less of the time but will often yield more targeted and qualified visitors who are ready to conduct the action you want - whether that be signing up for a newsletter or making an actual purchase.
By bidding on all three match types, you provide the opportunity to enter a conversation with many different types of visitors, positioning yourself in the strongest way to find success using Google AdWords. You also are able to bid differently based on your ROI for each match type; this especially applies to high volume keywords within your account.
Why AdWords Works (#1 of 47)
Being in safe hands with a Google Agency Partner.
The thing about Google AdWords campaigns is that they don’t lie.
And when your campaigns and website landing pages are correctly set up and working with each other, the results can be outstanding.
This advertiser is enjoying a massive 31.25% conversion rate, costing £1.89 per conversion.
Achieving high conversion rates needs well-structured and continuously optimised campaigns, tightly integrated with your landing pages, which takes time and effort.
If you’re not working with your campaigns every week, as we are, you’ll not get the best results possible.
If you’re serious about making AdWords work, you need professional help.
We’ll audit your campaigns to see hidden opportunities – and we always find them, no matter who you’re using to manage your AdWords Account.
Start making AdWords – WORK
Have More Fun at Work
About a month ago, I made a post about “The Myth of Work vs. Play” which stirred up quite a bit of controversy.
Terry Dean, in particular, sent me an email saying he wasn’t so sure he agreed with me. So I suggested he and I do an interview where we could iron out our positions. In the end, as you might expect, it turned out to have quite a bit of marketing advice within it (e.g. the evolving role of images as compared to text in marketing), but the most exciting part from my point of view were the specific techniques we each discussed for integrating play into work or…
How to have more fun at work (for internet entrepreneurs)
Enjoy!
G
www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com
PS – There’s a little clicking sound at the beginning of the interview. It goes away after 20 seconds, so don’t let it throw you OK?
PPS – I closed the personal coaching board to new registrants this morning for the rest of the year, no more inquiries please (sorry).
Moola Monsters, Credit Creatures, and Saving Squirrels
About 10 years ago, I did a large study on the relationship between money and personality. (At the time, I had formed the “Association for Money Mind Studies” with a friend and we were doing workshops, public speaking, etc).
I got a LOT of publicity about the “10 Money Personalities” I proposed as a result of this work, but never really developed it into anything significant. I’m thinking of picking it up again and incorporating it into my work with entrepreneurs.
I actually have a full book proposal developed (I had an agent previously), but I’d like to get YOUR feedback on this simple 13 page e-book which describes the personalities.
Do any of them resonate with you? Do they seem to represent people you know and love? Maybe even yourself?
How do you think knowing your money personality might be useful?
I actually developed a test years ago and put it up on a site. If people like this concept enough and I get the right feedback, maybe I’ll reactivate it so everyone can take the test.
In the meantime, download the 10 Money Personalities please and let me know what you think below!
Dr. G
PS – VERY SCARY! — Perry Marshall in a focus group? 3 years ago, I forced Perry Marshall to sit through a focus group on the topic of internet marketing. He rolled his eyes at first, but Sharon proved to him (and Bryan Todd) just how valuable focus groups can be! (It was a real eye opener to actually SEE a group of internet marketing junkies talk about what they loved and hated in the industry, and everyone walked away feeling like it helped them determine what to study, and what to leave behind).
I’ve got the whole thing on video, and I will post it in my Hyper-Responsive Marketing Club on Halloween Only along with an additional bonus. So if you’re a member before then, you’ll get to download it. Otherwise, you’ll just have to quake in your boots at the thought. Perry Marshall in a focus group … aaaaaaaaaaaaah! (Remember, this will appear in the club on Halloween only. But if you join today you’ll also get Adwords Checkmate, How to Choose Your Market, and 5 additional, immediately valuable bonuses to keep you company until fright night. Click here to join now)
PPS – There was a mistake on the order form for my personal coaching board which is fixed now. Unfortunately, I still DO need to close it to new registrants on Monday morning because I just can’t keep up with the time requirements. I’m leaving it open until then to be fair (and to avoid a bunch of angry complaints from people who tell me I don’t give enough notice), but I probably won’t open it again. So if you’re interested, today’s the time to sign up.
Why AdWords Fails (#2 of 47)
Breaking the 6 rules of landing page design.
Someone typed your keyword into Google, saw your ad, was enticed enough to click on it, and has arrived at your landing page.
And you’ve just paid Google whatever the click price was.
So — now what? What will your visitor do next?
What you want them to do is to stay and take an action which you have predetermined has value to you.
What you don’t want them to do is immediately leave.
They have to know that they are in the right place.
(There’s an excellent book called "Don’t Make Me Think!", which is all about website usability – every website owner should read it).
This website owner is immediately erecting a barricade to the visitors they have paid for.
It used to be quite conventional to have a pretty-looking doorway page before people could actually enter your website.
This is now quite ridiculous and totally unnecessary — it could also cause all your visitors from your paid traffic to leave in confusion (Google Analytics will tell you this "Bounce Rate").
The pretty looking graphic on the front page of this website is not clickable, and you have to carefully scrutinise the whole page before you can see the small and innocuous "ENTER SITE" link. But it’s already probably too late.
These six simple rules will help you design a landing page which helps your visitor get what they want, and ultimately of course what you want: a conversion event.
- Relevance – am I in the right place?
- Clarity – is the page easy to navigate and talking about what I’m interested in?
- A good headline – am I definitely in the right place?
- Social proof — are other people clearly saying nice things about this business?
- Scarcity or time-limited promotion — give me a good reason to convert to your action
- Call to Action – tell me exactly what to do next, and ideally take me to a page when I finish the conversion event which tells me what happens next, and maybe even offers me something else I may be interested in.
Most homepages are too general to achieve a conversion event quickly from a visitor.
If your keywords are related to specific things, then you need dedicated landing pages for them.
Don’t simply drop your visitor off outside the front door of your website, hoping they won’t leave, but will try to figure it out for themselves.
Most of them won’t – they don’t have the time.
We often see website owners failing with AdWords because although they may be getting traffic, they are failing to convert it to a trackable and testable event, at an acceptable cost.
We will even refuse an advertisers business if their website is clearly not going to fulfill its purpose, and they are unwilling or unable to work with us to improve it.
Contact us today for a no obligation discussion about why your AdWords campaigns may be failing to convert what you’re spending into profitable returns.
Start making AdWords – WORK
Your Ads Can Work 9 to 5 Too
Have you ever driven to a store in the evening to make a purchase, only to discover this sign hanging in the window?
Frustrated, weren't you? As a consumer, you just wasted your time and gas money, and now you have to come back the next day during business hours, go to a different store that's open, or just forget about it altogether and go home and watch some primetime television.
And as for the store that was closed at the time, they probably just lost out on your sale. Everyone loses.
So let's say you're shopping online in the evening instead, you click on an enticing ad and then decide that you'd like to speak with a customer service rep to make the purchase because you've got some questions and order specifications. You pick up the phone and dial the business number, only to hear the following automated message:
"Thank you for calling (insert company name here). Unfortunately we are closed at this time. You can reach us during our store hours which are Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm Eastern. Thank you."
Everything in this scenario is the same as the first brick-and-mortar example except for one major thing: the online business just wasted valuable advertising spend on a click that didn't result in a conversion.
Similar scenarios involving PPC advertising occur online every day, especially with businesses who carry out most of their transactions through the phone. Examples of businesses where this is common include ones who sell in bulk, have customizable products, or simply require all transactions be made over the phone.
If your business operates "9 to 5" and most transactions happen over the phone, you might test saving money by using Ad Scheduling to only show your ads during this time frame.
If you're not familiar with Ad Scheduling, it's an AdWords feature that lets you specify certain hours or days of the week when you want your ads to appear.
The Ad Scheduling feature is found under the Campaign Settings tab > Advanced settings > Ad scheduling. Click "Edit" and a window will appear where you can set your ads to run only during your desired hours.
If you click on "Bid adjustment", you can get a little more advanced by adjusting pricing for your ads during certain time periods. For example, if you know that your call volume is highest between 1:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., you can bid more for impressions or clicks during that period.
Remember: No one likes seeing the "Sorry, We're Closed" sign, so don't be the company that wastes money sending people there.
For more information on ad scheduling, click here and for more AdWords tips check out this video.
Money Is Hard When Its Easy and Easy When Its Hard
Here’s another important observation about money…
“Money is hard when its easy, and easy when its hard”
By which I mean, whenever I’ve gotten seduced by the idea of easy money, I wind up wasting a great deal of time, effort, and morale chasing a dream. In contrast, when I accept that creating money requires genuine work, time, and effort, I find it comes MUCH more easily.
The other day I got an enthusiastic email from a member of my hyper-responsive marketing club. It went something like this:
“I’m amazed at the level of focus your method provides, the confidence I have that I can actually implement what you’ve suggested, and the peace of mind it gives me that I really WILL be able to create the business I desire. Clearly you’re the guy to follow to develop long term, stable profit. But I need money now, who do you recommend for short term, more immediate profits?“
My honest answer was “no one”.
If short term, immediate profits were really so easily available, wouldn’t everyone be flocking to them? And if everyone flocked to them, how long do you think they would actually be available?
Money is hard if you insist it comes easily, but it’s easy if you’re willing to admit it’s hard.
What do you think? (I really want to know, would you comment below please?)
Dr. G
PS – The whole purpose of the hyper-responsive marketing club is to help you FOCUS and develop confidence in your plans so you CAN settle down on a reasonable path to business growth and real profit. It’s not at all hard as in difficult, but it does take time to build your system.
PPS – Notwithstanding all above, I can tell you that if you really DO need money in a pinch probably the best way to accomplish that is by offering your internet marketing skills as a consultant to hyper-local businesses (those you can visit personally, go have lunch with, etc).
You wouldn’t believe how primitive the vast majority of local brick and mortar businesses are with regards to their internet systems. Just getting an autoresponder installed, setting up a blog, doing a little clean up of their existing site copy seems like magic to them. Try walking into a few strip-mall stores and strike up a conversation about their website. The average person on my list with a reasonable grasp on these things (never mind PPC) should be able to fetch $50/hr work all day at minimum
PPS – I’m closing my private coaching program to new registrants on Monday, and I’m not sure if I’ll be offering it again.
Money, Boredom, and Reaching the Next Level
Let me ask you a question… and you have to promise to really think through the answer, no knee-jerk replies OK?
Does money bore you?
When you think of the most fulfilling, exhilarating, and enjoyable experiences you’ve had in your life, is making money one of the first things that comes to mind?
I think most (though not all) people would answer no.
In fact, I think many people, unbeknownst to themselves, find money to be rather boring. After all, money is just numbers on a piece of paper from your bank, or in your wallet. You can’t kiss, cuddle, throw a football, play chess, laugh, cry, scream, or take a nap with money. (Well, I suppose you could, but it wouldn’t be very fulfilling, would it?)
This, I believe, is one of our greatest obstacles to amassing true wealth. Something to consciously work on correcting in order to sustain a solid financial growth curve over the long haul.
I suppose this message would be more palatable if I spoke personally. So here it is.
I was a total idiot to enter 17 niche markets. My justification at the time was that I needed to prove my formula across a multitude of markets so I could really roll it out and/or get out there as a teacher.
But you know what? I was full of crap, because the formula was already proven after the 4th one, … and despite the fact they were all profitable and I developed a cool story to tell, I created a massive diversification of time, energy, and money which prevented me from developing any ONE of them to its fullest.
This not only meant seriously slowing down my trajectory, but in the end it meant I failed to deliver the back end products which would have been most helpful to people in any one given market.
Know why I really did it? (Hindsight is 20/20)
Because it would have been TOO EASY to just keep building out ONE of the markets. (We can’t have that, right!??)
I loved the challenge of making the front end profitable. This required an immense amount of research, immersion in the market, surveys, actually talking to (and connecting with) people, figuring out the puzzle. It challenged my comfort zone, requiring me to push my four core skill sets to the limit (psychology, computers, marketing, and research), and to find creative ways to combine them.
In contrast, the activities required to optimize and build out a market once it’s already profitable are much more executional and, well… kind of boring.
Testing and tracking, paying others to write and record more products, monitoring my spreadsheets, running regressions, doing a few joint ventures, getting interns to write and submit articles, working with SEO vendors, etc.
Yet THOSE activities are incredibly profitable once you’ve got an in-the-black traffic stream running.
So if I’m honest, I guess I chose to be “creative rather than rich”. (Thanks to Gary Halbert for that phrase). Getting rich, in my mind, was associated with being progressively more isolated, locked up in some ivory tower crunching numbers… BORING!
It was quite a shock when I had this insight.
I already had all the skills I needed to go to the next level. I could maintain a consistently upward trajectory. I only needed to find a way to re-connect this goal with my true purpose in life, with the people I loved, with the people I wanted to help, with the life I really wanted to live.
I just needed to choose this path, nothing more.
So I’m asking you all to take an honest look at where you are right now.
Is it possible you already have all the skills and knowledge you need to get where you want to go? Is it possible you’ve got some negative association with financial success which is causing you to make the wrong choices?
Does money bore you?
Let me know what you think below please!
Dr. G
PS – In my Bulls-Eye Marketing Club, I’ve worked VERY hard to combine my knowledge of internet marketing with my understanding of entrepreneurial psychology to help you focus and stay on track.
PPS – I’ve got only 3 more slots available in my personal coaching board. (And in the spirit of this post, I’m going to close it to new members in a few days regardless of whether it’s full because it’s really not the most lucrative thing I do… I just really enjoy working with people directly, and seeing how they improve upon my ideas. That’s probably why no-one’s left the board since I discovered the new format)
