Facebook Advertising = Relationship Building

We all know that Facebook is "where it's at", but the problem from an online marketing standpoint is learning how to tackle this growing source of traffic in the most appropriate and profitable way for your business.

Facebook's advertising platform allows for extremely targeted ad campaigns, and you can pay per click (like Google); however, when learning how to measure & profitably create an ad campaign the playing field is vastly different from other pay per click advertising platforms. The biggest difference is that Facebook is all about relationships. Anything that is not fostering or developing some sort of relationship on Facebook is deemed inauthentic.

Here are four ways to successfully grow & measure your Facebook presence authentically:

Get a Facebook Business Page:
Facebook advertising works the best when you have a Facebook business page set up, and you are actively adding posts and content. Having Facebook ads, but no facebook page is a dead give away that you are an advertiser just trying to "make a sale", and will not work well on Facebook.

If you are not on Facebook at all yet, creating a business page is a great place to start. Here is a Facebook link that outlines setting up a business page.

Once you have a page created, you are able to target ads directly to fans who have "liked" your page. There is also an option to target folks who are friends of fans who have liked your page. These options allow for more personal ad copy, and allow for you to relate to your audience better in your ad text.

If you are choosing to target to friends of fans who have "liked" your page, you get an added benefit of having their friends endorsement in your ad copy--making your ad extremely relevant. Here is what that looks like:

Build Your Relationships:
Once you have built up your Facebook page, begin by adding relevant and useful content that will keep your prospects and customers coming back for more!

Here's how: announce events, have a "deal of the day", promote new products, post tips, the ideas are endless-- just make sure they are relevant, useful, and engaging to your target market.

Set Realistic Facebook Advertising Goals:
Before you start your Facebook ad campaign you need to step back and think about your goals with Facebook advertising. Facebook is different than Google AdWords & MSN AdCenter in that visitors are using the site to develop relationships and connect with people. You will want to do the same thing with your ads. Think of your investment on Facebook advertising as an investment in beginning & nurturing relationships with your prospective and current customers.

Here are a few ways to foster your relationships in personal ways with Facebook Ads:

• Write your ad copy in very personal ways (talk about people, not things)
• Create Facebook only sales & promotions
• Test using images of people & not things
• Have ad headlines that speaks to your target market directly
• Test a number of different demographics & targeting --write ads accordingly

Measuring Your Relationships:
Since we are looking at Facebook advertising as a way to foster relationships, we need to ensure we are measuring the effectiveness properly. That's not to say that revenue won't come out of it, but to purely look at Facebook from an immediate "dollars in dollars out" standpoint like search advertising is not the place to get started.

You need to look at the metrics that are clearly revealing the level of relationships you are developing with your Facebook page, and the advertisements you are using to promote that page. Also, if you choose to send your users to your website you need to understand that these visitors may take longer to convert than a visitor from a search engine.

Here are a few of the metrics that reveal your level of relationship nurturing:

• Number of new "Likes" on your Facebook business page
• Number of interactions on your Facebook page (comments, votes, etc)
• Number of email sign ups, or catalog requests
• Number of Facebook referrals to your website

The interactions & likes on your Facebook page can be measured using Facebook insights within the Facebook interface. You will need to turn to your web analytics program for data on Facebook referrals, and other goals.

I hope you have found this information useful in directing you towards Facebook success!

Have any more ideas you've found successful? Leave your comments below...

Plus One! Google Adds Another Match Type

Google's latest targeting feature is the release of the new modified broad match. This new match type gives targeting results that are in between phrase match and the original broad match, but is more closely related to phrase match.

As many advertisers know, broad match can be quite risky, and sometimes not produce the most desirable ROI's. Modified broad match can help advertisers get more impressions and show for more variations than phrase match; however, reduce the number of unwanted irrelevant impressions associated with standard broad match.

The new match type is annotated with a + sign in front of the word that is to be modified. It's important to note that if you are currently using mostly broad match keywords, switching to modified broad match will most likely significantly reduce impressions.

Here is an example of how this match type works:

Regular Broad Match: Buy Makeup
Matching Examples: Buy Cosmetics, Cheap Makeup,

Modified Broad Match: +Buy +Makeup,
Matching Examples: Buy Maekpu, Buy loreal makeup

As you can see above, modified broad match will match you to misspellings, spelling variations, singular/plural variations, and stemmings (e.g., "floor/flooring", "Italy/Italian"); however, not to synonyms as regular broad match does.

If you are going to modify more than one word in the phrase, make sure you put a space in front of the plus symbol.

Correct Annotation:
+Buy +Makeup

Incorrect Annotation:
+Buy+Makeup

If you do not put a space, Google will ignore the plus symbol and treat the keyword as standard broad match!

Here is Google's official announcement of this new match type.

Here at ROI we look at modified broad match as another tool to have more control over your keywords, and squeeze more value out of your advertising dollar. Also, if you are currently only running your keywords in phrase & exact match, then using modified broad match is a great way to increase traffic without having to worry about the increased risk of irrelevant traffic incurred by many broad match searches. This feature is currently available to all advertisers in the US & Canada.

Want Higher Landing Page Quality Scores in Google? Here’s How:

Google Recently rolled out a new series of advanced tests for their Google Advertising Professionals program, and in some of the study material they explain what affects advertiser's landing page quality score.

Here are three areas Google wants you to focus on to help ensure your website receives a decent quality score:

"Relevant & Original Content"

*Make sure visitors can easily find what your ad promises
*Don't copy content from other sites, make sure your copy is authentic and original

"Transparency"

*Openly share information about your business (contact information, address, about us section)
*Only charge for items that are actually ordered
*Follow through on every promo and promise you make

"Navigability"

*Make it easy for visitors to navigate around your site
*Avoid too many pop-ups, pop-unders, or other "annoying" elements
*Don't require visitors to register in order to get access to your site

For more information on which types of sites Google tends to give low quality scores to visit this informative page in their help center.

Poor landing page scores can lead to higher cost per clicks, limited ad exposures, and in some extreme cases Google may even shut down your account. Also, it's important to note that focusing and improving these aspects of your website is not a guarantee that your quality score will improve.

Do you know about Gmail’s Funbox?

The 'Funbox' is a little known reference to the top ad spot in gmail, and guess what? You can target it as a managed placement in your AdWords content network campaigns.

So how do you target the fun box? The fun box is not found in the placement tool, so you need to add this in manually as a managed placement (in the networks tab):

Also, one of the most common mistakes is to try and target gmail by adding 'gmail.com' as a managed placement. It's important to know that to target gmail, you need to add the following as a managed placement:

If you see gmail is performing well for you, it's best practice to create a separate campaign that targets only gmail users.

Here are the benefits of creating separate gmail targeted campaigns:

• Write specific ads tailored to Gmail users
• Develop keyword themes around Gmail messages (advanced strategy)
• Controlled budgets
• Transparency of performance

It's not necessary to create gmail targeted campaigns when you are first testing out Google's content network. The best strategy is to first start with a keyword targeted (or contextually targeted) content campaign, and monitor the performance of mail.google.com on the networks tab. If you see traffic and conversions are high, it's a good idea to go ahead and separate out mail.google.com traffic into a separate campaign.

Save Money In Yahoo Search Marketing By Excluding Search Partners That are Not Performing Well:

I'd like to share with you a way to save money in your Yahoo Search Marketing account that is not as obvious as the regular optimization strategies. As you probably know, when you advertise on Yahoo's search network, your ads don't just show on Yahoo's search results page. They are also displayed on countless search partners that Yahoo has agreements with. This new optimization strategy is centered around the search partners.

There is a new report available that will shed light on how your ads are performing across the different search partners. To access this report, go to the 'Reports' tab in your Yahoo Search Marketing account and select the 'Ad Delivery Report' under the 'Traffic Quality Reports' section:

At the top of the report, change the 'Distribution' to Yahoo Partners. Then select a date range (I'd recommend about 5 months) and sort the data by cost. You'll easily be able to see if certain search partners are costing a ton and not converting!

Once you find search partners that are not performing well for you, you can actually add them as blocked domains under the 'Administration' tab:

Adding blocked domains is currently only an option in Yahoo, as Google will allow you to either opt in or out of their search partner network. Hopefully Google will also give advertisers this option in the near future!

New, Live Webinar: The 6 reports that contain 90% of actionable AdWords insights

Here at ROI Revolution we are always students of the best practices and the smartest strategies in the world of data driven paid search. Brad Geddes, founder of the Internet marketing training firm bgTheory (pictured right), has some of the most powerful pay per click insights around.

Brad is a long time internet marketing veteran who regularly speaks at search marketing conferences throughout the country and is the only Google AdWords Seminar Leader in the world who teaches, under Google's authorization, AdWords 301 and 302.

I've personally used Brad's techniques to come up with powerful new ad text for my clients, find new keyword opportunities, and find areas where my bids were limiting exposure on profitable keywords.

Brad has recently written a new book, Advanced Google AdWords, and we've already purchased five copies for our office.

We've got a unique opportunity to join us for a live webinar with Brad Geddes. Brad will shed light on the 6 most important AdWords reports that will give you all of the actionable insights you need to make some powerful changes within your AdWords account.

The AdWords report center is a powerful tool that should be leveraged by every advertiser, but without knowing what data to focus on it's easy to waste time running useless reports.

The webinar will be on Thursday, April 22nd at 2pm ET.

Click here to get signed up for this free event:

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/855171728

Hosted by: ROI Revolution's CEO, Timothy Seward
With Guest Presenter: Brad Geddes, Founder of bgTheory

Brad will break down each report and go over exactly what metrics to focus on, how often to run each report, and most importantly, how to apply the data so that you are making smart changes to your AdWords account.

We are extremely excited to have the opportunity to host a webinar with Brad. You don't want to miss this opportunity!

https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/855171728

Is it Time For a Winter PPC Account Makeover?

January is a fresh start, a time for resolutions, and a time for cleaning up the mess made from the holiday season. The same should apply to your Pay-Per-Click campaigns. Breathe new life into them with fresh keywords, ad text, and competitive research.

Here is a 5 step plan to give your PPC accounts a (much needed) winter makeover:

1. Read Blog Articles For New Keyword Ideas: Read your industry blogs to keep up with the latest buzz words. Reading the latest and greatest articles may help you think of new ways people will be searching for your products. Setting up a Google blog reader to follow blogs from your industry can help make this task much more time efficient.

2. Write At least 10 New Killer Ads: Take 1-2 hours and brainstorm some new ad text. Walk away from your computer, maybe talk to some clients, go to a white board. Break out from your mold of sitting at your computer and writing your ads. Switch it up! Sometimes to be creative you need to break away from the norm.

3. Study The Quality Score of Your Keywords: Check out which keywords in your account need some quality score help. Then separate those keywords out into their own ad groups and write highly specific ad text around them. Note the quality score before the change, then check the quality score in two weeks. Most likely you will see a big improvement.

4. Use SpyFu.com.: Use this tool to see what your competitors are bidding on! It’s not 100% accurate, but it’s a great way to come up with some new keywords and keep an eye on your competition. Simply type in your competitors’ URL to the search function on this site, and a list of your competitors’ paid terms is automatically generated.

5. Social Media: Stay in the loop on Facebook and other sites to see what your target market is saying and how they are talking about your products. This may help you come up with new ad text, and even make some changes to your landing page copy. Keeping your keyword, ad text, and landing pages relevant is an ongoing task. Social media sites can help you stay on the pulse of your ever changing and evolving target market.

I challenge you to make January a month of change! Think outside the box, and make some powerful changes within your accounts that will really impact your bottom line. Also, if you have any success using the 5-step plan please share!

Easy Recipe for Successful Ad Text

When it comes to ad text "Always Be Testing" is the motto that we hold in high esteem here at ROI Revolution. If you continually test your ads (to beat the current best performer) you will constantly improve the performance of your campaigns.

It is important to remember that there are a few strategies and tips you pretty much always need to implement as you are writing and testing ads. I"ve come up with an "ad recipe" that I keep on my desk to ensure all necessary elements are included in the new ads I write.

I"ll break down each ingredient:

Keyword Relevancy : This is plain and simple: have your keywords in your ad text. If possible place the keyword in the headline, also in the description lines and the display URL.

Differentiate From Competitors: This takes a little more work. Study your competitors' ads. What do you do differently? What sets you apart? Whatever it is, make sure it is in your ad copy (and stands out)!

Call To Action: Engage the visitor to take action on your site. Offer them a free report, a free consultation, ask them to call now, buy now, browse more. Whatever call to action makes sense for your industry and is the most powerful.

Like with any recipe, take the time to add each ingredient slowly. Then combine all to ensure your batter (or ad text) is well mixed! If you follow these steps, you will surely have a tasty ad that will keep your potential clients coming back for more.

Want more strategies and inspiration (including example headlines, ad text, etc) for writing your next pay-per-click ads?

Get our free PPC Ad Writing Quick-Reference Guide, simply fill out the form and the guide will be emailed to you instantly so you can start using it right away to write more compelling ad text.

Our Top PPC Blog Posts of 2009!

Here at ROI Revolution we've enjoyed reviewing our most popular posts of the past year. There have been a lot of changes in the Pay-Per-Click world over the last twelve months, and it's been exciting to watch them unfold.

To wrap up the year we've ranked our top 7 PPC blog posts of 2009:

1. The One vs. Many-Per-Click Breakdown --Turn to this article for a breakdown of the One Vs. Many-Per-Click conversion change that happened in Google AdWords this past year. Since conversions are a reflection of your bottom line, understanding this change is crucial!

2. Top 5 Free PPC Tools --There are tons of FREE PPC tools on the web. Some of them are great, some are alright, and some are just OK. Here are ROI we've had experience with almost all of them, and have compiled a list of the top 5 for you to reference.

3. Introduction to Google's Ad Auction, Part 1: Quality Score --This 2 part blog series summarizes a video put together by Google's Chief Economist. Part 1 outlines Google's Quality Score and what is required to have a good one.

4. Introduction to Google's Ad Auction, Part 2: AdRank and CPC -- Getting to the top of Google can be tricky (and expensive). This blog article outlines exactly how Google calculates AdRank and the cost you pay per click.

5.How to Use Negative Keywords When Targeting Google's Content Network -- Setting up campaigns to target Google's content network can be confusing enough, add in negative keywords and you've got yourself a double whammy. This article explains best practices when using negative keywords when targeting Google's content network.

6. Have You Used Google's New Wonder Wheel? -- We loved Google's new tool so much we blogged about it! Google's Wonder Wheel can help you expand your keyword list, build out content campaigns, find new negative keywords, and much more!

7.Google's New Interface Will Make Your Advertising Life Easier -- Google released their new interface for AdWords in 2009. Our article outlines the top features and benefits, and also links to our New AdWords user interface webinar where you'll see how the new AdWords User Interface will save you hours of your limited time, help you cut wasted adspend, and discover hew highly relevant keywords and placements to scale your online profits!

We hope you have enjoyed recapping our top posts of 2009.

Best wishes in the new year!