Joe Polish & I Love Marketing Podcast: Facebook Ads
Marketing legends Joe Polish and Dean Jackson interview Perry Marshall & Tom Meloche, on Facebook advertising. If you haven’t caught one of our presentations on Facebook advertising you should definitely check this out. 2012 is the year Facebook will reach 1 billion users.
http://ilovemarketing.com/episode-053the-one-with-perry-marshall-and-tom-meloche/
Learn How to Track Phone Calls with David Szetela
A large number of conversions happen over the phone. This can be very problematic for many companies as they have no idea how many calls they received, or they do not know what traffic source or keyword caused the phone to ring.
Call tracking is the answer to this problem. It has been around for several years on the web, but it has not seen the adoption rates one would expect from a technology that can help close the offline sales loop.
Much of this problem stems from companies either not knowing it exists, or not understanding all of its uses.
The next episode of Marketing Nirvana is dedicated to call tracking.
- What is is
- How can it benefit you
- The different types of call tracking and accuracy
- Best practices for choosing vendors
- And a lot more
I have a special guest for this episode, David Szetela.
Many of you might remember David from his days with Clix Marketing and PPC Rockstars. He’s been around for a long time in the PPC industry and has quite a bit of insights to share.
These days, David is semi-retired from the PPC world and has moved into the call tracking space having taken the position of Chief marketing officer for Bionic Click.
Like me, David is an educator first and a sales person second. Therefore, while he does work for a call tracking company that we do discuss in a little bit of detail, the show is geared to educate you how call tracking can help and what to look for in a vendor or technology.
The show will air at 9am PST / 12pm CST Monday the 6th at WebmasterRadio.fm.
Later on, the show will be available for download from our Marketing Nirvana page or on iTunes.
I hope you enjoy the show.
Learn How to Track Phone Calls with David Szetela is a post from: Certified Knowledge
Should You Let Google “Improve” Your AdWords Campaigns?
Q: Perry, wondering what you (fellow adwords expert) thinks of the new “benefits” Google is bringing out. Constant emails about mobile this, call us for a strategy session on that, conversion blah, upgrade this right now. My client’s campaigns are well refined now & they don’t want Google monkeying with them. Bottom line: The 3+ “upgrade” emails/mo. are overwhelming my clients with nonsense. –Rico
A: I posted this question on my Facebook wall. Look at the powerful response I got:
My Answer: You NEVER let Google touch the campaigns you have painstakingly built by hand with your blood, sweat and tears. EVER.
If I only had a dollar for every person who lost $20,000+ because they committed this grave error.
You can let them build a side campaign for you and put it on pause if you want… and cautiously turn it on… and watch it like a hawk. But 90% of the time they do a disastrous job. I’m dead serious. I’ve seen this over and over again. I cannot specifically recall a single instance that turned out well.
Moral of the story:
Never put a German Shepherd in charge of the ham sandwiches.
Roundtable Chronicles for January 31, 2012
Last week in Orlando Florida my highest level coaching groups had our once-every-4-months Serial Entrepreneur Fest. Highlights:
–>10MIL IN LESS THAN 2 YEARS: Mr. S has grown his company from $1 million to $10 million in 21 months. Just had his first million dollar month this fall. He’s got bugs in his teeth and every kind of growing pain you can think of. Fortunately he takes the mercenary approach to problems, and the guy never looks back.
Challenges:
*The opportunity he’s exploiting is huge but will evaporate in 5 years. He’ll either be in the driver’s seat then, or in a different business. Either he builds the platform that everyone standardizes on, or somebody else does.
*He’s doing business in dozens of countries and each has its own regulations. He’s got all sorts of fun with lawyers, foreign bank accounts, taxes etc. Good problems to have.
*Everyone wants what he’s building. If he plays his cards right, he’ll grow this thing to $100 million and sell to a much larger company.
–>SAFE ENTRY ON A SHOESTRING: Mr. T and his wife sell natural products and their #1 channel is good ol’ fashioned snail mail catalog. They’re about to jump into the Cosmetics market.
Not an easy decision. Because you either have ALL the colors people want, ALL the ingredients of a beautiful face, or none. There’s no doing this halfway. Major investment in containers, labels and product launch, just to get the first sale.
The group brainstormed a new way of getting critical data from a small group of test users without biting off the whole investment. Now they can do this in stages.
–>TAIL WAGS DOG: Mr. B is a specialized lender who gets referrals from major players in his business. 1/3 of his business comes from guys ‘throwing him a bone.’ He grew his biz 31% last year and his marketing is solid.
His next move is to maneuver himself in the tollgate position where he’s the one giving out the referrals and them waiting for him to throw the bone. A total reversal of what’s normal. He’s doing it by exploiting every ounce of authority he’s got. He’s got the perfect demeanor for it and I think he’s gonna pull this off.
–>RE-INVENTING LEAD GEN: Mr. E has been buying leads the old fashioned way. He’s very good at it but I showed him a completely new way to do it, which gets him not leads but qualified buyers, at lower cost per acquisition than he’d ever get from a lead.
–>CHANGING THE WORLD: Mr. N has two businesses and both are doing great. He’s now turned his attention to a burning passion, which is reforming a very specific segment of the education market. This could conceivably be worth millions but that’s not why he’s doing it. The money is not his focus.
Rather, it’s a CAUSE because he knows he can transform the world. (At least for a few hundred thousand kids.) The group gave him input on how to keep some huge company from patenting his ideas and taking them off the market.
–>EVIL LAWYERS: Speaking of patents, Mr. J has been embattled for years with a bogus patent lawsuit perpetrated by bloodthirsty attorneys exploiting the legal system. We explored his situation and concluded: There’s no way to call the dogs off.
In his session, based on advice from an attorney in the group from Italy, we discussed how to move his assets to the European Union and take advantage of the differences in patent law. Hey, sometimes you gotta fight fire with fire.
–>THE POWER AND THE GLORY: I can tell you this guy’s name. Roundtable Member Benji Rabhan of Morris Media Works, age 26, made the Empact100 List, a roster of top young entrepreneurs in the US. In November he attended a special reception at the White House, honored by President Obama for his achievements.
I’m extremely proud of my Roundtable members. If you’d like to apply for the Roundtable waiting list, visit www.perrymarshall.com/roundtable/
Perry Marshall
Coupons as an Online Marketing Strategy
Coupons are experiencing an explosion in popularity—among consumers and marketers alike. For the former, the attraction is clear: coupons are a quick and simple way to save money; if they are available, there is no reason not to put them to use. For the latter, it can be a little more complicated. Coupons offer a juicy incentive for new customers, but coupon-based promotion campaigns can be risky business. Here are some of the elements to take into consideration in order to decide if this sort of strategy is the right choice for your website:
Finding a Target Audience and a Product to Promote
- Online coupons should be tailored for new, potential buyers: Generally, the objective of any marketing campaign based on coupons is to attract new customers. In the case of online marketing, the idea is to up the website’s conversion rate—in other words, to turn visitors into actual buyers. Therefore, promotions should be put in place where casual viewers will readily find them. On the other hand, too many people making use of coupons can seriously dent profits.
- The established customer base should not be using online coupons: From a marketing standpoint, it’s a bad thing if proven buyers are finding and using the coupons meant to bring in new patrons. These are the people who would likely buy a given item even without that 50% discount. So—somewhat paradoxically—online coupons work best when they are advertised in such a way that only new buyers find them. There are a few ways to avoid a loss scenario and insure that a couponing campaign reaches the right people:
- Offer a discount on a very specific, niche product—this way, the buyers using the coupons will be customers with a legitimate interest in the item, not just all-consuming bargain hunters.
- Use coupons to get rid of excess inventory—items that are beginning to serve only as a drain on resources are always great candidates for discounts
Methods of Distribution
Once you know what you’re discounting and who you want using the coupons, you can figure out a strategy for distributing them:
- Major players: Vendors like LivingSocial, Google Offers, and Groupon are devoted to the circulation of coupons. However, relying on these third-party players can be risky—once you’ve made a coupon available to a vendor, you lose control of how many customers ultimately end up discovering and redeeming it.
- Video couponing: Video ads are safer than third-party vendors because they allow you the freedom to disable sent-out coupons after reaching a goal without having to take down the ad and lose the associated boost in visibility.
- Social media: The brand new Facebook Deals presents yet another avenue for a couponing campaign. The benefits of advertising through Facebook are already well-known to marketers: a massive base of potential customers who are already categorized by their likes and interests is something of an advertisement dream come true. Only time will reveal the true effectiveness of Facebook Deals as a coupon distributor, but for now it looks very promising.
Coupons can seriously boost business for a small company, but it’s important to remember that a poorly thought-out campaign can end in disaster. If you decide that coupons are the way to go for your own business, always plan your marketing strategy very carefully. Make sure you have a complete understanding of your current model, where your profits are coming from, etc. Avoid distributing coupons for proven sellers; focus on new products or less popular items. And give it some thought: is promoting your company and gaining new patrons worth the potential loss in profits? Plan ahead, maintain control, and you’ll be on the road to success. Good luck!
Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Certified Knowledge. If you would like to write for Certified Knowledge, please let us know.
Coupons as an Online Marketing Strategy is a post from: Certified Knowledge
