Can I Buy Your Business?
I have the attention span of a two year old. Going
“Google AdWords for Dummies” book review
Google AdWords for Dummies
by Howie Jacobson, Joel McDonald & Kristie McDonald
Wiley Books ©2011 403 pages
A few years ago at an airport, I got a call from Howie Jacobson. “Hey Perry, the people who publish the ‘Dummies’ books asked me to write an AdWords book and I said yes. Um, I hope that’s okay.”
I’d taught him AdWords early on, and he didn’t wanna tick me off by competing with my own books.
“No problem, Howie. I just want to make sure all the people in the AdWords cartel are my friends.”
Howie is a very good friend of mine and I’m proud of him and his book. I also know his co-authors, Joel and Kristie. The three of them run the online marketing firm Vitruvian. Allow me to tell you about Howie’s book.
The first thing I like about this book is the cartoons. AdWords has gone from being a glamorous “bright shiny object” for make-money-fast types (deservedly so) to being quite a complex undertaking for large accounts.
The result is that about half the AdWords books and courses out there are dreadfully boring. They read like computer manuals. It’s a shame to do that to AdWords because it’s a game for people who understand people just as much as it’s a game for people who do spreadsheets.
Howie’s occasional humor is appreciated. You might want to apply some humor in your AdWords career, as well.
Unless you want to drill down into your AdWords campaigns with Excel pivot tables and mind-numbing detail, this book contains all the basic information you need to build a large and successful campaign.
My favorite chapter is The Ten (or so) Top AdWords Mistakes. Success in AdWords is largely about having layers of refinement that most other advertisers don’t bother with. This tells you what the 10 most important layers are. If you already spend significant dinero on AdWords and want an instant improvement, this chapter will pay for your book a dozen times over.
And the case studies in the following chapter highlight different dimensions of thinking that you need to solve different kinds of problems.
The advantage Howie & company have over most people is, they’ve worked in dozens of different industries, where click behavior varies widely from one to another. This chapter is bound to show you something you’d never notice on your own.
One last thing: Howie’s modesty – to the point of checking in with me before he went and wrote the first edition of this book – tells you something about him. He under-promises, over delivers, and treats readers, vendors and customers with respect. When you’re laying down your cash to grow a business, that’s a big deal.
Howie respects your dollar and that’s what makes him a worthy teacher.
Excellent job, Howie. A top pick.
Google AdWords for Dummies on Amazon
Productivity Tip for Following Up On Emails
I’m a huge fan of making my time as productive as possible. I don’t want to waste time in hunting down if someone has replied or try to add yet more things to my calendar just to try to remember something. I like quick and automated solutions.
When you send an email that you need a reply to, in Outlook you can do this:
- CC yourself
- In the message you sent yourself, add a reminder for that specific email at the time and date you desire
- Archive the email
- The reminder will pop up the email at your set time. If you have a response and are done with the email – just dismiss the message.
- If you do not have a response yet – the email is in front of you – so you can just forward the email with a quick note that you still need a response
With this method, there is no need to try and remember what you are waiting on – its your task list.
When I switched to Google apps, I lose this functionality. It is the single thing I miss the most about Outlook.
I was very happy to find a program that does the exact same thing for Gmail (and it works in Google apps), called Boomerang for GMail.
It’s a browser add on that you can install that adds another tab in your email. You can easily set a reminder that if no one responds by a specific date, put the email back in your inbox so that you can once again forward the email making sure that you get a response.
I find this is very useful for:
- Following up on invoices
- Getting responses from support you send off to other companies
- Getting responses from people on vacation
- Following up on project information (I prefer project management software for most of this)
- Making sure bugs are being reported and followed up on (although I prefer bug tracking software)
- Reminding clients to give you access to their systems
- Anything else you waste time on trying to track down if you have an answer or who is response for that answer
The plugin works with Google Apps, Gmail, Firefox, and Chrome.
There is both a free and paid version. They both have similar functionality, the difference is how many items can be stored in your boomerang queue, and how many systems it integrates with (Google Apps or Salesforce).
It does have some mobile capabilities, but I find them pretty limiting at the moment as its not a fully integrated app (which it can’t be as GMail doesn’t allow that on mobile devices).
You can download it from Boomerang for Gmail.
Please note: This is not an affiliate link or a paid post. I’m just a happy customer (paying for it) and it’s a huge time saver.
Here’s a video about the program:
Productivity Tip for Following Up On Emails is a post from: Certified Knowledge
Glenn Livingston Arrested for Drinking
It’s 100% true…
Glenn Livingston was arrested for drinking on January 4th, 2012, and you can see his mugshot here.
It’s pretty scary what you can learn using Google Alerts!
Like most marketers, I have routine alerts out on my name, and for just a moment when I saw this come through I wondered if perhaps I’d been out on a bender I’d forgotten last week (even though I haven’t had a drink in 20+ years… not ’cause I’m an alcoholic–I detest that term–just because I find life more interesting and satisfactory without screwing with my mental state)
I also learned, of course, about the myriad of people stealing my products (we pursue them legally now), and a few things about yet ANOTHER Glenn Livingston who’s a pastor in Illinois up to some interesting things from time to time.
But none of these rather mundane results from Google Alerts come anywhere close to the REAL power of this FREE utility…
(Even though tracking your namesakes’ activities can from time to time generate an attention getting headline)
Because most marketers have absolutely NO idea how to use it…
The REAL way to leverage Google Alerts is to first know with crystal clarity EXACTLY what keyword defines your ideal prospect, plus a very small set of related keywords which surround it. Taken together these become your “archery target”… the small space which defines EXACTLY WHO YOU WANT TO BE on the internet, and allows you to more or less ignore everything else.
Once you’ve done that, you can combine Google Alerts with Google Reader Feeds (and some anti-RSS-spam code) to automatically collect pretty much EVERYTHING that happens on the internet that’s relevant to you…
And stop getting distracted by everything else…
Which is the ONLY way to build a hyper-responsive marketing system in my humble opinion.
Have any of you found effective-yet-novel uses for Google Alerts we should know about?
Tell me, I’d like to know!
Dr. G 
PS – I’m considering organizing my network and resources to build a “performance-pay-based-conversion boosting-done-for-you” service. Curious if that’s of interest to any of my readers today
Are Your Paid Search Ads Hurting Your Bottom Line?
I've managed paid search accounts here at ROI Revolution since 2005, and 99% of the time when I look at a new account there is room to improve results through ad testing. Over the years much has changed in paid search, but the need to continually test and optimize ad text has stayed constant.
Ask yourself if any of the following top 4 pitfalls are currently hurting your paid search performance.
Do you assume you've got the best ad variation running already?
Many advertisers test 5-10 ad variations and then feel like they've got the best performing ad that they can achieve. It's easy to get stuck in a rut testing the same messages and ad formats, and sometimes it takes some pretty intense brainstorming sessions to come up with clever ads that change your account's performance. "Never stop testing" is our motto here at ROI Revolution, Inc. - and we encourage you to adopt this practice also.
Are you constantly monitoring your competitors' ads and promotions?
Often times folks get stuck monitoring their account through the AdWords interface and forget to take a look at the other ads they are running against on the search engine results page. Let's discuss a situation where this could hurt you. Let's say you have a 10% off ad that is a long time best performing ad. Suddenly this ad variation has stopped performing as well. All you know to do is pause the ad and test something new. If you were not constantly monitoring your competitors, you would not know that two other advertisers had adopted the same 10% off promotion + free shipping. You actually have free shipping on your site but it is not in your ad copy. You are leaving money on the table by not constantly monitoring your competitors and sizing up their offers against yours.
Are all of your ad destination URLs the most relevant they can be?
When you add new category pages, product pages, and change the structure of your website you need to ensure you update your ad destination URLs. This can be a tedious task, but not doing so means lowered conversion rates and sometimes ad disapprovals (if the old pages are broken). It's a good idea to check your destination URLs every month or so to ensure all ads are pointing to the best possible landing page.
Are you basing your ad tests on the wrong metric?
If you want to run ad tests that really improve your bottom line then focus your ad wins on a combination of click-through-rate and conversion rate. You may be thinking "Why not just conversion rate". See, your click-through-rate affects the amount of traffic you are getting. If you look solely at conversion rate you could actually decrease your sales volume.
It takes constant monitoring and due diligence to run effective ad tests, but it's totally worth it. Since the ad is the first thing a prospective customer or client sees from you, having the right message on the search engine results page cannot be undersold.
Are you concerned that you are not testing your paid ads often enough? Sign up for our free 30 minute strategy session, and one of our seasoned paid search analysts will review your ads to see if your ads are hurting your bottom line.
