Some Free Market Motive Videos are Available This Week

Market Motive is making some of their videos free this week. Each day there will be one video available for free.

If you’re curious about the difference between Certified Knowledge and Market motive, you can see the full details in this post about the master certification.

I recommend putting these on your calendar and taking a look. There are some brilliant people at Market Motive and this is your chance to take a peak at some of the content.

• Monday (January 9th) – Web Analytics – Analytics Roles and Keys to Success
• Tuesday (January 10th) – SEO – Analyzing Your SEO Success
• Wednesday (January 11th) – PPC –  Ad Group Organization
• Thursday (January 12th) – PR –  Creating Ads Worth Spreading
• Friday (January 13th) – SEO  – The 4 Dimensions of SEO
• Saturday (January 14th) – Conversion optimization – 21 Tips to Reduce Shopping Cart Abandonment
• Sunday (January 15th) – Social Media – Creating a Social Media Strategy: The Blog as a Home Base

It seems there was a mistake at Market Motive about the free content. Avanish’s content (analytics) will be available on Tuesday and Matt Bailey’s information (Analyzing SEO Success) on Monday. Sorry for the mixup.

Some Free Market Motive Videos are Available This Week is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Do you want a Master Certification in PPC?

Market Motive offers master certifications in a variety of disciplines from analytics to conversion optimization to PPC.

Earlier this year, I took over the PPC Faculty chair at Market Motive and have had a great time working directly with students in both teaching them Google AdWords marketing; and working with them to improve some of their current accounts.

The new semester will start on January 16th; and runs for three months.

When you take the class, you will get:

• Access to many PPC lessons
• Access to lessons from other disciplines
• Regular homework assignments
• Weekly quizzes
• A graded final exam
• Weekly office hours with Brad Geddes (me)

What’s the Difference between Certified Knowledge and Market Motive?

This might sound odd that I founded a site that is based upon PPC tools and training, and also train at what could be considered a competitor site. However, the value propositions are so different – I thought I’d spell them out for everyone so they can see the difference.

Training

Certified Knowledge has more than 150 lessons from the basics to the advanced on PPC. Our lessons are completely self-guided; so you need self-discipline to get through them all.

Market Motive Master Certification is three month course that has regular check-ins, homework assignments, and due dates. So, if you are not good at self-discipline – Market Motive’s deadlines will help set a three month pace to get through hall of the information.

Community

Both Market Motive and Certified Knowledge offer a way to communicate with other members and ask questions. Market Motive’s ‘ask the experts’ forum will let you gain valuable knowledge from a large variety of sources.

Certified Knowledge has a private members group where I often post findings of tests I’m running, announcements of new features, etc; as well as private Q&A between members.

Cross Disciplines

Certified Knowledge is currently geared just towards PPC (although, we will be launching some new sections in the upcoming months). Market Motive is comprised of the ‘dream team’. The faculty includes Todd ‘Stuntdubl’ Malicoat, Bryan Eisenberg, Avinash Kaushik, among many others and includes information from several disciplines.

Tools

Certified Knowledge contains several time saving tools. Market Motive does not have any tools.

Weekly Office Hours & Monthly Workshops

This is one of the real benefits of Market Motive. We do weekly one hour calls via GoToMeeting to talk about the lessons and any other questions the students have. Considering our rates start at $400/hour; this is an excellent deal. We also do a monthly Market Motive workshop on a variety of  topics.

Advantages to Being Members of Both Sites

I recently ran into some Market Motive students a few weeks ago that work for a large agency. They use Certified Knowledge mostly for the tools and Market Motive mostly for cross discipline training. In fact, they told me that they would pay much more each month for Certified Knowledge just to use our Ad Copy Creation Tool as it saves them 15-20 hours for every new account they build.

Others use Certified Knowledge for the PPC tools and the members forum and Market Motive for the other marketing disciplines.

Of course, there are many members that are just here and others that are just at Market Motive. It depends on your price points and what type of experience you are looking for as to which site (or sites) fit your needs the most.

Learn More

You can start a 7 day free Certified Knowledge trial to see our tools and training in action.

Learn more about the Market Motive PPC Certification Course.

If you have questions, feel free to contact us.

I hope to see you inside one or more of these fantastic sites.

Do you want a Master Certification in PPC? is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Forget A/B testing – Is Multi-Ad Copy Testing the Future?

Matt Van Wagner is one of the funniest, and smartest people I know in paid search. In fact, I enjoy Matt so much, he’s doing the technical editing for the 2nd edition of Advanced Google AdWords (Thank you, Matt).  He’s also the President of Find Me Faster and you can find him on twitter.

Matt wrote a controversial article on ad copy testing where you don’t run the typical A/B test. Instead run an A/B vs C/D test. That’s right, test groups of ads against each other as this will help combat over-optimization.

I have mixed feelings about this type of testing. In some ways, it can help put out different messages for long buying cycle items where the same user will see the same ad multiple times.

In other cases, it might decrease conversion rates when your only goal is a click to conversion. Either you get the conversion on the first try or you just don’t ever get it (common in some lead gen industries). You also need a lot of data to run this test, but that’s another story.

Instead of debating the finer points of this type of testing, I invited Matt to be a guest on the latest Marketing Nirvana episode. You can listen to both our theories, comments, and other musings on multi-ad testing and see where we agree or disagree, and get some advice on how to run this test yourself.

You can listen to the show at iTunes or  on Webmaster Radio’s Marketing Nirvana Page.

I hope you enjoy the episode – we had a lot of fun taping it.

The next episode will be January 4th and I don’t have a speaker or a topic yet. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Forget A/B testing – Is Multi-Ad Copy Testing the Future? is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Is it me you’re looking for? Inside the Mindset of Search [Infographic]

Earlier this year, About.com conducted a qualitative survey that resulted in identifying three primary mindsets of Search: Answer me, Educate me and/or Inspire me.

One of the top findings in the report confirms that “People’s behaviors, needs and preferences in the offline world drive their behaviors and preferences online.”

The most interesting finding to me was the idea that people go to Search to find a certain type of expert. About.com sums it up like this – “The right kind of advertising could be the expertise people are looking for.”

Experts in the study are identified by Searchers as allies – those with topical experience or motivation; credentialed experts – PhDs, MDs, CPAs, etc; and finally, crowds – reviews, votes, and other social evidence from people the Searcher does not know.

Click the graphic below to learn more about the results from this About.com survey:

Embed this infographic on your own blog or website by copying & pasting the code below:

<a href="http://certifiedknowledge.org/blog/is-it-me-youre-looking-for-inside-the-mindset-of-search/"><img src="http://www.qualityscores.com/images/mindsetofsearch-qualityscores-ck.jpg" border="0" alt="psychology of search infographic" width="50%" height="50%" /></a>

Is it me you’re looking for? Inside the Mindset of Search [Infographic] is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Ad Rank: What Everyone Ought To Know About The Jungle In Adwords

Ever heard of the alpha male?

It’s a term used to describe the dominant male among  animals that live in groups. Usually the alpha male has special privileges like eating first, drinking first, being the first to mate or even the ONLY  one to mate.

Wikipedia refers the alpha male as being the animal with the highest  RANK.

What does this have to do with AdWords?

Well, remember how Google ranks ads on search results… Using a mesure called Ad Rank.

Ads with high Ad Rank take high positions while ads with lower Ad rank sink at the bottom.

But that’s just half the story and like social animals, Alpha Advertisers (advertisers with ads of high Ad Rank) get benefits that their competitors don’t. If you can increase your Ad Rank, Google will be generous in terms of traffic, position and cost.

Ad Rank Formula

The formula is very simple…

Ad Rank = MaxCPC  x Quality Score

… and very important to understand.

Anytime you change your bid (maxCPC), Ad Rank goes up or down. Every time your Quality Score (QS) changes, Ad Rank goes up or down.  Every time Ad Rank goes up or down, your ads get preferential treatment… or not.

Where To Find Your Ad Rank

Well, you can’t find it. We know that Ad Rank exists but there’s no place in adwords where you can see exactly what ad rank each of your ad is receiving. However, it is possible for you to find out exactly what you’re missing out with a low Ad Rank using the Impression Share metric.

Impression Share is the percentage of the times your ads where shown out of the times they were eligible to be shown.  By customizing the columns in your Adwords account, at the campaign level, you can see how much impression share your ads have lost due to a lower Ad Rank. That’s one way to tell if you have great Ad Rank or not.

How To Get Higher Ad Rank And Dominate The Jungle

In order to have high Ad Rank, you need the ability to bid high and get high Quality Scores. It’s important to have both and it can be a challenge to obtain them. Although you can work your way up with high QS, it will be much easier and more profitable if you can afford bidding high as well.  Let’s get into more details…

Jungle Rule 1: Earn The Ability To Bid Higher

It’s all about your conversion rate. Every time you increase your conversion rate, you increase your ability to bid high. In fact, you should figure out the bid that yields maximum profitability for your business (yes, there is one) with every conversion rate you achieve.

How to have better conversion rates?

The offer. The copy. The design.

Those are my personal ingredients to high conversions…  in that order.

The offer is by far the most important component and it impacts everything else you do. To have the best offer, you need to know what your potential customers actually want. This is important and most people assume they know and fail to take the extra effort to “really” find out. If you’re interested in having a method to discovering what customers want, I always recommend The Perfection Of Marketing by James Connor, a book that I think every business owner/marketer should own.

Once you know what your prospects want, you need to know how to convey it with powerful copywriting. Spend time crafting a message that resonates  with your target market  in simple words.

Then comes the design. Crappy won’t do it (most of the times). Though some great copy writers can pull it off with crappy web design, you should leverage every tool at your disposal. A clear, clean and simple design wins. And by the way, simple and clear is usually better than beautiful.

Jungle Rule 2: Get The Highest Quality Scores

Ah, that little number we love to hate loving over at Tenscores.com. Are you still wondering how to increase Quality Score? Can’t blame you. There seem to be a conspiracy around the web to put people on the wrong track at every turn.

I wonder who started it…

Here’s the ONLY  thing you need to know about QS and it’s not complicated:

If you have low QS… unless the diagnostic bubble tells you otherwise, Quality Score  EQUALS click-through rates. Nothing else.

Let me explain.

The diagnostic bubble is that little place besides keywords that give you some indication about why you have low scores. Take a look at the screenshot on the lower right.

The “keyword relevance” part is key. What they really mean is keyword click-through-rate (CTR). So, unless that bubble tells you of landing page problems or load time problems, all you have to focus on is CTR. That’s it. The tricky part is, the CTR is not necessarily yours, it is sometimes other advertiser’s CTR. But even that is no big deal if you focus on increasing your own CTRs continuously (without sacrificing conversion rates of course).

So unless things change, as of today, November 2011, there’s no such thing as semantic relevance in calculations of quality score. And if there is any at all, it is small enough to simply dismiss it. Since the day I stopped worrying whether my landing page was relelvant or wether my ad had keywords in it and simply sharpened my ad-writing skills for higher CTRs, quality score has become the least of my challenges. All that Google cares about in regards to QS is CTR. Thanks to Craig Danuloff for confirming this in his book on quality: Quality Score  In High Resolution.  Anyone who wishes to disagree should read that book in its entirety first.

So please, will you give more attention to your Adwords ads CTR?! I beg you, for the sake of your business.

And here’s where the circle is closed: the best  way to get higher CTR is to figure out what searchers want and give it to them. Just like increasing conversions.

Once you can afford bidding high because your conversion rates and profit margins are so good and you understand quality score well enough to increase it, the snow ball starts to roll, your ads get more exposure, you get more traffic to your website, your costs are reduced and you become an Alpha Advertiser.

Don’t wait any longer… rule your jungle!

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.

Ad Rank: What Everyone Ought To Know About The Jungle In Adwords is a post from: Certified Knowledge

High Growth Firms Use PPC 3X More Than Average Growth Firms

This is a guest post by Sean McVey.

Last week, Hinge Research Institute released an online marketing research study that analyzes the effectiveness of various digital marketing techniques for professional service firms.

500 firms participated, and as part of a larger survey each was asked to rate 15 techniques on two factors:

1. The level of focus the firm puts on each technique

2. The effectiveness of each technique for lead generation

The research team took a close look at one group of firms that was growing the fastest (based on year-over-year revenue) and generating 40% of their leads online. The goals was to understand how this high growth group was finding success with online marketing.

Data pertaining to PPC advertising shows that high growth firms focus on this technique over three times more than average growth firms:

In addition, high growth firms rated PCC more than twice as effective for generating leads than average growth firms.

To round out the study, 20 top online marketing experts were interviewed and asked to rate the effectiveness of the same marketing techniques. The experts’ ratings aligned closely with those of the high growth firms.

Why is it that the experts and high growth firms rated PPC as more effective?

The data don’t provide a definitive answer, but it is likely that the experts and high growth firms better understand how to get value out of PPC advertising than do average growth firms.

Many firms simply pour money into paid search — with dreadful results. But companies that fully tap into PPC’s potential are able to generate consistent, positive results.

For a breakdown of the other 14 online marketing techniques, download the full report (it is free; no registration required).

Sean is an Online Marketing Strategist at Hinge, a firm specializing in branding and marketing for professional services firms. For follow up questions, you can reach him on twitter @SeanTMcVey.

High Growth Firms Use PPC 3X More Than Average Growth Firms is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Save Money On Placements With Google Analytics

Google’s display network can bring you tremendous amounts of clicks and conversions if used correctly. If it is not used correctly, you can quickly spend mass amounts of money and have nothing to show for it.

A couple years ago, I wrote an article on how to manage the display network so you can spend most of your money on sites that are bringing in quality traffic. This is a quick graphic of the workflow that I still use today.

• The ‘Discovery Campaign’ is one of your lower daily budgets, and its goal is to find good placements where you want to spend more money
• The Placement’s Campaign is one of your higher budgets as it only contains sites that are helping you reach your overall goals

 

 

While I find this workflow is very useful, the overall problem is when do you decide to block placements? In your AdWords account, the only data you can see for any placement is conversions and conversion rates. The problem with so little data is that if you wait until you have enough statistically significant data to make a decision, you will never find all of the good placements, and spent too much money on bad ones.

There is another way to gain insight into placements with Google Analytics that you can use to determine if a site is sending you quality traffic.

Evaluating Placements with Google Analytics

To have access of this data you need to link your Google Analytics account to your AdWords account. Next, navigate to the placements information under the AdWords reports (found under traffic sources).

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have goals setup, then you can sort by the goal completions, conversion rates, and other data points to find the sites that are doing well for you.

While this data is useful for adding placements, it can also be useful for finding placements that you want to block even if you don’t have statistical data.

Sort Placements by Bounce Rates

Instead of trying to find sites that you want to add as placements, examine bounce rates to find sites where the traffic is so poor, you don’t want to wait for statistical data.

In this case, we have a handful of sites that have sent more than 18 visitors and have a 100% bounce rate. No one from any of those sites has even gone to a second page, therefore, we will often block these even though we don’t have statistically significant data.

Please note, you don’t want to just block sites if there bounce rates are 100%. You should also double check the ad copy and landing pages to make sure the offers are relevant for that site. If you consistently see high bounce rates for your display campaigns, then you might need to change the offer and landing page before deciding to block placements.

Just remember, a bounce in Google Analytics is a visitor who only went to a single page and then left your site. If someone gets to your landing page, picks up the phone and calls you, finishes an order over the phone and then leaves your site – they will be counted as a bounce even if they spent twenty minutes on the phone with you.

Create Interaction Goals

A quick way of seeing what sites are bringing in good versus poor traffic is to create interaction goals within Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, you can create goals based upon time on site or page views per visit.

 

If you create goals with these types of metrics, then you can easily examine what sites are not meeting your basic minimum interaction and then block those sites that are underperforming.

Conversely, if you find that sites are bringing in visitors that are spending several minutes on your site, you shouldn’t block those sites until you have enough clicks to determine if those visitors will eventually convert.

By using interaction goals, you can gain another level of insight into the placements where you are spending money, so you can make better decisions about block the sites or spending more money on the sites to gather more data.

If you have various types of goals on your site, I would recommend splitting out these types of goals by goal set. You might have one goal set that is all revenue events, and another one that is site interaction. By splitting these different types of goals out by goal set, then you can see one tab of just interaction goals, and another tab of just revenue goals. That way your revenue goal events will not be polluted by site interaction events and vice versa.

Conclusion

Overall, I like Google’s display network. There is a lot of traffic and conversions to be had from managing it correctly. However, if managed incorrectly, the display network can be a money pit. Therefore, you do need a system for managing the display network so it will perform for you.

However, the patience and money required to always have statistically relevant data is beyond what most AdWords advertisers have. Therefore, when you see sites that have several visits and 100% bounce rates, feel free to block them quickly. When you see sites that have some visitors, and those visitors are spending time on your site, then you should be more patient in determining if the site will eventually be a converting one for you.

By using Google Analytics to examine your AdWords data, you can go beyond just examining conversion rates to also determining interaction rates and gaining another viewpoint into the placement sites where you are spending your money, so that you can spend your budget as wisely as possible.

Save Money On Placements With Google Analytics is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Where to Find Us at Pubcon

It’s almost time for Pubcon Vegas – one of my favorite shows each year. I’ll be there all week long, so feel free to stop by and say, “Hi”.

If you’re trying to figure out where I’m going to be – I’ll make it easy and give you a quick list.

Tuesday, 11/18

1:30 Hardcore PPC Tactics: David Szetela, John Ellis, and myself will delve into the tactics that are not used by many. If you’re looking to spice up your PPC campaigns – this is the place to be.

2:55 The Best Tactics in Landing Page Optimization: Every year this is one of those session that Tim Ash, Joanna Lord, and myself do where the audience is flowing out the door trying to peak inside. This is the must see landing page session. If you want a seat – get there early.

4:15 Enterprise Level Bid Management: Wister Walcott (Marin), Dave Roth (Yahoo), and myself will discuss bid management at an enterprise level. Ok, with Wister and Dave there – I’m not going to talk bid management – I’m going to talk time management and tools for large to enterprise accounts (and I find these tools really good for mid sized accounts as well).

Tuesday is going to be a busy day…

Wednesday, 11/19

11:30: PPC & SEO Finally Walk Down the Aisle: This is going to be a spotlight session. Rob Snell (great ecommerce stuff) is going to go first for 30ish minutes. Then I’m going to get into how to marry PPC & SEO together so you can get the both of best worlds (and show you how 1+1=3).

1:45 Advanced Google AdWords Book Signing: I’ll be (I think) in the Expo hall signing books. If you have a copy, bring it by. If you don’t – then they should be selling them there. Now, if only Amazon can figure out how to sign kindle versions.

3:00 Pubcon Labs on AdWords: Pubcon is trying something new this year with Pubcon Labs. Spend a bit of one-on-one time with an expert. I’m totally booked up already, but you can always see if there’s someone else you always wanted to meet at Pubcon Labs.

The Rest of the Time

I’ll be around Pubcon most of the week. So, assuming it’s not super early – I should be somewhere around the conference.

If you see me, just stop by and say, “Hi”.

Hope to see you at Pubcon.

If you want to stay on top of all the internet marketing events going on (not just ours or ones we’re speaking at), you can see all the events on the Internet Marketing Events Calendar.

Where to Find Us at Pubcon is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Free Advanced Display Webinar This Thursday

This Thursday the Market Motive workshop on Advanced Display Advertising is open to everyone.

In the workshop, we’ll look at:

• Finding and blocking placement sites
• Filtering your ambiguous intent keywords for better targeting
• Removing current customers from broad reach targeting
• Controlling your remarking based upon search session behavior
• Buying & Measuring CPM
• And of course, a bit more here and there

If you are using the display network, or want some ideas for new things to test across display – you’re sure to take away a few items from this workshop to use.

The webinar will be this Thursday, November 3rd at 9:30 PST / 12:30 EST.

Signup here for the webinar.

Hope the see you there.

Free Advanced Display Webinar This Thursday is a post from: Certified Knowledge

Learn How Google +1 Affects AdWords with John Lee

Google has been making strides in social; and so far there’s only one of these changes that has affected ads – the +1 button.

This button has many marketers confused about who can see a +1 button next to their ads, if they can remove the button, how it will affect CTR and Quality Score, etc.

There’s an answer to all these questions: the next Marketing Nirvana show.

My guest will be John Lee, the Director of Client Services at Clix Marketing who has really dug into this button and how it will affect you.

You can also follow John on Twitter at @John_A_Lee.

In the show we will discuss:

• What is the +1 Button
• What does it do
• If you can opt out
• Quality Score & CTR impacts
• And much more…

The next show will air on November 7th at 12 EST / 9 PST on WebmasterRadio.FM.

You can also subscribe to the show at iTunes or listed to the archives at Webmaster Radio’s Marketing Nirvana Page.

If you missed either of the last two few shows, you should check them out at iTunes or Webmaster Radio.

• Search Query Data with Chad Summerhill
• Devising Killer Facebook Ads with Marty Weintraub
• Quality Score in High Resolution with Craig Danuloff
• And of course, many others…

I hope you enjoy the show.

Learn How Google +1 Affects AdWords with John Lee is a post from: Certified Knowledge