SEMNE event: Google AdWords Best Practices With Malinda Gagnon of Google

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Google Adwords Best Practices
When: January 27, 2009; from 6:30 PM – 9:00 PM
Where: Newton Marriott, Newton, MA
Speaker: Malinda Gagnon, Google Inc.

SEMNE welcomes new members, but beware that if you’re new to this world, there’s quite a learning curve. That’s another reason to go, eh? Excellent networking and snacks with full bar (and drink coupons). Jonathan Hochman does a great job and is a valuable resource!

Google AdWords highlights from Malinda Gagnon

In this era we need to

Give clients something to make campaigns perform better

Companies are looking to do more with less

Clients relying on us more

Measurable results, use marketing dollars more wisely

Do what we’ve always done that much better

Go back to core competencies: search best practices, content best practices

Search Best Practices

Connect audience with the info the audience is seeking: Reach right audience with the right message at the right time

Adgroup best practices
Have your targeted audience see you

Has to be tightly targeted

Keywords, fairly targeted, related to the ad and the service offered

When trying to determine themes, keep in mind

Differentiate products or services you offer
Different levels of services, specify among each
Same product with various phrases or synonyms used

Keyword best practices

Reflect what users are searching for
Create relevant themes of keywords to relate back to specific ad text

Keep in mind

Users who are familiar with what you’re selling
then think about those who are not experts
Avoid the middle of the road (paying for unyielding clicks)

Accurately reflect the services being offered

Use keyword variations to maximize exposure
Use broad, phrase and exact match, as well as negative keywords to weed out unqualifieds

Adtext best practices

Give customers a very clear call to action: They should immediately know what to do next
Reflect your keywords in ad text: Make ads unique so they stand out, see what else is out there and what competitors are doing
Test multiple ad text variations: change word order, diff phrases

Content Best Practices

Content marketing plans: When designing content campaign

Targeting options
CPC vs CPM

Before you start, you should know

Precise audience
Who: age, gender, household, life like, income
Where: do they spend time online
How: can I reach them online
Contextual, placement or category targeted
Message: How do I want my message portrayed
Think about what would grab their attention

Contextual keywords best practices

Duplication across ad themes is good
Use keywords you expect to see on the page
15 keywords are enough to build on that theme
Use negative keywords
Avoid misspellings
Use keywords URLs
Select and relay ad group theme

Best practices for ad copy

Target browsing mentality of the user
Spark interest with asking questions, gimmicky works well: ask questions
Accurately describe what you’re advertising
Explain how your product relates
Interested in investing? Think about an IRA, on an investment site
Test special offers, test emotional messages: 50% vs $50 off

Choose landing page that immediate addresses what they’re interested in

What’s Stopping You? How to Find and Close Business in a Troubled Economy with Carl Harvey

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Society of Professional Consultants’ Monthly Dinner Meeting

Monday, January 26, 2009, 5:30pm – 9:00pm • Hilton Garden Inn • Waltham, MA

http://www.spconsultants.org/notices/DinnerMeeting/2009/dinner-JAN-2009.html

Carl Harvey www.successandself-esteem.com

class=”style1″>About 20 people made for an excellent networking event, find out a little about each attendee, conduct personalized exercise, get feedback.

Carl spoke about cold calling as the way to be proactive and take control of your business development. Can’t just sit around waiting for referrals and speaking engagements!

Here are some highlights:

Have to figure out ways to make calls warmer
Call ppl who’ve attended your speaking engagements
Are there any issues that you’re seeing in the topics I presented?
Can you talk about them or tell them someone who could talk to me?

Associations or Chambers
Get the member list, ID the company’s you might want to target
Call them up!

Call Linked-In people

When you get them on the phone, your goal is to get a meeting. Don’t dip into your spiel, ask questions.

For the prospect to meet with me, prospect has:
1.    Problem that I can solve
2.    Urgency to fix the prob
3.    Current solution hasn’t been working
4.    Clients don’t know what they don’t know

Determine those above criteria by asking questions.

Look for urgency
What happens if don’t fix it?
How make you feel?
How long going on?
If been living w it for long time? Why fix it now?
When money comes up, ask if it’s a lot of money, don’t presume
If money isn’t the issue, what’s changed?
Asking questions, will lead to the real problem.

A compelling presentation and an extremely congenial group to network with.

Tonight’s event: Google Adwords Best Practices, Newton

http://www.semne.org/meetings/google-adwords-best-practices/

Grow Your Client Base …Professional Services Firm Executives Share Their Insights event

Glancing at the path behind

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It seems like it’s been forever to get here, but then again some people never make it!

Often on the trade show circuit, people are curious about the origin of Designated Editor. Here we are in brief, but if you want the big-picture view, check out my love-to-travel-but-have-to-work blog:
designatedtraveler.blog4yourbiz.com

Working my way up the New England newspaper food chain, I landed at The Boston Globe after surviving crazy shifts like midnight to 8 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. to noon. I spent six years at The Globe, aiming to join the Travel section, a dream since oh, say, high school. But doesn’t everyone want to work for The Globe Travel section?! Life works in strange ways, and when I realized that in the time it would take to be senior enough to join Travel, I would be laid off.

So I took a buyout in June 2008. And there’s another going on right now. I’m interested to see what the terms are going to be. Either way, I took the summer off to clear my head and then launched Designated Editor.

It dawned on me about four years ago that perhaps my newspaper dream career was dimming. So, I requested admission and was allowed to audit (read: free) Entrepreneurship, an MBA-level class at UMass-Boston. The night after my first class, I was working out at the Globe’s gym and found out a colleague with whom I worked closely had killed himself. It was another shocking death of a newsroom colleague, and the one that convinced me the toll newspapers extract from its workers is just too great and will only worsen with the industry’s decline.

As the mood at The Globe grew increasingly bleak, I was busy taking classes (Accounting, Marketing, Sales), reading 50 books a year, trying to learn everything I could while biding my time and hoping for a buyout. With all this prep behind me and a year of paid benefits (health insurance being key) I took the leap.

The weak link in my prep work was not being to able to really get out and talk to people about what the needs are. The demand for copy editors had always
been high (why they’re paid more than any other newsroom job category),
did businesses really see the need?

Before the Internet, most businesses probably didn’t require copy editing, but as practitioners of “pubic relations” and “consummate professional service providers” can tell you, businesses need copy editing now more than ever!

I’m now concentrating on merging the principles of SEO (search engine optimization) and quality content.

Subsequent posts will center on further development of Designated Editor and the accelerated evolution of SEO.

Thanks for following along!