Are SOPA and PIPA Dead… A Shocking Turn of Events
Feb 4th 2012SiteProNewsSite Pro News
SOPA and PIPA may be dead but politicians continue to work on a solution to combat Internet piracy.
5 Ways Your Email Campaign Must Tie into Your Conversion Optimization Efforts
Feb 4th 2012Matthew MeyerQuickregister.net & email marketing & email marketing optimization
Email campaigns can be an effective way of getting more customers and converting users into paying customers. When you are launching a massive email campaign you need to make sure your conversion optimization is tied into the process. It does not do you any good to drive traffic to your site if your site is not ready to convert these users into customers. An email campaign will get people to your website but the conversion optimization is what will get the users to do what you want them to do.
Are SOPA and PIPA Dead… A Shocking Turn of Events
Feb 3rd 2012SiteProNewsSite Pro News
SOPA and PIPA may be dead but politicians continue to work on a solution to combat Internet piracy.
25 Things You Could Buy With a Super Bowl Ad Budget
Feb 3rd 2012Corey EridonUncategorized
A 30-second commercial advertisement for Super Bowl XLVI is going for $3.5 million. Can you imagine what you as a marketer could do for your company if you had that kind of budget? If you can't even fathom what you'd do with a marketing budget that big (and just think, this is just one of many campaigns they're running this year!), we've come up with some ideas for how you can better spend that chunk of change. And if you're thinking you'd spend it on a commercial during the Super Bowl, well, maybe these ideas will give you some perspective on just how far $3.5 million can go in the marketing world.
25 Ways to Spend the $3.5 Million Budget of a Super Bowl XLVI Commercial
1.) Buy 1,458 years of HubSpot Basic Inbound Marketing Software. Tweet This!
2.) Direct mail the entire country of Sweden. Tweet This!
3.) Hire someone to blog for you for the next 70 years. Tweet This!
4.) Put up a billboard along the highway from Boston to D.C. every one mile. Tweet This!
5.) Purchase 2,333 years of Salesforce Enterprise CRM. Tweet This!
6.) Buy inbound links from enough web pages to fill the Oxford English Dictionary 16 times. Tweet This!
7.) Use PPC to buy a search presence for 2,333,333 keywords after Google dings you for purchasing links. Tweet This!
8.) Give 2,060 employees their own personal version of the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Tweet This!
9.) Send those 2,060 employees to classes so they know how to use the entire Adobe Creative Suite. Tweet This!
10.) Buy the email list of the entire population of Chile and SPAM them; try to do it before your IP is blacklisted. Tweet This!
11.) Repair your company's spamtastic image by plastering your company logo and tagline across 35,000 park benches. Tweet This!
12.) Hire Al Gore to be your company's celebrity spokesperson for a full 24-hour day. Tweet This!
13.) Let everyone know Al Gore is your spokesperson by, ironically, printing enough flyers to stick to every single household door in the United Kingdom. Take that, environment. Tweet This!
14.) Buy the stamps to send out your 2012 holiday cards. Let's hope you have 7,777,777 customers. Tweet This!
15.) Purchase about 35,000 shares of Facebook after it IPOs. Tweet This!
16.) Keep a web designer on call 24 hours a day for 4 years to change your website whenever you want. Tweet This!
17.) Commission enough content from the Zerys Content Marketplace to post a new blog to your website every hour of every day for the next 26 years. Tweet This!
18.) Hire the entire graduating class of Emerson College's Masters of Marketing program to work in your department. Tweet This!
19.) Or, if you're happy with your current team, you could send 23 of them to get their MBAs. Tweet This!
20.) You should probably also buy them all brand new MacBook Airs for their studies; you'll have enough money left over to hoard 3,477 for yourself. What? Marketers love Apple products! Tweet This!
21.) Hire Lady Gaga to follow your CMO around all day, singing "Happy Birthday" on repeat, every year for the next 145 years. Tweet This!
22.) Develop 542 mobile apps. Because the other 541 just weren't good enough. Tweet This!
23.) Purchase enough color toner to print brochures that can span the Atlantic Ocean from Dublin to Boston. And then back again. Tweet This!
24.) Pay to rank for the rarely searched keyword phrase, "best company in the world" for 11,666 years. Tweet This!
25.) Air 17 regular commercials on network television any other time of the year. Tweet This!
Now just think of what you could do with the additional $1-2 million you'd spend actually producing the commercial...
If you had $3.5+ million to spend on marketing, how would you use the money?
Image credit: Images_of_Money
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Tip of the Week – Direct Deposit for LinkShare Publishers
Feb 3rd 2012LinkShareTip of the Week
Want to get your commission payments even faster? LinkShare offers Publishers* the convenience of direct deposit, so you have no checks to cash and no waiting on the mail. Once you cash your first consolidated LinkShare check, you’re eligible. For more FAQ’s, please view the Publisher Help Center. *Please note: Only Publishers in the following [...]
Join LinkShare at LeadsCon Las Vegas
LinkShare will be attending LeadsCon Las Vegas on Feb 28-29, 2012 at The Mirage Hotel & Casino Las Vegas, NV. Stop by the LinkShare booth (#616)to learn about all the new and exciting things happening in the LinkShare Network. Visit our Trade Shows page to find out what other shows we’re attending in 2012. [...]
Join LinkShare at eTail Palm Springs
LinkShare will be attending the eTail Palm Springs conference on February 27 – March 1, 2012 at the JW Marriott Desert Springs, Palm Desert, CA. Stop by the Linkshare booth (#29) to learn about all the new and exciting things happening in the LinkShare Network. See you there! —- Catherine Hagan Marketing Specialist
Welcoming Eric Rosenthal
Feb 3rd 2012Jason FairchildOpenX & OpenX Enterprise & People
I’m excited to welcome Eric Rosenthal to the OpenX team. As we announced yesterday, Eric has been appointed as the General Manager, Enterprise, and will be contributing his deep experience and knowledge of the industry to help grow our business and further the global adoption of OpenX Enterprise.
Eric brings a rare knowledge and understanding of what publishers need to be successful in today’s rapidly changing online advertising ecosystem. And by “successful”, I mean helping publishers make more money through the use of ad technology. This is a great fit for OpenX, because we help publishers make more money through our new Enterprise ad server (with all major RTB buyers bundled into the ad server), and Eric has an incredibly strong background in introducing publishers to new technology products that help them increase revenues. This is a rare skill that Eric developed through years of experience at companies such as AOL where he was Vice President of National Sales and a member of the executive team that led Publisher Partner Development for AOL’s Rich Media Ad Serving platform (Pictela) for both publishers and agencies. During Eric’s time there, his team achieved a tenfold increase in revenue. Eric has also served as a Senior Sales Director at DoubleClick (now Google DoubleClick) where he helped generate an annual run rate of more than $50M. Eric’s career has also included roles at Kyte (now Kit Digital), Solbright (now Operative), Verizon Business and Panther CDN (now CDNetworks). Eric will be heading up OpenX’s New York team. Welcome Eric!
Interested in speaking with Eric or another member of his team to learn more about OpenX Enterprise? Contact us here. Or join the OpenX Enterprise live product demo this Wednesday February 8, at 11:00 AM (PST).
How the Third Wave of Media Is Transforming Marketing Content
Feb 3rd 2012Kipp BodnarUncategorized
As a society, how we watch, read, and consume information is fundamentally changing. News, information, and entertainment will never go back to "the way it was," and this change will have a powerful impact on all aspects of inbound and outbound marketing. In 2012, marketing is publishing, so let's learn how to be a great publisher in an industry under constant disruption.
This week, some of the most intense shots yet were fired in the battle for the eyes and mind of the world. Stop. Listen for a second. Do you hear the cries and confusion? Those are the cries of the publishing and broadcast executives.
As a marketer, you should be cheering.
Amazon's Unwavering Assault on the Publishing Industry
Brick and mortar bookseller Barnes and Noble announced this week that it would no longer stock books published by the digital book juggernaut, Amazon.com. "What's that?" you ask? "Amazon publishes books? But I thought they only sold them." That's right -- Amazon is a book distributor AND publisher.
In the fourth quarter of 2011, Amazon said it sold millions of Kindle electronic reading devices, but the business still came in a billion dollars in revenue below Wall Street expectations.
But Amazon doesn't care.
As reported by the New York Times, Amazon published 122 books in the fall of 2011. This number is seemingly insignificant when compared to the total number of books published by all publishers during the same time period. But what doesn't matter, because a secret about the publishing industry is that it makes most of its money from a small group of best-selling books and authors. Amazon understands this and seems willing to lose money in order to take the best and brightest writers away from traditional publishing houses. And with more than $6 billion in the bank, it can.
Barnes and Noble, citing the lack of ability to sell ebooks from Amazon's published works, has decided to return the favor by not selling the print versions of those Amazon-published books in its stores. This marks a continued battle for control over distributing the words of the world.
The Third Wave of Media
Salar Kamangar, CEO of YouTube, believes that we are in a third wave of media. At an event in California this week Kamangar said, “The first wave was the broadcast networks. The second wave was cable networks. Now, it’s about giving people exactly what they want to watch today.”
Mashable reports that YouTube has invested more than $100 million into premium content channels around niche topics including food, fashion, pets, and fitness, making it clear that YouTube is willing to spend money to be a major player in this third wave of media. This week, YouTube hired Bruce Seidel, who oversaw shows on the Food Network and Cooking Channel, to lead programming for YouTube's new food-focused channel. According to a New York Times article, Seidel hopes to “discover new stars and galvanize the niches that are driving the internet food conversation.”
User Experience and the Third Wave of Media
Since the early beginning of the internet, pundits have discussed the rise of internet-based entertainment, but the fact of the matter is that online video has never really made it into the living room. One core barrier that is too frequently ignored is the user experience of watching online video compared to watching television. People watch television to relax, and having to click a new video to watch on YouTube every three minutes is not relaxing. Plus, you have the added anxiety that, for many people, the computer equals a device, and devices subsequently mean stress.
It is the deficiency of user experience that third wave media companies have to overcome in order to infiltrate the living room. But Kamangar, who plans to launch 100 niche content channels on YouTube this year, says, "The idea is that you’ll subscribe to a channel, and you’ll go and just keep watching.”
Niche AND Quality
The knock against many ebooks and online video shows is quality. The fact of the matter is that because anyone with a computer or video camera can create an ebook or online show, the quality and production value in many cases is much lower than that of traditional publishing houses and cable networks. That's why Amazon is signing top-quality authors and YouTube is hiring some of the best minds in cable programming. Both of these companies understand that, to take over the living room, the core content has to be remarkable.
The idea of remarkable content isn't anything new. However, content has the potential to become even more remarkable when it is applied to a niche. And that niche factor is the leverage third wave media companies have over the first and second wave media companies. Imagine if 100 new cable networks launched this year to cover niche topics. It simply wouldn't happen. Online video providers and ebook authors' best shot at disruption comes from a laser focus on increasing content quality standards while still serving and representing niche communities currently underserved by cable networks.
Change Is Hard: AKA Why This Hasn't Already Happened
The fact that the world is constantly changing isn't news to any of us. We write it off as a fact of life. Despite this constant change, we are at a paradox. Change is easy to hate, especially major disruption to our daily routines and habits. And it's not that we as people or as a society don't want to change. It's the simple fact that change is exhausting.
Chip and Dan Heath explain this idea perfectly in their book, Switch. The Heath brothers write: "Change is hard because people wear themselves out. And that’s the second surprise about change: What looks like laziness is often exhaustion."
The way we read, watch, and consume information is changing at the pace of a rapid turtle. This means that you won't blink and suddenly live in a world where no publishers exist, but every couple of months, a stack of small changes starts to become noticeable, and the media world becomes slightly different. Before you know it, a few years have passed, and the media world is completely different.
Marketing in a Transitional Media World
It's time to find your niche. The way information is distributed is gradually yet radically changing around us, which means you can't wake up years from now and decide that it's time to change. It'd be too late. Instead, you need to take action now to be an active part of this transitional media world.
Start executing on these four action items today to not only survive, but also succeed in the next generation of media.
1. Find Your Niche - Your niche isn't the product you sell. Rather, your niche is the subject matter that is of greatest interest to your prospective customers. If you sell supplies to auto body shop owners, then your niche is content about operating a successful auto body shop in every facet of the business, even those for which you don't have products to sell.
2. Balance Quality and Velocity of Content - The challenge of content in the online media landscape is that content has to be high quality enough to stand out, but also be agile enough not to be out of date the moment it's published. The only real way to know what a good quality/velocity balance is for your business is to test different options to understand what works the best for your niche. You can do this by changing the frequency in which you publish blog posts and other content. Do you get more leads and engagement when publish a blog post every day, or once a week? Do blog posts that you spend more time polishing and improving generate more traffic and leads than other posts? These are the elements to test as part of your marketing content.
3. Have a Personality - Don't be bland. Look at the text or videos that capture your attention. They probably have a clear point of view and an interesting tone. Don't be afraid to be fun, sarcastic, edgy, or any other tone that aligns with your brand and products.
4. Start Planning Beyond the Desktop Computer Screen - For most of us, we still think of a computer as the device that sits on our desk with a big screen that isn't touch-sensitive. But from the Kindle, Nook, and iPads to iPhone and Andriod smartphones, the definition of a computer has changed. Yes, these changing devices will impact your marketing content. And it isn't just about their size, but it's also that they all have one key element in common: touch. Start thinking about what your content looks like in a world without mice (the computer kind). It will have a huge impact on how we design our content and collect information from our leads.
Success of digital-only magazines like the Daily demonstrate that consumers are willing to not only consume but also pay for touchable content that is personalized for their devices. Survey your target audience, and understand what devices they are using to consume information. Then make sure your content works well on the most popular devices.
Change is here.
Image Credit: Ariane Middel
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How to Tackle Your 5 Toughest Email Marketing Challenges
Feb 3rd 2012Magdalena GeorgievaUncategorized
Email is a powerful marketing channel, but it's also one that presents many questions and difficulties. In its 2012 Email Marketing Benchmark Report, MarketingSherpa surveyed 2,735 companies and asked them to rank the significance of 12 common email marketing challenges. In this blog post, we will focus on the top five challenges and suggest some ideas through which you can address these issues.
The best inbound marketers like to amass valuable data across their different channels. For instance, they might like to see the possible relationships between landing pages and emails or track the sales process of an email conversion. In addition to the obvious reporting benefits such integrations provide, they also open the door to a much more enjoyable experience for email subscribers.
Just think about it: if you could bridge the gap between email marketing performance and social media activities, landing page conversions, or new customer acquisitions, you are that much closer to improving your sales funnel and delivering content that your community loves.
'Other data,' including form submissions and activities on site, can point you to the resources your recipients are truly interested in. In that way, you have a clear understanding of how to further engage them through careful targeting and segmentation.
Solution: Integrate Your Data Systems
In order to integrate your email marketing with your other data systems, you need to use marketing software that allows for that integration to take place. In fact, integration is the foundation on which HubSpot’s software was built as it connects SEO, blogging, social media, lead management, and reporting with email marketing and lead nurturing.
Combining your different marketing databases allows for clear segmentation and the ability to better target your customers and prospects with relevant email messages. Once you have access to an integrated marketing system, keep your buyer persona in mind and focus on the opportunity to target the right audience with the right message.
The more targeted your email campaigns, the more content you’ll need. The key to promoting relevant content in email is to provide an offer that is connected to the initial request. What action have your contacts taken on (or even off) your website? Offer them content that fits with their intent and their needs.
Deliverability rate is the percentage of email messages delivered to your recipients’ inboxes
versus the total number of messages sent. It tells you how many of the emails bounced back,
and it's a sure sign of inactivity. The two factors that influence deliverability rate are soft bounces and hard bounces. The soft bounce is temporary and occurs when an email server rejects an incoming message (for instance, when your recipients’ inboxes are full). A hard bounce, on the other hand, is less benign and represents a permanent error to deliver an email. This generally occurs when the addresses you send to are bad or don’t exist.
A low deliverability rate might get you blocked by ISPs (internet service providers). If your list is full of inactive emails, you don’t really know what your complaint rate is. Sure, you probably look at the total complaints over total list size, but ISPs are actually registering the total number of complaints over the number of active email users.
In addition, ISPs can mark abandoned email addresses as spam traps. So even if you have acquired emails legitimately, the abandoned addresses may have turned into spam traps. Aside from all the ISP problems, low deliverability rate also means you are wasting money sending messages to nonexistent addresses.
Solution: Practice Good Email Hygiene
Start by cleaning up your email list by removing the unengaged addresses. (You can identify these addresses with metrics such as opens, clicks, or website activity.) If you have a really serious problem with deliverability, you might want to redefine your opt-in process to prevent invalid emails from getting on your list. Either ask people to enter their email twice or experiment with double opt-in. Lastly, make sure your recipients have an opportunity to update their email addresses. Invite them to your preference center from every email you send. That might also help you with segmentation and achieving higher engagement overall.
In MarketingSherpa’s survey, marketing professionals shared that their third most serious challenge in respect to email marketing is growing and retaining subscribers. No wonder! Increasing the size of your email list and keeping your contacts engaged in your messages is no easy task. In fact, according to MarketingSherpa, the average email list depreciates by 25% every year.
Unfortunately, companies often battle this problem by purchasing lists. This practice will surely get you into trouble: it might add invalid addresses to your list, and thus, pollute your entire database. Even if the addresses you acquired are valid, the new recipients will most likely not be interested in your content and either unsubscribe or not engage with your emails altogether.
To retain subscribers, a lot of companies also send fewer emails, thinking that the communication frequency might in some way define engagement. A few emails means they are more special, right? Wrong. Frequency of emailing, as we have established in our Science of Email Marketing research, doesn’t necessarily negatively impact subscriber retention.
Solution: Earn Your Email Subscribers
Don’t purchase email lists; instead, earn your subscribers. Be clear to your target audience about what they will get out of subscribing to your emails. Give them a clear description of what the value proposition is. For example, will your emails offer: (1) tips and tools on how to run their business more efficiently, (2) product updates from your company, or (3) special offers via email? Your audience will want to know “why” they should subscribe before they decide to clutter their inbox with even more emails.
Are you concerned that you are emailing your subscribers too often? Give this thought a break and instead ask yourself if you are emailing the right people with the right message. In order to retain your email subscribers, you’ll need to provide them with ongoing value that is targeted to their needs. Make sure you are segmenting based on knowledge you have about your recipients.
Don’t limit your email testing to subject lines. Embrace testing of various elements in your email marketing efforts to optimize email performance. For instance, you can do A/B testing of the landing pages you're promoting in your emails.
Achieving measurable ROI (return on investment) is another challenge that marketing professionals face in the land of email marketing. It’s difficult for them to connect the dots between the messages they send out to prospective customers and the moment when these subscribers get further engaged and turn into customers.
Interestingly enough, this problem is tightly connected to challenge number one -- integrating email marketing with other data systems. When your marketing channels are not speaking to one another, it’s hard to identify how they affect conversions. For instance, you might see that your email blast got a 3.4% click-through rate (CTR), but can you also see if that communication contributed to generating new leads? What is more, do you see if it resulted in any new customers?
Solution: Closed-Loop Marketing
The solution to achieving measurable ROI from your email marketing campaigns is to practice closed-loop marketing. Follow a contact from the point of visiting your website through further engagement (viewing other web pages, downloading resources, clicking on your emails), to her final conversion into a customer. Implementing closed-loop marketing empowers you to track leads from their initial channel through a first conversion all the way to becoming customers. Such intelligence, in turn, enables you to identify your most powerful marketing channels and assign clear value to each of them. In this way, you will be able to measure the ROI not only of your emails, but also of your other efforts, which might include social media marketing and blogging.
Your email campaigns should only be a part of your holistic marketing approach. The real power comes from achieving a strong marketing mix. Email cannot be truly as fruitful just by itself; rather, it should also strengthen your other initiatives, just like you shouldn't use social media in a vacuum, only rely on blogging, or trust that search engine optimization is enough to meet your goals. This, however, seems to be a challenge for marketers. How do you optimize your sales and marketing funnel with emails?
Most marketing professionals are accustomed to sending one-time email blasts that are not necessarily related to the actions of their email subscribers, their interests, or needs. Such a practice doesn’t help push leads down the sales funnel, and it can actually alienate them.
Solution: Nurture Your Leads
Lead nurturing sometimes goes by other names: marketing automation, drip marketing, auto-responders, etc. Simply put, lead nurturing is a system that allows you to send an automated series of emails to an early stage lead in order to better qualify them before handing them over to your sales team.
If it typically takes your leads a month to make a purchasing decision, then make sure you’re spreading out your communications to keep them engaged throughout the month. By taking this approach, you save your sales organization time because you educate and qualify the lead overtime.
Among some of the key benefits of lead nurturing is that it enables marketers to establish contact with their fresh leads fast and stay top of mind for potential, and even current, customers. In comparison to email marketing, lead nurturing is also relatively easy to set up because it is automated and doesn’t need a ton of maintenance over time.
What are some of your top email marketing challenges? Do you have any to add to this list?
This blog post is an excerpt from the ebook Introduction to Email Marketing. To gain a better foundation on executing and measuring successful email marketing, download your free copy of the ebook.
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Get Master Resell Rights To 25 High Quality, Hot Selling Products
Feb 3rd 2012E-business & E-marketingUncategorized
Get Master Resell Rights To 25 High Quality, Hot Selling Products For Pennies On The Dollar! Plus, Get Your Very Own Copy Of This Sales Page To Use For Your Own One Time Offers And Watch Your Profits Explode Through The Roof!
Categories: E-business & E-marketing, General
Categories: E-business & E-marketing, General
Are SOPA and PIPA Dead… A Shocking Turn of Events
Feb 2nd 2012SiteProNewsSite Pro News
SOPA and PIPA may be dead but politicians continue to work on a solution to combat Internet piracy.
Lycos Quadruples Yields on OpenX Market
Feb 2nd 2012amy.deavollOpenX & OpenX Enterprise & OpenX Market & Publisher & RTB
Lycos, one of the original Internet brands, has evolved from a search engine into a comprehensive network of social sites. Bringing people together to interact, have fun, and experience the best the web has to offer is in Lycos’ DNA. With more than 14 million users per month, their ad operations team found it challenging to optimize revenue on non-guaranteed inventory. At its peak, CPMs hovered around $0.25, a frustratingly low price for Lycos’ valuable audience.
In 2009, Lycos adopted OpenX Enterprise as its ad server for its, “granular targeting capabilities and great reporting features,” according to Kristyn Lyons, Ad Operations Manager at Lycos.
More recently, Lycos began selling its non-guaranteed inventory through OpenX Market, an ad exchange directly integrated into OpenX Enterprise. With access to global demand and real-time bidding (RTB), Lycos saw immediate success: their yield quadrupled yield on OpenX Market.
“Within two months, and with a lot of help from our OpenX team, our CPMs grew from $0.25 to well over a dollar. Some days CPMs are $2.00 and higher, and in select placements, we see $3.75,” Ms. Lyons said. “We’re getting double what we expected to get from OpenX Market.”
Read more in our case study.
7 Examples of Brands That Pop on Pinterest
Feb 2nd 2012Lauren SorensonUncategorized
I’m sitting here next to an empty pan of mini red velvet donuts, and all I want to do is find another recipe to bake this weekend. No, my first stop won’t be the Food Network, Gourmet, or Cooking Light. What I am dying to do is head over to my new obsession -- Pinterest -- to discover the next pastry to tackle. Currently, I'm using Pinterest to save links to just about everything: recipes I love, clothes I want to buy, or furniture I want to furnish my house with someday. As a 25-year-old graduate student, someday is a little farther off than I’d like, but it’s best to be prepared.
Since you already know how to use Pinterest for marketing, now you're probably craving some inspirational real-life examples of brands using it effectively. Many businesses have recently discovered that, not only is Pinterest another way to engage with fans and customers without spending advertising dollars, but it's also a great way to impact purchases, especially when it comes to impulse buying. Data from Monetate shows that referral traffic from Pinterest to the websites of five specialty apparel retailers jumped 389% from July-December 2011.
Based on this data, it's not surprising that many businesses-focused early adopters have been lifestyle brands like home goods retailer West Elm and Real Simple Magazine. However, tech brands like Mashable and The Next Web, as well as design network Behance have quickly seen the benefits, too. For these brands, Pinterest's knack for allowing an interesting, visual way of categorizing information is likely the draw. So whether your brand is based on fashion or you're just trying to show your followers what your brand is all about, Pinterest offers a great medium connect with your audience. And the brands that have been most successful aren’t just enabling users to “pin” their content; rather, they're getting in on the pinning themselves.
While Pinterest is still very young and its true ROI remains to be seen, here are 7 examples of brands who are already using Pinterest the right way: to engage fans in a meaningful way that gets them to react, share, and even convert!
Chobani
You may wonder why anyone would want to follow a Greek yogurt brand, but like Facebook and Twitter, it’s all about the content you share, not necessarily what you sell.
What They're Doing Right:
Chobani's Pinterest account doesn't just feature its different yogurt types, but it also shares recipes of how users can use its products differently. Chobani also has a featured board called “Nothing but Good,” the company’s tagline, which only showcases fun and funny pictures that go along with its brand image; there's no yogurt to be seen. In this way, Chobani is embracing the main goal of Pinterest -- to focus on the concept of a person's lifestyle and encouraging users to share their tastes and interests with others and discover those of likeminded people. In other words, by promoting the lifestyle its products promote, Chobani is using its Pinterest account to enable people to learn more about its brand beyond just its signature products.
Oreck
Yes, the vacuum cleaner brand. Sure, Oreck may be a more boring, industrial-type product (not a brand you would typically think of following on a social media site), but then again, you haven’t see how clean its floors are.
What They're Doing Right:
On its Pinterest page, Oreck has taken its industrial cleaning product and made you forget that a vacuum cleaner brand is behind the pinboards you're looking at. For example, Oreck has a board just to feature pictures of beautiful flooring styles and layouts. The images are so beautiful, and it reminds viewers about the fact that they also have to clean them every once in a while. My favorite Oreck board, however, is its board devoted to 'Furry Friends.' It subtly points out one type of cleaning job its products help take care of without hitting you over the head with it. After all, we're all well aware that the hairy aftermath of your favorite pets isn't always the easiest thing to clean.
Mashable
Mashable is the largest independent news source dedicated to covering digital culture, social media, and technology. Pinterest currently has a pretty girly vibe, considering that 54-70% of it user base is female. But as this tech brand is proving, the overwhelmingly estrogen-charged demographic of this social network could change quickly.
What They're Doing Right:
Mashable is preparing to be ahead of the curve for when the male population finally gets on board with Pinterest. Mashable's Pinterest account showcases the gadgets and infographics the news source is well known for reporting on, taking its immense amount of data and information and making it more visual and shareable. Even if you’re a more data-driven company, that doesn’t mean you don’t have something interesting to share.
Etsy
This online shopping website, with 43,000+ followers, is one of the biggest I’ve seen. Beware: I've seen items I’ve pinned for a later purchase quickly disappear before my very eyes.
What They're Doing Right:
As a retailer of homemade and vintage goods, Etsy's pinboards really take to heart what its brand stands for. You can of course connect to the thousands of items for sale on its ecommerce site, but Etsy's account also shows you how you can make your own products and how to put their products to work in your daily life, which again, emphasizes the lifestyle philosophy that Pinterest promotes. Not sure what to buy your love for Valentine's Day? Don’t worry, Etsy has all its pins organized to give you tons of ideas. In other words, giving your customers new ideas for how they can use your products will give them more reasons and incentives to buy from you. When using Pinterest, think outside the box of how you'd typically use social networks to market your products and services.
Drake University
Drake is one of the few universities jumping on the Pinterest bandwagon, and at the same time, they're doing an unbelievably awesome job. I sort of wish my beloved Wisconsin Badgers would jump on 'board,' too (hehe).
What They're Doing Right:
Drake University showcases items its student population might actually be interested in (sorry, I don’t exactly mean different kinds of beer bongs). Drake has its boards organized by clothing that matches the school's colors, room décor perfect for the dorm, what kinds of food to make when you run out of “Bulldog Bucks,” study inspirations, fan experiences, and even a board completely devoted to its bulldog mascot. Obviously, Drake is following Pinterest' lifestyle credo, making its boards specifically about the school and student experience. If you are a potential student, you can learn everything you need to know about the school with just a few quick glances. The takeaway here is to make your Pinterest brand page personal for your fans. Remind them why they love you (or should love you)!
General Electric
General Electric seems to be all about social media lately. They're rocking it on Instagram, and I shouldn’t have been surprised to find out they're dominating Pinterest as well.
What They're Doing Right:
Not only does GE have a board specifically devoted to the “Badass Machines” the company works with everyday, but it also has an “Archive” board that gives a visual history of the company’s products through the years. They also have an amazing board where they've posted all the fan photos taken during their #GEInspiredMe campaign, exemplifying a great use for Pinterest -- leveraging and featuring user-generated content. All in all, as its description says, GE is clearly devoted to “#Pinning things that inspire us to build, power, move and cure the world.” On Pinterest, stay true to core of your brand, and if you get your fans involved too, that’s even better.
Peapod
Peapod is the largest grocery delivery service in the United States, and if you are having trouble figuring out why, look no further than its Pinterest page.
What They're Doing Right:
Ever wonder how the food gets to your office or home? Want to know what sort of produce Peapod has in stock this season? The Peapod Pinterest page has all the answers. I particularly love the behind-the-scenes board devoted just to Peapod's delivery trucks. It really highlights that, at the end of the day, Peapod is primarily a delivery service. Showing the cities it's traveling through or watching its signature green bins getting loaded onto its trucks is a great way to give customers an inside look into a business that, on the outside, may not seem so glamorous. Even if your company isn't exactly devoted to “pretty things,” it doesn’t mean you can’t be on Pinterest. It just means you have to get creative about showing off your brand in an interesting and unique way. You can do this by showcasing some behind-the-scenes content that shows the people behind your brand, injecting some personality into your business and make it easy to relate to.
As you can tell, the trick to succeeding on Pinterest isn't necessarily about showing off your products or services directly. It's about finding creative ways to show how those products and services fit into the lifestyles of your target audience. Find ways to do that, and you'll have what you need to pop on Pinterest just like these brands do.
Are you experimenting with Pinterest for your brand? What are some pinboards you've created to highlight your business?
Image Credit: Christian Guthier
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New and Notable Advertisers in the LinkShare Network!
Feb 2nd 2012LinkShareNew and Notable Advertisers
Every month approximately 20 new Advertisers join the LinkShare Network. Most of these advertisers have great Publisher incentives and consumer offers! Below is a list of some of the Advertisers that joined the LinkShare network in the last couple of weeks. — Catherine Hagan Marketing Specialist Site URL: http://www.westcoastjewelry.com/ About: West Coast Jewelry is [...]
27 Startling Pieces of Insider Info Facebook’s S-1 Revealed [Data]
Feb 2nd 2012Corey EridonUncategorized
Did you hear? You probably heard...just about everywhere. Facebook filed their S-1 yesterday, and is charging full steam ahead to their much anticipated IPO. Many of us have been poring over the juicy details that were revealed in the S-1 -- Facebook revealed revenue and profitability numbers, mind blowing usage metrics, and the even more astonishing take-home pay of some of their employees. Take a look at the S-1 for all the gory details; but we've also consolidated what we think are the most fascinating stats and data to come out of the document if you don't want to read the 150+ pages of it.
Facebook Usage
1.) As of December 2011, Facebook has 845 million monthly active users worldwide, and 483 million daily active users worldwide. Tweet This Stat
2.) Mobile accounts for half of Facebook's user base at approximately 425 million active monthly users. Tweet This Stat
3.) There were 100 billion friend connections on Facebook as of the end of 2011. Tweet This Stat
4.) In Q4 of 2011, there were 2.7 billion likes and comments per day on Facebook. Tweet This Stat
5.) 250 million photos are uploaded every day on Facebook. Tweet This Stat
6.) More than 100 quadrillion bytes of photos and video were shared on Facebook in the last quarter of 2011. Tweet This Stat
Global Penetration
7.) Facebook is available in more than 70 different languages. Tweet This Stat
8.) Facebook has a penetration rate of greater than 80% in countries such as Chile, Turkey, and Venezuela. Tweet This Stat
9.) Facebook has a 60% penetration rate in the United States and United Kingdom. Tweet This Stat
10.) In countries like Brazil, Germany, and India, penetration rates are estimated at 20-30%. Tweet This Stat
11.) Japan, Russia, and South Korea have Facebook penetration rates of less than 15%. Tweet This Stat
12.) Facebook is restricted in China, resulting in a 0% penetration rate. Tweet This Stat
The People of Facebook
13.) There were 3,200 employees at Facebook as of the end of 2011, a 50% increase over 2010. Tweet This Stat
14.) At $500,000 a year, Mark Zuckerberg makes three times more a year than Google's co-founders did when they filed for their IPO in 2004. Tweet This Stat
15.) Zuckerberg is trailed by COO Sheryl Sandberg and CFO David Ebersman, who both make $300,000 a year, the second highest salaries at Facebook. Tweet This Stat
16.) Sandberg may only have the second highest salary, but she is the highest paid employee, even over Zuckerberg. In 2011, she ended up taking home $30,873,579. Tweet This Stat
17.) Like Steve Jobs did as CEO of Apple, Zuckerberg plans to take a salary of $1 per year starting in 2013. Tweet This Stat
18.) Zuckerberg owns 28% of Facebook, which could translate to $28 billion in worth after the IPO. Tweet This Stat
Facebook's Financial Information
19.) Facebook has only been profitable for the last three years. But in 2011, they earned a profit of $1 billion, far more than Google and Zynga when they IPO'd. Tweet This Stat
20.) In 2011, Facebook reported $3.711 billion in revenue, 88% more than the $1.974 billion they reported in 2010. Tweet This Stat
21.) This revenue growth seems enormous, but the percentage of growth year over year is shrinking. They point out that annual revenue growth from 2009 to 2010 was 154%. Tweet This Stat
22.) 85% of Facebook's revenues come from advertising. Tweet This Stat
23.) Zynga, the gaming developer who brought you the much beloved and bemoaned Farmville, accounts for 12% of Facebook's revenue. It came from direct advertising they purchased, and processing fees related to purchase of virtual goods. Tweet This Stat
24.) Marketing and sales expenses increased $243 million in 2011, or 132% compared to 2010. The increase was primarily due to payroll and benefits expense increases because of their 46% increase in headcount. Tweet This Stat
25.) In 2011, diluted pro forma per share profits were 43 cents a share. Tweet This Stat
26.) Share-based compensation expense increased from $2 million in 2010 to $43 million in 2011. Tweet This Stat
27.) Facebook did not grant any stock options in 2011. Tweet This Stat
When Facebook IPOs, will you be buying shares in the company?
Image credit: Sean MacEntee
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6 Different Emails Every Marketer Should Consider Sending
Feb 2nd 2012Magdalena GeorgievaUncategorized
Whether you're just starting out with email marketing or you already have some experience sending marketing emails, you've probably wondered about the types of email communication you can send to your database.
Should you nurture your subscribers with weekly newsletters? Are dedicated sends better at optimizing your sales and marketing funnel? What about email digests? These are all valid questions that marketing professionals should consider when selecting the right format to meet their email marketing goals.
So which types of emails should you be sending? In this blog post, we'll discuss the different types of email marketing communication and their respective advantages and disadvantages. This information should help you make both an educated decision when choosing the most appropriate email format to meet your specific goals.
When deciding whether you should use email newsletters in your marketing strategy, you first need to determine your goal. What is it that you want your email newsletter to achieve? You might want to nurture your existing contacts and become the first brand they think of when they need a product or service in your industry. Or your goal might be to increase social sharing so you attract new people to your list. As you define your goal, think about what metrics you can use to track your progress.
Email newsletters are characterized by three key advantages. First, they can spread your brand awareness. By building habitual communication with your email subscribers, you enable them to recognize your brand and associate it with a positive sentiment. Second, email newsletters can leverage existing content. Many companies do quick summaries of their most popular blog posts and link to the articles from their newsletter. Third, email newsletters give you the freedom to include different types of content that might be important to your organization. For instance, the same newsletter can contain a popular blog post, a new offer, an announcement of an upcoming event, information about a discount, and a link to a survey.
Email newsletters are also characterized by some important disadvantages. First, they dilute the main call-to-action. If you include a series of blurbs or article summaries, the attention of your recipients will most likely be spread across these tidbits of information as opposed to staying focused on a certain element. Second, the design of a newsletter becomes a much more complicated task than other emails like dedicated sends. You’ll have to spend some time deciding on the right placement of images and text, alignment, and prioritization of information.
Similar to newsletters, email digests provide summaries of existing information and offer a snapshot of a specific time frame (e.g. a week or a month). Traditionally, digests highlight the most popular pieces of content that new readers will gravitate toward, such as digests of books, movies, etc.
Digests are generally easier to consume than newsletters because they generally consist of links and lists. One popular option is the blog digest, which collects notifications about the articles you publish throughout a certain time frame and releases an email with the links. If you are blogging using HubSpot’s platform, your subscribers have the opportunity to set up this type of digest based on their preferences.
Dedicated emails, also known as stand-alone emails, contain information about just one offer. For instance, you can use a dedicated email to notify your target audience about a new whitepaper you've released or invite them to attend an event that you're hosting.
Dedicated email sends have three main advantages. First, they help you set up the context to introduce a main call-to-action and really drive results in respect to that one offer. Second, they are easy to build. Once you have your email template in place, building dedicated sends should be easy. Unlike newsletters, dedicated emails don’t need to include many graphical elements to separate the different blocks of text and prioritize information. Third, they are easy to measure. When you promote one main message and call-to-action, it will be easy for you to track progress, such as click-through rate, conversion rate, and leads generated from the individual send.
Dedicated email sends also have some disadvantages. First, with dedicated sends, the emailing schedule is less clear and potentially less consistent. You might use dedicated emails when you have published a new offer (which might be sporadic). Even if you decide to maintain a specific schedule, your subscribers might not realize it or expect communication from you because there is no clear connection between the separate sends. Second, it’s tough to include diverse content in a dedicated send, so you cannot add other calls-to-action that might also be important to your organization.
Lead nurturing introduces a tightly connected series of emails full of useful content with a coherent purpose. In this context, lead nurturing offers more advantages than just an individual email blast.
Let's look at some of the specific advantages of lead nurturing. First, it's timely. Studies show that email response rates decline over the lead age, so you need to reach out to your contacts while they are fresh and actively engaged with your brand. Second, it's automated. Once you set up lead nurturing, emails are sent out automatically according to the schedule you've set as new leads come in. This leads to a high return on a low investment. Third, it is targeted. According to HubSpot's research, lead nurturing emails generate an 8% CTR compared to general email sends, which generate just a 3% CTR. In other words, targeted and segmented emails perform better than mass email communications.
Lead nurturing also has some disadvantages that you should keep in mind. First, it results in less congruent buzz. Dedicated sends to your entire email database can generate a lot of buzz around your brand. Lead nurturing cannot quite achieve the same buzz effect because it is programmed to schedule fewer emails to segmented audiences. Second, it's inviting to passive tracking. Because lead nurturing is automated and marketers often forget about it after they’ve set it up, it also tends to be under-reported.
If you want to reach a totally new audience and generate net new leads, you might want to try sponsorship emails. In sponsorship emails, you pay for inclusion of your copy in another vendor’s newsletter or dedicated send.
The biggest advantage of sponsorship emails is that they are highly targeted, enabling you to be specific in defining the segment you want to reach. This allows you to get granular in identifying the different characteristics of your target audience--number of employees, geographic location, their interests and challenges, etc. Another advantage of sponsorship emails is that their ROI is very easy to determine. Because you already know how much you are paying the vendor, you only need to track the results you're generating (visits, leads, sales) in order to determine what is the return on the cost you have paid.
Of course, it's a disadvantage that you have to pay for sponsorship emails. Vendors usually offer different payment packages, and this is where you enter the land of negotiation. The other big disadvantage of sponsorship emails is that their management requires a major marketing effort and tight control. “For this style of sponsorship to be successful, there needs to be a dedicated team behind it that understands data, brand synergies, and the ability to unearth unseen co-branding opportunities,” writes Jackie Fast, managing director at Slingshot Sponsorship.
Transactional emails are the messages that get triggered by a specific action your contacts have taken, enabling them to complete that action. For instance, if you are signing up for a webinar, you will fill out a form and then receive a transactional (thank-you) email that provides you with the login information in order to join. Transactional emails are also the messages you receive from ecommerce sites like Amazon that confirm your order and give you shipment information and other details.
The biggest advantage of transactional emails is that they enjoy a high click-through rate (CTR). Recipients open these communications and click on them. Take advantage of this dynamic, and include a highly customized call-to-action (maybe even as a p.s.) to leverage the fact that the subscriber is fresh and very actively engaged with your email communication.
Unfortunately, one disadvantage of transactional emails is that they can add a barrier to entry. Sometimes the idea of taking yet another step to complete an action discourages recipients from completing the action altogether.
With all the types of email communication at a marketer's disposal, it's easy to fall into the trap of sending your email recipients too much email. Therefore, it's very important to regularly keep track of what messages you're sending to who. That being said, it's entirely possible to send all of these types of emails without spamming your list, and that's where segmentation comes into play. A highly productive and effective email marketing campaign consists of segmented communication that touches prospects and leads at the right time with the right type of email to suit that recipient's needs and preferences.
This blog post is a shortened excerpt from the ebook, An Introduction to Email Marketing. Download your free copy to gain an even better understanding of email marketing and how to succeed.
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Social Media – Part of Your Web Strategy?
Feb 1st 2012SiteProNewsSite Pro News
Why social media interaction is a must to integrate into your web strategy.
What in the Heck Is Going on With Privacy at Google
Feb 1st 2012Corey EridonUncategorized
The web has lit up about Google's updated privacy policy, and (shockingly) not all the feedback is super positive. Privacy on the internet has been a hot topic these days, especially considering Facebook's ever-changing levels of users' control over their information. European lawmakers are also introducing the "right to be forgotten," which would let users petition to have personal information on the internet removed. And the debate may rage further with HR 1981, a new bill introduced by Senator Lamar Smith -- the man who introduced the now defunked SOPA bill -- that will allow ISPs to track your financial dealings online and require them to store that information for 18 months, eliminating the need for government subpoenas of your private information.
So what's all the hulabaloo around Google's privacy updates? There's a lot of misinformation circling out there despite Google's attempts to clear the air, so let's break down what exactly Google has done with users' information, why there is so much controversy around the privacy changes, and what marketers can learn about privacy, user data and information, and mitigating controversy from what has become a mildly dramatic news story.
What You Need to Know About the Google Privacy Updates
So what exactly did Google do? Well, because it has so many different products and features, Google had over 60 different privacy policies. So to clean things up a bit, Google decided to release a new privacy policy that condensed all of those individual policies into one shorter, easier to read document that will take effect on March 1, 2012. In the policy, Google explains what information they collect and why, how that information is used, how to access and update your information, and with whom that information is shared. Here's a synopsis of what the new policy says, which you can read in full on Google's Policies & Principles page.
- The Information Google Collects: Google collects information in two ways. Either you give it to them when you sign up for a Google Account -- like your name, email address, telephone number, or credit card number -- or Google collects it when you use their services -- like the websites you visit, how you interact with ads, the device you're using, where you're located, and search queries you've entered. You can view the full list of information they collect here.
- How Google Uses That Information: The information Google collects is used to improve its products and services and deliver more relevant content. For example, Google may tailor search results and ads, record communications with Google to help contextualize future conversations, or record your language preferences for a consistent user experience across all products.
- How to Access That Information: You can review and update your personal information by controlling the type of information tied to your Google Account, editing your ad preferences, adjusting how your Google Profile appears to others, controlling with whom you share information, removing your information from Google services, and setting your browser to block all cookies associated with Google services.
- Who Sees That Information: Most people have to give Google consent to share your information with anyone outside of Google. The exceptions are if your Google Account is managed for you by a domain administrator like Google Apps, or if there are legal reasons your information must be shared with a third party. When Google uses affiliates or business partners to process information, they will have access to your data but must comply with Google's Privacy Policy.
Why Is There Controversy?
Whether this comes as a surprise to you or sounds like pretty standard stuff, I think the controversy stems from three feelings.
1.) Once Burned, Twice Shy - In the ongoing controversy around online privacy, Facebook is often cited as an offender because of its habit of quietly changing privacy settings, opting people into less private settings that makes pieces of profile information suddenly public, and then forcing users to navigate a less-than-intuitive interface to regain control of their privacy. When you combine this history with a Google user base in the hundreds of millions -- not all of whom understand the intricacies of cookies, IP addresses, and server logs -- the worst case scenario is bound to be assumed. Congress even wrote a letter to Google asking the company for further clarification on its collection and usage of private information, and the security measures Google has in place to ensure that information is securely encrypted.
2.) It Is Kind of Creepy - Sure, it's not like Google is collecting any information about us that it didn't already know. Google just did a better job explaining it with this new, concise, and jargon-free privacy policy, and they are going to use the information more effectively to ensure a consistent user experience across all Google products and services. But to some people, the extent of Google's insight into our lives is just plain creepy, and the big brother potential gets imaginations going. Google even released a video speculating this new use of information across multiple products and services "may even mean we'll be able to tell you when you'll be late for a meeting."
Bottom line is, more people get how their information is collected and used that might not have understood it before. While some people see this as something that will make their online lives more efficient and personalized, others interpret it as just plain creepy.
3.) Having Control Over Your Privacy Is a Stretch - Google is publicizing this privacy update as one that gives you more control over what information you share, and what information you keep private. But the truth is the only way to fully opt out of sharing your information isn't a viable option at all -- because you have to stop using Google and its products almost entirely. It's a fair clause; you have to agree to the privacy policies of the other companies with which you do business. But when your product or service is an integral part of the everyday lives of millions (if not billions) of people, opting out is a reach, making personal privacy a myth.
What Marketers Can Learn From Google's Approach
Whether you think the privacy update is no big deal or the beginning of the end of privacy on the internet, there are some lessons marketers can learn from the privacy controversy Google is navigating.
- Google had until February 16th to respond to Congress' letter of concern, but it had its ducks in a row and got back to them immediately. Google understood that the sooner questions are answered, the sooner we can all move on to another controversy.
- Google's reliance on valuable user data is just like ours. The lead intelligence marketers gather based on visitor site behaviors is a crucial part of lead nurturing success, and contributes directly to our bottom line. It would be foolish not to use the information you have about your users to improve their experience with your product or service.
- Google knew this change would face some criticism, but it mitigated backlash by being extremely clear and public about the updates. Along with email communication about the change, every time I use a Google product or service, I see this:
So instead of hiding its changes like Facebook did, Google took the time to make these changes visible across all of its products, and provided more than a month's notice before the changes go live so any questions can be answered and concerns alleviated.
- Google used different content formats to make this information more easily palatable. It created an FAQ for those who don't have time to read Google's entire privacy policy (short as it may be), a glossary for those who don't understand some of the little jargon it used in the new document, and even created a video that explains the changes and the benefits it provides the user.
Finally, a consistent and convenient user experience is something all businesses should strive for. From your website, to your product or service, to your messaging and communications, your prospects and customers should feel like less of a number, and more of a person. If we're in an age where information is everywhere, what level of privacy do users expect? And how much are they willing to sacrifice a great user experience for control over their personal information? I suspect as with most updates of this nature, the controversy will die down once users realize that not only will Google move forward with these updates, but Google is too intricately tied into their day-to-day lives to extricate themselves from usage.
Do you think Google's privacy update means something dangerous for the state of privacy on the internet?
Image credit: Sean MacEntee
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How to Distinguish Between PPC Pros and PPC Posers
Feb 1st 2012Dan SlagenUncategorized
Hiring a paid search manager is easy. Hiring a great paid search manager is not. First, let's briefly review this specialty. Paid search managers, of which I am one, are notorious for living in their heads. They are some of the oddest people I have ever met. They are also some of the best people I have ever met, and I consider myself truly lucky to have had the pleasure of working with some of them professionally. I've learned innumerable lessons from paid search managers, including those who I've managed and those who have had the fun-filled task of managing me.
The unfortunate thing about paid search is that it's one of the easiest skills to fake. Making a campaign look good on paper could simply mean opting into the content network and showing an Excel chart with increasing leads at a decreasing price, without ever taking the quality of said leads into account. But the paid search managers who truly stand out are the ones who aren't ordinary. They don't focus on an industry standard click-through rate (CTR) or a generic cost-per-lead (CPL) goal. They don't get bogged down by a typical keyword list, simply testing dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) ads vs. non DKI ads, or updating bids so that the change history report looks active. Nope. The best paid search manager in the world is the one who genuinely cares.
So how do you go about hiring one of these much more desirable paid search managers? What questions should you ask during the interview process? Almost anyone can come to an interview and talk about all the trending and historic paid search strategies, but if they are feeding you pure BS that you can't recognize, then you'll have wasted months of time, energy and cash as a result of their hire. Whether you're hiring a day-to-day manager or a team lead, there are 5 critical things to look for that will help you during your hiring process. Certainly there are additional qualities to be mindful of, but after having built various teams myself, a few key characteristics have risen to the surface time and time again.
Passion
Passion about what? This person should be passionate about paid search, their career, and your company. They should care that bid prices increase during certain holiday seasons, they should present flawless work that is a direct reflection on their ability, and they should always be interested in how to grow the bottom line (never complacent).
Questions to Ask Potential Job Candidates:
- What frustrates you during a year of paid search management?
- How would you expect your boss to describe you as a paid search manager, and what lengths do you go to to ensure your expectations are met?
- Describe examples of how you've grown campaigns historically, and explain which strategies you would plan to employ here?
What to Look for in Their Responses:
- How mundane are the frustrations?
- How high of a standard is this person willing to be held to?
- Do those types of growth strategies work?
Tireless Work Ethic
Paid search isn't easy. It requires countless hours in an Excel spreadsheet, regular tweaks to a bid management platform, frequently appending URLs, trafficking, updating bids, etc. Search management also tends to be monotonous. Once your company figures out which methodologies work best, it becomes a game of repeating and scaling.
Therefore, you need to ensure that your paid search manager understands that although the tasks may be repetitive, simply going through the motions won't cut it. Every time an optimization is performed, it needs to be done thoroughly with attention paid to every detail. After all, finding success in paid search is like tectonic plates shifting; the tiniest crack can lead to new masses of opportunity or failure.
Questions to Ask Potential Job Candidates:
- Describe one or two times when you've asked your boss for help when optimizing a paid search campaign. At what point in your analysis did you say, I need help?
- Do you think paid search management is monotonous? If so, why do you like to manage it, and how do you prevent burn-out?
- What is the best discovery you've ever unearthed when managing a campaign, and what was the result?
What to Look for in Their Responses:
- At what point did the person go to their boss?
- A passionate search manager doesn't think search is monotonous.
- How great of a discovery was it?
Creativity
While your paid search manager needs to be an expert on all the latest trends and nuances within search, this person also needs to be creative. The vast majority of paid search campaigns are way too similar, and generic keyword lists and straightforward ad copy pollute Google's real estate day in and day out. A great manager will find new, innovative ways to write ad copy, test keywords with no little/no competition, and come up with new campaign concepts that aren't already in the mainstream.
Questions to Ask Potential Job Candidates:
- Google AdWords trainings teach you how to best manage AdWords, not necessarily how to best manage paid search. Tell me the things you choose not to focus on within AdWords in order to ensure you're managing paid search as best you can, not just managing AdWords.
- How do you write ad copy?
- What steps do you take to prevent your paid search accounts from becoming stagnant? Explain a time when an account you were managing had stagnated and what you did to revive the account and test new things.
What to Look for in Their Responses:
- Make sure it's clear that the manager does what's best for the client/account, and not what Google always suggests (Google is incentivized to get clients to spend more).
- Conduct a mock ad copy writing session: have the candidate write you ad copy on the spot, and watch the ideation process. Do you see a creative thought process that includes a benefit, offer, and call-to-action within the copy?
- It's very typical for paid search accounts to stagnate, so listen to what this person does to avoid falling into that trap, and then what they've done to refresh a campaign when it has stagnated.
Data-Driven
This is an obvious one, but if your manager is going to be hanging out in Excel all day, they better know what to do and what to look for. Give them a quick test. I've been amazed time and time again during interviews with search managers with 5+ years’ experience who didn't know how a pivot table or VLOOKUP worked. Performing analysis is perhaps the most important aspect of paid search management, so it's imperative that your manager performs optimizations and analyses the correct way. Everyone who does PPC has learned it in a different way, and it's essential to understand how your potential manager learned PPC and how they apply those learnings to their current management style.
Questions to Ask Potential Job Candidates:
- As we mentioned, give the candidate an Excel test.
- Describe how you learned paid search and what, if any of those principles, do you still apply in your search management tactics today.
- What things do you look for when optimizing a paid search account? How do you analyze the data?
What to Look for in Their Responses:
- Pivot tables and VLOOKUPS should be second nature to them.
- Who the candidate learned search from can often be the genesis of their inspiration and passion. I still apply some of the same general principles that I was taught during my first week of learning search. While this isn't a make or break interview question, it's just something that can be helpful when trying to understand where the candidate is coming from and how they approach search.
- In listening to the candidate discuss analysis and optimization, see how in depth they go and what their process is. How often do they optimize? How? What do they look for? How do they know how much to bid up or down, or when to pause keywords/ad copy? Do they look at time of day, day of week, seasonality? Do they consider pre-click vs. post-click? Make sure the candidate has an arsenal of data points that they consider when performing analysis and that they are the right things to be evaluating.
Ability to Connect the Dots
99 times out of 100, paid search is a component of a business’ overall marketing strategy. It may complement traditional media or display advertising. Paid search is also the first step of a sales cycle or lead generation campaign that has additional steps after the "conversion." The success of a campaign depends on many factors, but one that is critical for a manager to consider is both the pre- (before a searcher clicks on your ad) and post-click (what happens after a searcher clicks on your ad) experience. Make sure your candidate understands the components of both sides and how they must work together in harmony. For example, if the copy of a paid search ad offers red shoes for $30 and the landing page the searcher is sent to offers green shoes for $40, then the pre-click and post-click experience is definitely not consistent.
Questions to Ask Potential Job Candidates:
- How do you run your search campaigns in conjunction with other digital channels such as display and mobile as well as traditional advertising?
- How often do you talk to your sales team or call center, and what types of things do you discuss?
- What is the ideal relationship between the pre- and post-click experience of a user? What types of things should a user see within the pre-click experience vs. the post-click experience?
What to Look for in Their Responses:
- It's encouraging to find search managers who at least understand that paid search isn't the only answer. Make sure your candidate conceptualizes the entire marketing mix and the role that paid search plays as a component to the overall strategy.
- Working with your sales department is a must these days. You can learn which types of questions your potential customers are asking, as well as understand the researching process they go through so you can ensure their experience is consistent from start to finish. If your manager isn't thinking about the entire customer experience, they're not thinking "big" enough.
- Finally, a manager that understands the pre- and post-click relationship is something to watch for. This shows a holistic way of thinking and illuminates a "team player" attitude in the sense that they understand that pre-click paid search is only the beginning.
So there it is, the 5 qualities to look for when hiring a paid search manager. It's a difficult process, but remember that making the wrong hire will cost you time, money, and frustration. The negative impact on an AdWords account, a sales team, or your executive management team can take months -- if not years -- to fix, and sometimes perceptions can never be changed. The person managing your account is going to be responsible for your brand name in the spotlight of Google paid search, so make sure you're comfortable handing over the reins.
If in the end, you've gone through all of these questions and are still stumped as to whether or not to make the hire, there is one final question you can ask yourself that a former co-worker once asked me when we were deciding on a hire. "Would you ever want to go out for a beer with this person after work?"
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