Join SMS's CEO at the Central Coast Code Camp

The Central Coast Code Camp has invited me to speak at their event on September 27-28. This is an annual event that last year attracted 120+ attendees to listen and learn from some of the region's best technical minds. We are honored to be speaking on "SEO versus PPC a technical discussion." Last year the event drew 40 speakers for the two day event. Speakers last year came from all over California and included technology leaders like Amazon and several other leading names. The event is supported by the San Luis Obispo .Net User Group and Softec the leading technology trade association in the region.

The event includes the now famous "Geek" Dinner, Saturday Night, September 27th, 6:30 pm at the Embassy Suites.

The original Code Camp was a conglomeration of ideas by many different people across the development community. The idea was simple provide an off hour forum for the development community to speak and share ideas for them to come and enjoy. The results have been astounding with many events at many different cities across the nation.

Facebook Flyers PPC Program

SMS is always looking for new opportunities to market ourselves and our clients on the Internet. Recently we've begun to experiment with Facebook Flyers. Facebook has millions of members and now offers a PPC program with a lot of potential!

For the uninitiated, Facebook is a social networking site where you can create a profile about yourself and link it to all of your friends. This type of site has exploded in popularity in the last few years and Facebook is one of the biggest in the market space. To give you an idea of the size of the Facebook user base, the network currently shows 20,665,600 people for the US. It's also become very popular overseas. For example, I got into Facebook after one of my Swedish friends asked me to join. The network for Sweden is now almost 1 million people in a country of only 9 million! Facebook continues to grow at a staggering pace and if your customer base includes 18-34 year olds (Facebook has 15,788,600 of them) you can't afford to ignore the opportunity this marketing channel presents.

The coolest thing about this new offering is the targeting. Some PPC engines attempt to give you the ability to target demographics but can't really guarantee their guess will be correct, Facebook knows for sure who you are advertising to. The Facebook Flyer platform allows you to target by a country or cities, gender, age, keywords, political views, relationship status, educational status, school, major, and workplace!

So for example you could target single Men ages 18-24 in San Luis Obispo, CA enrolled in Cal Poly majoring in Mechanical/Electrical/Computer/Civil engineering who have moderate to conservative political views. In that particular example I get about 340 very specifically selected guys that would be able to receive my flyer.




Facebook has made this a Pay Per Click system so you only pay for the people who click your ads and visit your site, which is good because in our tests we have gotten huge impression numbers in very short amounts of time. Currently The minimum bid you can make is $0.10 and the most they will let you spend in a day is $50.

For our new and existing clients, we are adding Facebook Flyers to our PPC repertoire. If you want to try out this new media give us a call or send us an e-mail at rob@smsrd.com and we can help you figure out if this new advertising platform will benefit your business.

So far Facebook's program isn't perfect, and I think we're in for some big improvements soon, but the one thing that won't change is the potential in this new way of getting your message out. We're excited to see how this platform and its traffic patterns evolve, and if you're a 25-65 year old interested in marketing, advertising or the internet keep an eye out for the Adwords monster!

Understanding the Potential Power of a Click... or a Man with no Hat

A lot of us that deal in clicks and impressions and conversions have a tendency to get lost in the numbers presented to us. Seeing as we don't function in a vacuum, you have to take into account a lot of what ifs when determining cost per conversion and return on investment numbers. What if someone clicked my ad and bookmarked it to make a purchase later? What if they saw my ad and called in an order? What if they saw my ad and then came to the store?

Recently I lived out one of those untrackable what if conversion tracks and thought it would be a good example of how there is more value to your advertising than what is tracked in your Adwords campaign.

I have what I would categorize as a slight internet addiction, and a taste for hard to find products... luckily these are complimentary problems. Being bald and Californian, also complimentary problems, necessitates the acquisition of a good hat... unless you look good with a red, peeling scalp. Since I have a general distaste for regular baseball hats, especially seeing as any team I like is pretty much horrible (Milwaukee Brewers anyone?), I've made a move to fedoras. So far I'm a fan, they're fun and different, keep my head and ears (bonus!) covered, and ...if I may say so myself... look pretty suave on me :) Here's the problem, when's the last time you came across a fedora store in the last 40 years? Yeah me neither.

So here comes the internet to the rescue! I did my initial Google search for Fedora and got all kinds of Linux related stuff, not helpful. So I expanded it to Fedora Hats and hit pay dirt. I clicked on one of the Adwords ads and found a site that I really liked. It was easy to navigate and had a good selection. Problem was I didn't feel comfortable dropping $200 on a hat I couldn't try on first. Feeling somewhat defeated, I proceeded to sulk through their site a little more. Eventually I came across their Location page and realized I was going to be in their state and driving past their store in about a month, problem solved! I bookmarked their page and printed directions on Google Maps of my little side trip before I flew out.

Fast forward about a month and there I was about 2000 miles from home in their doorway with cash in hand. Unfortunately for your friend and humble narrator, they were closed... and I burnt my head sitting on the 3rd base line of a Cubs game the next day.

So there are 3 lessons to learn here... One little click can do more than you think! Make sure the days you're open on the website actually correspond to how locked your doors are on the day a bald guy shows up from half way across the country to buy a hat. And finally, Lesson 3, if you're bald pack sunscreen irregardless of your destination.

I Left My Brain in My Other Phone

I was reading an article in Wired Magazine (Human Memory and the Outboard Brain by Clive Thompson) this weekend about how computers, PDA's, cell phones, and Google have replaced quaint and outdated things like actual human memory. In a recent study, respondents over 50 years old were substantially more likely to be able to recall information like phone numbers and birthdays than those 30 and under. A full third of the younger set didn't even know their own number off the top of their head. It's enough to make you wonder if your business has enough visibility on the web for those who use Google as an external hard drive for their brain.

As a member of that under 30 group, I can vouch for our collective inability to remember dates and numbers. Case in point - my old cell phone is roaming the streets of Milwaukee in a cab somewhere with how to get a hold of pretty much everybody I at least sort of know. Once I flew back into San Luis Obispo and bought a new cell phone I proceeded to put 3 numbers into my phone from memory: Mom, Girlfriend, Work... pretty much everybody that might yell at me, and then I hit the wall. Luckily the Internet knows everything I forgot. A bunch of e-mails, a Myspace bulletin, and some Google searches later I'm at least half way back to my original phonebook glory.

Notice not once did a physical phonebook come into play. That's because we all rely on websites, devices and search engines to find things.

So how does this apply to Internet Marketing?

If you're not in Google you don't exist. It sounds a little harsh, but for most people if they can't find you in just a few minutes they're done and on to the next thing. If you like customers and you like money, it's in your best interest to make sure that someone searching explicitly for you will always be able to find you.

Now some of you will say "but I'm first on Google for my business!" Well that is all well and good, but unless you're a major company like Microsoft or Wal-Mart an unfortunate tweak to the algorithm could send you off to the outer reaches of page 10 never to be seen again. What we recommend to any business is to have a Pay Per Click phonebook style listing for your business. Google is the new phonebook! Advertise on your business name, important people associated with your business (owner, founders, sales people, etc.) and the type of business you run plus the street/mall/plaza that you reside in. For example you could advertise on "car wash Grand Ave Arroyo Grande," that way if someone knows you but forgot who you are; they still have a shot at finding you. How many times have you tried to explain what business "that great place over on main street" is that really like but can't remember the name of?

Not advertising online is like not putting a sign on your store... a good way to save money and a bad idea. And you don't have to be a Rockefeller to get in the game. A small PPC campaign like this won't cost you much money, and won't get huge amounts of traffic. But it will tend to be of the highest quality traffic which is more likely to result in a purchase. They were specifically looking for you by a very specific search, which in my book is money well spent. Now if I could just do a Google search for my phone...

Self Induced Content Inspiration

One of the hardest things about running a web site is keeping it fresh. If you have new interesting content on your site at a daily or near daily frequency, visitors have a reason to come back often. More visitors usually mean more money, so this is a good thing. Plus on a side note, this is great for SEO. The only problem is where do you find the inspiration to do all this writing?

Content development can be difficult and time consuming, especially if you have no idea what to write about. As it turns out, if you are running any kind of analytics program or PPC account you have a tons of possible ideas just waiting for you. The stats in these accounts will tell you what words and themes are most popular on your site and on the web. This is great inspiration because it allows you to see real searches, not just what you think would be popular.

The first place to look for content inspiration is your analytics account. If you don't have one in place, Google Analytics is a free and easily implemented option. What you want to do in Analytics is find your traffic sources, and then search engines. You should be able to access a list of keywords used to visit your website. There will be a lot of words that make sense to you in there, some relevant surprises, and some that are completely out of left field. One of my clients that does general contracting and clean up had a number of searches on how to clean egg off of windows, cars, and driveways. It's on the very edge of what they do, but it might be worth writing about seeing as a good number of people are interested. However if a phrase or keyword doesn't make any sense just disregard it.

Now start really looking at this list. Are there predominant words, phrases, and ideas? And are these themes relevant to your business? If there are, you've just found some great possible content development ideas. Make sure you scour this list for any potential topics, you have a lot of content to create and every relevant little bit helps.

Now your other content goldmine is your PPC account. This is a collection of words and phrases you want people to use to get to your site. The best part about this is you can see the total number of searches done even if they didn't result in a visit to your site. So say you sell fruit and you get 40 visits a day for 'apples.' 'Oranges' only gets 4. If you're only looking at analytics 'apples' is clearly more popular and content development should be focused there. But before you start your research into the wild world of applesauce, check out your PPC account. There's a chance that 'oranges' is searched far more often than 'apples,' you're just not getting a proportional piece of the traffic. Always keep an eye on which words get the most impressions.

Now that you have a better idea of what you should write about, make a plan. As I get ideas I write them all down in the same place. Then I try to figure out what topics have priority and how to best space them out. You don't necessarily want to ride one topic at a time. If you run 2 weeks of articles on the same topic and you have some regular readers that like your site but not the current topic you're riding at the moment, you might break their daily reader habit.

So in short, keep it fresh, keep it interesting, keep it relevant, and don't forget all the inspiration you need is right under your nose!

The Granularization of Keywords

There's a good chance Granularization isn't actually a word, yet. However the principle behind it is more important to your Adwords account than the actual existence of the word, kind of like 'truthiness.'

The more specialized your ad group, the more effective your campaign will be.

That's my campaign building mantra. A common mistake people make in setting up their accounts is to decide on campaign topics and then throw all the related words in one ad group. I call this the 'Bucket Approach.' Once all your words are in the bucket, your ad or ads will be shown for any keyword in the bucket. Because of this you're going to have to write a pretty generic ad. This is going to hurt your relevance, quality score, click through rate, and ultimately your wallet.

Now I'm not saying you can't use a 'bucket' group every once and a while, it has its uses. They can be good for testing the impression levels of new words for an existing account. After they've gained some data you'll be able to tell if the words deserve their own ad groups, should be dropped completely, or may be fit for an existing ad group.

So how do you set up your account for maximum effectiveness?
Granularization.

Keyword research is a lot of work, and you're going to amass lots and lots of words. Having the right words is just the first step... fight the urge to toss them in a bucket! Start looking for themes and key root words in your list. Divide it into as many reasonable, logical, relevant groups as you can.

One example of granularizing a campaign is if you carry foreign languages. An ad group that covers all of them at once isn't going to be very effective, but if you break it into 1 or more ad groups per language you're going to do much better. Your word groupings will be tighter, your quality score should be higher, and your ad can be more targeted and thus get better click through rates. If a query for "Learn Swedish" triggers ads for "Learn a Language" and "Learn Swedish Today" you can guess which one is going to perform better. "Learn Swedish Today" is more relevant to the search engine and the searcher. You get the click because you're giving the people what they want.

Kick the bucket, Granularize, and give the people what they want!

Those three things will help you succeed in the PPC game. Put in a little extra work up front in structuring good campaigns and delivering relevant solutions to user queries PPC, and you'll be able to break out your old bucket to carry money all the way to the bank.