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Reach 100 Million People In 10 Minutes With Google AdWords

Thursday, December 1st, 2011

Most small businesses need advertising vehicles that draw targeted traffic to their website or location. Not just traffic, but targeted traffic. You reach specific customers by geography, demography, and lifestyle. In sum, the shortest click between people and products, yet at a price you control.

Google Adwords is one such vehicle. AdWords drives sales. It works. It fits your budget. You can do it yourself.

I’ve been using Google AdWords for over one year. Below are some lessons learned:

Jump in, sign up, and start with a minimum budget of $3.50 – $10 per day. With AdWords, you decide your daily budget. You will need a credit card to start your account. Read all the Google tutorials and tips. Go to YouTube and view additional tips.
Keywords are key. Focus on using the built-in keyword analysis tool to find the best keywords. Write your 3 ad lines around those keywords. Line 1 is your title with 25 or less characters; line 2 describes benefits with 35 or less characters; line 3 describes features & a call to action with 35 or less characters; line 4 is your website landing page.
Run 2 to 4 ads at a time. Monitor the ads with a higher CTR (click through rates), and then revise. Tweak, modify, research more and new keywords and phrases. It’s a process.
Use both the ad and the keyword CTR reports to enhance your website copy.
Exclude negative keywords once search reports start coming in. This information is gold. Dig for it.
Use the geographic and demographic options to target zip codes, cities, states, nations, or global regions.
Work for ad CTR rates of at least 2%. As you learn, this will grow.

Watch this short video:

Few advertising tools allow a small business or organization to expand its reach, frequency, and impact like AdWords. In some respects, you become the ad agency. It won’t replace creatives or traditional ad campaigns, however it helps level the playing field for small businesses.

Same rules, new tools…

Your thoughts?

Tags: google, Google Adwords, Marketing, search, search engine marketing, search engines, SEO, top selling business books
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How To Increase Your Website Traffic

Sunday, September 18th, 2011

Since January 2009, Atkins Marketing Solutions’ annual website traffic has grown over one thousand percent. For 2011 thus far, my site’s had 31,000 visits and over 68,000 page views. A record? No. But for a small business, not bad. It’s been a journey of both quality and not just quantity.

How can you do this? Do you need a magic formula? Must you hire one of those “get to the top of Google’s page rank” SEO companies? Do you have to pay each visitor one dollar per visit? No. It takes a step-by-step, gradual, patient, and learn-as-you-go process.

Here’s how you can do it:

Research and use both keywords and phrases that apply to your site’s focus, themes, and content.
Include page content that matches these keywords and phrases.
List your website URL on as many free external sites as possible. Not link farming but legitimate link building.
Include links on each of your e-mail marketing newsletters that draw readers back to your website.
Consistently update and revise site content.
Include links back to your site from Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn posts. Also make sure your site’s URL is included in all your social media profiles.
Contribute to other blogs related to your expertise or business.
Include a blog on your site. The most significant change I made was in April of 2010. I integrated a WordPress blog to my site. My entire website is now converted to WordPress and I love the interface and ease of use. One month after adding a blog, page views increased by almost five-hundred percent.
Write at least one blog post per week that directly relates to your business. Keep writing. Keep posting. Provide free, relevant, and value-oriented content. Think benefits, not promotion.
Add a “Share-This” plugin to your blog and e-mail newsletters so visitors can easily share content they like.
Add a cache plugin to your blog. This will increase your page load speed, something Google now monitors.
Add an SEO plugin to your blog. This will enhance and automate your post content to make it search friendly.
Include relevant YouTube videos in your blog posts.
Monitor your daily traffic and detailed page activity with a metrics tool such as AWStats and/or Google Analytics. Ignore hits. Track page views since they show engaged reading rather than meaningless hit clicks. Average time per visit also shows engagement trends.
Stay patient.
Keep writing creative, fun, and practical content.

Much of good SEO and increased website traffic takes time and effort. You don’t need a high Google page rank to see increases in traffic. It’s the trend not the rank that matters most. Growth trends now; rank increases later.

Your comments are welcome…

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Tags: how to, increase traffic, increase web traffic, increasing website traffic, Marketing, more visitors, page views, search engine ranking, search engines, SEO, SEO tips, web traffic, website traffic
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Are You Measuring Your Online Marketing?

Wednesday, June 29th, 2011

A pretty, well designed website is nice, but it doesn’t drive your sales or make your marketing successful. It’s the data and analysis behind the content and design that determines success. Data first; design second.

See the survey results below from Chief Marketer. This chart shows metric reporting tools any small business or company can use to measure marketing success. Some are about how people get to your site and what they do once they arrive there.

For example, “hits” to your website doesn’t tell you much. But “Page Views” do. I love tracking Page Views because it tells me how many visitors over a given time-frame actually viewed a page or pages on my site. It’s the difference between an attention grabbing read versus a click or glance. A page view means interest. Do you track your daily page views? Are you tracking the trends?

Are your website reporting tools enabled, such as Google Analytics or AWStats? Also make sure your e-mail Service Provider supplies reporting tools such as open and bounce rates. The reports I get from Constant Contact for each e-mail marketing newsletter sent is a goldmine. This way you see the trends and can act on them. You see what works. You can then change what does not work.

So make sure you have the means to measure your marketing performance as it relates to your website and social media campaigns. Remember, marketing without measurement is flying blind. It’s important to know where you’re going. And, if you don’t get there-you will know why. Double click the graph below for a larger view:

Now, track those trends…

Your thoughts or questions?

Tags: AWSTATS, click through rate, Constant Contact, e-mail, Google Analytics, Internet marketing, Marketing, measuring social media, metrics, page views, reporting tools
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How Google’s Mission Statement & Philosophy Can Help Your Business

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

Google is both a noun and a verb. The name equals information and answers. If you need information, just Google it. It’s that simple.

Google’s mission statement is also a great example for small businesses to follow when drafting their own mission statement. Below is Google’s mission statement:

“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

This mission is stated simply, clearly, directly, and in an action-oriented fashion. There is no confusion. You understand exactly what Google does and is.

Google also has a great philosophy statement. It’s what they think about what they do. Below is the Google Philosophy:

“Never settle for the best.

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

2. It’s best to do one thing really, really well.

3. Fast is better than slow.

4. Democracy on the Web works.

5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

7. There is always more information out there.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

10. Great just isn’t good enough.”*

I could write a book on each of the above 10 points. They are the core of the information/search age of marketing. For both billion dollar and small business companies, Google’s philosophy and approach applies. If you grab just a few of the above points, your business model will improve, and thus your execution. Ponder the above and apply.

Think like Google and learn. You won’t be sorry…

Your comments are welcome.

* The Economist: Business Miscellany (London: Profile Books Ltd, 2005), pp. 32-33, as cited in Phillip Kotler’s Marketing Managment, 14th Edition 2012, p. 38.

Tags: company culture, google, Google mission statement, mission statements, Philip Kotler
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Archive for the ‘Internet marketing’ Category

Reach 100 Million People In 10 Minutes With Google AdWords

How To Increase Your Website Traffic

How Google’s Mission Statement & Philosophy Can Help Your Business

Top Three SEO Tips from Networks Solutions VP

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