Smart People

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.”

Albert Einstein

Physicist

10 Tips To Dominating Ads on Google AdWords Listings

eTaildTail friends at Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Web Marketing Today have a great, free Web video education on mastering Google Adword buys, if that is even possible.

 

I saw it last week and wanted to share it with all of you.  Lance Loveday is excellent.

 

- Chip Arndt

 

 

 

How to Dominate Google AdWords

Web Marketing Today

By: Lance Loveday

As seen on “Dr. Ralph F. Wilson Web Marketing Today”

August 18, 2009

 

"In this video interview paid search specialist Lance Loveday offers the first of 10 tips on how to dominate ads on Google AdWords listings. He discusses the first five tips in this interview:

 

1. Run the Search Query Performance Report to find the actual keyword queries your ads show up for.

2. Calculate the ROI for each match type using the same report, sorting on 'match type' and focus on match types with the highest ROI -- usually exact match. 

3. Run the Placement Performance Report for keywords on the content network, and prune domains that aren't as productive.

4. Run the Campaign Performance Report with 'impression share' checked to see what percentage of the time your ads are shown, then adjust based on available budget.

5. Always be testing at least two versions of your ad copy…"

 

(continue reading and go to Web video education by clicking here)

Pay-Per-Click and Keyword Search Questions To Ask

Many clients have asked MerchantAdvantage questions about how buying keywords on general search engines - as Google, Bing, and Yahoo! Search - translates to using these same keywords when sending their data feeds to shoppping comparison sites, consumer shopping engines, and other comparison shopping engines ("CSEs"), i.e. if an ecommerce merchant is allowed to send keywords in their data feed to CSEs and other shopping destination sites should they use the key word information they have acquired using general search engines to create those keywords?

This is an excellent question and I have a simple answer.  Yes.

Eventhough it might be best to know exactly what keyword searches customers use on a particular CSE and shopping destination site directly, I believe there is a correlation between search on general search engines and comparison shopping engines.  And besides, you never know exactly what keyword search term a customer might use when looking for your product on a comparison shopping engine.

Therefore, the more keyword search terms you can identify and then send to a comparison shopping engine in your data feed the better.  Right?  So why not use research and keywords identified from your general search adword campaigns?  And besides, it does not cost you anything to send keyword tag identifiers in your product data feed to comparison shopping engines....so the more the better!

So, let's call this process the transitivity game = what applies to one search engine probably can help with another - even if that "other search engine" is focused just on products. 

If you like what you are reading, then the following article from eTaildTail friends at Practical Ecommerce will help you identify some of the best keywords that you can also utilize for your product data feeds while provding valuable advice on managing your keyword campaigns.

- Chip Arndt

Ten Pay-per-click Questions An Owner Should Ask

 

Practical Ecommerce

By: Greg Laptevsky

August 13, 2009

"If you own or manage an ecommerce business, you may not directly execute your pay-per-click advertising campaigns yourself. Instead, you may delegate the execution of them to an employee or an outside firm. But owners and managers need to know that broad outlines and the successes and failures of their pay-per-click advertising efforts, and to help them with this I've assembled a list of 10 questions to ask the employee or outside firm who executes the campaign. 

1. How many keywords do we have running? If the answer is anything less than a few thousand, you’re probably not taking advantage of the longtail game of the business. While there are always exceptions, a few thousand keywords for an ecommerce store are not uncommon when you consider all kinds of product and brand variations.

2. What are our top converting terms (by sales volume and spend)? This one is always interesting....

(click here to continue reading) ..it is very helpful!

Smart People

“To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.”

 

Confucius

5 Data Feed Management Tips To Successful Affiliate Marketing

Earlier this week, I wrote about "Affiliate Marketing" and how working with a myriad of affiliate marketing channels might help ecommerce merchants execute some of their marketing strategies more effectively. 

I ran across an article that goes more in-depth into how an ecommerce can best utlize afiliate marketing channels.

The process is a bit more more complex than I thought to be truly effective, so I suggest reading this advice as it is is very, very helpful and a quick read.

- Chip Arndt

5 Things That Make My Affiliate Life Easier

OutSpoken Media

By Rae Hoffman

August 13, 2009

"If you’re a merchant with an affiliate program (or an affiliate network), you’ll find some tips below for making your affiliates lives easier, and thus your sales volume higher.

Allow Deep Linking To Any Page

There is nothing worse than having an affiliate program only offer you links to predetermined landing pages. Not long ago, I had an issue with a merchant (who is a household name) that only offered affiliate links to their homepage...(continue reading by clicking here)...

Microsoft Bing Pays Consumers up to 50% To Use Online Shopping

Yes...the headline is true and Microsoft's Bing Cashback program will pay up to 50% of the purchase price. So, as I understand it when you purchase a pair of shoes for $100 you get $50 back! 

That is one heck of ratio to pay for traffic, but I guess when you have that much cash on hand and are going after Google, this is one way to do it.

Want to learn more about this incredible program?  Well, I turned to a comprehensive article written by Boaz Berkowitz at Seeking Alpha.  Here is part of it and then a link to the whole story.

Note: Microsoft began this program last year after they bought the online shopping comparsion engine JellyFish an incorporated their "cash-back" tool into Live Cash Back - now Bing Cashback; for August this porgram has been ramped up to a whole new level.

- Chip Arndt

By: Boaz Berkowitz

Seeking Alpha

August 10, 2009

"Starting today, Microsoft (MSFT) plans to actually pay users to search via Bing. Yes, you read that correctly - they will PAY you, in cash, to use Bing rather than some other search engine such as Yahoo (YHOO), or more likely Google (GOOG). How will they do this? When you shop online through the Bing search engine, Microsoft will refund you a portion of your purchase price at its own expense. Okay, they have actually been doing this for a while, but starting today they will double that amount to up to 50% of your purchase price. That’s worth taking notice.

In practice, this concept isn’t entirely new. Many e-commerce sites have affiliate programs which will pay a third party site (like Bing) for referring customers to them. Microsoft’s search engine has taken advantage of this by combining its search engine capabilities with various affiliate programs. When a buyer searches for an item on Bing and then purchases it, Microsoft gets paid a commission for the referral.

There are many sites that do this, but Microsoft is the only one that refunds 100% of this commission back to its users. For more on this, read my last article on Microsoft’s Bing.com (formerly Live.com) here. As you can see from the article, Microsoft has dabbled with paying users out of pocket to shop via Bing in the past. Previously, they have offered similar promotional discounts to specific stores like eBay (EBAY). In that instance, users received up to 30-35% cashback for making their eBay purchases through Bing. But with this promotion, they will double the cashback on ALL affiliate stores, up to 50%!

Want to save 50% at FTD Flowers (FTD) or 50% at Footlocker (FL)? You can, but only if you buy their items through Bing. For a full list of stores..."

Click here to continue reading...

Smart People

“Whether you be man or woman you will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor.”

 

James Allen

British Sports Commentator