How to Get Started in PPC

January 23, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Guest post by Marianne Pratt

Are you finally ready to give pay-per-click (PPC) advertising a try? Maybe you’ve dabbled in PPC but your efforts need a boost. Or perhaps you’ve put your proverbial toe in the water and now think PPC may be a career opportunity for you. Knowing how to get started in PPC will ensure your next steps take you where you want to go.

Used properly, PPC can make your marketing more efficient, producing greater search engine visibility, more traffic, higher quality leads and quickly quantifiable results. Just being able to track and control your advertising can do wonders for your ROI.

Follow these basics on how to get started in PPC:

  • Do your homework. Google is the easiest place to start, because they offer lots of help. You can even earn an AdWords certificate.
  • Set goals and identify metrics to analyze results. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Paid Search, PPC Tips

Five Things I Learned in One Month at Trada that I Didn’t Learn in Four Years of College

January 16, 2012 By 4 Comments

Guest Post by Keith Jensen, Sales and Marketing Operations Intern

As I am dreading my impending graduation from CU Boulder this May, it was interesting to look back and see what I wish I would’ve learned while attending college.  I’ve only been at Trada for a little over two months, and I now know that there will always be more concepts, skills, or programs to learn before I can get to where I want to be in the real world.  Here are five main ones that hit me within seven days of my Marketing and Sales Operations Internship:

Salesforce.com
If you are involved with marketing or sales and you haven’t heard of SFDC, then I would recommend buying Salesforce.com for Dummies.  SFDC has received multiple awards over the past few years, including “Most Innovative Company” and “Best Sales Platform.” It serves as the basis for keeping all of a company’s leads, contacts, opportunities, accounts, campaigns, and everything else sales-related organized and easy to read.  A lot of companies pay above-average salaries for someone to be their SFDC Administrator, so learning everything about the site can prove to be a huge resume booster.  I had to spend hours exploring all the features and pages that exist in the back-end of the site, and knowing the basis of how it worked first would’ve made it a lot easier. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Trada News

Tips from the Boosters

January 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Jeff Sexton of BoostCTR

So you offer nut-free cookies, created specifically for those who suffer from sever nut allergies. And naturally, you’re advertising for keyword phrase Nut-Free Cookies through Google AdWords.

So when writing the ad for this keyword phrase, what do you think will prove most effective:

A) Repeating the “Nut-Free Cookies” phrase in the body copy, or

B) Giving the reader more info on your cookies, related to their chief concern

Well if you guessed B, you got it right.  Take a look:

So why would “Nut-Free Bakery” work better than “Delicious Nut-Free Cookies”?

 

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Advertising, PPC Help

What to Look for in a Content Management System

December 21, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Marianne Pratt

A content management system is a comprehensive software application that gives you a single, automated framework from which to manage your website, blog, e-commerce, website-based customer communications and marketing.

There are lots of reasons to purchase a content management system:

They’re designed to be used by several contributors, and users don’t have to be highly skilled technicians.  Information sharing is easy, but you can control who has access to different areas.  A CMS provides:

  • Consistent look and feel throughout your website and blog.
  • Smooth content creation process (writing, review, approval).
  • Coordinated content processing and publishing.
  • Content storage, organization and retrieval.
  • Increased productivity, to save time and money.
  • Enhanced customer relationships. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Marketing Tools, SMB Marketing

How to A/B Test Your Lead Generation Form

December 19, 2011 By 2 Comments

Guest Post by Marianna Pratt

Your lead generation form is a critical element in converting visitors to “warm” leads you can engage and nurture.  But how do you know if your form is really working?  How much more revenue could you earn with even a small percentage increase in the number of responses?

That’s where A/B testing comes in.  The beauty of online marketing is that you can test easily and quickly, and implement changes right away, so you save time and precious budget dollars.  Besides, testing is fun.

A/B testing is a well-used marketing analysis method that examines the performance of one element at a time.  This is important because each detail can affect your form’s performance.  Drilling down to individual detail lets you draw accurate conclusions.

So A/B testing uses a control form – which could be the one you’re currently using or something new – to compare against a test form with one different element.  You track  results via your conversion (thank you) page. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Marketing Tools, PPC Tips

Mantra: A Call to Action on Every Page

December 16, 2011 By 1 Comment

Guest Post by Marianna Pratt

Exactly what is it you want your website visitors to do?  Ultimately the answer is “purchase something,” but most visitors aren’t ready to buy right away.  They came to your site for some “interim” reason.  But if they get confused or lost, they’ll probably just go away.

You have to give them something they want, and tell them how to get it.  That’s your call to action (CTA).  The more instructive you are, the more likely visitors are to stay on your site and do what you want.

That’s why you need a call to action on every page.

What you want visitors to do actually differs by page — go to another page for more information, give you their email, download a free report, contact you, visit your physical location, leave a comment, take a little survey, etc.  You can use CTAs to lead visitors around your website.

Even your blog can become a stronger conversion tool, with a well-crafted call to action.   Christopher LoDoke says the “best performing CTAs are ones that continue to educate your readers,” rather than offering a pushy sales pitch or generic “contact us” option.  Check out his article and note his very clever call to action at the end. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Landing Pages, Marketing Tools

How to Get Started with Link Building

December 12, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Marianne Pratt

What good is your website if nobody sees it?

Links located outside your website give people an opportunity to click through to your pages.  Your website may naturally attract some incoming links, but deliberately working to create them will boost your results much sooner.  Link building is an ongoing and painstaking process, not a one-shot deal.  And while volume is valuable, quality is even more important.
You want lots of incoming links because they build traffic.  They also give you credibility (or “authority”) with search engines, important because off-page SEO is a major factor in raising your overall and page rankings.

We’ll talk here about specific link building techniques, but in the end other sites will only agree to link to you if you have useful, fresh content — something good at your end worth finding. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Marketing Tools, SMB Marketing

Facebook for Small Business Owners

December 7, 2011 By 1 Comment

Facebook LogoDoes your business have a Facebook? Do you actually even use it?

Small businesses, unfortunately, are notorious for neglecting their Facebook pages (up to 50 percent of small businesses do in America), on top of the rest of their social networks, according to a survey done by web analytic company comScore earlier this summer.

Facebook for small business owners should be important to any marketing strategy, especially when taking Pay-Per-Click (PPC) into consideration. So, how can a small business use their Facebook?

  • Promote daily deals that are Facebook exclusive to drive traffic to the page.
  • Hold contests and competitions for your Facebook fans, have the prizes be products or deals from your business.
  • Use your Facebook page to ask questions to further customer satisfaction.
  • In lieu of a website, you can use your Facebook Page, which can also drive traffic and click-through rates.
  • Have a better connection to your customers and a friendlier profile which can be a source of casual communication with customers. [Read more...]
Filed Under: Facebook, SMB Marketing

How Does the Search Alliance Quality Score Work?

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest post by Marianne Pratt

The Search Alliance is a working partnership between Yahoo and Bing (Microsoft), created to help them compete more effectively against Google in the paid advertising marketplace.  The Alliance calls their program AdCenter.

The Search Alliance Quality Score is similar to a Google AdWords Quality Score in that your ads receive a 1-10 numerical ranking.  But AdCenter uses a very different formula to determine that ranking.  Also unlike Google, the Search Alliance Quality Score does not determine ad placement or affect bid prices.  It is meant as an educational tool to help advertisers achieve better results.

How it works

Your overall Quality Score is based on separate scoring for keywords, your ad and your landing page.  This is good because it allows much greater analysis, but potentially dangerous because if one component fares poorly that could lower your overall Quality Score, relevance and ultimately your ROI. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Paid Search, PPC Tips

Holiday PPC: It’s Not Too Late!

November 22, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Guest Post by Marianne Pratt

Regardless of the still-sluggish economy, people are in a holiday shopping and buying mood this year.  We’re seeing earlier-than-ever online advertising and shopping activity.

If your holiday pay-per-click (PPC) campaign isn’t underway yet, no worries.  There’s still time to capitalize online to boost your overall holiday sales, even if you don’t sell gift-oriented products or services.  And since many people have a love-hate relationship with holiday shopping, this is your chance to help them love it.  That means they’ll love you, too.

But you need to get going, and maintain your campaign into the new year for strongest results.  Most importantly, you need top-flight PPC management. [Read more...]

Filed Under: PPC Tips
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