Score Big with Quality

If you’re not monitoring and tweaking your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns on a regular basis, you are probably paying more and getting a lot less than you could be.

John Lee of Hannapin Marketing nailed it, recently, with an article in Website Magazine about optimizing your Pay-Per-Click Quality Score. The bottom line? It’s all about staying relevant and connecting your focused, meta tags/keyword groups to your ads and landing pages.

Google’s Quality Score, Yahoo!’s Quality Index and MSN’s Quality Based Ranking are all essentially the same thing. They are values or rankings constantly calculated from complicated formulas. They essentially reflect (for each specific search engine) how relevant each of your keywords is to your ad text or website landing page. This score (or rank) is used, among other things, to determine each keyword’s actual cost-per-click.

This is a good system that rewards advertisers for presenting highly relevant keyword lists, ad text and landing pages. In general, the higher the ranking the lower your costs-per-click and the better your ad position. This system also rewards searchers by helping to weed out junk advertisers, helping prospects find the products and services they’re seeking faster.

Tips for Improving Quality Scores

• Optimize — Break down your ad groups into tightly-themed keyword groups. Never dump a large list of keywords into a single ad group.
• Infuse Ads with Keywords — Be sure the headline and text include keywords. This improves your click-through-rate (CTR) which improves your Quality Score. Also, the keyword typed in the search box by your prospect will be bolded in your ad text.
• Anchor Landing Pages with Keywords — Include keywords in the title, heads and body content. Marrying keywords and landing pages is a critical element in boosting your relevancy and Quality Score.
• Stay On Topic — Keep landing pages focused on the specific product or service you’re promoting. Don’t wonder into corporate philosophy, office culture, etc.

Since Quality Score is all about relevancy, make sure the content of your website and online ads matches your meta tags/keywords to a T.

Steve

Upswing In A Down Market

With some early prognosticators already predicting a slow 2009 because of inflation and recessionary pressures, you might be wondering what you need to do to keep sales strong, meet your numbers and maybe even grow a few market share points in the year ahead.

Plan for Success
Seriously. It seldom happens by accident. We’re already working with clients to assess their market strengths and goals before laying plans for the new year. And many of those plans are including internal campaigns to help re-energize a sales force…even an entire company. 

It’s important to get everyone involved. As every member of a company takes ownership for his part in the process to design, produce, market, sell, support or service its products and customers, a synergy of passion, cohesion and excitement will develop that can energize and drive success through the new year.
 
More Direct Marketing Tips

• Listen…Listen…Listen. Resolve to understand your customers better. Gather information, then share your conclusions with your marketing team members and with product development and sales colleagues. 
• Outshine competitors’ weaknesses. What unique selling proposition do they stress, and how can you counter them? Try to anticipate competitors’ product development plans for next year, and gear up now to beat them to the punch.
• Address inflation head-on. Add violators to your communications—”Special announcement,” “New offer,” “No price increase,” “Same price as last year,” “2007 prices still in effect” or “Repeat customer discount.” 
• Reactivate former customers. Research reasons that caused them to lapse. Then group them and develop strategies to respond to their concerns in powerful messages.
• Boost communications creativity…each production can be improved beyond the initial idea, and every offer can be made more enticing. Spotlight benefits instead of features. 
• Seek a balance…between under-communicating and “going to the well” too many times. Consider asking customers how often they want to hear from you: monthly, quarterly, twice a year. Respect the customer’s wishes and set up customizable contact strategies.

Most of All
Treat every customer and prospect as if they were the most important individual to your business—they are. Then segment…segment…segment. Make your communications relevant to their individual needs. It’s the best way to grow business in good times and bad.

Don

Blasting Your Way Into Inboxes – Part 3

From Parts 1 and 2, we know the “How” and the “Who” about email blasts, let’s wrap this up with the “When.”

The Right Time

Timing IS everything. From proper frequency to optimal day and time, timing can have a significant impact on your results.

With your lists secured, you now need to find the proper balance for usage. Both high and low frequency schedules will garner the same results–messages ignored, deleted or marked as “junk.” Do set a schedule, and be consistent. Customers and prospects often view consistency as a promise. And every time it is fulfilled, your credibility and overall image is enhanced.

Determine an appropriate blast schedule for your company based on the amount of relevant information you have to share, how often your customer/prospect lists want to hear from you, as well as the logistics of creating and executing each email blast. Whether it’s every week, two weeks, month or more, follow through on your schedule consistently.

Don’t forget the day and time. There are certain days of the week and times of the day when received emails are almost guaranteed to be deleted unread. And these can vary, depending on your specific audience. Marketing professionals can test a range of days and times to determine the most optimum choice.

Reaching Your Audience
Of course, all this planning and testing will be for naught if the email blast doesn’t ever reach your audience.

Some tools and platforms will catch your email in spam filters that could get your email address or even your company’s domain blacklisted by a client. Using professional email service providers (ESPs) should alleviate this concern. A good ESP monitors its listing status regularly with email clients, maintaining positive relationships with them. The ESP can also provide valuable data on each blast to help your marketing professional monitor effectiveness and continually optimize effectiveness of future blasts.

Okay...if you’re still with me, your head may be spinning with too much information. Just consider one more recommendation: Hire A Professional.

While it might be tempting to give email blasts a go without employing professional services, a misstep in this particular minefield could have a devastating effect on your business and your reputation. Email blast marketing is a great tool. Use it. But get assistance from a professional marketing firm. They can promote your company by setting up a highly targeted, opt-in campaign that can generate great feedback, qualified leads and increased sales for your business.

Melinda