To illustrate, here’s my own story of managing a relatively large campaign using Conversion Optimizer for the past six months or so:

This advertiser is in the B2B market so, as always, traffic and conversions slowed considerably in December. This threw the Conversion Optimizer engine for a loop, so I tried something new – I removed the conversion code from the client’s site for a day – and sure enough traffic slowed almost to a standstill; however, adding the code back in the next day caused the Conversion Optimizer to sort of “reset” and after New Year’s Day, traffic came in at previously unseen levels, and at higher-than-ever conversion rates.

At this time I also moved the bidding method from Target CPA to Max CPA, having experienced better results with the latter, at least in general.

This client’s January spend was above his comfort level and desired budget, so I rolled bids back a bit. February was another big month for both traffic and conversions, but again, the ad spend was still about $5,000 too high, so I rolled back the Max CPA bid once more, and that’s when things started to get ugly.

Fortunately, the desired goal was met: Reducing overall spend to meet budgetary requirements. However, the conversion rate dropped with it. Not dramatically, but enough to give me cause for concern, and to realize that I must find the underlying problem and take corrective action quickly.

In traditional CPC bidding, raising or lowering of bids usually has the opposite effect: Lowering bids will generally bring higher conversion rates and ROI with reduced overall spend, while raising bids tends to bring in more junk traffic, lowering conversion rates, while ad spend goes up.

But in my experience with Conversion Optimizer CPA bidding, the exact opposite happens. My client experienced a drop in conversion rate for two reasons:

1. I periodically move very well-converting placement from Automatic Placements into Managed Placements. This also causes the average cost-per-click to increase, for reasons unknown, but presumably because you have flagged those placements as highly desirable, and Google will increase the minimum CPC accordingly. Lowering the Max CPA caused these premium placements to become out of reach, since our Max CPA bid was below the minimum bid to access these newly managed placements.

2. Conversion Optimizer operates on a unique algorithm. It will automatically lower CPCs on placements that may be high volume but don’t convert well, while increasing traffic from them. The result is a lower effective conversion rate, because you’re suddenly getting massively increased traffic from sites that don’t necessarily convert well; however, the flip side is that Conversion Optimizer is giving you this traffic dirt-cheap, so even though the apparent conversion rate has dropped, you may have actually increased  your ROI and profitability on these placements. (Hopefully I wrote this in an understandable way.)

IN OTHER WORDS: While increasing bids on traditional CPC bidding typically results in increased ad spend, lower conversion rates, and reduced ROI, increasing bids on Conversion Optimizer CPA bidding frequently results in HIGHER conversion rates and increased ROI!

Since Conversion Optimizer works so differently than standard CPC or even Enhanced CPC bidding, it’s important to keep these points in mind, and not to get gun-shy when it comes to setting your initial CPA bids, or increasing them down the road.

This just about blew my mind because cold calling to sell SEO services must be the DUMBEST idea I’ve ever heard of!

The reason is very, very simple: The entire purpose of marketing a business online, whether it is done through SEO, PPC/AdWords, guest blogging, Facebook contests, or any other method, is to bring leads and customers in without the necessity of cold calling!

In other words, an SEO company, or any type of internet marketing agency, that engages in cold calling, is essentially telling the world, “We’re incompetent! We claim to help YOUR business market online, but we can’t do it ourselves and have to resort to calling people at random, asking if they need SEO!”

It reminds me of my first sales job, when I was told to go door-to-door and tell business owners, “We can help your business.”

That statement got me yelled at and thrown out of more offices than I care to remember. Of course I can’t  help someone’s business, when I’m out canvassing trying to scrape up sales!

The same is true for someone who is selling search engine optimization – something that is supposed to bring customers into a business without the need for them to make cold calls – yet somehow the search “expert” isn’t getting enough business via their website.

Ok, fine, trying to SEO your site for the keyword “SEO” is extremely difficult. In any given city there are dozens, if not more, companies all fighting for that same spot.

But let’s be serious here: If you are supposed to know search engine optimization, you should be well-versed enough about online marketing in general to be able to generate leads online without being on the coveted first page of organic results.

There are so many ways to generate business online it’s not even funny, and if you’re claiming to be an “expert” in that area but have to cold call to look for new clients, you have zero credibility.

Even if you aren’t getting enough leads from your website, at least to speak to some local chambers of commerce or Rotary clubs where you can meet and network with business owners, while showing off your talents at the same time.

Whatever you do, forget about cold calling for SEO. That makes about as much sense as a stockbroker calling you, asking for stock tips!

A bit of background first: Per my post “Can You Reset Conversion Optimizer,” I had my AdWords traffic come to a screeching halt after I’d inadvertently removed the conversion code from my site for about 36 hours. On top of that, it happened in December, when my Never Cold Call Again business tends to really slow down to begin with.

As a result, I began looking for ways to jumpstart traffic, and decided to switch my Target CPA bid to a slightly higher Max CPA bid.

Nothing happened for a little while (though traffic quickly recovered from the tracking code incident)…

Until the first working day of the New Year, that is. Around January 3rd, traffic came flooding in. And it was converting well! In fact, even though my daily spend began to approach uncomfortable levels, I left it alone for the remainder of the month since it was converting. In addition, the amount of newsletter signups was pretty massive, which means ongoing revenue for the months to come – I routinely see sales conversions from people who have been on my list anywhere from several weeks to over a year.

Going into February, I decided to reign in my spend a bit; although the additional traffic is converting well, I do sell most of my products on a 30-day trial basis, which means I don’t get paid until a month after the conversion take place, and I don’t want to become one of those businesses that falls victim to excessively rapid growth. Increasing my AdWords spend is something I want to do gradually, not suddenly.

As a result, I moved my largest campaign back to Target CPA rather than Max CPA, although I left the bid on the high side – I set it to the same bid I had it at in July and August of 2011, the two best months ever for that site.

It’s been a few days since making the changes, and two things have happened so far:

1. Traffic has dropped by about 10%

2. The average cost-per-conversion is up slightly

I’m going to let this ride for another week or so before jumping to any conclusions. However, if the current trend continues, I will do the following:

1. Move back to Max CPA bidding

2. Set the bid slightly lower than it was in January

3. Control spend via the daily budget

The reason for this is that even though I spent more than I was comfortable with in January, my average CPA was very nice – lower than my longtime average, and traffic converted very well. My ongoing goal is to stay at that CPA and conversion rate while controlling daily spend a bit better than before, and slowly ramp it up at a more comfortable pace.

I’ll keep you posted on the results!

This is absurd and a complete lie.

First of all, no one can guarantee anything when it comes to Google. We sure don’t at The ROI Team. We sell based on our reputation, and we always work our hardest and do our best for our clients, but we know full well that Google’s algorithms, both in search and in AdWords, can and do change without warning.

That’s what happened with the Panda algorithm update last year. It was designed specifically to defeat many of the less-than-holy SEO companies who were doing things like automated blog posting and forum commenting in order to artificially inflate a website’s ranking. It worked, and a lot of sites lost rank, but on the bright side it helped legitimated marketers and SEO companies who are using “white hat” techniques that not only improve your search rankings, but get you direct traffic in a variety of ways.

Secondly, the idea of someone guaranteeing the #1 search result for any keyword is so ridiculous, it isn’t even funny. Go ahead and try getting #1 for “bookstore.” Sorry but the best SEO company in the world can’t beat Barnes & Noble and Amazon for that one. And if they tried, by sending insane amounts of links to the client website, Google would detect it, ban the site, and remove it from the index completely.

Finally, any company that over-promises anything, in any industry, is a huge, huge red flag. And especially in a business like SEO where tons of get-rich-quickers are jumping on it as their next past to easy money. People who will say anything to make a sale usually won’t do anything for you as a client.

So beware of SEO services that over-promise and under-deliver. And remember that it’s something that takes time and must be done carefully, and by humans – no software – to avoid violating any Google policies and wind up having your site banned from their index altogether.

Fortunately, most of my sites already rank well for their relevant terms. Because they’re relevant. And because they already have plenty of “authority” or what the SEO guys like to call “link juice” – high authority domains linking to them. This is the results of long providing good solid content, along with excellent value and service to my customers.

Which begs the question: Is using SEO really a form of deceiving the search engines, since if you already had relevant content and enough backlinks, you wouldn’t need to do it in the first place?

This question came up in a discussion forum I was reading the other day and it really brings up a good point. There are two kinds of people who use SEO strategies to rank their websites:

1. Perfectly legitimate businesses that want to grow their online presence, including everything from small local businesses to large e-commerce sites. In many cases, these companies already have a website that’s relevant, and have good links pointing to them, but due to a lack of basic SEO site structure and strategy, their sites are not optimized at all and in many cases are killing their rankings. For example, I just had a consult with a new client whose site is fantastic, but isn’t getting any decent traffic.

Why?

Because all of the title tags, for every page, are the company name – which is totally irrelevant to the service they’re selling!

By making simple changes like this, and fixing others – like missing description meta tags – an otherwise good website will get with the program when it comes to SEO.

2. The other variety of SEO users are in the “black hat” realm, particularly get-rich-quickers and affiliate marketers. A typical scenario is someone who provides no product or service, and zero value to customers, but who is playing the affiliate arbitrage game by setting up phony product review websites that direct you to an eBay or Amazon or other affiliate link at the bottom of the review.

Since these people have no value and little content to offer, they are forced to resort to using SEO tricks to rank in the search engines. And I don’t like it.

As someone who directly sells my own products online, I can tell you it’s infuriating to have someone sign up as an affiliate and then put up a weak website, SEO it for my trademarked product name, and “poach” traffic from people who were looking for my website in the first place. And for this they “earn” a 50% commission.

(I’m adding a trademark policy to my affiliate program terms & conditions to ban this practice but that’s beyond the scope of this article.)

So, what’s the takeaway from all this?

Simple: SEO is beneficial and necessary for real businesses. They help the business, and they help customers, who need their products or services, to find them. But it gets a bad rap because if you go into any SEO discussion forum you’ll be surrounded by the black hat types who are trying to game the system in order to “earn” a passive income without any real work.

One of the biggest problems in their account is a lot of very low Quality Scores, that are the result of poor landing page optimization. Having said that, we did find one landing page that is converting extremely well and is getting decent – but not great – quality scores. With that in mind, we’re running with that page for all campaigns temporarily, until new ones can be built out.

Today, I got on the phone with the SEO guy/web designer and we discussed ways to improve the page even further, not only to increase Quality Score but to increase conversions as well.

And the conclusion of the call was very simple: AdWords landing page optimization should be done with a view toward conversion and an SEO-related mindset. The issues we found were so obvious yet so simple that I decided to post them here on my AdWords blog.

When you consider AdWords policies such as Quality Score, they are in place with one main goal: To improve the end-user’s experience. As long as AdWords end-users have good experiences with the sites they visit, they will continue to click on ads, which is a win-win for everyone: Google makes money and we all get higher CTRs and more traffic.

So, as you consider what goes into the process of optimizing landing pages, here are some takeaways from today’s call:

• SEO Mindset. The first thing I noticed that was wrong with the page’s relevancy was that the title tag simply contained the company name, which has zero relevancy to the specific ad groups that are pointing to that page. So the first thing I gave the client’s webmaster was a new title tag containing relevant keyword phrases.
• Conversion Mindset. In looking for ways to make the page more relevant from an SEO/Quality Score point of view,  I immediately saw that it was lacking in content. Sure, the page converted well, but the AdWords algorithm isn’t seeing enough content on the page that’s relevant to the keyword groups and the ad copy. WIth that in mind, I thought about what kind of content would be best, and guess what I came up with? Testimonials! I instructed him to add a large number of testimonials “below the fold” since they would not only improve relevancy in terms of what AdWords sees, but will also drive up conversion rate.

  In addition, the company has an A+ rating with the BBB and has this advertised on their home page, but it was conspicuously absent from the PPC landing page, so I instructed him to add that as well. While it will probably have no effect on Quality Score, this is going to have a huge effect on conversions.

Remember, AdWords judges pages in terms of end-user experience, which means you should think about the pages as an end-user would. That means landing page optimization is all about what’s going to convert best while still remaining highly relevant to the keywords and ads pointing to that page.

The Display Network operates in two ways:

1. Automatic Placements: These are sites across the Google network where your ads will display based on contextual relevance; in other words, if the keywords in your campaign are determined to be primary keywords on that specific page, your ad will trigger.

2. Managed Placements: These are web properties (URLs and subdomains) that you manually enter into Managed Placements within the “Networks” tab of an ad group. Your ads will always show on these sites, regardless of contextual relevance, based upon your bid price.

If you’re starting out with AdWords, or just with Display Network advertising, you’ll want to set your campaigns to run on All Placements. This will ensure that your ads begin to appear across the Display Network, based on contextual targeting within AdWords.

However, after some time passes – usually a couple of months – you can pull placement performance reports from within AdWords itself or with any third-party conversion tracking software you’re using.

What you’ll then want to do is export a list of all placements that have generated conversions for you. Also make note of the cost per conversion for each placement versus your profit per conversion.

Once you have this list, you can go ahead and enter the URLs into Managed Placements in the “Networks” tab of your ad group. Also, you should manually set the bid prices for each placement, based on the cost per conversion data versus your profit per sale.

Now, each of those well-performing sites will show your ads on an ongoing, continual basis, meaning a lot more conversions and a much higher ROI for you than were you to continue using only automatic placements.

This tip is a must-do for any serious AdWords advertiser looking to make the most of the system. And once you’ve generated enough conversions in a campaign to qualify  for AdWords Conversion Optimizer (CPA) bidding, you can enable it and that, combined with a well-managed list of managed placements, will really skyrocket your conversions and profits!

This experience was with my Never Cold Call Again site. My business model on that site is as follows: Users reach the landing page, and the offer is to download a free 37-page PDF preview of the full course. They then receive a follow-up email series enticing them to purchase the full course, which is a hardcopy workbook and 2-CD set that ships to them along with some additional downloads.

I’ve always tracked conversions via signups in AdWords Conversion Tracking, striving for about $3.00 per signup CPA. However, last month I decided to change my strategy, based on the reasoning that just because someone signs up for a free download doesn’t mean they’ll necessarily buy the full product, and in fact a huge percentage of signups are probably just freebie-seekers who have no intention of buying down the road.

So with that in mind, I removed the conversion tracking snippet from the signup thank-you page and let AdWords track only sales conversions.

But, upon reviewing a large amount of tracking data for the year, I quickly reversed course, and here’s why:

1. A huge percentage of customers purchase more than 30 days after the signup date, and the AdWords conversion tracking cookie only lives for 30 days.
2. An even larger percentage of customers’ sales are not tracked at all, because they either sign up and purchase from two different computers, or because they’re blocking third-party cookies in their browsers.

So, about 36 hours after removing the tracking snippet from the signup thank-you page, I added it back in.

And something interesting happened:

First, traffic plummeted to a very low volume. Apparently AdWords saw that signup conversions dropped from several hundred a day  down to zero, and stopped sending traffic as a result. I emailed one of my reps at Google who reassured me that things would come back up in a few days, which they did.

And here’s the second, and more interesting, effect that this had: Traffic not only came back, but conversion rate nearly doubled! And on top of that, over the past week, traffic volume itself has nearly doubled as well, meaning an astronomical increase in conversions!

There’s no way to know, specifically, why this happened, but my best guess is that removing the code for a short period of time caused Conversion Optimizer to “reset” itself and begin tracking conversions all over again from scratch. This may have had the effect of purging “stale” sites from the historical data, that may have converted well in the past, but since stopped performing.

In the future, if I see Conversion Optimizer results starting to sag, I may try this again and keep my fingers crossed. I’ll certainly report the results here on my AdWords blog.

What remarketing does is allow you to “tag” visitors who come to your website, and then serve specific follow-up ads to them across the entire Google Display Network. What’s more, you can create various remarketing lists within your AdWords account, and then create campaigns to target those specific lists, and even drill down by time elapsed since they visited your site.

I use six different remarketing campaigns to recapture lost opportunities. They are:

1. All Visitors (up to 30 days since last visit)

2. Opt-Ins (up to 60 days since last visit)

3. Abandoned Shopping Cart (up to 90 days since last visit)

4. All Visitors (all time)

5. Opt-ins (all time)

6. Abandoned Shopping Cart (all time)

As you can see, ‘All Visitors’ receives ads for the shortest time. These are people who landed on the home page and bounced off the site without taking any action; therefore they are the lowest-value remarketing prospect. As a result they see ads for the shortest time span and also get the lowest cost-per-click bids.

At the other end of the spectrum, ‘Abandoned Shopping Cart,’ people who got as far as the checkout page before backing out and deciding not to buy, are the most valuable. They were about to click the Order button but chose not to for some reason. Therefore I serve them ads for 90 days, at a much higher CPC bid than the others.

In the middle are those who opted-in to my email list but who have not yet bought. Initially these seemed like high-value prospects for remarketing, but in the end the results weren’t that good, presumably because they are already getting my follow-up emails and don’t need to be targeted through remarketing.

With all remarketing lists and campaigns, the prospect no longer sees the ads once they take the desired conversion action. For example, someone who is on the All Visitors list will be removed from it once they hit the opt-in conversion code, at which time they end up on the Opt-ins list.

Remarketing Tips for Success

Here are some quick tips I’ve learned through considerable experience with using remarketing for both myself and my AdWords management clients:

1. With my ‘All Visitors’ list, i.e. website bounces, sending them to a different landing page had the best result.

Early this year I was referred to a “conversion expert” to redesign my website. I consented then ran a long-term A/B split test between my old site, and the new redesign. Results seemed promising at first – it edged out the old site on opt-in rate but flunked on ultimate sales conversion.

However, there’s a silver lining – all that money wasn’t wasted!

I now use the homepage only from that redesigned site as an alternative landing page for visitors who had originally bounced, but who clicked through via a remarketing ad such as this one:

This page is the original home page. Visitors who originally bounced from that page but later clicked on a remarketing ad land on this alternate page. (You’ll also notice that the new landing page matches the branding in the ad.)

I originally ran the ‘All Visitors’ campaign by sending people back to the original home page, which didn’t work out so well, but sending them to a different page works extremely well and is getting me a considerably low cost-per-action on remarketing opt-ins.

2. Make sure your ad copy specifies the correct call-to-action for that list.

In the ad above, for bounces, the call-to-action is for them to opt-in to get my free download. However, with the other lists, opt-in and abandoned cart, I want them to buy, so this is the ad copy they see instead:

As you can see, the call-to-action is to make a purchase.

3. Limit your frequency cap.

Initially I had no frequency cap on my remarketing campaign. I soon noticed that I was seeing my own ads on nearly every website I went to. This is very annoying for prospective buyers, and also makes it very obvious that you’re stalking them with remarketing, when in reality you want to create the impression that you are a big brand with a large web presence.

As a result I now cap impressions at a maximum of 3 per day per user.

4. Don’t forget text ads.

In working with various AdWords management clients, a common issue I find is that they only add display ads to remarketing campaigns, when in reality text ads are still shown far more frequently across the Google Display Network, so be sure to include text ads in your remarketing campaigns.

So there you have it – some quick & easy tips to make the most of your AdWords remarketing campaigns!

Some ads that have previously been shown in the sidebar (to the right of search results) are now being shown at the bottom of the page, below natural search results.

This is the result of Google’s efforts to continually improve user experience, which is a win-win for you as an advertiser, because it means they’re placing ads where users will be more likely to notice them, and, consequently, click through and land on your website.

To determine where your advertisements are appearing, Google has added a new “Top vs. Side” segment to reports.

For my largest business, NeverColdCall.com (which sells my ‘Never Cold Call Again’ sales training system), the sales process is typical of that of an information product, beginning with a landing page offering an incentive for people to sign up for my email list, in the form of a free 37-page PDF download of the book portion of the package, followed up by a sales page along with an extensive follow-up email series.

As expected, most sales are made anywhere from a few days to several months after the initial signup, via the follow-up emails. As a result of this I moved most of my focus over the past year, away from optimizing the site itself to working on my follow-up emails.

However, a couple of weeks ago I was in front of the camera shooting a new TV commercial and figured it wouldn’t hurt to take an extra minute and bang out a new homepage video to test, now that I’ve “moved up in the world” a bit and have access to better production quality.

I let the test run for about 3 days. Since the video was on the homepage promoting the free download and email opt-in, that’s what I tested as my primary outcome, and here are the results:

The new video is represented by variable #2, and as you can see, it slightly edged out the original. The results weren’t impressive by any means but they should equate to about an additional 750 opt-ins per month for me, which, based on averages, equates to about 56 sales and around $6,750 in revenue.

Not bad for a “quick” video test.

HOWEVER: Here is the real reason I’m writing this today!

Anytime I run a split test to try to improve opt-in rate, I always add sales conversion as a secondary outcome.

Why?

Because, time too numerous to mention, I’ve had a wildly successful split test on the opt-in side that seriously exploded opt-in rate, but destroyed sales conversion!

In this case, however, the opposite was true. In the above screenshot you see the tiny improvement in opt-in conversion. But look at what happened to my secondary outcome, sales conversion:

As you can see, this time the results were not insignificant at all – by changing the homepage video, sales conversion on those initial visitors nearly doubled!

Why?

As far as I can tell, it’s because the original video pitched visitors to get the “free download,” which is somewhat vague. The second, new video, specifically says to download the “37-page sneak peek.” In other words, I’m making it perfectly clear that what they’re getting is just a teaser, and not the full version of the book.

The original video apparently was attracting either freebie-seekers, or people who mistakenly believed that they were getting the whole nine yards in the form of a free download.

The new video presumably is attracting visitors who know full well that they’re just getting a teaser, are still interested enough to want to see the teaser, and who understand full well that anytime you download a teaser, a sales pitch to buy the full version immediately follows. As a result, they expect to be sold, and are not annoyed when it happens.

Another variable is the fact that the video itself is better quality, the camera is angled so that I am looking down at the camera (a psychological trick that causes the viewer to view you as more powerful than they), and quite frankly because I’m in better shape than in the original video: Dropping 20 pounds and having a thinner face creates the illusion that I’m taller, again another enabler of the power principle.

In summary: The lesson I want you to take away from this is no matter what you test on your website, always always always measure its effect on ultimate sales conversion. The results may surprise you, and you will frequently avoid making a fatal mistake!

Well now it’s official – it begins today!

Keep your eyes open for display network ads featuring the new +1 button.

I want to share this information here, because even though this is primarily an AdWords blog, the fact of the matter is that the overwhelming majority of my customers do not buy on that initial visit, but only after receiving several follow-up emails from me. So doing it correctly will exponentially increase your return on investment from both AdWords and other paid search marketing efforts.

Here are the biggest mistakes I was committing, and what I did to correct them:

1. Mailing too infrequently. For years I sent out mailings no more frequently than once per week. Like many marketers, I assumed that mailing too frequently would turn people off and make them unsubscribe. In reality, prospective customers are hottest to buy when they are on that initial website visit and their probability of buying goes down as time passes. So, new subscribers now get a series of five consecutive daily emails from me, and my full subscriber list gets at least 3 new emails per week. Did this increase my unsubscribes? Yes, but only initially! Once that initial wave passed, things leveled out. Furthermore, I’m no longer sending emails to people who weren’t really interested anyway, which reduces my SMTP sending costs.

2. Not mailing promos to existing customers. I used to take new customers off my ‘leads’ list and they would no longer receive promotional emails, under the assumption that doing so would cause them to unsubscribe, and then I wouldn’t be able to promote new products to them. This was a HUGE mistake. By mailing promotional emails to existing customers, I create a viral marketing effect. Why? Because your customers are your biggest fans! Happy customers will forward your emails to several people, resulting in exponential increases to your traffic and your business. Once I began mailing promo emails to customers, I began seeing spikes in “mystery” signups and conversions in my tracking software, which turned out to be people who had received forwarded emails and decided to visit my site as a result.

3. Not being aggressive enough in emails. I used to send strict content-only emails, with a weak call-to-action at the end (essentially, a “by the way, I sell this” reminder). Now I aggressively ask people to buy, and even admonish them sometimes, by telling a true success story from an existing customer and then going along the lines of, “Since Average Joe was able to accomplish this with my product, you have no excuse…” etc etc. Try it – it works!

4. Sending the same content to everyone. I used to blast the same emails out to my entire prospect list. However, the problem there is that the bulk of unsubscribes happen early on in the process. If someone is going to leave your list without buying, they’re going to do it in the first couple of weeks. As a result, I now segment my lists by subscribe date and send the most aggressive call-to-action, “Buy Now” content to the newest subscribers.

5. Doubling email frequency to first-week subscribers. After figuring out #3 and #4 above, I took my best-performing emails and put them into an autoresponder series that goes out to new subscribers for 5 days after they join my list, and excluded first-week subscribers from broadcasts. However, once I experimented with sending broadcasts to those new subscribers, on top of the autoresponders they’re already receiving, and voila, sales volume exploded! I think this is for a few reasons: 1, that my broadcasts go out in the early morning, while autoresponders hit approximately the same time of day the user signed up, so early-birds definitely get the emails, before they get caught up in their busy day. 2, prospects are hottest to buy in that first week, so doubling the number of marketing messages in that time works. And 3, since most unsubscribes happen early on, I’m getting their attention before they bail on me.

So there you have it – the 5 methods I’ve used to literally double my sales volume without increasing traffic, simply by becoming more effective in my email marketing.

The problem isn’t that accurate conversion tracking is lacking in terms of what both AdWords as well as third-party solutions offer (I use Conversion Ruler myself.)

The problem is that only about half of people who initially visit my site via PPC and register a click via tracking actually buy from that same computer/browser combination.

Conversion tracking works by placing a cookie on a user’s browser, and/or tracking their IP address or hostname. This obviously works perfectly when the user makes the purchase on that initial visit, or buys later on from that same computer & browser.

However, counting on someone to make the initial site visit, and eventually buy, from that one computer is becoming less and less common, especially as more people opt-in to email lists with an iPad or smartphone, then open an email campaign from a home or work computer and buy there. And particularly in my business, people sign up at work and buy from home or vice versa.

The problem is compounded by marketers like me who are especially aggressive with email marketing, combined with a longer-than-usual sales cycle.

Over the years I’ve frequently observed the phenomenon of adding a new paid traffic source only to shut it down because the conversions weren’t there in my tracking reports; however, there would be a surge in “mystery” conversions with no associated tracking data in the days and weeks that followed, which I can only assume came from the traffic source I’d turned off, assuming it was ineffective.

I know what you’re thinking – just put tracking tags in follow-up email campaigns!

And my answer is: I do! But they only give me half the picture. It’s great to know which emails work best, but ultimately I want to know what traffic sources originated those customers who purchased via an email.

So, starting today, I’ve set up a new strategy to hopefully solve this never-ending tracking dilemma: I’m sending specific traffic sources to different landing pages that each subscribe to a specific, segmented email list.

As a result I can send traffic from Source A to a specific landing page that goes to a List A. Then, in the purchase links in the follow-up emails, I can tag the URLs as coming from List A.

That way, instead of a bunch of mystery conversions, I can figure out what the original traffic source was and make better decisions on what campaigns live and die.

Is this a perfect solution? No, of course not. Is it tedious? Yes. I’m working on ways to simplify it a bit, such as dynamically using tracking tags to auto-subscribe the user to the correct, specific list. However, if it works – and I think it will, at least for my purposes, I won’t be flying blind anymore when I send an email broadcast out then find 30 or more conversions that seemingly came from nowhere, with no traffic data.

The following factors will significantly impact all AdWords advertisers:

1. Landing Page Quality. Google is increasing the weight given to landing page quality in determining AdWords Quality Score. This means that poorly-designed landing pages, especially “squeeze pages” that have no navigation, will see Quality Scores severely impacted, or will be banned from the AdWords network altogether (a welcome change to advertisers like myself who play by the rules).

2. Landing Page Relevancy. Weight given to landing page relevancy is going up as well. This means that both the keyword phrase that triggers a user’s ad, as well as the ad copy itself, must be relevant to the content on the landing page. You’ll see those annoying ads with content like “click here dude, really, click here” disappearing as they’re “slapped” out of existence by these changes.

To cope with these changes – and even excel and defeat your competitors who are not aware of this – the following tips will assist you:

• Make sure your landing page(s) include full navigation, enough content and information to let a user know what your site is all about, and most important of all, eliminate “squeeze pages” as landing pages in your AdWords campaigns.
• Review your ad groups to be sure keyword groups are tightly themed. As an example, an HVAC contractor offering repair services would want Ad Group A to focus solely on air conditioning repair and point those ads to a landing page dedicated to a/c repair, while Ad Group B that focuses on furnace repair should have ad copy relevant only to furnace repair, and all ads should point to a furnace repair landing page.
• As always, make sure you don’t have any issues with any pages in your website that violate AdWords policies, such as pop-under or hover fly-in ads, exit splash pop-ups, any type of scripts that collect user information with user consent, and so on.

This is a big deal because Quality Score largely determines the cost-per-click you will pay, in what position your ads will how, and finally, if they will show at all – the phrase “Rarely shown due to low quality score” is all too common in the Keywords view of many clients’ AdWords accounts when they approach me for help.

Here are the key components that make up your AdWords Quality Score (at least the known ones – Google is a bit secretive about this):

1. Clickthrough rate (CTR): This is huge. If your CTR, the percentage of people who see your ad and click on it, is too low, your quality score will go down with it. To get around this problem, see this article on shortcuts to high clickthrough rates.

2. Keyword relevancy to ad copy: This is fairly simple to achieve. It consists of having keywords, or individual words that make up your search phrases, actually appearing in your ads, either in the headline, in the body, or even both. This is why it’s crucially important to have tightly-themed ad groups. If you throw 500 keyword phrases into an ad group, it will be literally impossible to come up with ad copy that is relevant to all of them. So limit your ad groups to no more than about 50 keyword phrases each, and keep them relevant to each other and to the ad copy.

3. Keyword relevancy to landing page: This is growing in importance (though Google hasn’t reached the level they have over at MSN/Microsoft adCenter where they are extremely picky about keyword-to-page relevancy). If the individual keyword phrases that triggers an ad isn’t relevant to the landing page, your quality score will suffer, costs will go up, and ad positions will drop. The solution here is to have multiple landing pages on your site(s). This is easy to accomplish, because if you follow the advice in step 2 above, when you create those tightly-themed ad groups and ad copy, create relevant landing pages to go along with them.

4. Your site’s speed and load time: This one is little-known and largely overlooked, but AdWords analyzes your landing pages’ load time, and penalizes your Quality Score for poor performance. So if you’re still using one of those cheapo $10/month shared hosting accounts, you really need to think about whether it’s worth the savings. Bumping up to a dedicated server for $200-300/month can potentially save you thousands in wasted AdWords costs!

5. Your site design and layout: This has to do with having full navigation on all pages, including landing pages, and avoiding squeeze pages.

Follow these five simple steps to improve your AdWords Quality Score, and watch your return on investment and profits quickly improve!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwn9gVOztcc

I’m excited to start testing this out, and here’s why:

My top-performing campaign primarily shows on the Display Network, and on top of that, I’m already using Google’s Conversion Optimizer (CPA) bidding. CPA bidding essentially adjusts bids on the fly to automatically achieve the desired CPA without any real work on my part.

What Display Campaign Optimizer appears to do is a similar function, but in addition to automatic bidding, it features automatic placements on sites that are most contextually relevant to the keywords in question.

So, on top of consistently producing the desired CPA, this may be an opportunity to get more and more conversions at that CPA thanks to more relevant ad placements!

I will keep you posted as I learn more about this from Google and try it out myself.

The problem I find most of the time is that the advertiser’s website simply doesn’t convert. Instead of improving the site itself to increase conversions, most marketers and advertisers are on a quest for more traffic.

The key to success though, and huge returns on advertising investment, is to do more with the traffic you already have. Then, and only then, should you look to increase spending on traffic sources.

This shift in thinking happened for me in 2006. At that point I had been doing business online for several years, and like most online marketers, I was on a mission to get more and more traffic.

But then I took a step back and looked at how well I was monetizing my existing traffic. And truth be told, I wasn’t doing a very good job.

As a result, I took two major initiatives:

1. Improve On-Site Conversion Rate

I worked hard and did endless A/B split-testing and multivariate (Taguchi) testing to improve on-site conversion, in terms of both opt-in conversion, and sales conversion.

2. Increase Revenue Per Customer

I did this by adding upsells to my product funnel. In other words, when someone makes a purchase, they are offered additional products until they finally say “no” at which point the order process ends and they reach the thank-you page.

And while I’ve always had an email follow-up system in place, this year I really spent a lot of time, effort, and analysis on:

3. Improving Follow-Up Results

Part of #1, optimizing for opt-in conversion, results in far more email signups per day and a larger email list. Therefore it only made sense to really test and measure different ideas in terms of getting existing subscribers to buy. Combined with #2, more revenue per customer, this really made a huge difference.

While I won’t get into details here and will save the ins-and-outs of my email campaigns for future articles, the gist of it is in the knowledge that people are hottest to buy when they first opt-in and make that initial visit to the site.

From that point forward, the more time passes, the less likely they are to buy.

So with that in mind, I now do a much more aggressive follow-up series, with near-daily emails. Furthermore, I now do most of my emailing as live broadcasts, which are freshly written, and sent out in real time, rather than a pre-written follow-up autoresponder.

In summary, if you’re an AdWords, or any other type of pay-per-click advertiser and you’re not seeing the returns on investment you’d like, take a step back and do everything you can to improve your on-site conversion. Then and only then should you begin dumping more money into ad spend.

One final note: Be realistic. I had an AdWords client who claimed to have a 10% conversion rate on his site for a $900 product – and with first-time visitors, no less! This is completely unrealistic and probably impossible – anyone who could pull off a 10% conversion rate on a $900 product would be an overnight billionaire. Set realistic expectations, and you won’t be disappointed.

As you probably know by now, the +1 button has been live on search ads for a while now. Here’s a screenshot of one of my own ads showing that I +1′ed it:

Now, similar functionality will show on Display Network ads. Here is an example of what a display ad with +1 functionality will look like (photo courtesy of Google’s Inside AdWords blog):

Courtesy of Inside AdWords

As with +1 implementation on search ads, you won’t have to do anything – sometime soon the +1 button will simply begin appearing on your display ads.

The goal in this is to make ads more relevant by showing who, in an end-user’s Google network, has endorsed the ad. I expect this advantage to grow, perhaps slowly, but nevertheless exponentially as more and more people get on board with Google social features.

I also expect that this may make a bit of a dent in Facebook’s ad growth. While Facebook ad revenue is exploding, and is predicted to rise 104% according to eMarketer, the truth of the matter is that Facebook ads are still relatively ineffective when compared with AdWords. While Facebook may be current king of the “Like” button, AdWords still rules the pay-per-click space in terms of both market share and return-on-investment for advertisers, and the new +1 on ads will likely continue that dominance.

What are match types?

AdWords match types fall into three categories: Broad, Phrase, and Exact. And now, there is a new, fourth one called Broad Match Modifier that I’ll briefly describe here and explain in full detail in a subsequent article.

Let’s go through the three main match types first:

1. Broad Match

Broad match is what you get when you simply type in a search phrase. As an example, let’s use the #1 phrase for one of my websites, ‘cold calling.’ This is from my Never Cold Call Again website which sells a sales training package, so the search results we want must be related to sales training, and when possible, specifically to sales prospecting and cold calling. If I simply type:

cold calling

in as my search phrase, then any end-user’s search phrase that includes both words will trigger my ad. So if someone enters, as their search phrase:

calling all cold eskimos in Alaska

then guess what – they’re going to see this ad:

And you know what? This ad is totally irrelevant to the user’s search phrase!

What happens is that it won’t get a clickthrough, meaning my clickthrough rate is hurt, along with that search phrase’s Quality Score.

So, while broad match has a place, it’s the least desirable of all match types, even though most AdWords advertisers unknowingly use it by default.

2. Phrase Match

The next level up is phrase match. It is enabled by putting a search phrase in quotation marks:

“cold calling”

Phrase match will trigger ads when the end-user’s search term includes the full phrase, in word order, anywhere in their search query.

So, if someone types in “calling all cold eskimos in Alaska,” they won’t trigger my ad for cold calling/sales training. But, if they type in something like “cold calling to sell insurance to eskimos in Alaska,” then they will trigger my ad, and this time the ad is actually relevant!

For that reason, phrase match is probably the biggest generator of traffic, and overall it produces good clickthrough rates and ROI.

3. Exact Match

Exact match is effected by putting the search phrase in brackets:

[cold calling]

Exact match is just that – exact. The end-user must enter the exact search phrase in order to trigger your ad.

The good news is that it produces the most relevant traffic and search results, for excellent clickthrough rates, Quality Scores, and overall results.

The down side? Traffic is minimal. My example search phrase ‘cold calling’ has so few exact searches on Google each month that it’s not even worth it to me to do an SEO campaign for that phrase, so as you can imagine, exact match traffic is minimal.

But the exact match traffic I do get converts exceptionally well, so it makes sense in the end to use it.

4. Broad Match Modifier

This is effected by using plus signs in front of each word in a phrase:

+cold +calling

Broad Match Modifier, or BMM, is a happy medium between Broad Match and Phrase Match. The resulting traffic is better in quality than Broad Match, but lesser in quantity than Phrase Match.

What it essentially does is loosen up the “those exact words, in that exact order” approach of Phrase Match by triggering your ad more frequently when another word might come between those in your search phrase, but when Google still thinks it might be relevant.

I’ve been experimenting with BMM for my top phrase, ‘cold calling’ in its own campaign, and the results have been very promising so far.

As a final note, I strongly recommend that when you generate keyword lists, you create separate ad groups for Broad, Phrase, and Exact match types, and now of course, BMM. Here is a free tool I offer on one of my websites that can automatically generate all of those match types for you, from just one keyword list:

AdWords Keyword Wrapper Tool

(The tool doesn’t yet include BMM because it’s so new.)

As I mentioned in another article about ad optimization, having a high clickthrough rate doesn’t necessarily equate to more sales or a good return on investment. However, you still need at least a decent clickthrough rate to get good costs-per-click and ad positions; furthermore, very low clickthrough rates will get entire ad groups and campaigns penalized, or “slapped” as is the popular term for this.

Most importantly though, new campaigns, and new advertisers in particular, really need to crank up clickthrough rates quickly in order to compete with advertisers who have been using AdWords for a long time. The problem is that clickthrough history is permanently archived and stored in your account details and used long-term to evaluate and choose Quality Scores.

Long-time advertisers who have established clickthrough rates and Quality Scores have an unfair advantage from brand-new advertisers, and to a lesser degree, brand-new campaigns from established advertisers, simply because anything new starts out at zero clickthrough rate.

In order to defeat this problem, and quickly establish clickthrough rate history, I like to use the Keyword Macro feature within AdWords to create ads that generate extremely high clickthrough rates, very quickly.

Here’s how it works:

The Keyword Macro feature allows you to display the end user’s exact search phrase as the headline in your ad! The syntax for this is:

{keyword:default text}

with the “default text” being whatever headline you would like displayed just in case the user’s search phrase exceeds the AdWords 25-character headline limit.

A better way to do it is as follows:

{KeyWord:default text}

in which case the first letter of every word in the end user’s search phrase is automatically capitalized, making your ad appear more professional. Here is a real-life example of an ad from one of my campaigns:

And here is how it works in the real world:

Internet users are naturally more inclined to click on ads that show the most relevant headlines related to their search terms. By showing the exact search phrase as your ad headline, you guarantee very high clickthrough rates!

There’s a catch, though: As I’ve explained previously, high clickthrough rates frequently result in poor sales conversion, for the simple fact that your site may very well not have anything to do with the user’s search phrase, even though that is what your ad is displaying as a headline.

With that in mind, here are two thoughts on how to use this feature for maximum benefit:

1. Remember that you are using this strictly as a “trick” and a shortcut to get high clickthrough rate history established in your AdWords account and in a specific campaign. Do it for a few weeks or even a month. The result will be a bit of wasted ad spend in the short term, but tons and tons of saved money and lower costs-per-click, along with higher ad positions, in the long term.

2. Since you should always test and measure as many ad variations as possible in your campaigns, test this type of ad versus a static headline ad. Every now and then it will out-perform and you’ll be surprised at the results. I still have a handful of ad groups that permanently use Keyword Macro ads because they generate both high clickthrough and conversion rates.

For my simple ad scoring system which I use to determine which ads live and which ones die, see this post on ad scoring.

What it essentially does is begins by giving all ads in an ad group equal time, but the ad with the highest clickthrough rate will gradually get more and more “air time” until finally it is the only one showing, and the others are paused, for all intents and purposes.

Furthermore, using this tool is very popular because practically all AdWords books and courses on the market advocate it. However, I don’t.

Is the tool bad?

Not at all. But, the problem is that if you’re optimizing ads for clickthrough rate, you’re only optimizing for half the picture!

Why do we advertise, whether it’s on AdWords or anywhere else? Simple: To make sales. Our goal in marketing any business, product, or service online is to convert site visitors into sales.

On the surface, it makes sense to optimize AdWords ads solely for highest clickthrough rate. Why? Because clickthrough rate is one of the biggest factors that goes into your AdWords Quality Score, which largely determines your actual costs-per-click, your ad position, and in extreme cases, whether or not your ads even show at all.

However, a high clickthrough rate doesn’t necessarily translate into sales. In fact, an unusually high clickthrough rate frequently produces clicks that don’t convert at all.

Why?

Because in order to get an extremely high clickthrough rate, you essentially need to over-promise. And over-promising in your ads certainly won’t earn you any customers. If anything, it will turn potential customers off.

It’s not unlike the outright deceptive email subject lines that a lot of desperate online marketers are resorting to. It’s become commonplace to receive an email with the subject line “Problem with your order #9u8e3″ or “Collections: Final Notice” only to open the email and find that it’s a marketing message!

Naturally, even though I opened the email, I don’t buy from any of these people. Likewise, if your AdWords ad promises one thing, in order to generate high clickthrough rates, but the landing page offers something quite different, people aren’t going to buy.

So, does this mean you shouldn’t optimize for clickthrough rates?

No, but what it does mean is that you have to optimize for both clickthrough and conversion rates, and choose ads to run that give you the highest possible combination of both.

Here’s how:

This is a typical screen shot of what you’ll see in the Ads view in your AdWords account:

Notice that you see clickthrough rate (CTR) and conversion rate (Conv. Rate) displayed. The way I score ads to determine their overall value is to multiple the conversion rate by the clickthrough rate. In this case, we’d have:

0.72 x 8.5 = 6.12

This final “score” of 6.12 is what I use as a final ranking number to choose which ads live and which ones die.

Here’s a real life example of an ad I was running that shows exactly why you should never optimize on clickthrough rate alone – it had a clickthrough rate of 3.54%, which is practically unheard of and nearly impossible to achieve, but didn’t convert any sales:

3.54 x 0 = 0

Naturally, anything times zero equals zero. So if an ad isn’t converting sales, even a 100% clickthrough rate is totally worthless!

Sadly, many AdWords authors and self-proclaimed “experts” who make their living writing books and conducting seminars, but who don’t actually manage real-life AdWords accounts for a living, will tell you that you should use the automatic ad optimization tool that relies on clickthrough rate – in which case the 3.54% CTR ad would have lived while the others died, yet it would have produced zero sales and the poor owner of that account would soon be out of business!

So, in summary, while clickthrough rate is very important, and while an unacceptably low clickthrough rate will hurt you big-time, it’s only half the picture. Having a high clickthrough rate but no conversions is equivalent to a salesman who has lots of appointments but can’t close any sales. At the end of the month, he’ll be broke and hungry.

Likewise, if you’re not optimizing your ads for sales conversion as well as clickthrough rate, you’ll be in trouble too. Use my simple scoring system instead, and you’ll quickly maximize your AdWords ad performance!

With that in mind I switched them to Conversion Optimizer, Google’s CPA (cost-per-action) bidding system.

What Conversion Optimizer does is allow you to set either a maximum or a target CPA and then it goes to work optimizing bids and ad positions to meet that CPA consistently.

I’ve also moved many – actually most – of my own campaigns to Conversion Optimizer and the results have been very impressive.

Here are a few reasons why I’ve gotten such great results with Conversion Optimizer and why I strongly recommend that other AdWords advertisers give it a shot:

1. More control over costs and CPAs

With Conversion Optimizer, you don’t have to worry about a campaign or ad group going haywire and costing you, say, $10 per lead when your target is $4. Once you have your target or max bids set, your actual results, while not being 100% precise, will be close and will generally stay in the ballpark regardless of other factors.

2. More consistency with traffic

One of the challenges that AdWords advertisers run into, particularly new advertisers, is that they need to carefully control their spend and so they set their bids conservatively. The problem is that bidding too low can result in little or no traffic, but increasing those bids can produce sudden surges that wildly exceed the target CPA and/or budget. With Conversion Optimizer you can be sure that your traffic flow will remain consistent, while avoiding unacceptably high costs.

3. Conversion Optimizer follows Display Network trends

This is the best part for me in terms of real world results. Traditionally, I have managed Display Network placements by watching automatic placements for well-performing sites, moving those into managed placements, and then managing the bids manually. The problem, however, is that sites that performed well last month might not perform well this month, and on the other hand, I may be missing out on optimal control over sites that are suddenly receiving surges in traffic. What Conversion Optimizer does is keep an eye on all of this for you in the background, automatically, and display your ads on the sites that are producing the best returns at any given time.

4. It saves you a ton of time

One of the best parts of Conversion Optimizer is that it’s pretty much the only automated AdWords bidding system that actually works, since I haven’t found any third-party automation tool that actually works (some will even destroy your results). Once it’s up and running, it does the work for you, so you’re free to be productive in other areas of your business. Furthermore, unlike  many of the questionable third-party automation tools, this one is free and is included as part of your AdWords account!

Of course, you have to have a minimum amount of 15 conversions in the past 30 days for Conversion Optimizer to have a sufficient baseline of data to work with. If you’re not using AdWords conversion tracking, set it up now so you can accumulate those 15 and begin using one of the most effective free tools in the Google AdWords arsenal.

This made me laugh because just this week I was reviewing my AdWords performance trends and have discovered that my AdWords costs-per-click have not increased, but have dropped!

How can this be possible when so many people are talking about AdWords price increases?

The truth of the matter is that while the overall market determines the price range that your clicks will cost you, your own AdWords costs-per-click are largely determined by – drum roll – you!

My overall costs-per-click have dropped because of improvements I have made, in both AdWords itself and on my own landing pages.

Here are a few examples of what I’ve done, that you can do to reduce your AdWords costs:

1. Drop The “Squeeze” Pages

For a long time I only used landing pages that might be described as squeeze pages – they were designed for the sole purpose of getting a visitor to sign up for a list and that’s it. However, Google hates these. In fact I was even warned by AdWords themselves that squeeze pages are frowned upon and that they strongly recommend a higher-quality page that includes full and conspicuous site navigation.

I was terrified of making this change because the squeeze pages were averaging about 40% opt-in rate and even as high as 80% on some highly targeted campaigns!

To my relief, and astonishment, the opt-in rates didn’t drop at all with a full-navigation landing page. In fact, overall conversion rate improved! When Google says they follow this rule in order to maximize the user’s experience, they’re right. My own results show that a professional-looking, respectable site with full navigation not only equals the opt-in rate of the “squeeze page” but generates higher sales conversion overall.

2. Increase Focus on the Display Network

The overwhelming majority of my sales conversions come from Display Network traffic. This might come as a surprise to some because many self-proclaimed AdWords “gurus” will tell you to avoid the Display Network entirely and stick with Search Network only.

This is absurd.

By increasing the time spent on managing my Display Network ads, I’ve really kicked things up a few notches. Specifically:

- I watch automatic placements closely and when I find ones that convert unusually well, I move them into managed placements for more control over bids. (And in some cases I will even contact the site owner directly for direct advertising which is sometimes, but not always, less expensive than AdWords.)

- I add a variety of display ads in all available sizes, and keep a close eye on them for the best-performing ads in terms of both clickthrough rate and conversion rate. This isn’t difficult or expensive – I create most of mine in the AdWords Display Ad Builder. No need to pay a graphic designer.

- If a campaign is performing very well, and has enough history to qualify, I move it to Conversion Optimizer (CPA) bidding. This by far has given me the highest returns of all in my campaigns.

- If a campaign is performing very well but doesn’t have enough conversion history to qualify for CPA bidding, I go with Enhanced bidding instead.

3. Create Tightly-Themed Ad Groups

This technique is especially effective with Display Network advertising, and in fact, Google’s new Contextual Placement Tool makes this super easy. You type in the main keywords or search phrases you’re going after and it will come up with a through list of very tightly-themed ad groups that you can simply export into AdWords Editor and make live in your account.

4. Eliminate, or Isolate, low-CTR Keywords

Find the low-CTR keywords in your campaigns. If they’re not generating conversions, pause them (I prefer not to delete anything in case I ever want to go back and look at metrics). If they are generating conversions, move them all into their own campaign, organized into relevant ad groups, so that they don’t mess up your other campaigns’ CTR rates.

5. Eliminate, or Isolate, low Quality Score keywords

Same as above, but now do this with low Quality Score keywords.

These 5 steps will go a long way to greatly improving your AdWords performance and getting the idea out of your mind that they’ve had any price increases. Do this, and you’ll see your costs dropping significantly while traffic goes up!

1. Call-to-Action

2. Call-to-Action in Every Frame

3. Company or Brand Logo

4. Pricing Information

5. Clear Value Proposition

6. Sense of Urgency

7. Coordinate Image and Colors

8. Balance Text and Images

9. Relevant Landing Page

10. Cast a Wide Net (create ad in every available size)

Click Here to View The Full Post

Microsoft Advertising adCenter has made a couple of announcements for improvements starting this month, September 2011.

1. Easier and Faster Account Reactivation

Starting this month, you will be able to reactive an account without having to create a new one. All you need to do is select the inactive account in the Accounts List view, and click Re-Activate.

Photo courtesy of Microsoft

This will work as long as the account has not had an unpaid balance for more than 180 days. Also, the standard account limits still apply: No more than 6 accounts at any one time and up to 5 of them can be associated with a single credit card.

2. Improved Account Management Interface

In response to demand and criticism, adCenter has updated their interface for full compatibility with the latest versions of both Internet Explorer and Firefox – Firefox in particular is great news for us Mac users.

Although a specific release date hasn’t been announced yet, Microsoft is promising full adCenter compatibility with both Safari (woohoo!) and Chrome in the near future.

In summary, this is great news for both current and potential adCenter users. I will certainly be giving it more attention and allocating more advertising budget to it as they continue to improve. And while nothing compares to the huge traffic and results of AdWords – at least not yet – MSN adCenter is certainly moving in the right direction.

While AdWords already provides first page bid estimates and has for a long time, this new tool estimates the required cost-per-click bid to appear regularly in the top positions on the page, above the natural search results.

This new feature is especially useful in conjunction with the “Top vs. side” report segment, which compares ad performance for ads appearing above search results, versus ads which show in the sidebar to the right of results.

To access this valuable new data:

1. Go to the Keywords tab in your AdWords campaign.

2. Click the Columns button.

3. Select ‘Customize Columns’ from the drop down.

4. Click the checkbox for ‘Est. top of page bid’ and then click Save.

You’ll now see your estimated top of page bid requirement in your keywords view!

As of now, you can add an Ad Position parameter to your tracking URL. So, with each click that comes through to your landing page(s), Google AdWords can report via whichever third-party tracking platform you use (we like ConversionRuler.com), what position your ad was in when the user clicked on it.

Implementing the new tracking feature is as follows:

http://www.yourlandingpage.com/?adpos={adposition}

The example value of “adpos” can be whatever you want it to be in your tracking software, or whatever your tracking platform will allow it to be. The parameter that counts as far as AdWords is concerned is the {adposition}.

The reporting works like this:

If the value passed is “1t2″, then what AdWords is telling you is that your ad was on page 1, on top, in position 2.

Another example: “1s3″ would mean your ad was on page 1, in the sidebar, in position 3.

As to Display Network advertising, unfortunately at this time Google cannot relay that information and so the value “none” will be passed along.

This new parameter is VERY valuable for AdWords advertisers, and here’s why:

Currently in AdWords reporting you can only see your average position in search results. This is fine for measuring things relatively, but by measuring the EXACT position of your ads with each individual clickthrough, you can analyze that data and determine which positions are resulting in the most clickthroughs, and most importantly, what positions convert the most sales!

You can then take this data and apply it to your campaign optimization efforts in order to maximize your results by bidding for positions that convert best for you.

Of course, this feature would have been best used in conjunction with AdWords Position Preference which has been phased out. Since this newly available tracking parameter makes Position Preference a lot more useful and powerful than it ever was before, perhaps Google will bring it back!

If you’ve been living under a rock – or are new to online marketing – Ripoff Reports is a complaint website that is unregulated and where complaints, and complainants, are unverified. In other words, you can sign up under a fake name and fake email address and post complaints about any company you want, and the complaints are made public for all to see.

In over eight years in business with well over 50,000 copies of my various books and products sold, it’s inevitable that I’ve gotten a few bogus Ripoff Reports filed against me and my company. Although I must admit that they’re relatively few considering the large number of my customers.

Just about all of them are written by dishonest customers who fully intended to rip me off by ordering one of my products under my very generous 30-day free trial offer, where we ship a product and let the customer try it free for 30 days. If they keep it, we automatically charge their credit card for the price of the product. If they send it back before 30 days, we cancel their order and they’re never charged.

The Ripoff Reports mostly come from people who sign up for a 30-day trial with full intent to keep the product – or should I say steal it – without paying for it. They do this by using a pre-paid Visa card with insufficient funds to cover the charge after 30 days. Or they file a frivolous dispute with their credit card company in order to reverse the charge.

In almost all cases we win the credit card disputes by simply providing proof-of-shipping. But in those cases where the customer got around that by either using a pre-paid card, or in cases where they continued to re-dispute the charge until they won, we send them to a third-party collection agency that also reports these people as delinquent collection accounts to all credit bureaus.

And therein lie the Ripoff Report customers.

These losers file complaints, flat-out admitting their scheme to get my product for free, but then accusing me of being the bad guy by sending them to collections!

There are also the thieves who claim they “didn’t know” they were going to be charged in 30 days and thought the product was free, even though the 30-day charge is explained a whopping 12 times on the product page and twice on the checkout page, where they even agree at the time of placing their order that they are responsible for payment in 30 days!!!

BUT -

What these morons who suffer from low mental wattage don’t know is, when they file their bogus Ripoff Reports, or whichever one of those websites they choose, they are doing me a huge favor!

See, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the lifeblood of many an Internet business. I personally don’t pay much attention to SEO because I generate most of my traffic from AdWords, along with direct traffic from readers of my published books or people who have seen me speak. And due to the sheer age of my websites they tend to rank highly for most relevant keywords.

Having said that, incoming links from so-called “authority” websites with high PageRanks from Google are the most important factor in getting high search engine rankings.

And guess what: Ripoff Reports is an authority site with a high PageRank!

So, every time a thief files a Ripoff Report about me, they’re providing a very valuable and authoritative back link to my site, something many webmasters and site owners willing pay big money to get!

These links result in more and better search engine rankings, meaning more traffic and more sales for me!

Ripoff Reports also do an excellent job of weeding out miserly, malicious people who check in advance to make sure a business is an easy “mark” before buying. They have no effect on honest, legitimate customers who know full well that only petty miserable people post them in the first place.

So to all of my Ripoff Report friends: Thank you for giving me all those valuable links that are increasing my income every day!

PS: One of the biggest faults with Ripoff Reports is they don’t allow any complaints to be deleted, even by the original poster; therefore I don’t have to worry about any of these crooks deleting their reports in order to deprive me of those valuable links after they read this.

“An advertiser with a low click-through rate will be punished with higher costs per click, and lower ad positions, than a competitor with a high click-through rate,” says Frank Rumbauskas (http://www.adwordsopus.com), who holds Google’s professional certifications in both AdWords and Analytics. “Unlike other pay-per-click engines where bid price is the sole factor in determining ad position, AdWords includes many factors that really give a small business a chance against bigger players.”

But, how to get that elusive high click-through rate? Rumbauskas provides these tips on how a new advertiser can quickly gain an advantage over competitors:

1. Use Keyword Macros. This feature in AdWords allows you to craft your ads so that the end user’s actual search phrase appears as your ad headline. The format is as follows: {KeyWord:Backup Headline Here}, where the backup headline is entered in the event that the end user’s search phrase exceeds AdWords’s 25-character headline limit.

The use of keyword macros makes your ads appear much more relevant to an end user, resulting in a dramatically higher click-through rate. Rumbauskas warns that this frequently results in a lower sales conversion rate because of the false appearance of high relevancy: “If you use this tactic and find that you have a low conversion rate, use it only temporarily to build a high click-through rate, because that click-through rate history will stay with your account for the long-term.”

2. Use Small Ad Groups. Using small ad groups with keywords that are highly relevant to each other – and to ad copy – results in higher click-through rates. “You want your keyword lists to have tightly common themes, and you also want to include the main keywords of that theme into your ad body, and also the headline, or backup headline in the case of keyword macros, if possible,” explains Rumbauskas.

3. Immediately disable poorly performing ads. “You ideally want to test many ad variations, but if you activate one and see that it’s not delivering a high-click through rate, pause it immediately before it throws your entire campaign off.”

Frank Rumbauskas is president of ROI Advisors, Inc., a Certified Google Partner Company. You can download a free 36-page PDF guide to using AdWords at http://www.adwordsopus.com

So, in other words, if someone +1′s your AdWords ad, everyone in that person’s Google network will see that they +1′ed it.

This is a VERY powerful tool in increasing both click-throughs and sales from your AdWords campaigns.

If you don’t have the +1 button installed on your site, here’s where you can get the code:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/

What does this really mean for you? Simple: We already know that AdWords is one of the best – if not THE best – e-commerce traffic source in the world. With the +1 button in place, AdWords now has social media functionality very similar (if not exactly like) the Facebook Like button.

In other words, it now adds the element of SOCIAL PROOF to your AdWords campaigns. Right now, anyone can sign up for AdWords (well, almost anyone), and start an effective ad campaign in minutes. But with the +1 button, you can now add the element of social proof to your ads, which is well-known to any experienced internet marketer as the most powerful conversion tool in the world.

So get the Google +1 button on your site and begin using this powerful new tool!

Learn all the details here -

AdWords PPC Management Services by Frank Rumbauskas

To your success,
Frank

Most internet marketers use hosted shopping cart solutions, and for a long time, I was no exception. I started out on day one with 1ShoppingCart.com, and moved to UltraCart a few years later.

Why?

Because hosted cart solutions are quick & easy to set up, and, at least initially, they’re cheap. However, if you’re a serious marketer, hosted carts are not a serious solution.

The reasons are many. Mostly they come down to flexibility and customization. For example, while some hosted carts allow quite a bit of flexibility when it comes to matching up the checkout pages with your site, they will still never be exactly the same. There are exceptions; for example, UltraCart has the ability to let you use your own order forms which then post the information to their servers, but, as someone put it to me, “Good luck finding someone who can figure out their API.” In other words, for the amount of money you’ll spend getting that custom programming and design done, you may as well get your own e-commerce solution.

Here are the specific reasons why I advise internet marketers to avoid hosted solutions and get their own cart set up:

1. Cost. Hosted shopping carts are cheap initially, but you have to continue paying for them monthly, for as long as the cart remains active. Since account options that give you the full range of features are typically in the $100-200 range, in less than a year you’ll spend more than it would’ve cost you to have your own system installed and customized.

2. Flexibility. As I’ve already mentioned, you are very limited when it comes to customizing hosted shopping cart pages to match your own site, and getting someone to set up a page that posts to the cart’s API can be prohibitively expensive. By installing your own solution you are on your own site and have full control over what the pages look like. This affects sales more than you think.

3. Conversion rate. Consumers are taught to look for changes in URLs as a red-flag that they’re being redirected to a phishing or fraudulent site that’s out to steal their credit card number. When a customer clicks your “order” button and is redirected from your domain to a third-party site, many will assume they’re walking into a phishing scam, and will close the browser without buying.

4. Credibility. Big companies that consumers are used to buying from have their own shopping carts set up on their own domains. By  hosting your own cart, you give yourself that same credibility and increase your sales in the process.

5. EV SSL. Consumers used to look for the “https” in the URL and the little padlock icon on their browser. Now, the “green bar,” powered by EV SSL, is becoming the de-facto standard in browser security. And guess what? The hosted carts don’t offer it. They can’t, because the fact that they provide e-commerce shopping carts to third parties excludes them from EV SSL qualification. By hosting your own shopping cart, you can get the green bar EV SSL on your site. Businesses are reporting an average conversion rate increase of 50% just by giving site visitors the green bar on checkout, so it’s absolutely worth it! And with EV SSL certificates now available for as cheap at $99 there’s no excuse not to do it.

In summary, any serious marketer or business owner will host their own solution. There are many available, so do your research and find the one that suits your business best. Your sales numbers will explode as a result.

I’ve recently been doing massive amounts of testing to increase opt-in rate on my top site’s home page. I made it a short-term goal to really test every possible idea and variant I could come up with – no matter how crazy – and find the best possible combination to generate a huge opt-in rate.

I succeeded!

The final version increased opt-ins by nearly fifty percent! Incredible! This was a big deal for me because I’ve always been surrounded by internet marketers who achieve seemingly impossible opt-in rates, while I continued to bang my head against the wall trying to improve upon the much more modest opt-in rate I was stuck with.

So, here I was over the past week, watching my list explode in size, and laughing out loud in joy at the amount of leads I was capturing daily.

Except for one big problem: While my opt-in rate exploded, my sales conversion rate tapered off dramatically.

Why?

Because in the process of creating my new mega-successful squeeze page, I forgot about the fact that the instant a site visitor lands on the page, the sales process begins.

Most internet marketers separate the opt-in and the sales letter. They see them as two separate steps: First, capture a lead. Then and only then, the sales process begins.

Wrong!

The sales process begins the instant someone finds your site. (In the case of a JV, it begins even before then, in the form of the copy that your affiliates mail out.)

My new squeeze page, while capturing leads at an unheard-of rate, failed to build the interest and credibility necessary to make site visitors actually want to read the sales page. Instead, all it did was entice them with a great download, and instead of reading my sales letter and buying my product, they were happy with the freebie.

So, I’m going back to an old rule of mine that I somehow forgot about: Whenever I split-test an opt-in page, I’ll always include a second outcome in the test in the form of sales conversion rate. After all, what good is a big pile of opt-ins if they’re not buying your product at the end of the day?

Remember that quality always trumps quantity. For years, internet marketers have always been in a contest with each other to build the biggest list. Now many are in a big pissing match to get the most social media followers. Both pursuits are a fruitless waste of time, for the simple fact that neither focuses on the only thing that puts money in our pockets: Sales.

Don’t make the mistake I make and forsake sales volume in exchange for worthless list building. Always, always, always measure the impact on ultimate sales conversion no matter what kind changes you’re making!

Update: I’ve finally made the decision to walk away from the publishing world, despite strong interest from a major publisher (larger than my previous publisher, Wiley), to publish my next book concept.

To shed some light on this decision, and why traditional book publishers are becoming irrelevant and obsolete, I’ll fill you in on a conversation I had with a friend a few days ago.

This friend is another well-known internet marketer and has a large email list. He was in talks with a major New York publisher to do a book deal. That is, until the conversation took a bad turn. Here’s what the editor he’d been working with had to say:

You will need to guarantee that you will promote the book to your list hard. On launch day, you will need to have at least 30 of your largest JV partners promoting the book, and they’ll all need to run contests and give out bonuses to get people to buy. You’ll need to guarantee a #1 best-seller day at Amazon. Put all of that into writing, and then I’ll take the book proposal to my board for approval.

In response to that very brazen and totally unreasonable set of demands, my friend said this to the publisher:

“If you require me to do all that, what the hell do I need YOU for?”

And that’s exactly why publishers will continue to lose large list owners as authors, and will lose more and more money as their antiquated business model continues to lose steam.

Here’s the singular concept that publishers do not understand:

To a successful marketer like myself who already has a large list, a published book is just another marketing tool to get people to my website and get them to opt-in. That’s it. Nothing more.

So, with that in mind, the goal of a book is to get it into as many hands as possible. Not only will that maximize the number of people who eventually land on one of my sites as a result of the book, but the more people who have it, the more people will talk about it and the sooner and more powerfully it will go viral.

With that end in mind, does it really make sense to sell a book with a $20 cover price? Wouldn’t it do it’s job as a viral marketing tool much more effectively if it were even cheaper… or even free?

Yes, it would. And that’s why I’ve made the decision to make my next book – my biggest, most comprehensive, and dare I say it, my best book – a free e-book that I will give away 100% free. With an option for people to buy a traditional hardcopy version at cost, say around $5.

The truth of the matter is that we authors really don’t make any money on our books. We make the big money selling products and courses online, and doing seminars and paid speaking. And that’s exactly why it no longer makes sense to work with publishers who do zero promotion (except for celebrity authors) and expect us to do 100% of the marketing.

To illustrate this point, let me tell you a true story: A few years ago, someone emailed me a copy of an e-book he’d bought for $30. (Yes, I know, I accepted and read a pirated e-book. My bad on that one.) This is an e-book that I would’ve never purchased on my own for $30. It just didn’t get my attention.

However, as a result of my friend emailing it to me for free, I read it, and as a result I purchased an advanced $300 course from the author, and several months after that I attended one of his seminars at a cost of $500.

So, as a result of getting the e-book for free, instead of paying $30 for it, this author eventually made $800 from me. If he would drop the $30 price tag on the e-book and make it a free download, he’d probably become a multi-millionaire rather quickly.

If I’m going to do all of the hard work in promoting my book, not only am I going to skip the publishers and deny them the lion’s share of the profits, along with an unreasonable amount of control over my book’s content, but I’m going to give the world access to my books absolutely free from now on. That’s what will really get the word out, make the books viral, and maximize my back-end profits.

Now that corporate tax time is over (March 15th rather than April 15th), I cleared the stacks of paperwork off my desk, boxed them up for storage, and started the day with a clean slate and fresh mind. My first order of business was making a list of potential new product ideas, and the list quickly got long.

But what excites me most is how quickly and easily I can act on those ideas and cash in on them!

My last post was a rant against the publishing industry. One of the things I hate about traditional publishing is the sheer slowness of the process. Most published books were written a year or more before they ever hit bookstores or Amazon!

To make matters worse, it’s a needlessly tedious process. The manuscript must be submitted to the publisher’s specific requirements, then a first edit is returned that the author must go through and either approve or disapprove each change, and finally a few months later the printed page proofs arrive, for more error checking. This is all done for a total amount of compensation that is embarrassingly low compared to the typical internet marketing product launch.

In the world of internet marketing, however, I can create a product in a matter of days or weeks and launch it shortly thereafter. This is particularly true with digital delivery, since I don’t have to wait for printing/replication and warehousing to take place before I can launch. I have a professional video production facility in-house, and the magic of screen video makes creating products even easier.

Another nice thing is that a high-quality internet marketing product is typically sold for several hundred dollars at a minimum, and frequently two thousand dollars or more. This is a far cry from a $20 published book that pays the author a dollar or two per copy, and no commissions to third-party promoters.

The best part about launching a product via the internet marketing route, instead of a traditional publisher, is the ease of getting affiliates and JV (joint venture) partners on board. Book launches were big a few years ago, but marketers with large lists are increasingly refusing to participate in them, for no other reason than the absence of affiliate commissions. With an actual product, however, top affiliates want to promote it! They know it’s easy money to send out an email or two promoting your product, then watching the big fat commissions come rolling into their PayPal account a few weeks later.

Right now I’m looking at a whiteboard on the wall beside my desk with seven solid new product ideas on it, all able to be created quickly and fulfilled digitally if I choose to do so. Once I decide what order to put them in, I can get started on product creation and have them completed in no time at all, and ready for launch to the world. That is what I love so much about internet marketing!

The issue I’m talking about here is the failure of the mainstream publishing industry to embrace the Internet and the Information Age.

I’ve been agonizing over what to do with my next book concept. It’s a killer concept, totally groundbreaking, and is sure to sell a ton, probably even more than my best-seller Never Cold Call Again has. My choices are to go with a traditional book, through a traditional publisher, or to release it myself, perhaps as an information product or an online course.

I’ve made the decision to skip the publisher and do it myself.

Why?

Because the Internet has made publishers obsolete and increasingly irrelevant now that we’re fully in the Information Age.

My logic is very simple: Years ago, if you got a book deal, your publisher would promote your book. After all, that’s what a publisher is for. They’d do promotions, set up media tours, and get the word out about your book.

Today, with the exception of celebrity authors, publishers don’t do that anymore. They way they operate now is to seek out potential authors who have a large Internet platform, presence, and mailing list, entice them with a book deal, and then rely entirely on the author to promote the book. (That sounds frighteningly similar to companies who order their sales reps to cold call in order to avoid marketing expenses, doesn’t it?)

Now, this obviously makes sense for the publisher – it allows them to all but eliminate their marketing budget – but it’s a foolish choice for anyone who has a large Internet presence, as I do.

The problem comes down to the very fundamentals of what publishing entails: Giving up the lion’s share of profits from your book in return for a small royalty percentage. In consideration for keeping the bulk of the profits, the publisher is supposed to spend their money to promote your book. That’s the very basis of the legal doctrine of “consideration” – if you give something up, you must get something of equal value in return, or a court can declare the entire contract void.

Sadly, publishers just don’t get it. They’ve been in business for so long that they can’t understand just how much the Internet empowers those of us who know how to use it to publish and sell our own material and keep 100% of the profits. I had a chat with a literary agent the other day who told me the industry is getting downright dismal and editors are more grumpy and unhappy than ever. Yet, it’s their own fault for ignoring the threat of the Internet and believing that they can continue their antiquated business model in the Information Age.

To make matters worse, the amount of quality information that goes into a book with a cover price of, say, $19.95, that ultimately sells on Amazon for around $11.00 and pays the author a dollar or two per copy, could be translated into an information product that would easily sell for $97, $197, even $497 by someone with the Internet presence to do so. (To be totally honest, my published books took more time and work to create than my high-dollar info products, largely due to the publishing industry bureaucracy.)

Looking around at Internet marketers who I know, a shocking truth becomes clear: Some of those marketers who have made the most money have exactly zero published books out there. They know they’re better off selling their knowledge directly, in the form of information products, seminars, and coaching programs. That’s where the real money is. I even heard an Internet marketer, who has made well over twenty million dollars online, openly mocking published authors for their foolishness!

So, for those of you who always ask me how to get a book published, my advice is this: The Internet is making publishers irrelevant. Skip the publisher and learn Internet marketing, because that’s where the real money is!

EDIT – 3/15/10 – After posting this, publishers came out of the woodwork with, “Wait! Hear us out first!” So, I may entertain some book offers after all, only if those offers include guaranteed minimum marketing budgets and specific promotional plans.

I think the same thing every time someone calls hiring a maid or some other domestic help as “frivolous.” Sure, I could do the work myself, but why would I waste my time when it’s so well-spent elsewhere? Is it really a good use of my time to mop the floors or mow the lawn? The only domestic work I still do myself is detailing my car, and it’s because I really truly cannot find anyone who can do it better or with as much attention to detail as myself.

As true as this issue is with domestic work, it’s even more so in business and particularly internet marketing.

Nowhere else but in internet marketing do I see more people wasting so much time on menial tasks. I’m guilty of this myself – every day I wind up doing something that someone else should be doing, and I’m always making mental notes to outsource that kind of work.

The answer is outsourcing. Outsourcing is a hot topic both in the marketing world and out. Successful entrepreneurs and internet marketers understand the value of time, and not wasting that time on non-productive tasks, whether that means mowing the lawn or building a web page.

Starting out, most new marketers don’t have any choice but to handle their own tasks. From responding to emails to handling support tickets to processing unsubscribe requests – not to mention fulfilling orders – there’s a lot to be done in any new online business, and without solid profits or a budget to work with, the new marketer generally has to do everything.

However, tasks should be outsourced as quickly as possible. When I started out, I had a fulfillment house producing and shipping my products within a few months of making my first sale. I contracted with a call center to handle the phones and support requests, and even hired an outside firm to run my PPC campaigns so I wouldn’t have to. I wanted my time to be free to create new products and work directly on marketing, and nothing else.

Take a look at your days and how you’re spending your time. Time is the only asset that cannot be replaced, and therefore it is the most valuable. Think about whether you’re using your time effectively, or wasting it. If you’re wasting it – and we all do to some extent – correct the situation by outsourcing as much as possible, both at home and at the office!

The answer is simple: There is always room for improvement. Unless you have 100% opt-in, 100% conversion, and 100% upsell rates, you can improve your marketing. The easiest way to do this is via a/b split-testing. An even faster way is multivariate (MVT) testing, or variations on a/b such as a/b/c (split-3) or a/b/c/d (split-4). Multivariate testing is sometimes known as “Taguchi testing,” named after the mathematician who invented the various MVT formulas.

In the nearly seven years that I’ve been marketing online, I don’t think I’ve ever stopped testing. There is always at least one active split- or multivariate-test active on my sites, particularly NeverColdCall.com, my #1 income producer and also the “test lab” where I try out all of my new ideas that I can then apply to all of my other sites – and future sites as well.

The benefits of this are many:

1. Your conversion rate continually improves. I’m running near 9.2% conversion on NeverColdCall.com. This is for a variety of reasons – finding and exploiting high-quality traffic sources, continually educating myself with internet marketing info products, master-minding with other internet marketers, and more. However, the biggest reason for this is the fact that I am constantly testing new ideas.

2. You can apply your results anywhere. Each time you conclude a test and declare a winner, you now have a new marketing technique, or piece of copy, or whatever, that you can apply to any and all sites. As a result of my years of testing, I have a cookie-cutter marketing system that I can apply anywhere. For example, if you compare two of my sites – NeverColdCall.com and AdwordsInsideSecrets.com – you’ll see that they’re nearly identical. This is very simply because I’ve taken my system, site structure, basic copy template., etc., from NeverColdCall.com and applied it all to AdWordsInsideSecrets.com. I know that it works VERY effectively, so why use anything different?

With this approach you can increase your income exponentially by simply plugging different products into your master marketing template, as I have. I realized how wealthy one can become in internet marketing when I discarded the mindset of trying to squeeze a few extra sales from one site, to realizing that I can plug any product into my system and make money. That way, instead of trying to take a site that makes $20,000/month and improve it to $30,000/month, for example, I can just create ten sites using that same system that generates $20,000/month.

(Having said that, I’m always testing. The reason I run nearly all of my tests on NeverColdCall.com is because it gets more traffic than any of my other sites, so I get the fastest results there. Then I apply the winning formula to all of my sites.)

It’s a known fact that people who stop learning and stop educating themselves stop growing. A similar maxim can be applied to internet marketing: Any business that stops testing stops growing, and will never realize its full potential.

With that in mind, stop whatever you’re doing, go to your site, and start looking for new and creative ideas you can try out – and test them!

Yes, I can confirm that the rumors are true. Mike is leaving the info product business, and going forward, Mike Filsaime, Inc. will strictly be a software and services company.

So…

…what does that mean to YOU and why should YOU care?

Because today at 2PM Eastern, you can get his $1297.00 Home Study Course, “The 7 Figure Code,” for Free if you act fast!

Mike he has decided to give ONLY Lucky 10,000 people the course for FREE (Instant Access) as well as send you some free bonuses just for the s&h. Here’s the link:

7FigureSecrets.com

I’d recommend going to the site NOW, signing up for the advance VIP list, that way you will get the first shot at one of the 10,000 copies when the site goes live at 2PM.

Enjoy!

A good, well thought-out internet marketing approach it the best way to promote your business. Do not think for one second that you will gain customers by using spam. Sending out bulk emails taken from a spam list and then trying to forge where the email is sent from is tacky and deceitful. There are many severe laws against spamming and people can take it very seriously. They take it so seriously, in fact, that some advertisers went to court and the courts forced the spammers to pay hefty fines. Shutting down someone’s email is not the way to gain business. Talk does fly at Internet speed, and your reputation will go down the tubes as word spreads about your annoying spamming.

The use of spamming software is very advanced. If you want to take a chance with it, it would not be a very good idea though. The likelihood that you will even get a few good customers out of it is almost nonexistent. People enjoy your asking them to join your network or buy your product in a legitimate way. Financially opening up to involving a third party is certainly asking for trouble. By using some else’s email and causing a lot of heartache for them will open complex issues for you.

The next form of advertising that will turn off a customer in a heartbeat is pop-ups. Today, there is not only the traditional pop-up but pop-under too. A barrage of pop-ups or quick pop-ups from under the screen will leave your customer insulted and angry. It does not matter how good your product is – do not do it. In addition, a new marketing software technique slides pop-ups across the customer’s screen. This might sound non-intrusive, but think about this: What if they are in the middle of reading some information about your site? That is not helpful to your cause. It can be especially bad if they were about to click on the order button. Lost profits are never good for your wallet. If you are going to use pop-ups – and I hope you don’t – learn the software, and more importantly learn a bit about the human psychology of advertising. Look around for information on how and why people buy on the Internet, and apply that to your advertising and marketing campaign use.

Not only are spam emails, pop-ups and pop-under ads bad marketing techniques to use, but the tactic of high speed spawning is hideous and more than irritating to your potential customer. If you have ever thought about using it on a customer and have experienced it yourself, then go back and experience it again. You may have forgotten what it was like, although that is hard to see how you could forget it. A vicious attack on your customer’s browser button will not let the customer leave your site. Worse yet, they are forced to do an emergency shut down of their computer. Let us hope they have saved all information they were working on because ad after ad will over take their screen. Please do not use this garbage to try to increase your profits.

I hope that you will avoid using any of these three tactics in your advertising campaign. Using them will not bring the money in at a faster rate; in fact, just the opposite may occur. Take the time to use good marketing strategies. Learn what people appreciate in the way of business practices. Also, use manners and courtesy along with a little shrewdness in your marketing strategy. There are many ways to do it. By exercising patience and learning your way around the Internet, you can bring in many very happy customers and a lot of money for you.

The first Google search result I clicked on wanted me to register just to do a search. Unbelievable! I quickly clicked my “back” button, and moved on to search result #2.

This one allowed me to do a search, review the results, and click on the “more details” link. I did, and guess what? I hit a page telling me I had to register before I could view details on that particular home.

No thanks. Time to move on to the third result.

And so I did. This one let me search without registering, but I couldn’t view the search results until I did.

What the hell is the matter with these people? Especially at a time when the real estate market is dead, you’d think real estate brokers would have enough sense to use their brains when putting these sites together!

Unfortunately, common sense is uncommon. They fail to realize this one basic truth of marketing:

Anything that isn’t helping people to buy is preventing them from buying.

Think about that for a minute. Anything that isn’t helping your sale is hurting it. That means unnecessary pages, unnecessary registrations, unnecessary product details or brochures, unnecessary company information, and on and on.

You may have heard the concept of “filters and amplifiers” in marketing. Simply put, anything that doesn’t amplify the power of your marketing is acting as a filter between you and your prospect. These stupid, idiotic, moronic pages that demand I register my personal information before I can view a simple real estate agent listing (or even search in the first place) are a prime example of a filter. A big-time filter, at that… not only will I not be buying from agents who pull this nonsense, I left their sites completely and won’t be doing business with them at all.

Do this right now: Review your entire marketing system, from traffic generation, to your opt-in pages, all the way through to your thank-you pages. Identify any and all filters and either remove them, or convert them into amplifiers. Your marketing success depends on it. Remember, anything that isn’t helping people to buy is preventing them from buying.

In other words, I’d been hit with the dreaded Google Slap!

I’m not the only one lately. Fortunately, I was able to fix my problem – the use of a pure “squeeze page,” which Google frowns upon. I simply changed it to include site navigation and company information, therefore meeting Google’s guidelines. But not everyone is so lucky….

I say that because although I was hit with the Google Slap, where all of your keywords are reduced to QS 1, thousands of AdWords advertisers have been shut down completely over the last couple of months, and even banned for life!

The reason?

Flagrant violations of the Google AdWords terms of service. You know, that button you clicked “I Agree” on when you signed up for AdWords.

The fact of the matter is that certain kinds of sites, most namely PPC arbitrage sites and affiliate “review” sites, have never really been permitted by Google. That’s where the Google Slap originated – Google’s attempt to frustrate and discourage the PPC arbitrage and affiliate “review” site crowd to cut the crap and stick with legitimate marketing.

Unfortunately, many of them didn’t get the message, and starting around September of this year, Google dropped the hammer on them. Banned. For life. And no chance of opening a new account under a different name/address/domain either. There are stories on the web of people who used a friends’s name, billing address, credit card, set up sites on entirely different domains, and even logged in with a completely different internet connection, IP address, and to be totally safe, different computers and routers since it’s suspected that Google tracks hardware mac addresses.

No go. Big Brother Google somehow always knows.

So, let this be a warning: If you’re trying to run “get rich quick” PPC arbitrage or other schemes that are outright banned by Google, the chances are that you’re going to get banned too. If you want to make money in Internet Marketing, you need to sell legitimate products through legitimate business models. “Get rich quick” was never a reality to begin with, and the enforcement group at Google AdWords is making damn sure there’s no “get rich quick” nonsense happening in their system, either.

The formula that Google uses to determine quality score may take many factors into account but there are two things that will kill your score in a heartbeat. A lower quality score means that you are going to pay more for your AdWords placement.

1.) Landing Page

In the eyes of Google the landing page must be true to the letter of your ad. If you promise a free report or e-book, then your landing page must have an open link to the download. No squeezing allowed.

Honestly, Google and AdWords are not against the use of squeeze pages; however they are against advertising something for free and then requiring your visitor to exchange their name and email address for your product. As Google sees it, free means free, not in exchange for something.

The best way to get around this is to NEVER use the word “free” in you AdWords copy if there is not an open download link on the landing page. If you insist on doing this, Google will penalize you.

A few words of advice on landing pages.

Keep your landing page relevant to your AdWords copy. Google loves sites that have relevant, high quality copy. Sites that are not relevant to their ad copy are considered low quality and while Google will not ban them they will raise their costs so high that using AdWords is no longer economically feasible.

Avoid redirects on your landing page. The the use of sneaky redirects seems to be a part of the underside of the internet marketing business and is a “black hat” technique we all pay for. Google hates redirects used on landing pages and in the future these pages my not be indexed or may even be de-indexed.

Do not use hidden text or links. If Google observes your site to have hidden text or links and deems them deceptive in nature, you may find that your site has been removed from the Google Index.

2.) Floating Layer and Hover Ads

Google and AdWords hate these things. Simply put, these types of ads will destroy your quality score. Get them off your landing page as soon as possible. Replace these ads with a static opt-in form built into your landing page.

3.) Pop Up or Pop Under Ads

Google sees these types of ads as a hindrance to navigation on a site and will ban your landing page from AdWords if you use them. They will only re-activate your AdWords ads when you have removed any type of pop up or pop under ads.

If you are using any of the points outlined here on your site then you are only hurting yourself. Clean up your site and you will find that your ad position may climb while you costs may drop!

One of the keys to optimizing your Google AdWords campaign is the relevancy of the keywords that you use. There are a number of types of search phrases that might be included in your AdWords campaign. These phrases will determine how your advertisement is triggered.

As an example we will be selling products related to the phrase “leadership training.” Let’s imagine that our product is a DVD video course teaching leadership skills.

1.) Broad Match: leadership training

With this type of match the keyword or phrase is entered into AdWords without quotation marks or brackets. Any search that includes the keyword in any form will trigger the advertisement.

Example:

boy scout master training and community leadership

This phrase would trigger the ad because it has both “leadership” and “training” in the search phrase, but might not be the perfect solution for the search. Broad match keywords can result in greater click through rates but fewer sales.

2.) Phrase Match: “leadership training”

A phrase match is entered by placing quotation marks around the keyword or phrase. In this case the ad would only be activated if a users search contains the phrase in the specified order.

Example:

boy scout master training and community leadership would not trigger the ad, but leadership training for boy scout masters in the community would.

3.) Exact Match: [leadership training]

To enter an exact match phrase in AdWords the phrase is surrounded by brackets. In this case a user would have to search for the exact phrase in order to trigger the advertisement.

The different keyword variations will give you the ability to control the quantity and quality of your traffic. Broad match keywords might generate larger amounts of traffic but cost you money in the long run because they are so general. Phrase match keywords allow you to narrow the scope of your target audience. Exact match keywords allow you to zero in on a target market. They all have their place in your Google AdWords campaign and you should use them all.

Using different types of keyword variations gives you the ability to control how and when your ad is presented. Broad match keywords will trigger the ad when the keyword is placed in a search phrase in any combination. Phrase match keywords will only trigger your ad when the phrase appears in the search in order. Exact match keywords will only activate the ad when the exact phrase is searched.

Google AdWords is a powerful tool and can increase the quality of your site traffic immensely. To take advantage of the system you need to understand how it works and how to make it work for you.

Most people who start out in the internet marketing business begin on a shoestring budget and fear pay-per-click advertising programs like Google AdWords. They are afraid that they will spend too much money on advertising with little or no return on their investment.This is a legitimate fear and we have all felt it but some of the best traffic that you will ever get will come from an AdWords campaign. All you have to do is understand the program and how to make it work for you.

The first thing that you need to understand is how the Google AdWords ranking system works.

There are a number of factors taken into consideration when Google determines the ranking for an advertisement.

1.) Maximum Bid Price

This is the thing that scares many people when it comes to running an AdWords campaign. In most pay-per-click programs this bid is the deciding factor when determining the placement of your ad. In those programs the highest bid gets the highest spot. Not so with Google AdWords. There are other factors taken into consideration in determining placement.

2.) Relevancy

Weight is given to relevancy by AdWords. If one ad is more relevant to the search input it may appear in a higher position.

3.) Click Through Rate (CTR)

Google AdWords records the CTR for your keywords, groups, and phrases from the day you begin using the system. The historical CTR of your campaign can affect both ad placement and cost. A high CTR can result in higher ad placement and at a lower cost.

This is the biggest challenge for new users. When you first begin using AdWords you will have a historical CTR of ZERO. This presents a problem but there are ways to improve your CTR score such as using keyword macros and other techniques.

4.) Quality Score

This is very important for all internet marketers. There are a number of factors taken into account when determining your quality score. These are click through rate, relevance of ad text, historical keyword performance, and the landing page.

Yes, your landing page can have an impact on your quality score. Google says “Your landing page must be true to what your ad copy promises.” If you ad copy promises a free report then your landing page must have an open download link. In the eyes of Google free means just that …free, not in exchange for a name and email address. Avoid using the word “free” in your ad copy if you are sending visitors to a squeeze page that requires that they submit their name and email address.

Google AdWords is not the mythical fire-breathing beast that it appears to be once you understand how it works. Understanding the AdWords ranking system is the just the first step in turning the dragon into a house pet.

Many internet marketing professionals believe that the best forms of advertising include writing articles, joint ventures, using ad swaps, and joining product giveaway programs. Do not get me wrong, these methods all have their place in a marketing campaign and should be used when trying to build a list, but they all have one inherent problem. Much of the traffic that these types of marketing generate is of low quality and consists of people looking for a freebie. Giving away a freebie is a good thing but the bottom line is the bottom line for internet marketers.

While a Google AdWords campaign may not be free like those methods mentioned above, the cost is outweighed by the potential to generate many more paying customers. When a visitor arrives through your AdWords campaigns they are already aware that they have clicked on an advertisement and that the corresponding website will be selling a product. These people are much more likely to buy from you than those leads that are generated through other methods.

You may be using free advertising methods exclusively and they may be successful, but why wouldn’t you want to expand your market? Google AdWords is another method that can be used to bring highly targeted traffic to your site and your product line and can boost your sales.

Many internet professionals seem to be afraid of a pay-per-click campaign and I can understand that. Paying for traffic can be pretty unnerving when first diving in but there is nothing to fear. The cost involved can be managed easily. Google AdWords, unlike some of the other pay-per-click systems, allows you to set a daily spending limit, control when your ads are displayed, and how they are displayed. All of these work for you in keeping costs down.

There are many people who have taken the plunge into pay-per-click advertising and are making a fortune. How do they do it? Honestly it is not as hard as you might think. All you have to do is understand how Google AdWords works and how to make the system work for you.

There are many methods that you might use to build your list. Writing articles, classified ads, joint ventures, and giveaway sites all generate traffic. Some of this traffic may join your list and in time become a valued customer, but if you want to get your product or service in front of millions of potential customers pay-per-click advertising cannot be beaten. Learn how to make Google AdWords work for you and watch your list of paying customers grow.

I have been using AdWords for years and believe it to be a wonderful system. Not only has the system worked very well for me, it is how I became a published author.

Here are 5 reasons that I believe in AdWords and you should too.

1.) Traffic Conversion

Internet marketers all love search engine traffic. After all, the traffic generated was actually searching information related to our site. I call this type of traffic natural or organic traffic. There are studies that prove that AdWords traffic converts at a much higher rate than organic traffic, frequently 5 to 10 times better. With such a high conversion rate it only makes sense to use the traffic to your advantage.

2.) Ease of Use

If you are involved in SEO marketing you know that it takes time to build traffic levels. The same is true with Affiliate marketing. There is a great deal of time and effort involved in building an affiliate sales force. By contrast, in just a few short minutes your AdWords campaign can be ready to drive highly targeted traffic to your website.

Some other PPC systems require a live human being to approve your account and even your ads. This can take a week or more. AdWords is quick and easy to use. You will spend minutes instead of days getting your campaign started.

AdWords is also the only PPC system that I know of that does not require you to deposit funds in advance to cover the cost of your advertising.

3.) Automated Free Tracking Tools

When you sign up for an AdWords account you are given access to two very helpful tools free of charge. AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics will both help you maximize the effectiveness of your campaign and get the fastest return on investment possible. These free services are better than any third party software package I have ever used.

4.) Cost and Spending Limits

When using AdWords, the advertiser (you) decides your maximum bid price as well as how much you want to spend. For each campaign in your account you can set a daily spending limit. Suppose that you only want to spend $60 per day on your campaign. All that you have to do is enter that amount and AdWords will stop serving your ads when the limit is reached.

5.) It Works!

AdWords is the most effective way that I have found to bring high quality, laser targeted traffic to my products. It has allowed me to build a very profitable list in a very short time. If you want to grow quickly, AdWords works.

High conversion rates, ease of use, free high-quality tracking tools, the ability to control costs, and effectiveness are the benefits that you will enjoy when using AdWords. To make the most effective use of the system you need to learn, and I mean really learn, everything about it. Learn how to make the system work for you and your business will enjoy new-found success.

Here are the top 5 reasons that that you should not be using AdWords:

1.) You don’t want high conversion traffic.

Studies have shown that traffic generated by AdWords enjoys a conversion rate of 5 to 10 times better than natural or organic traffic.

2.) You do not like to do things the quick and easy way.

SEO and affiliate marketing require time and effort in order to generate high quality traffic. AdWords on the other hand can be up and running in a matter of minutes. Some PPC systems require that a live person approve everything from your account creation to the actual copy in your ads. This can take as much as a week or more. On top of that they require that you make an up-front deposit to cover your clicks. AdWords is the only PPC that does not require a deposit and will bill you in arrears.

3.) You like manually tracking your campaigns and hate automation.

Google Analytics and AdWords Conversion Tracking are tools that are offered free of charge. These free tools help maximize your return on investment in the shortest time. These tools are better than any third party software on the market and will save you a great deal of money, time, and frustration.

4.) You like to have others determine your cost and spending limits.

AdWords allows the advertiser (you) to determine exactly how much money you will spend. You determine your own maximum bid price for keywords and have the ability to set daily spending limits on each campaign in your AdWords account. If you want to invest no more than $50 per day in your ad campaign, simply set the limit to that amount and the system will stop displaying your ad when the limit has been met.

5.) You hate things that actually WORK!

AdWords is one of the most effective ways to build your click through rate which is one factor considered when determining ad placement. When your click through rate builds more traffic is flowing to your site. More traffic means more profit. This system is excellent for building your list as well. We have already said that AdWords advertising enjoys a higher conversion rate and with that conversion rate comes new customers.

So there you have it. If you are someone who hates high conversion rates, likes to do things the hard way, enjoys wasting time, couldn’t care less about how much you are spending, and hates things that work, AdWords is something that you should avoid at all costs. On the other hand, if you want to enjoy success and the benefits that come with it, you should take the time to learn – I mean really learn – about AdWords and how to use the system to your advantage.

A great man once said, “The only thing to fear is fear itself,” and though the quote was not about AdWords or even internet marketing, it holds true. Mankind in general has always been known to fear the things they do not understand and I believe that this is why there is so much anti-PPC sentiment.

Many very intelligent people in the internet marketing business are in the anti-PPC crowd. This boggles my mind. If you are doing well with article marketing, joint ventures, and other free techniques then why would you want to limit yourself by avoiding AdWords? Using PPC can do nothing more than open up a bigger market and if used properly can generate a great amount of income. Free traffic generation is a great way to bring traffic to your site and should be part of any marketing strategy just as AdWords or PPC should. Use every tool at your disposal to grow your business.

Most of us start our online marketing career with little or no real cash and the thought of paying for advertising can be a scary thing in that situation. Honestly, though, if you take the time to learn how AdWords works you will find that there are many options available to control ad cost.

Learn how the Google AdWords ranking system works. Unlike other PPC systems, AdWords takes more into account when determining ad placement than simply the maximum bid price. The other things that are used in determining ad placement and cost are relevancy, click through rate, and the quality score.

With a thorough understanding of the AdWords system it is quite possible that your ad will attain a higher ranking than a competitor’s ad, even though they have a higher maximum bid price.

When conducting your PPC campaign with AdWords, use your keywords effectively. Test your ads using broad match, phrase match, and exact match keywords. This will allow you to laser-target traffic. Using keywords correctly is one of the big keys in controlling ad costs.

Use keyword macros to build your click through rate quickly and easily. Keyword macros will set your ads apart from the competition. When a user conducts a search the macro will use the search string as the headline for your ad, capitalize the first letter of each word, and place the headline in bold type. Keyword macros get much more attention than static ads and we know that more attention means more clicks.

If you take the time to learn as much as possible about the Google AdWords system you will have a huge advantage over the competition, understand how to control your ad costs, and enjoy a larger market as well.

In many pay-per-click systems the only determining factor in ad placement is the maximum bid price. In those systems, if you are willing to pay more than a competitor then your ad will be placed above theirs. Google AdWords does not work that way and places your ad based on performance.

One of the criteria used by AdWords to determine the placement and cost of advertisements is the historical Click Through Rate (CTR). CTR is determined by how often your ads are clicked in relation to how often they are shown. Ads with a higher CTR get higher placement and a lower ad cost.

AdWords keeps a historical record of your individual keywords, phrases, and groups beginning the first time that you begin using the system. This can be a challenge for new internet marketers.

When you open your Google AdWords account you will have an absolute ZERO historical click through rate. The competition that has been using AdWords is leaps and bounds ahead of you and will be getting prime ad placement while you are at the bottom of the totem pole. Most people only look through the first page or 2 of a search and if your ad is on page 3 they will not see it. This might seem like a “lose-lose” situation, but don’t worry, we are going to show you how to turn that around.

Keyword Macros

Keyword macros are a feature of Google AdWords that allow you to create dynamic ad copy. This feature allows your ad to display the user’s exact search phrase as your ad headline.

To use the Keyword Macro feature all that is needed is a little syntax:

{KeyWord:alternate headline}

Using this syntax in your AdWords campaign will display the user’s search as your headline. Google AdWords allows only 25 characters as a headline however and if the search exceeds this limit your alternate headline will be displayed.

If you notice in the syntax above the K and W are in capital letters. Doing this will cause the user’s search to not only become your headline but the first letter of each word will be capitalized. This will make your ad stand out from those who do not use this macro.

Finally, using this macro will cause your headline to be shown in bold type, yet another way to make your ad stand out from the rest.

How does all of this help build a historical CTR? Using keyword macros will result in much higher click through rates than standard headlines. This is the fastest way to build historical CTR. If you keep your CTR high your ad will enjoy better placement and you will enjoy lower ad costs.

One of the main reasons that internet marketers fail with their AdWords campaigns is because they are lazy. Honest, but true. AdWords is not a guided missile to riches that you can simply fire and forget. Like all things in life that provide a great reward, a successful AdWords campaign is something that you have to work at.

1.) Understand the Nature of the Beast

The most important thing in a successful AdWords campaign is developing an understanding of the system. It may not be rocket science but it is pretty darned close. Before you begin, head over to the AdWords site and read the FAQ. Then hit the Google search engine and visit some message boards dedicated to AdWords. If need be, pick up a guide and read it as well. The more that you know about the system and how it works, the more you will be able to take advantage of it.

Take the opinions of others into consideration but do not let them guide you. On some of the internet marketing forums you will find that many people are against AdWords and other pay-per-click systems. Many times this is because they jumped in with both feet before they understood the system and therefore they failed. You are not going to fail because you are going to take the time to do your research BEFORE starting your first campaign.

2.) Set Spending Limits

AdWords gives you the ability to set daily spending limits for keywords. Use this feature to control the cost of your ads. If you only want to spend $75 per day on advertising, set that as your limit and the system will stop serving your ads when your limit has been reached.

3.) Create Relevant Ad Copy

When creating an ad the goal is to achieve top placement at the lowest cost. One way to accomplish this goal is to include your keyword in both the headline and body of your ad. This increases the relevancy of your ad and thereby lowers the cost.

4.) Use Different Types of Keywords

How often your ad is displayed and how it is triggered is really up to you. There are 3 main keyword types that you can use.

Broad Match – example: fine dining

 This phrase is entered without quotations or brackets. You ad would be triggered anytime a user enters a search string that included the words “fine” and “dining” regardless of order or placement.

Phrase Match – example “fine dining”

 Enter this type of phrase with quotation marks surrounding it. Your ad will be triggered by searches that contain the words “fine dining” in that order.

Exact Match – example: [fine dining]

 This type of keyword is entered with brackets. To trigger your ad a user would have to conduct a search that exactly matches the keyword phrase.

Use of keywords and match types can help your keep your costs within reason and lead to a successful AdWords campaign.

The 4 topics discussed here are but a few of the many strategies that you need to learn and understand to be truly successful in the AdWords game. Get as much information as you possibly can and use it to explode your business.

Frank started his first internet business with only a few hundred dollars and a bit of spare time on weekends. Less than six weeks later, he quit his last job ever and achieved the dream lifestyle! He quickly became known as a top internet marketing guru and even became a #1 best-selling author.

On this site, Frank will share his extremely detailed and thorough knowledge of internet marketing, for anyone to use and replicate his success.

Enjoy, and here’s to your success!