A mentoring client just asked for some guidelines on using Google Image Ads – here’s some of what I had to say – it might help you get your first Image Ad Campaign up & running…

How to use Google Image Ads

Setup a new campaign, set to ‘content network only’, use CPC bidding.

Create a number of AdGroups, each with 2-10 keywords (use the “wonder wheel” for help choosing relevant keywords)

You don’t need to set “placements”, you can let Google find the best sites on which to show your ads (to start with – see below)

You absolutely must utilize conversion tracking, or forget the whole thing

Choose a ‘conversion goal’ that will allow you to get at least 5 conversions a day – this means that you can graduate to utilizing Conversion Optimizer as soon as possible, a great tool! So for example if you’re selling products & only making 1 sale a day, choose an earlier step in the process (eg, adding a product to the shopping cart) as the conversion. You need data & the faster you can get it, the quicker you’ll be profitable

Conversion optimizer rocks! One reason you want to get lots of conversion data is to start using this tool as quickly as possible

Run placement reports regularly (at least weekly). For ‘Content Network’ campaigns, exclude ‘bad’ placements just like you’d add negative keywords. You might also want to bid a little more on sites that generate cost effective conversions to get even more traffic from them

ONLY create 300×250 ads to start with. Create a number of different ones (different images, different copy etc) & test test test. Only when you have a decent amount of data, should you choose the best ad & create the other sizes.
This gets you 2 big benefits:
1. it’s cheaper to only create 1 size – which means you can try a wider range of tests
2. you get better much faster

Other thoughts:

If starting out with standard image ads (ie not animated), create your images to be 300×239 pixels (google adds an 11 pixel footer & you don’t want google resizing your images!)

Match the image in the ad to the landing page where possible (yep that means multiple landing pages if you want to test different image ads – use Google Website Optimizer to easily see which page converts best)

Depending on your market, start with ~$1.10 bids (so many people start at $1 & you want to just beat the majority without spending a fortune). See how many impressions you get & adjust accordingly

You may want to exclude certain categories of placement, eg death, tragedy etc

Have lots of AdGroups on ‘tangents’ to your main topic, eg what other topics are people looking at that are interested in your product… think about their demographics & psychographics

‘Peel & stick’ winning placements into a new campaign (& consider running this as a CPM campaign)
remember to add these sites as negatives in the original campaign!

Finally, when you think you’re done testing, test some more!

If that all sounds like too much work – fill in the form below & request a sneak peek of our upcoming module from the AdWords Bootcamp on Using Google Image Ads in Your AdWords Account.

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I’m not in the habit of quoting other writers in entirety, but Seth Godin’s post a few days ago deserves to be seen again (& again & again).
If this strikes a chord with you (or if you disagree) then you might want to read Chris Anderson’s brilliant new book ‘Free!’

Remember – ot’s not want you want the market to do that’s important (to them), it’s what they want to do.

You can fight the trend of ‘free’ for as long as you like – but your (smart) competitors won’t. They change & adapt. What will you do?

Here’s Seth’s post:

Do you really expect that the first time we transact, it will involve me giving you money in exchange for a product or service?

Perhaps this is a good strategy for a pretzel vendor on the street, but is that the best you can hope for?

Digital transactions are essentially free for you to provide. I can give you permission to teach me something. I can watch a video. I can engage in a conversation. We can connect, transfer knowledge, engage in a way that builds trust… all of these things make it more likely that I’ll trust you enough to send you some money one day. I can contribute to a project you’re building, ask you a difficult question, discover what others have already learned.

But send you money on the first date? No way.

The question then, is how much time and effort does your non-profit/consulting firm/widget factory spend on pre-purchase transactions and how much do you spend on trying to simply close the sale?

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We’ve been creating a lot of covers recently for clients, some in-house & some have been outsourced. For the most part we’ve used 3Dboxshot, but the program isn’t all that intuitive & the designs are ok, but not stunning.
My good Kiwi friend Sean D’Souza pointed me to these guys at Cover Action Pro – fantastic bit of software & the list of templates they provide is very extensive…
In the next couple of days I’ll post some designs for the upcoming AdWords Bootcamp for your delight & feedback

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Analytics has long been a great tool for small business. Not only does it give you the power to see what’s happening on your website, but it’s 100% free.

We all know that you can’t manage what you don’t measure – so Analytics (or some sort of stats package) is vital if you want to improve your website over time.

Well it just got a lot easier to do so

Google have just announced a number of improved features for Analytics, such as:
- better engagement metrics. eg you can know count a goal as someone that stays on the site for over 2 minutes
- up to 20 goals for each profile (at last!)
- filtering of results. eg don’t wade through a list of thousands of keywords, now you can filter say those with a low bounce rate & high time on site. sweet.

and many many more

check it all out here
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/10/google-analytics-now-more-powerful.html

eg. setting a goal that a visitor stays for over a minute

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The Google Local Business Centre (LBC) is becoming more & more important.

As Google really starts to ramp up its local search efforts, your Local Business Listing will become the cornerstone for a number of services that are coming soon.

So step 1 – go to ‘google accounts’ & set up your free Google Account. This gets you access to all of Google’s services & is becoming a must have item (AdWords, Analytics, Webmaster Tools, Website Optimizer, Local Business Centre, News, Alerts etc etc)

step 2 – go to the Google Local Business Centre & claim your local listing. It’s a free service & you may find that Google has already written some details about your business (it gets this from the Yellow Pages & a few other places). But if you’re smart, you’ll claim your listing & add some more info (eg opening hours, categories of products & services you sell & images)

step 3 – you’ll probably also want to ask your happy clients to give you a good rating. These are going to be more important in the future, so get started now & start to build up a history – but don’t try & game the system by rating yourself, or asking all your staff to do this… let it happen naturally over time (& maybe prompt a few customers if & when you need to!)

step 4- stay tuned for more updates on this soon & a detailed free guide we’re creating to help you get listed

step 5 – stop reading & claim that listing today. Or watch this first, up to you.

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Here’s a great & very useful tool that you may want to try in your business: Dragon Dictate Preferred Edition.

Combined with a good headset (we use the Logitech ClearChat Wireless Headset) this is a fabulous tool that can have a huge boost on your productivity.

Essentially you talk, your computer types. Easy. And after a little bit of training, the accuracy is actually pretty good (in fact I’m using it now!)

You can also use it to create transcriptions of recordings – for instance created on your iPhone. Here’s how:

Use the Voice Memos app to record you talking.
Sync your iPhone with iTunes & find the ‘voice memos’ playlist.
Right click the recording & choose ‘create mp3 version’
Then go to ‘recently added’ & drag the mp3 file to your desktop (to make it easy to find)
Then from the Dragon icon (in your toolbar) choose ’sound | transcribe recording’
& in just a few seconds your voice is automatically turned into a document!

Of course this might need editing a little (you might also want to use commands like ‘new paragraph’ while you record to make it easy to read the text) but the bulk of the work is done for you.

Now you have no excuse not to create that blog post, article, free report or even ebook that you’ve been putting off for a while

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How do you incentive your staff, workers, outsourcers?

Check out Dan Pink’s fantastic TED talk & you might find you’ve been going about it completely the wrong way…

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This post will be one that grows over time (please add your comments below with your own recommendations)

Free - Chris Anderson

So to kick things of, August’s must read book is Free: The Future of a Radical Price (he of Long Tail & Wired fame – not the TED Chris Anderson)

Free is an amazingly well thought out book. Plenty of different examples of how Free (& the internet) are changing the face of business every day. But it’s also much more than a business book. It’ll make you think about a lot more than your business plan or how to use ‘free’ in your business.

Still only in hardcover, so quite expensive in most Aussie book stores – but check out Fishpond – they guarantee to beat Amazon’s pricing & this book is one of the few they ship within 24 hours! (usually 3-5 working days). At last a decent online store for us Aussies!

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In it’s quest to continually make the bidding process more transparent, Google is rolling out a new tool – Bid Simulator.

Look for a little icon next to the keywords in your account & give it a click (you’ll only see it for keywords that have a decent amount of traffic & clicks)

(more help from google here)

Now you see what will happen if you change your bids & get a feel for exactly how different the traffic levels will be if you bid more or less.

It works by looking at your Quality Score (QS), the QS & bids of your competitors (which you of course can’t see) & the probability of your ad getting clicked when in various positions on the page.

You’ll find some graphs are very flat, but others are skewed dramatically – those skewed curves offer plenty of potential to change your bids (often quite a bit) without huge affects on your traffic levels.

Have a play – don’t worry, you can’t break it!

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If you use Google AdWords to target people in a local area you might this this very very interesting…

You’ve probably noticed a “bonus 5th line” appearing under your ads if you target a particular city or state, rather than an entire country, eg:

BUT, did you know you can now show your entire address under your google ad (read google’s help here)

How do You show your business address under your Google ad?

The first step is to target an area using the ‘Custom’ address option (the 4th of the 4 location targeting choices)

Next enter your address into the box provided:

Make sure you tick that little box that asks ‘allow address to show in my ads’

And choose a radius – ie the distance around your location within which you want to show ads. That might be 10kms, 20 miles or 200 kms – it’s entirely up to you (although in Australia, I’d use 10kms as a minimum).

You can then see the visual for this address & radius on the map to the right:

click the ’show ads here’ button & you’ll see confirmation in the lower left-hand box – note you can choose multiple addresses, as long as they’re relevant to the business being advertised:

and you’re done.

Now when your ads show on Google – both on the right side and in the yellow box at the top of the left side – you’ll get a much better bonus 5th line… your actual address.

So few people are using this feature it’ll really make your ads stand out. Try it today.

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