If you’re running GDN campaigns, this is a great way to get massive extra reach – however it is to be used with caution. It’ll work best with offers that have wide appeal & for advertisers more interested in brand awareness than in strict ROI targets… in other words, it’ll probably cost a bit more per lead than your other GDN campaigns.

Worth a try though! Have a look…

and if you haven’t already experienced the awesome contextual targeting tool – have a play inside your account today:

Typically the reason for the minisite is to create a segment of the main business website. This might be to laser-target a particular niche, or it might be to create a special offer that you wish to keep separate from the main site (eg discounts, added value, time limited offer etc)

Another reason is typically to improve your SEO results.
If the main site doesn’t rank well for a particular term (or group of terms), then a minisite may be a solution.
Because the domain name is a major factor in how well a site ranks, choosing an keyword-rich domain will often prove to be a shortcut to better rankings.

Guidelines for domains:

Obviously the main thing is to include the main words of the niche you’re targeting!
Keep it as short as you can (1-3 words is best).
Don’t use dashes, hyphens or underscores if you can avoid it (particularly if you’ll be advertising the site offline)
Only consider using dashes IF you’ll only advertise the site online (ie people will click a link, not have to remember or spell the domain) AND if the domain without dashes has been taken (& isn’t for sale)
Do some basic keyword research to determine the phrase(s) that most people use when searching in the niche & choose the domain accordingly (contact us if you’d like us to do that for you)

We recommend using DomainFace if you want to look for domains for sale, or domains about to expire.

The goal of the minisite …

will typically be to capture a visitor’s email address, or possibly even create a sale.
Either way it will usually be some sort of direct response offer, so the site should contain:

• some sort of form to capture the information & send that through to your email/CRM
• a static ‘thank you’ page. That is a second page that the user is directed to after they’ve successfully completed the form. This is then used to track how many users managed to complete the form – which gives you your conversion rate… a VERY important number to know
• Analytics tracking installed on all pages (we recommend Google Analytics NOT AWstats)
• As few form fields as possible. Preferably you’ll only require the user to give you an email address. Every field you ask for in addition to this (eg name, mobile, address) will reduce the conversion rate (in almost every case – although of course there are exceptions to this)

Additional pages to consider for your site:

Don’t just build a site with the landing page & a thank you page.
Users (& Google) won’t like it as much as something that offers plenty of value

At a minimum you should also include: a privacy policy page (essential if you’re collecting personal information), an about us page, a contact us page & possibly an FAQ page

You might also want to consider 5-10 pages of relevant, unique & valuable content that the user would find helpful in making their purchasing decision
Each page might contain 300-500 words & be about one particular aspect of the targeted niche.

How to build the site:

There are literally hundreds of ways to build sites these days & no shortage of bespoke systems to help you do so. The problem with those systems is that once you use them, you’re beholden to the owner of that system forever more – which can mean costly changes down the track.
Far better to use open-source software such as WordPress - as this is not only free (!), it’s also being continuously improved by a world-wide army of geeks!
WordPress (WP) is also very easy to use & is very well optimised for SEO without you having to change anything – it just works!
And because it’s open source, there are no shortage of helpful how-to videos on  the web explaining every aspect of how to use the platform.

Where to build the site:

You can of course use your usual web development team & pay accordingly
But increasingly it’s getting cheaper & easier to use web designers from around the world.
Sites like elance.com, odesk.com, rentacoder.com & guru.com make it easy to find, work with, then pay a freelance designer anywhere in the world
The huge benefit of this is cost – you might expect to pay ~$500 for a complete site, assuming that you provide the copy & images to be used
Stuck when it comes to finding images – head to iStockPhoto.com & choose from millions of shots for a few dollars each (the medium size is fine for website work)

That’s it.
Once the site is built, we can help you ‘split-test’ the site… for example testing 4 different headlines to see which works best.
Small changes to headlines (and other copy, the offer, the colour scheme & other elements) can have a massive impact on your conversion rate.
It pays to test!

Let me know how you go with your site & good luck!

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?

google remembers where you live

Google will now ask you for a location the first time you search for a local service – it will also ask if you want that location remembered (default is yes).

What does this mean for us?

For us as Google users it means no more daft results from a location far far away (I know more about the businesses in Melbourne Florida & Richmond Virginia that any normal person should)

For us as Google advertisers, it means the Google Local results are now more important than ever. That little map that you used to see for an occasional search (melbourne hotels for instance) will now be appearing more & more often as Google starts to learn more about the local areas in which we live.

It also means people might start using different phrases to find you & that trusty ‘Melbourne xxxxxxx’ that has worked so well for the last year, might start to lose it’s effectiveness… probably not for a while – but it’s good to know in advance what might happen!

And it means your SEO guys had better know about citations, reviews, proximity and authority.

You need to claim your Local Business Listing in Google – so that you control the information shown & not Yellow Pages.. that’s right, until you claim your own listing, Google will display whatever Yellow knows about you – which might not be all that much.

We’re putting together a new Local Business Listing Service, so contact us today if you’d like to know more.

Would you go out on a first date & towards the end of the main course ask your date to marry you? on that very first meeting?
Probably (hopefully) not!

Likewise asking for a sale on someone’s first visit to your website probably won’t work either.

If this first visit is akin to a first date, we need to be asking for a second date, not a trip down the aisle!

Your goal should be to get enough information to have a second date. Essentially all you really need is an email address.

So rather than trying to sell, you’d give away something.
The rules:
It must contain great info – some of your best stuff! do NOT hold back all the great info you can give
It must have real value
It must look professional
It must add value to them & ideally start to solve their problems in your area of expertise
It’s free!

Once your visitor subscribes, take them to a thank you page (ask them some short survey questions here if you like), or take them on to the existing order page. But at least now you have their email addresses

This should get you 10-20% opt-ins (higher if the giveaway has great value)

Now use Google Website Optimizer to test different opt-in pages (different offers, headlines, forms etc) & get that up to 50% in a matter of weeks.

I’ll guarantee that if you do this the right way, this strategy will make you more money in the long run. Way more .
& Give you the chance to have conversations with people that want to hear from you over & over again

Make more profit & have fun – what a concept!!

You can have the best keywords, carefully chosen & broken down into small, distinct themes…

But if the Ads that you show the searchers of those keywords don’t grab them & compell them to click – you’re wasting a lot of time & leaving a lot of money on the table

Gloria Dutton at SiteProNews has an excellent post on writing ad copy for two very different audiences, B2B & B2C prospects. It’s well worth a read.

Here’s a fantastic example of a tactical press ad from yesterday’s Daily Telegraph by Veet

The Search Network (google.com.au, google.com) & the partner network (ask.com, aol etc) get most of the airtime in the SEM game. But there’s a third network that you ned to master to get the most out of your pay per click advertising: The Google Content Network

Rather than showing text ads next to the search results, for example on google.com.au, the content ads show up next to relevant content on ‘other sites’ around the internet. Which other sites? Well there are millions of them. Blogs, social media sites, portals, directories, newspaper sites even next to emails in gmail that contain (what Google thinks) are relevant words.

Can this be useful to you? You bet! Let’s count the ways:

1. Many Google advertisers don’t use the content network at all, most of those that do often do so by mistake (the default setting is to show your search ads across the content network). This means that only a fraction of advertisers are using this powerful medium to it’s full potential & yet Google makes about 50% of it’s revenue from these ads!
2. You can display more than just text ads. Image ads are available in a wide range of sizes (just be sure to get the size right) & again hardly any advertisers use these! Many of those square, rectangle, skyscraper & even plain old banner ads you see on sites like myspace, facebook & others are put there by google advertisers (& it’s very easy to setup). You can also test animated ads, video ads & gadget ads (look out for a huge increase in these in 2009)
3. You don’t have to rely on Google to figure out which sites are relevant for your ads – you can specify a list of sites that you choose. Better yet, you can specify the content that needs to be on those sites before your ads show (by choosing a short list of keywords). So you might place ads on facebook that only appear when the phrases “weight loss” or “lose weight” are used on a page… nobody else gets to see your ad, so it’s still fairly targeted. You might even write those ads to make a special offer just to facebook users & send them to a facebook specific landing page… just an idea
4. It’s generally cheaper than the Search Network (but not always). Text ads are generally 50-80% cheaper on the content network. Image ads might be a little cheaper, but usually not by a lot.
5. You can split test ads just as you do on the search network. Yep, even the image ads. For example, you’re about to launch a new billboard campaign for the first time (or an insert in a local paper, or a poster in your physical store) & your graphic designer gives you 4 styles to choose from. Which one’s the best? Not which is your favourite, but which will get the highest ROI for your marketing dollar? Run 4 image ads for a couple of weeks, letting Google do the hard work of showing them evenly across the web. Sit back & choose the winner!
6. Choose the pricing model that you prefer. You can choose either cost per click (CPC) or cost per thousand impressions (CPM)
7. You can use the very useful (ok essential) placement performance report to find out which sites are working & which ones get lots of impressions but no clicks – better yet manage based on conversions not just clicks (hint: you can easily stop showing ads on these sites in just a few clicks). Read my post on how to run the placement performance report.
8. You can drill down to specific areas within large sites. myspace & about.com are both huge sites. Instead of running your ads across the whole site, you can choose which niche you want to target,
9. Negative Keywords are just as important in Content but use them wisely. You’ll probably want to edit the list of negative keywords you’re using on Search & cut this down a bit – otherwise you can severely limit the number of impressions you’ll get.
10. You can be a lot more creative in the cross selling opportunities your product or service gives you. It would be nearly impossible to advertise say a site selling whiteboards by bidding on terms like ‘small business office’ on search. There’s just too much competition & the lack of relevance between the keyword & the ad would really hurt your Quality Score for that term. On content – if your ad is good enough – those ads will be shown to a much wider audience.
11. The Content Network is great for affiliate marketing! Very few affiliates are using this avenue effectively – especially image ads – giving you amazing opportunities to dominate your chosen niche.
12. Often the more creative (even salesy) ads will work very well, more than might be the case on Search. Experiment with your copy, ham it up, tone it down – see what works in your market

Convinced? Ok, so how do you set this up?

First – always (always!) use a different campaign to your search targeted ads (in fact you’ll want separate campaigns for your content text ads & image ads, but more on that another day).

Feel free to use AdWords Editor to create a copy of your existing search campaign – but check:

• Delete all keyword bids. It’s only the AdGroup bid that counts on content. Start with bids about 70-80% of the search bids & test from there.
• Edit your list of negative keywords – you’ll want some, but not too many.
• Consider rearranging your groups of keywords – you want enough keywords in a group so that Google can work out what you’re selling, but not so many that they become irrelevant to the ad itself (hint: Shelley Ellis tells us that google will only look at the first 50 keywords in a group – so don’t bother having more than that). I find that 5-15 phrase are usually best
• There are mixed opinions about this… but I believe it’s best to delete your broad & exact match keywords from your group & just leave the phrase match keywords. Why? Well on content, phrase & exact are going to be basically the same thing – it’s the phrase that will be used on a page of content. And whilst the broad match type will get you more impressions it should be tested & used with caution. It will greatly increase the scope of your campaign, but probably not the relevance. Watch that cost per conversion number carefully!
• check your geo-targeting settings. As with search I’m a firm believer in (starting off at least) just targeting one country per campaign. Maybe for you it’s the States, or Australia or just Ireland. But test your ‘most likely to succeed’ country first, then expand to others.
• consider adding a 2nd campaign with image ads sooner rather than later – lots of low-hanging fruit out there!

Any of this not make sense to you? Would a video of me setting up campaigns for the content network make this easier to understand? Drop me a line & I’ll see what WebSavvy can do to help.

Good luck out there!

Check out his site & be sure to link/comment if you know of a great blog with great content, that needs more readers.

Thanks! Mike

Take a look at the results below – I think you’ll find them very insightful…

First, you’ll need to choose the metrics to display. Find the drop down box at the top of the Campaign Summary screen & choose the appropriate selection (‘Split:Google search/search partners/content network‘ will show you all three lots of stats – but of course you should already have your search & content campaigns running separately .. don’t you!)

Now for the first time you can see clicks, impressions, cost, average position & conversion data for the Search Partners (AOL, Ask etc)

Take a look at one campaign we’re currently running for a small client – these are the numbers for the weekend just gone… we’ll be turning off the search partners option for this campaign from now on! The difference is more than I would have thought.

Now it’s your turn. Go to your account now & check this for your own accounts. You may be amazed at what you find.