Posts Tagged ‘Advertising’

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Every year Reno puts on a rodeo event. I know this, not because I live here, but because every year approximately one person asks me, “are you going to the rodeo?”

Now granted I’m not a rodeo fan, but how is it that I don’t ever know about this event, save for the lone person asking me if I’m going? Is anybody even advertising this thing?

Ok, so I may not be the average consumer. I don’t watch commercials (thank you, TiVO!); I listen to commercial-free satellite radio or my ipod exclusively (thank you, XM and apple); I get all my news from the internet (thank you, Al Gore), rarely hitting local news sites; and I don’t get out much (thank you, blu-ray.) So it got me thinking….

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Friday I posted a snapshot of a billboard advertising an auto mall here in Reno (Fallon, actually). I wanted to solicit some comments to see if anybody else saw the same problem with this billboard as I did.

Pretty much every comment noted that the guy with the cigarette was a problem, but only Chris of Westward Strategy explained why.

…they associated the sleazy car dealer with Fallon Auto Mall and not Kietzke or “Big City Motors” as their TV ads say. If I wasn’t a local and hadn’t seen their TV spots I would think that all the guys at Fallon Auto Mall look like him.

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Day 1: Sessions

WOW. What a great day. The day gave us four sessions / two tracks of indepth introductions to all aspects of Search Marketing for small businesses. Each speaker had a full hour to go into more depth on their subject than any conference you’ve ever attended.

Rather than have a keynote speaker, Unleashed opened with a general overview of what Online Search Marketing is all about. Jennifer Laycock introduced three incredible presenters,
Matt McGee of Marchex and Small Business SEM (who happens to hate Twitter I do not like green eggs and ham, I do not like them Sam I am.), Wendy Piersall of sparkplugging.com and Matt Bailey of SiteLogic.com.

After the Common Sense introduction, we split out into the sessions. These are the ones I got to attend: Click here to keep learning

SEMpdx Searchfest

Ok, this one has come and gone but I wanted to provide a short debrief. I have to say that I had a fantastic time. Searchfest marked my one-year anniversary speaking at conferences. They opened the door for me at Searchfest 2007 and were kind enough to invite me back this year. Boy, am I glad they did.

I have to say that I was really surprised by the marketing power they were able secure for each session was amazing. I felt severely out gunned on both panels I was on. I was amazed at the quality of the information provided and the overall environment established by the SEMpdx team.

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SEO

• Part Two: Why Use Yahoo! Answers
• Part Three: How To Use Yahoo! Answers
• What is your robots.txt file telling your competitors about you?
• How to SEO Your Site in Less Than 120 Minutes
• 6 Reasons Why Your Awesome Site Isn’t Indexed

Copywriting Click here to keep learning

SEO

• 5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success
• Hey Rand, Do You Mean Siloing?
• Sometimes All you Need are a Few SEO Tweaks!
• SEO Tools: Firefox Addons for Search Engine Optimization

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Do you like how Google AdWords have changed the keyword tool within AdWords?

In case you haven’t seen it yet … within your ad group, click on the keyword tool, (Your options are slightly different if you use the keyword tool linked from Tools)

You’ll find you no longer have tabs at the top of the tool for keywords and getting keywords from your site. Instead you’ll find there are three radio buttons, Descriptive words or phrases, Website content, or Existing keyword.

When the Descriptive words or phrases option is selected (which is the default selection) you enter keywords or phrases just like you did previously. It looks like this:

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I often over hear Stoney on the telephone, describing to a prospective client, exactly what Pay-Per-Click entails. These explanations vary from one call to the next of course, depending on how familiar the person already is. Sometimes the explanation will be quick as “yes, we manage PPC accounts.” Other times the explanation goes much deeper into what are often overlooked as very basic description as to where the paid sponsored ads display in the search engine results.

Last week the Pole Position Marketing Team went to Las Vegas for Webmaster World PubCon 2007. While sitting in the Major PPC Engines: Vendor Panel presentation, there was a slide that showed screen shots of ‘ad placement’ and it suddenly occurred to me how brilliant of an idea that was. Pictures of ad placement.

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Coming from a background in training, I always appreciate a useful training tool. I found Chapter 4 “Paying to Play: Pay-Per-Click” by SitePoint Search Engine Marketing Kit, to be an excellent training/learning tool.

The chapter is laid out logically, giving a brief introduction of the entire Pay-Per-Click system and process. After the intro, you’ll find that it provides a brief look at the major players in Pay-Per-Click, being of course Google, Yahoo and MSN. The chapter defines ranking, bids and organization. Before moving on to the next subject, they even introduce (name only) some of the minor Pay-Per-Click players.

The Pay-Per-Click process is the next topic, and it covers a breakdown of terminology, including triggering, click through, landing, interaction, measurement and analysis and refinement.

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I spent some time today reviewing a link-building service called Text Link Revolution (TNX). The company specializes in rapidly buying / selling links for websites and blogs. I know lately the paid links ethical issue has been increasingly controversial, but this post is simply for review purposes, not a treatise on Google’s paid-link confusion.

TNX attempts to create an advertising system that will garner better search results for websites while offering publishers bigger profits via links on their site. The site uses a system of “points” to which users can convert to money or reinvest back into their site to buy more links. TNX could be useful for your site whether you are a webmaster or publisher.

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