Dan Soschin

Landing Pages & AdWords Quality Scores

Great article by MarketingProfs (Larry Kim) on Google AdWords Quality Scores and your landing pages.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2011/4230/three-lesser-known-ways-to-enhance-adwords-quality-score?adref=nlt012111

Page load time not only affects your quality score, but it can dramatically impact page load times. I recently worked with someone who’s landing pages were loading in about 15-20 seconds! That has a major affect on user experience. Very few people with broadband will wait even 5 seconds for a page to load, let alone 20 seconds. We reduced the size and number of images, decreased the amount of and size of includes and modified the hosting and caching settings of the web server. The result was a page that loaded in about two seconds. What an improvement! Think of all the people that were leaving even before they saw the message.

Another very important aspect is to make sure that your landing page matches your keyword or keyword phrase. It’s good to have “H1” tags that have the keyword, as well as sub-headers and bullet points. These all improve the visual recognition among users that your page matches their query, and improves your quality score in the eyes of Google. I know it is a lot of work when you have a lot of keywords. I am working with someone who has 1000’s of keywords and yes, over 250 landing pages. They use a platform that makes building page variations easy and scalable. You might not need such tools, but that doesn’t excuse you from building pages that match your search terms.

Similarly your landing pages should visually match your display ads. Remember that your landing pages should be separate from your organic website, so you need not worry too much about SEO and duplicate content. Your landing pages are intended to support your paid traffic, not organic searches.
Facebook’s Commenting System

Still a little foggy on the specifics… but Facebook will roll out a new commenting system very soon. Facebook seems to receive a fair amount of criticism when it rolls out new features and services; many times these are well deserved jabs.

This time around it appears that Facebook will have a commenting system that feeds comments from non-Facebook sites to your Facebook profile/feed. Sounds like a great feature for viral marketing enthusiasts for one…
Coke’s Emphasis on Mobile & Text Messaging

Here’s an article about Coke’s re-emphasis on mobile and text marketing:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=144376&nid=123451#

It’s compelling that one of the brand managers for one of the most well-respected brands is leaning on a fairly well established technology for future growth. Makes you at least question the state of your current mobile strategy.
2011 B2B Marketing Trends

MarketingProfs issued this article on their “top 5” B2B marketing trends for 2011. I would agree that there is an issue in most organizations of misunderstanding social media and how to properly leverage it as well as measure and monitor its impact on one’s business.

There is also a disconnect between the c-level execs and the front-line on how best to leverage social media for their business.

Here’s that article:

http://www.marketingprofs.com/articles/2011/4381/five-b2b-trends-in-content-social-media-in-2011?adref=nlt020711
A Cautionary Tale about Mobile Ads

I’ve shared my strong opinions towards click fraud regarding various ad platforms such as Google AdSense and Facebook before, so I’m not surprised by a recent article I came across by MarketingProfs.

http://www.marketingprofs.com/charts/2011/4365/mobile-app-users-click-on-ads-mostly-by-mistake?adref=nlt020311

The article discusses data detailing how most mobile app users click on advertisements by accident more than they do on purpose.

Think about that! Let’s say it’s 50/50… That means you really need to double your cost (or divide your clicks by two) when calculating expected ROI and other metrics.

For instance, I know that 40% of the clicks on my Facebook ads never get counted by Google Analytics, meaning that those clicks don’t make it to my landing page (or a select few don’t have JavaScript/cookies enabled, which is very low). So I know that 40% of what I get charged by Facebook is a sunk cost, and provides no value. So when I calculate and try to predict the performance of future campaigns, I always make sure I factor in the 40%.

When doing mobile ads, it’s important to realize that your conversion rate may be a lot better than you see, because half of the people clicking your ad are going to abandon immediately. So divide that by two, and that’s a more accurate click-to-conversion rate.
Reddit hits 1 billion

The social link sharing service, Reddit, hit a big milestone in January, 1 billion page views. Now I’m wondering how they will begin to monetize such a service to capitalize on its success. You can read the article on this milestone at Mashable here: http://mashable.com/2011/02/02/reddit-surpasses-1-billion-monthly-pageviews/
Getting your blog noticed – 30 SEO Concepts

I’m teaching some bloggers next week how to blog, and how to get their blog noticed. One place to start is to make sure that your bloggers understand basic SEO (search engine optimization) techniques, so that they incorporate those into each post.

Here’s a great article to get started with basic terminology:

http://www.seoptimise.com/blog/2011/01/30-new-seo-terms-you-have-to-know-in-2011.html
Facebook’s Search Algorithm

Here’s a great article about something that hasn’t had much press – Facebook’s on-site search function.

So when you are on Facebook and you search for something, how does Facebook return the results?

http://www.verticalmeasures.com/social-media/ranking-in-facebook-search-take-notice/

While comScore reports that only 2.7% of all searches happen on Facebook, in my opinion that is a HUGE number! So you need to make sure your brand is well represented on Facebook, with the right keywords in your profile.
10 Facebook Policy Tips

If you are administering a Facebook page for your business, here are some helpful tips:

1. Be timely
It’s important to respond to inquiries in real-time. Customers don’t want to wait, and rapid replies (even if it is acknowledging the inquiry and saying that you’ll get back to them later), is extremely important. It shows you care.

2. Be honest
If you made a mistake, apologize. Whatever you do, don’t make promises you can’t keep. Sarcasm doesn’t translate well into the online space either.

3. Be transparent
Explain who you are and your relationship to the business. Customers will see through you and expose you if you try to hide your relationship. If you own the business, post as the owner. Transparency is rewarded with loyalty on the web.

4. Don’t be defensive
If you made a mistake, fix it. Explain how you will make good. Don’t be defensive. Instead, by understanding.

5. Moderate
Don’t be afraid to moderate. If there’s a violent or offensive post, delete it and block the user as soon as possible. But, don’t delete everything that is negative. If customers don’t see a balance, they’ll think everything is fake. Typically your loyal customers will come to your defense, and that’s a strong offense!

6. Don’t reply to everything
You don’t have to answer or chat with everyone. Let your customers do the talking for you. It’s more valuable when a customer answers another customer’s questions. Just moderate for accuracy. Be lenient. Don’t bud into other people’s conversations unless absolutely necessary.

7. Don’t engage the nasty people
If someone is really negative and you don’t delete or block them, don’t engage them either. You won’t change their mind; you’ll just antagonize them further, making your situation worse.

8. Be fun
Facebook can be fun and cool. Don’t be afraid to make a joke or be silly. After all, it’s the internet.

9. Be careful
Just because you delete something dosen’t mean it’s gone. Someone could have saved the post, taken a screenshot, or reposted it. So watch what you say.

10. Coordinate
If you have more than one Facebook admin, it’s okay to post in different styles, but make sure you are all on the same page (with the bullet points listed above). Otherwise, one of you might be defensive, while the other isn’t, and that creates confusion online.

Here’s another great article about Facebook policy management:
http://mashable.com/2011/01/31/facebook-engagement-policy/
Mobile Email Usage Skyrockets

A great article by MediaPost discussing the latest ComScore numbers regarding email usage:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=143363&nid=122890

Source: ComScore

Daily mobile email usage is up 40% year over year for November 2010. I’m not surprised about this stat, due to the proliferation of mobile devices that are highly email friendly such as the BlackBerry, iPhone, Droids and iPad.