I am managing Digital Marketing Institute’s paid search accounts, including our Google AdWords account, and make sure to review them regularly. Most of the times I make changes to the keywords – add negatives, pause or amend poorly performing keywords, raise the budget for profitable ones... However, every now and then when I get the chance to glance over our ad text, I always find room for improvement (even though at the time of when I created those ads they seemed pretty good!)
Good ad text has a two-fold advantage – it resonates with the search query of your potential customer and improves your QS (Quality Score) reducing your costs and improving your competitiveness.
Here is a 4-point checklist to help you recognise whether your ad text strategy is currently hurting your paid search performance:
Do you assume your current ad variation is as good as it can be? Many PPC advertisers tend to test between 5 and 10 ad variations, find the one that is proven to perform best and stick with it. However it often takes thinking outside the box and continuous testing of new original ideas to ensure the success of your PPC campaigns.
Do your ads have the best destination URLs? If you run time-limited offers, or have a different page for each product/service you need to ensure that your ads go to the most relevant pages. This is not only important for the QS, but above all offers a user the shortest path to what they are looking for – dramatically increasing conversion rates. It is also crucial to ensure ads direct to correct pages if you add new categories, or carry out any kind of restructure of the website.
Are you constantly monitoring your competitors' ads? It is important to constantly check live Google results rather than just the stats in your AdWords account, so you can see what is going on with your competition. If your best ad starts showing signs of decreasing performance, it might be because your competitors have a higher bid, or a more compelling offer. In case of the latter you could even get some good ideas on marketing your product or service!
Are you testing your ad on the correct metric? Focus your ad wins on a combination of click-through-rate and conversion rate. Often if you pause your ads based solely on low conversion rate you could actually decrease your sales volume. Check your Analytics reports and how visitors arriving on the site through those ads behave. If they spend a lot of time, visit some key pages and/or complete goals (e.g. fill in contact form), then they are quality traffic that you cannot loose.
Managing Google AdWords account requires a good bit of time and a lot of diligence, but it is absolutely worth the effort you put in. Since the ad is the first thing a prospective customer or client sees from you, having a compelling message that results in clicks cannot be underestimated.
Need help? Digital Marketing Institute has a PPC module included in all its programmes.
If you are new to digital marketing, Professional Diploma would be a good holistic course to start with.
However, if you would like to learn only Google AdWords, you will be able to attend classes on just this topic. Email or call 01 271 1816 for inquiries and next available dates
Digital Marketing Institute delivers high quality training courses in all aspects of current digital marketing. We have recently partnered with the Cork College of Commerce to bring the course to Cork city.
This is a 12-Lecture Part Time course (taking place over 8 weeks) which takes place on Tuesday and Thursday evenings between 6:30pm and 9:30pm.
Where: Cork College of Commerce, Morrison's Island, Cork, Ireland
When: Start date Thursday 3rd March 2011
Time: 6.30pm - 9.30pm Each Week for a total of 12 weeks
Week 1 - Thursday 3rd March Week 2 - Tuesday 8th March & Thursday 10th March Week 3 - Tuesday 15th March Week 4 - Tuesday 22nd March & Thursday 24th March Week 5 - Tuesday 29th March Week 6 - Tuesday 5th April & Thursday 7th April Week 7 - Tuesday 12th April Week 8 - Tuesday 19th April & Thursday 21st April
Overview
As we are all aware, the Internet plays and ever-increasingly important role in our lives, whether in business or at home. For businesses, especially as the economy falters, businesses are looking to use the internet as a method of communicating, selling and marketing their products, services, brand and vision and generally interact with customers.
This course has been developed by digital marketing professionals for existing and aspiring digital marketing professionals. All of the lecturers are expert practitioners in their field. This course therefore provides attendees with comprehensive introduction to the concepts and application of digital marketing. It introduces a range of innovative approaches that have been taken in applying these ideas to online Marketing. Real life case studies and a very practical approach provide a cornerstone to this course, ensuring that students understand both the theory and be in a position to apply this in their own business.
Course Overview
The course includes all aspects of current thinking and application of online and digital marketing, including
Search Engine Optimisation
Pay per Click Marketing
Banner and other Digital Image marketing
Podcasting
Blogging
Social Networking
Affiliate Marketing
Email Marketing
Web Site Analytics
Dealing with Digital Agencies
Facebook
Twitter
Upon completion of this course, students will have an understanding of the essential concepts required to develop a career in Digital Marketing.
Lecturers
All of your lecturers are professionals in the Digital Marketing sector, running and delivering online marketing campaigns. Furthermore, all of your lecturers are senior members of (and some are board members of) their appropriate association. They base their training on their experiences and will be therefore using real life examples and case studies throughout the course.
Your lecturers for this Cork-based digital marketing training courses are all digital marketing practitioners. A complete list of our faculty is available here, and here is a short list of some of some of these lecturers:
12 Lectures over 8 Weeks, Evening Programme, 6.30pm - 9.30pm, each evening
Venue
Cork College of Commmerce, Cork
Who Should Attend
This course is designed for those who have little previous experience of online marketing and who want to get started in implementing these techniques in their business. The course is targeted to those with responsibility for developing or implementing an organisation’s online strategy, including senior management, marketing managers, communication specialists, webmasters and IT managers and personnel or would like to a pursue a career in online marketing.
Course Structure
Lecture 1.
How the Internet has Impacted Marketing Web Site Design and how it’s development has impacted marketing and how the web and it’s various can be applied to your business through the use of the online marketing techniques that we will introduce over the coming weeks.
Lecture 2.
Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Correctly implementing On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO on your web site can get your business listed at the top of Google and the other search engines. This lecture clearly explains how, by correctly implementing blogging, meta-tags, content, sitemaps, an inbound linking strategy and developing a comprehensive digital footprint, Google will find your site and place it to the top of the search results.
Lecture 3.
Pay Per Click Marketing (focusing on Google AdWords) Online advertising is now a critical part of any online marketing campaign. This lecture takes the student through the various Pay per Click products as well as taking everyone through various case studies. The lecturer will also set up a Google AdWords campaign.
Lecture 4.
Using Google Analytics to improve traffic and user navigation This lecture describes how to view and analyse web site statistics as part of an online marketing campaign. It is focused entirely on Google Analytics and how to implement Google Analytics on your web site and use it to find out who visits your site, where they come from, what pages they visit, etc, etc. You can then use this information to improve your visitor interaction.
Lecture 5.
Email Marketing in the Digital Marketing Mix We explain the ideas behind email marketing and how this has evolved over the past 10 years, introducing students to the leading email marketing tools and applications available on the market. The lecturer goes through some of the best practice examples of email marketing. Practical examples and case studies throughout.
Lecture 6.
Social Marketing With more than 140 million blogs currently being tracked by Technorati, the opportunities for businesses to speak with their customers is nearly unlimited. That’s why more and more companies are turning to the blogosphere to connect with consumers. Never before have had businesses had such effective access to the frustrations and desires of their target audience. This lecture clearly explains how to go about using blogs and social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc) as part of the marketing mix to drive business.
Lecture 7.
Online PR and how to create and implement successful Online PR campaigns Students will learn how to plan and implement an Online PR Strategy using some or all of the Social Media applicatins and tools discussed in the previous lecture. The issues discussed will also include Online Brand and Reputation Management
Lecture 8.
Online Display Advertising - Create, Implement and Measure Online Advertising Campaigns Display and Banner now advertising now plays a huge part in the overall marketing mix. This lecture goes through the history of the development of this market. You will learn how to develop an online brief, understand the components of online advertising success and be able to understand and construct and online media campaign.
Lecture 9.
How Web Site Architecture can Affect Online Success A Web site’s information architecture and technical architecture are critical to its success in natural search results - and are important elements of paid search success, too. Dynamic URLs & dynamic content. This lecture discusses some of the following (in marketing terms!): HTTP and HTML, Redirects, JavaScript, CSS, Multiple languages, domains and sub-domains, Duplicate content issues, etc
Lecture 10.
Mobile Marketing and Video Optimisation This lecture discusses (a) the emergence of mobile marketing and how to usethisas art of your marketing campaign, and (b) how video is affecting our interaction with web sites and how you can take advantage of video, Youtube and other video content sites.
Lecture 11.
Affiliate Marketing What is Affiliate Marketing and what are the benefits of using Affiliate Marketing as an additional channel. How to set up a successful affiliate program. Using paid and natural keyword bidding and natural search to effectively promote products and services on search engines. Measuring results and case studies throughout.
Lecture 12.
Planning and Implementing a Digital Marketing Campaign This lecture brings together all of the elements in a digital marketing campaign. The advantages and shortcomings of each of the activities within a campaign are reviewed with real-life examples as to why and where a medium would be chosen.
Assessment
The Diploma is awarded to participants on the successful completion of a Digital Marketing Assignment. The assignment is a written document, giving students the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding and application of their newly acquired digital marketing knowledge.
Cost
Cost per participant - €1,495 1,250
Note that your place on the course is confirmed upon full payment of the course fee.
Google (UK) has just launched a series of Free Google AdWords Training Course Videos to help advertisers start with, and then get the most from, their Google AdWords advertising.
If you're interested in creating a stronger online brand presence or drawing a high volume of traffic to your site, the Google AdWords Online Classroom can help you accomplish both by giving you access to the world's largest online video-streaming and -sharing community.
There are a whole bunch of video's to help you get started with Google advertising. The titles of these videoa includes:
Create an AdWords account
Ways to Boost Your AdWords performance
Measuring Success
Beyond the basics
This is an excellent series of video's for beginners.
There is also a video specially for marketing agencies trying to get to grips with the digital advertising world.
delivered in association with the Cork Chamber of Commerce and the Biznet Cork Skillnet and starts 27th January 2011. It takes place in the River Lee Hotel (formerly known as Jury's Hotel).
Early booking is strongly advised as this course has been oversubscribed each time we ran it in the past.
This Diploma in Digital Marketing Course is designed to enable you to create a real and focused digital marketing plan that can help you and your organisation to increase online brand awareness, traffic to your site and intimately sales for your products and services, therefore allowing you to become more profitable.
It is a part-time evening Diploma, delivered between 6.30pm and 9.30pm commencing on Wednesday 26th January and running every Wednesday for 12 weeks.
This course is for marketers and business leaders who need to understand what the impact of the fast evolving digital marketing will play on their company and profits. We have developed this course for the modern SME to enable to to develop a clear, concise and focused digital marketing strategy that can help you and your organisation become more efficient and more profitable.
This course includes modules and lectures by some of the leading lights in the digital marketing sector in the country. the modules include lectures on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), Online & Display Advertising, Mobile Marketing, Social Media Marketing, Online PR, Affiliate Marketing, Web Site Analytics and much more. Your trainers include people from companies that include Adforce, Radical, Digino, H&A Group, RingJohn.com, BizGrowthNews, Ion Online Marketing, Cybercom and many more. All of your lecturers are experience industry practitioners who share with you their extensive experience - each module is a mix of lecture, hands-on workshop and interactive discussion.
In designing this accredited Diploma, we share with you the main skills required to create and implement effective digital marketing campaigns.
Millions of people search Google Maps every day. A free listing on Google Maps makes it easy for them to find you. Business can use Google Places to create a free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they will find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your shop front or products. It's easy, free and you don't need a website of your own.
Google Places is a business listing page within Google’s Maps service offering. Within Google Maps, users search for products or services offered by local businesses as well as transportation directions and business information. The business information shown to a user within Google Maps is the product of the information compiled and retrieved from Google Places (or the business’ “Place Page”).
If you’ve ever conducted a search at Google.com, you’ve probably already been exposed to Google Places. You’ll know this by the incorporation of a map and a set of listings when you include a city or region within your search.
In fact, recent changes in Google’s search engine will now show the Maps listings with a great deal of emphasis when a local search is conducted; pushing the “organic” listings down the page.
The listings from Google Maps take up the majority of the results page. And each of these listings is created by a Google Places listing.
Google has announced that they have a new reseller program and a reorganised some of the business to support this and a reorganization to support it. They made this announcement at the BIA/Kelsey Directional Media Strategies 2010 Conference in Dallas, Texas and has been reported byChris Silver Smith of SearchEngineLand.
Chris goes on to say the following:
As you may recall from back in March, Google abruptly closed the AdWords reseller program, causing some major heartburn from their many large channel partners as well as some loss of revenues (so I’ve heard). Access to their AdWords API was discontinued, making it impossible for these companies to sell into the system and manage accounts across their multiple channels.
The abrupt move was interpreted by a number of Google’s partners at that time as being overly aggressive in competition and unfair — perhaps exacerbated by some opaqueness in statements they made about why the move was done. (I had spoken with a few of Google’s large reseller partners at that time who did not wish to go on the record due to desire to renegotiate agreements.) However, consistent reports indicated that Google would relaunch the reseller program later with some changes, and that has now happened.
If you’re unfamiliar with the AdWords reseller program, it enabled a number of companies, particularly in the local space, to officially partner with Google in order to resell Google ads, and deploy and manage those ads on behalf of the resellers’ partners. As Google’s online search and visitor share has grown over time, online advertisers have increasingly known that they’d benefit from exposure in Google’s ad networks, and others who sell ads to small-to-medium businesses (“SMBs”) have found it advantageous to be able to sell into Google’s system in addition to selling into their own sites and networks. In return, these partnerships expanded Google’s ad sales as well, since it tapped multiple sales organizations in other companies who have relationships with small businesses who might otherwise not be inclined to buy and self-serve their own ads directly with Google.
In this morning’s announcement, Todd Rowe (Google’s new Director of Global SMB Reseller Partnerships) related that Google had decided that their reseller channel was one of their most important initiatives. Google realized that they could reach tens of billions of dollars more in revenue with effective reseller partnering, and this raised the program more and more to the attention of the company’s top executives. At the same time, the organization wasn’t arranged and set up to support this kind of growth, and they couldn’t support both the advertisers and resellers’ needs effectively. So, they halted the partnerships and began rebuilding the organization. Rowe was hired on due to his background experience with channel development, and he began reorganizing. Google’s separate Asian channel reseller division was combined along with other foreign divisions with the domestic office in order to coordinate the entire program.
Here are some of the main features of the new AdWords Reseller Program:
One Global Channels Organization. This will allow partners to be able to sell into domestic and foreign placement through a single relationship. And it will allow coordinated development and a unified roadmap.
Global SMB Reseller Partner Partner Council. Google will bring representatives from a variety of partners from different companies, including different types of companies such as pureplay, SEM, yellow pages and local, as well as from startups.
Investment in the Program. Google has increased investment in the program to effectively support their partners. They’ve staffed up to handle development needs, as well as representatives to interact with partners. The representative to partner ratio has been increased. The development can be ramped up to address new products and potentially custom reseller partner needs.
Executive Management. Google has made reseller channel a major initiative, and they’re giving it increased focus and attention with many new hires, including Todd Rowe as Director. He stated that “…if it’s been over a year since you spoke with a Google executive about your reseller partnership, that’s been too long…” (I paraphrase).
Product Roadmap. They will have a roadmap, and he indicated that info regarding upcoming changes would be shared with their partners to reduce issues with abrupt changes, and to receive feedback in return regarding impact to partners’ business and to understand potential impacts to advertisers.
Rowe directed the audience’s attention to a row in the middle of Google employees involved with the program, and indicated they’d be interested in discussing partnerships.
From the context of the announcement, I’d interpret that Google’s increasing growth in the numbers of resellers (he said they have about 250, worldwide) and the increasing revenue stream from the channel partnerships had outpaced their ability to scale and handle partner needs/demands. I know that different sites, different businesses resulted in logical demands for customizations and effective communications with their reseller API. There will likely continue to be people who view Google’s moves in this area with some degree of suspicion and with the nuance that they felt burned by the abrupt yanking of prior agreements — some viewed that as a wake-up call that they needed to diversify even further in order to reduce dependence upon a Google partnership. Some of those prior partners will likely now return to partnering with Google — I think that most likely cannot afford to ignore the newly-opened door.
There were rumors back when the reseller partnerships were halted that Google was going to demand increased transparency from the reseller partners, and force them to provide advertisers with reports on what their mark-up margin was for the ads resold. However, I spoke with Rowe after the announcement session, and he clarified that Google’s terms were only focused on providing the advertisers with the advertisements’ performance metrics — such as impressions and clickthroughs.
The announcements of openness in terms of sharing info on product roadmap plans with resellers, and taking input from reseller partners in developing product features was very well-received by the audience.
Companies who don’t even advertise online are now using digital marketing tools to shape their offline marketing campaigns. A client of ours was recently preparing a national radio campaign advertising their new service. They run these radio ads once per quarter and while discussing their possible use of the web we suggested they do some keyword research before writing the script of the radio ad to see exactly what words and phrases their target audience were using to describe their products and services.
This told them two crucial things
1. What words were being searched for most often right now by their target audience (google keyword research tool) and more importantly
2. what words were trending into use and what words had become tired and were trending out of use. (google trends)
This allows them to align themselves with the phraseology and terminology of their audience as it changes, and helps them to appear as leaders to their market. It also allows them to get a jump on search engine optimisation and start being found for these words before their competitors.
When we set up the digital marketing institute about 2 years ago the field we are in was typically called “online marketing”. With some keyword research we saw that the phrases online marketing was static (usually the first sign of a coming decline) in terms of it’s usage where as the phrase “digital marketing” had made huge leaps and even if it’s growth slowed significantly it would still pass out online marketing as the phrase to describe the industry.
Language is not fixed it evolves and changes over months and weeks. Think of a cartoon in the newspaper, it’s funny today but in a few weeks time it looses it’s context and relevance.
The following article comes from the latest version of AMAS’s State of the Net publication. The State of the Net can be downloaded from the AMAS site.
2010 marks a watershed for digital advertising in Ireland, with the publication of the first study from IAB Ireland/PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Digital advertising was worth €97.2 million in 2009, or 10.3% of the Irish advertising market. With advertising spend suffering a 20% fall in 2009, digital is proving to be more resilient than other categories.
Search – predominately Google AdWords – was the dominant format, accounting for 46.2% of online advertising spend, followed by classifieds (27.2%) and display (26.6%). A variety of formats, including email, sponsorships and affiliates, are included in the display category. Property, recruitment and motoring were the biggest spenders, accounting for 45% of digital advertising spend.
Why is this study so important? Many large advertisers, notably global brands, tend not to commit budgets without industry-recognised data. And that’s what they’re getting – the reconstituted IAB Ireland is part of a network of similar industry bodies internationally while Price-waterhouseCoopers uses a tried and tested methodology across all markets.
Equivalent IAB research in other markets has accelerated the growth in online advertising, at the expense of traditional media. More mature markets, such as the UK and the Nordic countries, are reporting online advertising market shares in excess of 20%. Expect the next IAB Ireland study, for the first half of 2010, to start plotting that growth curve.
If you are interested in the digital marketing and advertising sector in Ireland and abroad, sign up for one of the many courses that the Digital Marketing Institute offers.
Google’s latest innovation for Gmail, called ‘Priority Inbox’, is aimed at those who are overwhelmed by email.
For many users, particularly if you are signed up to lots of automated newsletters and email updates from companies, it can be overwhelming to open up their email ina morning and sort the wheat from the chaff.
Learns email habits
Google’s Priority Inbox attempts to learn your e-mail habits and then decides which messages are most important to you and places these at the top of your email list.
Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread”, “Starred” and “Everything else”.
Priority Inbox is essentially an automated way of doing what many already do (ie setting up manual filters).
Google Software Engineer Doug Aberdeen, explains thethinking behind Priority Inbox(which is currently in beta) as follows: “Our inboxes are slammed with hundreds, sometimes thousands of messages a day—mail from colleagues, from lists, about appointments and automated mail that’s often not important. It’s time-consuming to figure out what needs to be read and what needs a reply.”
Aberdeen says that, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important.”
“So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it tonot only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this”bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is likeyour personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.
One of the better Google video’s that I have seen (and I show as many folks as possible) is one delivered by a guy called Hal Varian who is Google’s Chief Economist. The video introduces viewers to the wild and woolly area of the AdWords auction. You can watch this Google AdWords video below.
Finally, remember that if you’d like to understand how bidding can affect your ad’s performance in the auction, you can use the bid simulator. It will provide you with click, cost, and impression data estimating how your ad could have performed over the last seven days had you used a different bid.
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I am managing Digital Marketing Institute’s paid search accounts, including our Google AdWords account, and make sure to review them regularly. Most of the times I make changes to the keywords – add negatives, pause or amend poorly performing keywords, raise the budget for profitable ones... However, every now and then when I get the chance to glance over our ad text, I always find room for improvement (even though at the time of when I created those ads they seemed pretty good!)
Digital Marketing Institute delivers high quality training courses in all aspects of current digital marketing. We have recently partnered with the 
Google (UK) has just launched a series of Free Google AdWords Training Course Videos to help advertisers start with, and then get the most from, their Google AdWords advertising. 
Millions of people search Google Maps every day. A free listing on Google Maps makes it easy for them to find you. Business can use Google Places to create a free listing. When potential customers search Maps for local information, they will find your business: your address, hours of operation, even photos of your shop front or products. It's easy, free and you don't need a website of your own.
In this morning’s announcement, Todd Rowe (Google’s new Director of Global SMB Reseller Partnerships) related that Google had decided that their reseller channel was one of their most important initiatives. Google realized that they could reach tens of billions of dollars more in revenue with effective reseller partnering, and this raised the program more and more to the attention of the company’s top executives. At the same time, the organization wasn’t arranged and set up to support this kind of growth, and they couldn’t support both the advertisers and resellers’ needs effectively. So, they halted the partnerships and began rebuilding the organization. Rowe was hired on due to his background experience with channel development, and he began reorganizing. Google’s separate Asian channel reseller division was combined along with other foreign divisions with the domestic office in order to coordinate the entire program.
Google’s latest innovation for Gmail, called ‘Priority Inbox’, is aimed at those who are overwhelmed by email.
