The Critically Important Role of Bing Ads in Search Marketing Sunday, Apr 28 2013 

E-Commerce Website Design prowebmn 6:58 pm

It was one of those moments in time I bet many Microsoft executives would like to revisit. The day they decided that Bing Ads (formerly known as Microsoft adCenter) had to be different from AdWords.6

We all know the outcome, using a mixture of familiar terms with different meanings led to advertiser confusion, which in turn led marketers to bad decisions and poor results, which is why so many marketers cut back on Bing Ads, or even stopped marketing on Bing Ads altogether.

The unfortunate thing is that in reality search campaigns running on the Yahoo Bing Network often yield better ROAS than those run on Google AdWords, but due to lower volume, Bing Ads has often been labeled as a “nice to have”.

Because Bing was so different from AdWords, it required lots of different processes, additional learning was required, and unfortunately time is the biggest constraint on PPC teams. So Bing has suffered terribly and hasn’t received their fair share of the ad pie.

Strike that, Reverse it

Last year the Bing Ads team, realizing what was happening, made the wise decision to reverse the path of trying to be different and instead opted to become more like AdWords. And what a year it was for the Bing Ads team. (more…)

 

Using PLAs to Enhance, Not Encroach, on SEM Friday, Apr 26 2013 

E-Commerce Website Design , , prowebmn 5:54 pm

Ever since last year’s rollout of the new product listing ad (PLA) system from Google, there’s been an ongoing debate about whether PLAs steal from paid search. And with similar changes pending from Yahoo/Bing, it only becomes even more critical to accurately measure.

Web-Hosting

Web-Hosting

In looking through data and understanding the different ways marketers employ PLAs, it’s become apparent both sides of the debate are correct, at least to a point.

It’s not that PLAs inherently steal from paid search. It’s a matter of how you’re using them.

Treat PLAs as “just another program” and try to manage through simple automation, and you’ll accomplish little more than checking a box, but you will pay a price. By taking a more sophisticated approach, you can make PLAs benefit your SEM efforts.

The first thing to realize is that PLAs have moved from being a feeds-based system that you can optimize to an optimization-based system that leverages a feed. This is an important distinction.

Managing feeds is a technical requirement. And while certainly not something just anybody can do, it’s much more straightforward than optimizing media, which requires semantic and quantitative expertise.

Expecting a feeds provider to be able to optimize media and bids efficiently is like asking Ashton Kutcher to perform Shakespeare. Technically, he could probably do it. But would you sit through the entire performance?

The second realization is that there’s much more to effectively managing PLAs than just cleaning up a feed, uploading assets and doing basic manipulation and reporting. These are the check-box items. If your technology or service partner can provide this, you can run PLAs. But it doesn’t mean you can be effective.

To truly turn the corner and make PLAs a win, there’s more to be done. Using semantic optimization, you can better position the products in your feed to match actual consumer intent. This is part art and part science. (more…)

 

The Legacy of Spam Thursday, Apr 25 2013 

Web design skills , , prowebmn 3:40 am

How do we, as search marketing professionals, defeat the legacy of spam? The industry’s reputation affects all of us, and the question demands an answer. Before we defeat the legacy, however, we need to look at how the legacy came to be.

google

google

Years ago, your link building strategy may have consisted of generating about a thousand spammy links while playing a round of golf. In those days, you could submit a few keywords to certain websites, pay some cash, and head out for the afternoon. By the time you returned, a ton of links had increased your client’s search rankings.

You were happy. The client was happy. It was that easy.

Many of us have drastically changed the way we build links since then, but those link building practices were completely normal not so long ago. They were easy and they got results.

We now live in different times, but the way SEO professionals operated just a few years ago has created a powerful legacy in our industry: the legacy of spam.

Every Saga has a Beginning

The legacy of spam didn’t build itself. We built it. (more…)

 

YouTube Creator Playbook Adds 5 Tailored Playbook Guides Wednesday, Apr 24 2013 

Web design skills , prowebmn 6:11 pm

YouTube recently added five tailoredPlaybook Guides – for education, media companies, music, nonprofits, and sports – to be used in conjunction with Version 3 of the Creator Playbook, which is the main resource for site-wide best practices.adobe_flash

After reviewing each of the five new Playbook Guides, it’s clear that one size does not fit all when it comes to audience development. Although every YouTube channel needs great content to be successful, the strategies for building audiences around each type of content are significantly different.

Education

For example, YouTube EDU is home to high quality educational content from around the world. YouTube’s ambitious goal is to provide a global platform where anyone, anywhere can teach – or learn – anything they want. From Pre-K (e.g., Sesame Street) to Primary and Secondary Education (e.g., Khan Academy), to Higher Education (e.g., Massachusetts Institute of Technology), to Lifelong Learning (e.g., Big Think), YouTube wants to encourage creators in this category to continually discover, create, and share educational videos with the world.

However, some schools block access to YouTube, so the Education Playbook Guide talks about a gateway feature called YouTube for Schools that provides school networks with access to YouTube education videos, while continuing to block the rest of YouTube. Additional features include disabled comments and related video suggestions that are limited to YouTube EDU content.

Media Companies

There are two main types of media companies on YouTube. The first type creates “new” content that is tailored for YouTube’s audience and platform (e.g., PBS Off Book and Nerdist). The second type “repurposes” content that was originally produced for television or a partner’s owned and operated site (e.g., Comedy Central or TED Talks).

The Playbook Guide for Media Companies tackles a question that both types of media companies would ask: At what point is it smart to launch a new channel? The answer: If your content appeals to multiple, diverse audiences, then create multiple, diverse channels. And how should media companies leverage their existing audiences to drive viewership to a new channel? This particular guide says, “Annotations, calls-to-action (CTAs), description links, and promotional videos are effective (more…)

 

How to Be a Marketing Leader: Make Everyone Around You Better Tuesday, Apr 23 2013 

Web design skills , , prowebmn 6:13 pm

While I was scrambling to finish some last-minute handover items during my last day in the office before heading on vacation, I remembered a saying we had in the army: “A good commander is tested in his absence.”6

Basically, this mantra forces you to ask yourself if you’ve prepared your team well enough to keep everything running smoothly even when you aren’t there. Did you train them well enough to trust them to do their work even when you aren’t hovering over their shoulder to make sure that every detail is in place?

This is a question that every manager should ask, and it touches on one of the core elements of management: coaching. It’s the ability to make the people around you better because it makes the entire organization better.

Whether you’re managing a marketing team, a company, or an agency, the only way to truly succeed (and scale) is to make sure you empower your team enough to do the job – even in your absence.

One of the ways to do that is to use any opportunity to analyze their performance in executing the tasks you assigned to them. If you look close enough, there are multiple opportunities like that every day.

Finding Coaching Opportunities

For example, let’s say that you run an SEO agency and one of your basic services is on-page SEO analysis. Since it’s a relatively simple and somewhat repetitive task, you assign it to one of your junior account managers. You show him how to use the software to get the information about the page, how to create the report and how to send it to the client. (more…)

 

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