Hi all,

Welcome to Part Two as promised of our April Newsletter

In this part I've popped in an interesting article I found from The Press about TradeMe and the changing face of marketing - seems to be a hot topic right now!. In Marketing 101, we are carrying on from Part One and talking about "How to Run a Successful PPC Campaign" (fascinating stuff I must say!). Remember that we can do this for you.

Also check out our search world tidbits for some interesting reading.

We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles… just email us at info@optymise.co.nz.

Have a fantastic month.

Enjoy,
Robyn

In this issue:

• » TradeMe and the Changing Face of Marketing
• » Marketing 101: How to run a successful Pay per Click Campaign
• » Search World Tidbits

Is marketing broken? That question was posed recently by a senior executive at Trade Me, one of New Zealand's most successful technology companies. It is an important one as many local technology companies look to replicate their success.

Controversy erupted in various internet blogs (online discussion forums) last month with a comment from Trade Me technology manager Rowan Simpson, who was quoted as saying: "Trade Me wasn't about technology, Sam (Morgan, Trade Me founder)'s insight was that marketing was broken. Rather than wasting lots of money on big billboards and TV ads he instead decided to focus on building a really great product, which people like to use and tell their friends about."

Mr Simpson was saying that marketing activities like traditional advertising are becoming less important. Create a good enough experience for the customer and you can achieve success without having a big promotional war chest.

Marketing in the sense of promoting your product is certainly changing, and is going to keep on changing. In leading American marketing publication Advertising Age, columnist Bob Garfield points to official figures that show network TV audience has eroded an average of 2% a year for a decade while the U.S. population increased by 30 million. The cost of reaching 1,000 households through television advertising in prime time increased from $7.64 in 1994 to $19.85 in 2004.

The conclusion of Garfield's article was that advertising as we know it was under severe threat, as we consumers use channels such as pay TV and the internet to gather information about the products we wish to buy. "This is revolution, and first we will be awash in the blood of the old guard."

It is not a unique position, with plenty of pundits in recent years predicting the demise of traditional advertising. Still, a recent survey released by US investment bank called Jefferies and Co says online advertising, although growing fast, only represents 6% of total ad spending in the U.S.

Recent statistics in New Zealand don't suggest a major shift in ad spending is imminent. Online advertising revenue rose 48 per cent to $65 million in 2006, but that is only a tiny fraction of the $2.224 billion spent overall. Total spending was only fractionally down in 2006 on a record year in 2005.

On stuff.co.nz advertising expert Nigel Keats predicted overall revenue growth in 2007 advertising spend. "We're seeing some growth. We're getting a strong sense that TV is doing very well at the moment. With newspapers and radio it's harder to tell. We think magazines and outdoor are soft and online is growing like crazy."

So is marketing really broken? It seems that traditional advertising mediums are still a very important part of many local companies' marketing mix. To assess the question properly we need to look at couple of key roles marketing plays.

Identifying a value proposition i.e. the unique promise of value your company can make to a customer is the first crucial role. A marketer needs to be able to look at your business from the customer's perspective and understand why choosing your product or service benefits them more than any other option. Trade Me built a very strong value proposition, offering the consumer a live, low cost way of buying and selling used goods. It was clearly different from the hard copy publications and newspaper classifieds that were on offer at the time.

The stronger your value proposition the less you need to engage the marketer's other focus - indirect persuasion (as opposed to the direct persuasion that is sales). For example, a pub in a student town offering free beer is unlikely to need to do a lot of advertising to pack out their establishment.

The weaker your value proposition the more indirect persuasion (advertising, direct mail, sponsorship, publicity etc) is required. With commodities, where there is little actual variation in the end product, indirect persuasion is really important. Think baked beans or petrol. Or when there is a lot of competition - clothing or airlines.

Simpson's comments do have something of Winston Churchill's famous observation that "history is written by the victors." Trade Me has been a huge success with remarkably little traditional promotion. They did create a great experience for customers and they did stay focussed on this as they grew. But they also had no strong online competition at the time, and they saw a gap that the hard copy publications weren't fulfilling.

Zillion.co.nz is another trading website which bills itself as technically smarter than Trade Me. But just because it is reportedly a 'better' product doesn't mean it will beat Trade Me. Zillion would struggle to overtake Trade Me even with a huge advertising campaign. Trade Me have grabbed that space, served it well and rightfully built a dominant position.

It is interesting to see that Trade Me are now using traditional newspaper advertising quite extensively to promote their online property promotion service. That's because this sector is very competitive, with a lot of offline and online publications offering property listings. Maybe marketing isn't that broken after all?

Source: http://www.concentrate.co.nz/media_broken.htm

How to Run a Successful PPC Campaign

Hi team, remember how last month we covered Pay Per Click for dummies… what it was, what its benefits were, and why go to the trouble of including PPC in your online marketing agenda? Now that we've all decided it's worth its while, let's talk about the how part… how to run a successful PPC campaign. In reality, anyone can run a basic pay per click campaign through Yahoo! or Google. But running a successful campaign is a different story altogether.

Your most important considerations in putting together a PPC campaign are how much you intend spending and what keywords you plan on targeting.

Obviously, the larger PPC search engines like Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and MSN have the widest coverage of most target audiences, so the cost for bidding on their keywords is going to be more expensive than if you try the smaller, niche PPC search engines.

It is best to do some research for keywords, so try using these tools:

http://www.wordtracker.com/ (the free trial is fine)
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

If you are new to the industry, it's advisable to take it slowly to begin with. Set yourself a small budget and choose keywords that are well searched for and as cheap as possible.

♦  The first step is to choose the PPC search engine you are going to use. You can choose from the "Big 3" - Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing or MSN, or one of the smaller PPC search engines.

♦  When choosing your keywords, choose wisely (the more focused and targeted the better to attract quality leads) and keep bids within your budget. Just because a keyword has the most searches does not necessarily mean it will be the most profitable.

For example: the keyword "batteries" might have a large number of searches, but it is too general. How do you know if the visitor wants the batteries your site is going to sell? More targeted keywords and phrases, even with fewer searches can be profitable. Example: the keyword "buy rechargeable AA batteries" is much more focused and more likely to result in a sale.

♦  Tip: Do not target only keywords with the highest number of searches, especially if you are just starting out. These will be the most sought after keywords and phrases for PPC and they will cost you more to bid on them. Don't be afraid to use keywords from the middle, and even lower end on the list. Fewer click-throughs that convert to sales are much better than paying for a lot of click-throughs and fewer sales. Remember, you want quality targeted traffic.

♦  The next step is to design and implement your ad. This will depend on the PPC search engine you have chosen. Incorporate your keyword or key phrase into the Title and if possible, either the main keyword or a secondary key-phrase into the description.

Create a number of versions of your ad so you can split-test them to see which one works most effectively. PPC Marketing requires a good deal of tweaking - especially when you are starting out - so tweak, test and monitor until you find the right word combinations that not only draw you visitors but make the sale.

Running a Profitable PPC Campaign

Your main consideration in running a successful PPC campaign is your return on investment (ROI). The ROI is calculated by working out how much you are making on the click-throughs (and purchases) from your PPC visitors minus the amount you are spending on advertising. If your ROI is low or worse still, negative, you have to tweak your ads to increase traffic or opt for less expensive keywords.

• » If you have chosen particularly competitive keywords and paid a premium for those words, you may have to consider keywords that are less competitive.
• » Your position in the search engine listings is determined by the bid price you have paid. Obviously, the more you are willing to pay "per click" the higher up in the search engine rankings you'll be. The trade-off is that you need to have a high ROI to make the cost of your keyword bids worth it.

Most PPC search engines automate the bidding process so you only pay the maximum amount required to get you to the top of the search engine listings. However, it is imperative that you follow your own PPC campaigns to ensure you aren't being out-bid or that the PPC search engine has declined your ad. (This can happen if your original maximum bid price becomes uncompetitive).

Once you have mastered the basics of running a PPC campaign and have discovered the various tools and software available to help you run a profitable campaign, you will be in a position to fine tune your campaigns.

Although PPC marketing is an effective and instantaneous way of generating targeted traffic to your site, it doesn't work for everyone. Factors like the competition in your market, the cost per bid, the number of actual click-throughs you are getting and your return on investment (ROI) must all be factored into your results.

But when you consider that the only alternative is to wait for your site to be organically listed and ranked by the major search engines, which could take anywhere from one day to three months or more, running a PPC campaign is certainly a more viable option. Good luck!

Tricks of the Trade

Unfortunately, Pay-Per-Click advertising is not as simple as it seems. There are things to consider for a more in depth PPC campaign. Such as, each search network (i.e. Google Adwords, Yahoo! Overture, etc) attracts different demographics, each network requiring copy writing that is uniquely appealing to its demographic. Knowing what kind of sales copy works where and at what point in the purchase decision can make or break a campaign. Complexity abounds with bidding strategies which can vary drastically between the different ad networks and between different keyword phrases - especially when managing large budget campaigns. As a result, merely replicating one campaign within a different ad network can cost your campaign thousands of dollars and bring you little to no returns, despite the fact that it worked somewhere else. To say the least, Pay-Per-Click advertising is not as straightforward as it might first appear.

Out-Sourcing Your Pay-Per-Click Advertising Campaign

If you do not know how to run a successful Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign, you run the risk of driving all sorts of targeted traffic to your web site that does not convert. This will leave you scratching your head and leave you with holes in your pockets. This is where hiring an Internet marketing professional can pay dividends. Call 03 377 0803 or request a quote and see how Optymise can help you run a successful Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign.

Source: Anicon, PayPerClick Search Engines, Ezine and Enquiro

• » Helium - Inside Helium, a new site for writing, rating and finding articles. The concept is simple: You register to write articles on a theme of your choosing. Once you have contributed an article, you get to rate or flag other articles in the same category. I like it!
• » NYTimes.com hires former Yahoo executive - The New York Times has named Murray Gaylord, a former Yahoo executive, to oversee marketing of the NYTimes.com web site. "The move is part of New York Times' efforts to increase sales at its digital operations as advertisers spend more on the Internet and less on print publications,". Times are a changing people!
• » Google Maps Offers Speech-Friendly Alternatives - For blind searchers and others who use spoken outputs, screen-readers or a Braille display, the visual display that is returned from a Google Maps or Google Local search is often translated poorly in such readers. So Google has added a simple, alternative view into Google Maps for visually impaired users, with the Textual Maps UI. It's also extremely useful for any searcher using a non-graphical display and can quickly look up a location by typing a simple English query of the form of a start address to end address. Good thinking!
• » Google Changes the Dating Dynamic - Ever thought about the internet and your love life? Click here for an interesting read.

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