Is Pay Per Click Right For You?

Addressing Common Concerns

At Yield Software, we have the luxury of seeing a multitude of businesses across a wide range of industries, geographies, business models, etc. This give us a unique perspective on internet marketing effectiveness for different types of businesses. A question I hear often is: “For my type of business, is search engine marketing relevant?” While it’s not safe to over-generalize, I’ve put some thoughts together that can help you decide how relevant pay-per-click is for your business.

The benefits are well known and documented–search marketing has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry because it is effective and measurable. Combining the fact that a disproportionate share of marketing budgets are targeted to the Internet relative to the amount of time users spend on the it, together with the ability to assess exactly how valuable each…

Google Social Search is Live

Social Graph Content in Search Results

Moving quickly to capitalize on its growing relationship with Twitter, Google is now publicly testing a new search feature called Social Search.  Available now via Google Labs, Social Search triangulates your contacts in your Gmail chat buddies, your Gmail contacts friends, family and co-worker groups, and people you’re publicly connected to on other social sites (such as Twitter and FriendFeed), which Google calls your Social Circle, to find social media those folks may have produced that relates to your search query.

In a blog post at Google Labs, Google’s Matt Cutts says you should login and do a search:

If there’s relevant web content written by people in your social circle, it will automatically show up at the bottom of your search results under a section called “Results from people in your…

Facebook, Google to Add Music

Naming that Tune Gets a Lot Easier

The New York Times Bits blog (see our blog roll on the right) said it has inside scoop that Google will announce a new music service next week in L.A.  They report:

Several reports today indicate that Google is set to introduce a music service at an event at the iconic Capitol Records building in Hollywood on Oct. 28. The service, we’ve confirmed from three people briefed on the details, will offer searchers a better way to find and sample music on Google — much in the same way people can get detailed financial information about a company from Google Finance.

According to this and other reports, Google is teaming up with iLike (which is owned by MySpace, which, in turn, is owned by Fox/News Corp.), Lala and Imeem.  For folks who search…

Bing, Google Add Tweets to Results

UPDATE (8:43 a.m. PDT): Microsoft has struck a deal with Facebook to include its news feed updates in Bing’s searches.  Bing powers search on Facebook.

Tweets from users on Twitter have hit the big-time: they’re now going to be featured in search results on Bing and Google.

For those geeks among you who follow news from places like Twitter, Google and Microsoft (maker of Bing) like I do (it’s not a particularly scintillating life I lead…), you were no doubt enthralled with yesterday’s unfolding events.

First there was this blog post by Biz Stone, Twitter’s chief:

…there are already tens of thousands of Twitter apps and more to come because people want the choice to consume and create tweets wherever and whenever they prefer. The folks over at Bing took a keen interest in Twitter and worked fast to establish…

For Agencies, Add Value to Client SEM

Break Down SEM Silos

Search engine marketing (SEM) agencies typically fall into two camps: specializing in search engine optimization (SEO) to the exclusion of all else or focusing exclusively on pay-per-click (PPC) while shunning SEO altogether.

Hence, entrenched SEM silos have become the norm and businesses end up working a the traditional ad agency for “outbound” marketing activities (print and radio/TV advertising, direct mail), an SEO agency, and/or a PPC agency.

The problem with this scenario is three-fold:

First, companies end up overlapping their efforts.

Second, little integration exists between traditional marketing and SEM (and online versus offline).

Third, the ability to see a comprehensive view of the marketing “big picture” is often severely compromised.

The SEM silo within companies occurred naturally, according to search marketing specialist Marta Turek. In an objective and insightful essay, “Breaking the Search Marketing Silo,” on her…

Which Is Harder? Google Analytics or Rubik’s Cube?

Understanding the Cost of “Free”

Let’s face it: It is great that Google offers a free analytics tool that tracks all your traffic and allows you to slice-it and dice-it by a variety of different dimensions. You can have a tremendous amount of insight into how your website is performing, where your traffic is coming from, which content is most effective, what users are doing when they get to your site and more.

However, on the downside, in the “Information Rights and Publicity” section of Google’s Terms of Service, they have the right to use the data internally as they see fit. (Insert “crickets chirping in the woods” soundtrack.)  On top of that, you need to be able to really understand all the data you’re presented with, and have the time to analyze and understand it properly.

So,…

Increase Your Agency’s Productivity

Integrated “Cloud” Applications and Efficiency

Though Joni Mitchell’s famous song “Clouds” may lead you to conclude that the whole “cloud computing” phenomenon is just some airy concept (”I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now / from win and lose / and still somehow / it’s clouds illusions I recall / I really don’t know clouds at all”), the fact is, these time-saving, efficiency-enhancing technologies can help you to reduce costs, increase revenues and improve your agency’s margins.

In an interesting post on his IT Enquirer blog, Erik Vlietinck writes about how the “human factors” at a European ad agency led it to lose considerable time and money. Falling into the trap of acting as the “middleman,” the agency dealt with the client and two outside copywriters and caved in to the client’s insistence on weekly face-to-face meetings.

These…

For Ad Agencies, a Call to Act as Consigliere

…or Risk Getting Whacked by Your Clients

In an August post written for the Small Agency Diary blog, Tom Martin talks about how ad agencies have neglected to act in their clients’ best interests. Writes Martin:

We’ve slacked off. We don’t invest nearly enough in our people and resources to ensure we are actually ahead of our clients and in a position to look around the corner and see what’s coming. We have a serious talent gap in our senior-management ranks, and we’ve (by and large) forfeited sound strategy in favor of cheap production tricks and cute one-liners that will line our shelves with awards but not necessarily our clients’ shelves with dollar bills.

To address these issues, writes Martin, agencies can take a cue from The Mob, specifically the Consigliere. For those of you not hip to Mafia…

The Pursuit of (Customer) Happiness

Recently I read a thought provoking article titled The Awesomeness Manifesto. It struck me because start-ups often do things that 99 percent of the rest of the world would consider to be innovative. “Innovative” isn’t as much of a differentiator anymore. It seems like we’ve entered a new stage of product development that requires your product to be darn near frictionless to the user (a.k.a. Awesome).

So, In our latest release we’ve upped the awesomeness level with the goal of making internet marketing easier and more profitable for you!

Traffic Source Filter

Last week we added the ability to select custom date ranges, and this week we build on that by giving you the ability to select your traffic sources. When you select a specific traffic source from the drop down, all the metrics and graphs in the…