Comprehensive Strategies for Growth

All of us here at Yield Software have worked hard to provide useful, easy-to-understand information on the full range of Web marketing possibilities on this blog, through our tweets on Twitter and the like. And, based on feedback, it seems the many small and growing businesses we serve (and tons more we don’t) really appreciate the information.

Which is why we were inspired to pull together our first eBook, “The Link Economy and Why It Matters to Small and Growing Businesses,” a limited-edition print run of which will be distributed from our booth at the annual Search Engine Strategies (SES) 2009 Conference & Expo August 11 and 12, 2009 at the San Jose Convention Center.

Addressing the concerns of business leaders who have limited or no experience with Web marketing, our new eBook provides an introduction to the Link Economy; the ways any business can plug in; and ways to best leverage Web marketing to expand business opportunities. If you’re not able to visit us in person at SES this week, free downloads of our new eBook are available here on our website.

We’ll also be on hand at SES to demonstrate recent upgrades to our Yield Web Marketing Suite. By combining and automating the three key elements of search marketing – paid search, natural search and landing page optimization – within a single, secure system, the Yield Web Marketing Suite enables novice to advanced marketers to optimize campaigns on Google, Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Bing – all via a simple and user-friendly interface.

Recent upgrades and new features include:

A new campaign creation wizard for businesses starting search engine advertising for the first time, which guides the creation of budgets; keyword lists, including suggested keywords; and text ads, including suggested copy points;

New informational widgets added to the campaign overview Dashboard, including a new “What’s Yield done for me in the last 24 hours?” widget providing a snapshot of computational and transactional work system algorithms perform “under the hood”;

Point-of-impact access to impressions, clicks, cost and conversions metrics, to make quick evaluation and performance reviews more convenient and robust; and,

Complete support of Microsoft’s Bing.

Yield Software offers all new subscribers a free 30-day trial. No downloads or systems integration work is required, and there are no contracts. Following the 30-day trial period, promotional pricing starts at $129 per month for up to one full year.

Whether you run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google only or across the three major U.S. search engines (including Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Bing until the two merge their platforms), setting up a pay-per-click campaign is fairly straight-forward. That is, until you have the campaign up and running and realize you’re shelling out a ton of money for little or no return.

Because we work so often with small and mid-sized businesses just beginning to dip their toes into the PPC waters, we’re introducing a new series — the “It’s New to You” Series — and we’ll be covering how to set up a campaign for the first time, including methods for getting started, making keyword lists, developing your first ads, setting up groups, and how to focus on keywords in each group.

There are a number of good books you can read, too.  For instance, if you want really detailed PPC strategies specific to Google (which is where most businesses begin their PPC campaigns), I recommend you read Andrew Goodman’s classic book Winning Results with Google Adwords, 2nd edition, which Andrew updated in 2008. And we’ll be introducing our own new e-Book, The Link Economy and Why It Matters to Small and Medium Businesses, at next week’s Search Engine Strategies Conference & Expo in San Jose, which you’ll be able to download for free right here from our Community page (be sure to check back on August 11th to download your free copy.)

Today: we begin with a few key steps to getting yourself oriented and set up.

Step #1: Create accounts with the various search engines.

To save you some time, follow these links to the three search engines and their sponsored search programs. Do note that Microsoft charges a non-refundable $5 fee when you create an account for its Bing search engine. Google and Yahoo! do not charge to set up an account.

Google AdWords

Yahoo! Sponsored Search (for small business)

Microsoft adCenter

Step #2: Spend some time in the learning centers.

Each PPC platform works a little differently, so it pays to spend some time viewing each platform’s learning demos and other information. Both Google and Microsoft have “open to the public” learning centers that are quite robust with multimedia training, quizzes, etc.

Some things you’ll want to carefully review include:

Billing – Set this up with care as you can’t change your billing preferences with regard to currencies once you set up your account.

Daily Budget Setting – All three PPC platforms allow you to set a daily budget – i.e., once you hit your (say) $10 a day maximum, your ads no longer appear on results pages until the next day.

Search Network – It’s also important to understand where your ads will appear. In addition to the sponsored listings on the search engine results pages (SERPs), your ads can appear across multiple sites within each search engine’s network of search partners; for instance, in the case of Google, AOL, Myspace and Ask.com SERPs are included in their network. Ads also appear within each company’s free email platforms, including Google’s Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and Microsoft’s Hotmail, as well as the various properties within each search engine (i.e., Yahoo!, MSN or Google News).

Content Network – Again, your ads will appear across potentially dozens of media and other content sites such as the The New York Times, CNET, Fortune, blogs, and second- and third-tier websites. (Website owners and bloggers can subscribe to Google’s AdSense program, which serves ads on their sites and generates a share of revenue to the site owner.)

Step #3: Target your customers.

This is the step most new search marketers forget – that is, figuring out the type of customer they want to target. If you’re like most small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs), you have three or more types of customers you currently do business with – and perhaps a couple more you’ll want to attract in the future.

For example, if you manufacture pet care products, you may sell directly to consumers as well as to pet stores (and their distributors) across the US or a specific region. And, because you sell high-end (re: relatively expensive) products, you’ll want to target those pet owners who don’t mind spending money on Fluffy or Spot.

Hence, not only are you targeting consumers with a specific household income level, you’re also targeting boutique pet stores (both bricks-and-mortar shops and the online versions) as well as national chains. The campaigns you eventually develop will be different for each distinctive group.

So, before you begin writing those ads, write down the types of customers you’re targeting and any demographics you know about them (where they live, income, job titles, publications they read, etc.)

Okay, that’s enough information to keep you busy until the next post, where I’ll cover setting up ad groups.

Small plug: Yield Software actively manages PPC campaigns for you across all three major search engines through our fully automated system powered by advanced algorithms. For people new to pay-per-click advertising, our simple, intuitive systems get you up and going in no time, guiding you through each step of the process. From determining ideal keywords to setting up campaigns, from managing your budgets to optimizing your landing pages, our Yield Web Marketing Suite makes it easy to get started.

For more information about how we can help you with your web marketing efforts, click here.

My co-worker, Jenae, recently sent me this email:

“I can’t tell you how many calls I have with folks who are hung up on cost per click (CPC). It’s the main metric they focus on when they start to dig into their campaigns and what they think they want to use Yield Software to optimize. It takes me a couple of discussions and lots of detailed examples to help them understand that while CPC is a tempting metric, having a low CPC doesn’t necessarily translate into a successful campaign — especially if you want conversions or are more ROI-driven.”

Search engine marketing comprises a number of tactics – online and offline – including pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, organic search, branding, and the various methods used to funnel traffic to your Website landing pages.

Too often, however, businesses of all sizes tackle only one aspect of an online marketing campaign without considering the costs of the entire campaign. And the one metric they often focus on, to the exclusion of everything else, is CPC.

Due to this narrow focus, we found that clients have a tough time answering this very basic question: “Is your PPC campaign making money or losing money?”

So, while driving down your CPC is good (and our Yield Web Marketing Suite is fully capable of delivering on this objective), focusing only on this metric may not help you achieve real return on investment (ROI) – nor will it show you how much it cost to achieve those clicks.

Which is why we counsel customers to focus on CPA – or cost per acquisition.

You’ll find lots of definitions for CPA, but in a nutshell, CPA is the amount you pay in total to acquire a customer or online order.

Notice, I did not say the amount you pay per click, but the amount you paid in total to acquire a customer or online order. This total dollar amount should include all of your marketing-related costs for a particular campaign including: branding and advertising, SEO, inbound customer support, and PR, to name a few things.

Only by looking at CPA can you determine if your cost is too high (compared to industry or internal benchmarks).

Let’s say you’re a shoe manufacturer that sells shoes in bricks-and-mortar stores and online. To build brand awareness, you must advertise — whether online, in print, or on TV. You may build mechanisms for capturing Website visitor information (i.e. via newsletters, contests, PPC ads). And you’ll likely need analytics that let you slice and dice data to determine who your target customer is, how she found you online, which products she’s ordered in the past, and when she likes to be contacted (to name a few things).

You may also develop email campaigns promoting your shoes, hire an agency to oversee these campaigns (if you don’t do it in-house), develop landing pages, etc. etc. etc.

By now it should be very clear to you that solely focusing on reducing CPC is not the best tactic. This is because you could be getting a ton of untargeted traffic that doesn’t covert – and reducing CPC won’t don’t anything to increase campaign ROI.

Put another way, which would you prefer:

100 clicks at $0.10 per click, resulting in 1 conversion, at a $10.00 cost per conversion; or

10 clicks at $1.00 per click, resulting in 5 conversions at a $5.00 cost per conversion?

(I know which outcome I’d pick!)

The key, then, is understanding how many clicks – and what kind of clicks – you need in order to convert one sale. Then you can understand what the cost is of getting those clicks. But as I’ve pointed out, you must consider a whole host of other variables before deciding that CPC is too high.

The reason so many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) become befuddled with regard to campaign ROI is precisely because of the sheer number of PPC variables. Once you begin focusing on CPA, you may go through a period of trial-and-error in order to arrive at the exact right results.

Sadly, time (and its corollary, sustained investment) is not something most SMBs have on their side… which is why we suggest you start in a more limited way: focus on optimizing three elements of your marketing strategy in tandem – paid search, natural search, and your landing pages – and focus on driving down your overall cost to acquire and convert one visitor.

By optimizing natural search you can improve your page rank in the leading search engines, thereby driving more free traffic to your site. Similarly, by optimizing your paid search campaigns by focusing on your best-performing keywords (in terms of generating conversions), you can drive more of the right kind of traffic from paid sources. When combining the cost of acquiring your paid search visitors with those visitors you acquired through natural search, you effectively lower the cost of acquisition overall.

And because you’re also looking at optimizing your site’s principle landing pages, you increase the likelihood that those visitors will convert.

Small plug: Doing this all on your own, with disparate systems or consulting specialists, can be time-consuming and costly. Which is why we designed our Yield Web Marketing Suite to simultaneously optimize paid search, natural search and landing pages in one fully automated solution. Using our system can help you grow your business and keep it sensibly focused on driving down CPA.

For instance, instead of spending months in trial-and-error approaches, our Yield Web Marketing Suite tests multiple variables across your PPC campaigns and favors the best converting variables in real time. To learn more, sign up for our free, no obligation 30-day trial and see for yourself how you can reduce your CPA efficiently and quickly.

In my last blog post, I covered how to develop a landing page that increases conversions by limiting people’s options to explore other areas of your Website.  As I discussed in the post, you have many elements on the landing page that can make or break conversion rates, and one of those elements is the headline.

In his book, Tested Advertising Methods, John Caples explains why headlines are so important:

“In most advertisements, no matter how striking the illustration, the headlines are critically important. The majority of the public reads little else when deciding whether or not they are interested.”

The same holds true for landing pages – which are basically direct response ads designed to get people to take some sort of action.

So how do you add some muscle to your flabby headlines? Whole books have been written on this topic – so there’s no way I can cover everything. What follows are five basic strategies for more muscular headlines any company can quickly implement:

First: Spend more time writing them. Tom Ahern, expert fundraising consultant, speaker and author, says people will spend hours writing copy and only two minutes writing the headline – if that.  Usually written at the last minute, headlines, he says, are given very little thought – and it shows in the weak anemic headlines that populate fundraising materials. His advice? Spend more time on the headline and less time on the body copy.

Second: Write multiple headlines. Instead of writing one headline, brainstorm multiple headlines. The more you write, the more ideas you’ll come up with – and the punchier your headlines will become. If you have only one offer, consider writing multiple headlines that “pitch” the offer in different ways. For example, if you have a white paper offer, write headlines that present the offer as a “white paper,” “guide,” or “e-book,” and test to see which draws the best response.

Once you decide on a headline, don’t throw your discarded headlines away. You can use these to test against your main headline. Who knows – one of your “trashed” ideas could draw stellar response rates!

Third: Get input from others. Don’t rely on your own imagination only for a great headline. Solicit the opinions of others. One small change can turn a good headline into a response-busting headline.

Fourth: Include a time-based call-to-action. “Conference Registration Now Open” is a so-so headline. “Early Bird Special: $200 off Registration!” is better. Changing it to “Save $200 When You Register by June 15!” gives people an incentive to take action now.

Another incentive is the word “free,” which has been proven time and again to increase response rates. So use it if you have a free offer – i.e.: “Free Webinar,” “Free White Paper,” “Free Demo.”

Finally: Test your headlines. Components to test include color, size, and copy.

Test colors – What happens when you put the word “FREE” in red? How about the entire headline in red? Or blue?

Test font size – Increase the font size so that you have only one or two words per line. Does this increase response or lower it?

Test copy – And of course, test different headlines to determine which one delivers the best response.

In the old days, you used to have to test these things manually. Now with our Yield Web Marketing Suite, which includes a Landing Page Optimization Module, you can quickly test headlines, including color, size and copy – and see results in real time. (The module includes an easy-to-use wizard that guides you through the creation of multiple versions of your standard landing page.)  Our multivariate testing engine automatically serves up the best performing page to your visitors over time – improving your conversion rates while saving you considerable time and money.

If you’re testing headlines, let us know how you do. We’d love to feature your success story. You can send me an email at press[at]yieldsoftware[dot]com.

Transactional landing pages have one purpose only: to get people to take one specific action, whether it’s filling out a form for a white paper, purchasing a product, or even subscribing to an e-newsletter.

Yet many companies lower landing page conversion rates by providing opportunities to browse for related goods and services or offering all kinds of back-up information to support their offer.

In other words, if you’re trying to get people to sign up for your Webinar and on your landing page you have links to your Website, YouTube video, and white papers, you’re encouraging people to click away from your landing page – perhaps never to return.

I call this “Distraction Interaction.” Think about what happens when you go online to do something:

Initially… you open your email client to send someone an important email, but first you read your new messages and find an interesting newsletter, which you click open to read.

Then… within the newsletter are a few links to blogs and articles, which you read. An industry guru wrote one of the blog posts and you see her Twitter handle, so you open TweetDeck in order to follow her and then get sucked into Twitter . . . .

An hour later… you come up for air, completely forgetting you were supposed to send your customer that important email.

This exact process is what happens when you include links to additional information on your landing page!

To significantly decrease Distraction Interaction and increase conversions for various types of landing pages, consider the following tips:

Eliminate ALL links to your Website, blog, etc. – Eliminating links discourages people from clicking off your landing page and falling into a rabbit hole on your Website. If you want people to visit your site, give them a link on the “thank you” page once the transaction is complete.

Keep forms simple – A MarketingSherpa report on white papers revealed that people do not want to fill out long, complicated forms. On another note, have people outside your company test your forms before they’re live; you want to ensure they work smoothly and that your spam filter isn’t gobbling up the response emails.

Focus on one objective – The objective of the landing page is to get people to do one thing. Whatever your objective, ensure all landing page components support that objective, from the headline and body copy to the design and graphics.

Don’t “bait and switch” – If you’re using PPC, SEO, or other “inbound” methods to get people to the landing page, make sure the headline and the offer match what people are expecting to get. Nothing is worse than getting to a landing page that’s offering something completely different then what the ad copy proclaimed.

Include a “hero shot” – If you’re offering a product, white paper or other tangible item, include a graphic of the cover, a headshot of the Webinar presenter, or a photo of the item.

Once you have these elements in place, you can then begin testing headlines, images, form and copy to see what increases or decreases conversions, some of which we’ll cover in subsequent posts to this one.  And remember that our Yield Web Marketing Suite includes a landing page optimization module that enables real-time multivariate tests of landing pages. Our wizard takes you step-by-step through a process of creating test pages from your original; serves different versions as people click on links to your landing page; and automatically begins to favors the page that converts best overtime, improving your conversion rates in real time.

Do you have other suggestions for improving landing page conversions? Send us a tweet via Twitter at @YieldSW.

Building a sustainable program of communications with your customers and your prospects is an important strategy for continually driving traffic, leads and / or sales. But I often hear from small business owners they just don’t have the time to do the necessary legwork to foster a multidimensional program.

The good news is technology and web-based services are changing so rapidly, there are lots of great ways to create multiple outbound communications that get the results you’re looking for without a huge investment of time or money.

What follows are ten tips, tricks and strategies for effectively communicating with your prospects and customers.

#1: Produce Once, Reuse Many. Many small business owners fall into the trap of believing every form of outbound communication must be wholly unique. While it may be important to adapt headlines and content length depending upon the medium, it is perfectly acceptable to, say, take a blog post you’ve recently written and use it in an upcoming email newsletter you’re preparing. While there will be some audience overlap, most people are forgiving on this front and you shouldn’t encounter much in the way of objection for re-purposing content across multiple communications channels.

#2: Start an Email Newsletter. Using low cost or free newsletter services such as Constant Contact is a great way for you to stay in touch with both prospects and existing customers (I use Constant Contact for the Yield Newsletter). Be sure to give visitors to your site a visible and easy way to sign up for your newsletter – newsletters are most successful when folks voluntarily opt-in to receive them (for instance, if you look on Yield Software’s Community Pages, you’ll see sign-up boxes on the top and bottom of the page). Sending newsletters to folks who don’t ask for them not only irritates them, it could be breaking the Federal Can-Spam Act. Take a look at newsletters others put out so you can get a sense of what works and what doesn’t from your own point of view. Using Constant Contact, you can set up a simple and attractive template for your newsletter. Try sending a newsletter out every two weeks or so. They don’t require a lot of writing, and you can certainly re-purpose content from your blog, or point to other sources of content you find interesting or useful. And, of course, you should also highlight any special promotions or special offers you have — and link to those pages. (Small pitch: be sure to use the Yield Web Marketing Suite to optimize all your landing pages to ensure you’re getting the best possible conversion-to-sale you can.)

#3: Sign Up for HARO – Help a Reporter Out. This terrific service, founded and run by the highly energetic Peter Shankman, helps to connect reporters and writers working on stories with sources or subject matter experts. Typically, Peter distributes two-to-four emails per day showing the most recent reporter entreaties. Peter also hosts periodic conference calls where he goes over best practices for responding to reporter queries and how best to incorporate PR strategies for your own business. It can be hard to get, but landing a mention – or better yet, a full feature – about your business in a story can drive great awareness about you and traffic to your website.

#4: Set Up a Blog. I’ve encouraged you to do this in other posts and so I’ll say it again: start and maintain a blog. Ideally your blog will be integrated into your main website and URL structure (and not hosted on separate blog hosting platform with a unique URL.) There are enormous SEO benefits to maintaining a blog and it’s a great way to continually reconnect with your customers. Blog posts don’t have to be long and involved – a paragraph each day or two with updates, or links to relevant news or information, or highlighting one of your customers or employees is all it takes. Throw in a few photos from your company’s Flickr stream and before you know it, you’ll be a bona fide blogger!

#5: Set up Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook accounts. If you haven’t already, bite the bullet and do this. I guarantee you that your competition either is or very soon will be using these platforms for their business communications. (Take a look at ours as an example – the links are in the right-hand column of our Community Pages.) Some people choose to keep their professional and personal lives separate for each of these services, which is totally fine. Doing this adds a level of management complexity, which is why I don’t distinguish between the two, but I understand why people prefer to keep things separate. Each of these platforms provides excellent networking opportunities for individuals and businesses, and standing on the sidelines looking in just isn’t an option any longer.

#6: Connect Twitter with Social Network Updates. Be sure your Twitter account is linked with the social networking platforms on which you’ve established a presence (i.e. Facebook). A great way to do this is using FriendFeed, which asks you to put in user information for each service. Then, when you post updates to your Twitter stream those same updates will then automatically appear in your Facebook and other update streams. This way, no matter how your customers, friends and family may follow you, they’re getting the same update. And because Twitter enables you to post your updates via your mobile phone, you can be highly efficient with this activity. (Just remember: this is a form of mass communication. Once you’ve hit the “enter” button, you can’t take what you say back!)

#7: Install a Twitter Monitoring Application. While Twitter on its on own is a terrific service, a number of other companies have sprouted up to make using and getting the most out of Twitter a breeze. The two leading desktop apps, TweetDeck and Twhirl, do this using a dashboard feature that enables you to not only do your updates but also to keep track of all those you follow; save searches for your own or your competitor’s business; and monitor tweets pertaining to a specific set of keywords (for instance, if you’re baker, you may want to follow all tweets using the word “bakery”.) I personally use TweetDeck but Twhirl is also hugely popular, too. Both are free and both get better and better each passing month. HootSuite is a Web application that enables you to manage multiple Twitter accounts (for instance, if you keep your personal Twitter account separate from your business and other accounts). HootSuite also allows you to schedule tweets for later broadcast and a bunch of other cool things. If you have an iPhone, check out a cool little app called Tweetie; like HootSuite, it allows you monitor and update multiple accounts via a single interface on your iPhone. Check out each of these and pick the one that feels right for you.

#8. Sign-up for a Press Release Distribution Service. Though most small and growing businesses very rarely issue press releases, when this makes sense for you, a distribution service like BusinessWire or PRWeb is a great way to distribute your release. While not free, the most basic service for each is pretty low cost for local distribution (i.e. San Francisco Bay Area) and hits the major online news sites – which, frankly, is almost all most small businesses really need to do. Distributing the occasional release (which should have real news in them) can be great for SEO and building link-love to your company’s website. Additionally, well-written, relevant and timely releases can capture the attention of reporters and bloggers. Releases can also generate new traffic to your site, so be sure the release includes links to relevant pages on your website that pertain to the news you’re announcing. Ideally there will be a special promotional offer for these visitors.

#9. Use Screencasting. Screencasts are digital recordings of a computer screen. They enable you to capture the interactions you undertake on a website or a Web application as a way of providing a demonstration. Screencasts can also be promotional in nature, highlighting the best places on your website that folks should be sure to check out during their next visit. Most screencasting software not only captures your interactions as they unfold, but also capture your narration – the audio – as you take folks through your online tour. One of my favorite blogs, Mashable, did a great job of listing the leading screencasting tools, most of which are very, very affordable.  Because I use a Mac, I use IShowU, which is a great piece of software for Mac users. Creating screencasts can be fast and easy, and you can create new ones whenever you’d like. Then, feature these on your website, via your blog posts and in your newsletter. You can also send out tweets via Twitter when a new screencast becomes available.

#10: Set Up a YouTube Channel. Anyone can make videos. Even you. Small business owners, in fact, often do so with the help of their kids or close friends. Tape an interview with one of your customers, for instance; or a trip to source new products to sell on your site; or the manufacturing process for your cool, totally unique little doodad. If you’ve created screencasts, you can feature them on your YouTube channel, too. You can then feature the videos in your channel, as well as those from others, on your blog and throughout your website. With quality video recording equipment getting less and less expensive by the day, and with the availability of high-quality, low cost editing software, video production is now a DIY (do it yourself) endeavor. (Buy a Macintosh computer, for instance, and it comes bundled with iMovie, which is a nearly professional, yet easy-to-use video editing software included in the price of the purchase.)

Your time is precious and limited – I understand that. But by choosing the right collection of outbound communications tools for you, it’s very likely you’ll be able to efficiently and effectively stay in touch with customers and prospects. Try starting small and adding new elements to your strategy over time – I think you’ll be pleased with the results.

For more blog posts in our small business marketing strategies series, go here.

We officially launched our product at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco at Moscone West. While we were excited, we hardly knew what to expect. We exhibited in the Long Tail Pavilion which is where the new, upcoming companies are typically congregated.

When the show opened, we experienced some nerve-racking minutes where no attendees were in sight–not at our booth nor any of the long tail booths. Wait, wait, wait. How long would it take to get past the lead sponsor booths who had secured the best real estate?

Finally, they start to trickle in. Demo after demo after demo. It was great. Derek and I were working the booth together and were talking non-stop until the exhibit floor closed. No lunches, no breaks. I was blown away by the level of interest in our product and the validation we got from the people who do web marketing on a daily basis. Not the press, not the analysts, but the users.

The most validating themes were around how great the product looked (especially from UI designers), how it looked easy-to-use, and how affordable it is. We also got visits from some of our beta customers, some really cool bloggers, a woman who sells cow bells online and members of the twitterati.

The second day didn’t let up. The good news is that one of our senior engineers came by the show to see the booth and meet some attendees. He started talking to the attendees and was so engaged, he ended up staying all day. The crazy part is that he was really good at demoing the software and answering questions. Although, I’m not letting him quit his day job! Its great when engineers like interacting with customers. Makes for a better product.

I got a chance to walk around the rest of Web 2.0. The main themes were focused on Twitter and mobile. However, the two companies that I thought were worth checking at were image search by Gazopa and multi-party video chat by ooVoo.

So, now we are officially open for business. Life is never going to be the same!

From ‘Private Beta’ to Available Now!

As of this moment, we’ve officially launched the new Yield Web Marketing Suite, a simplified way to drive new traffic and customer conversions at a low overall cost.  As part of our launch week activities, we’ll be demonstrating our browser-based system at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, which opens tonight and continues through April 3, 2009 at the Moscone West Convention Center.  And we’ve got to admit it: we’re all pretty darn proud of what we’ve accomplished and are really looking forward to showing it off!

The Yield Web Marketing Suite, which up until now was in private beta, is built with small and mid-size businesses in mind.  Primarily, our team has responded to the long-standing desire to make search marketing more simple and intuitive. By combining and automating the three key elements of search marketing – paid search, natural search and landing page optimization – within a single, completely automated system, the Yield Web Marketing Suite helps folks like you work smarter.  And because the system seamlessly integrates with the three major search engines – Google, Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Live Search – we think a lot of people who’ve been sitting on the sidelines will now become more engaged.

And let’s face it: search marketing is the most effective way to attract new traffic and revenue, especially in such a tough economy when marketing budgets are lean. Moreover, the team here at Yield Software has spent more than two years building a system that works day and night to help our customers optimize all their search marketing programs so they don’t have to—making the whole process much more efficient.

Here’s how:

First: we help your company rank as high in natural (and therefore free) search results as possible.

Second: we work to get your paid ads placed in the right position on search engine results pages at the right price.

Third: we make sure clicks on each of those links lead to landing pages that are optimized to convert prospects to paying customers.

Each of these activities, by themselves, can be complex and time consuming, and often require constant supervision in order to achieve success.  Up until now businesses have been forced to piece together a range of tools and third-party experts to address the totality of their Web marketing needs, none of which interoperate or play well together.  To address this we’ve built our system to automate, simplify and optimize each of these three Web marketing components within a single interface:

Paid Search

Enables pay-per-click (PPC) campaign set-up for one, two or all three of the major search engines, including geo-targeting.

Determines, establishes and constantly optimizes keyword bids to meet targeted outcomes within budget constraints.

Optimizes bids and budget allocation based on traffic, conversion or conversion value.

Natural Search

Continually analyzes Web pages for conformance to search engine optimization (SEO) best practices.

Provides an easy-to-understand description of each best practice.

Provides clear instructions for addressing and resolving any areas of improvement.

Landing Pages

Enables the creation of multivariate landing page experiments using a simple visual interface to create different versions of a page.

Provides easy step-by-step instruction for implementing experiments.

Automatically displays the most successful versions of a landing page more frequently, optimizing conversion rates over time.

Dan Kaplan, one of our private beta users, recently blogged about his experience at PeriscopeUp, and he had this to say (which we loved):

“I’ve been involved as a beta user of Yield Software and these guys have done a great job of making a hard problem seem easy.  They make it easy to use and get started, even for people who have little experience in search engine marketing, and it gives me the flexibility, as a professional, to apply my knowledge on top of their optimization algorithms. It also saves me a ton of time.”

Yield Software is offering all new subscribers to our Yield Web Marketing Suite a free 30-day trial.  Because the system is a Web application, no downloads or systems integration work is required, and there are no contracts so subscribers are able to cancel their subscriptions at any time.  Following the 30-day trial period, promotional pricing starts at $129 per month.  For more information or to subscribe to the free 30-day trial, go here.

Let me close by saying thank you to our amazing group of engineers, led by the fearless Matthew Baird, and product folks (with new mom-times-two Jenae Wiegert leading the charge) for getting us to this point.  I’m biased, but I think we have the best team anyone could hope for and I’ve witnessed first-hand the blood, sweat and tears they’ve put into making our new Web Marketing Suite the best there is.  And I really mean it when I say we’re lucky for the leaders we have: Matt Malden, our CEO and co-founder and John Coker, our CTO and co-founder are the best and brightest around.  These guys have not slept much in two years and the strength of our new offering shows it.  It’s a privilege to work with everyone here at Yield Software.

Still nothing (and no one) is perfect.  We’d love to hear from you about what you love (of course) and also what you think we can do better.  With your continuous input and guidance, we know we can get as close to perfection as possible.  You can send us an email at support@yieldsoftware.com or a tweet on Twitter–we’ll definitely be paying attention!

ChaiSpice Cupcake, courtesy Just Desserts

Even You Can Write Great Ad Copy

A key stumbling block for many novice Web marketers is the task of writing compelling ad copy for a pay-per-click (PPC) campaign on Google’s AdSense, Yahoo’s Search Marketing or Microsoft’s adCenter. Web site owners and novice marketers who are not natural copywriters will find it difficult to zero in on the most right collection of words that inspire people to click on a link.

The good news? No one knows your site, your company or your products as well as you do.

Put that unique knowledge to work when following these few simple tips for creating excellent PPC campaign ad copy:

First, be sure you know the character limits for the advertising platform. Typically the title (the first line in the ad) is limited to 25 characters.  Ad copy, including the URL, is limited to 70 characters in most instances.

Second, when writing the title, be sure the keywords you’ve bid on are included. For instance, if you bid on the term “cupcakes”, that same word should be in your ad title.  The title is very often the most important element of the whole ad and will dramatically impact click-through rates (CTR).  Depending upon the ad platform, you can typically opt to dynamically place a keyword you’ve bid on into a standard headline (for instance, “cupcakes” OR “birthday cakes” OR “brownies” would automatically be inserted to a standard headlines such as: “<KEYWORD> baked fresh-to-order daily”).

Third, using clear, easy-to-understand language (i.e. whole sentences), briefly state what makes you different. If it’s the lowest prices, get that into the headline or body copy.  If you make your cupcakes using only fresh, organic ingredients, then say so! If you’ve won an award for customer service, crow about it.  No matter what business you’re in, it’s very likely you have competitors, so be sure to succinctly state: “this is what makes me different!”

One last piece of advice: writing effective PPC ad copy is inherently a trial-and-error process.  It’s best to try a number of ideas and see which perform best for you over time.  You’ll be amazed at how much you learn about your customers in the process.  All of which is to say: have patience.  Few people get this right on the first go.  Keep trying. Keep refining.  You’ll get the hang of it and before you know it, you’ll be a pro!

One more piece of advice that’s also a small plug: try Yield Software’s Web Marketing Suite. We’ve automated the whole process of PPC campaign management and provide a complete, easy and profitable way for you to test your ad copy and get at the results you’re looking for.  We have a free 30-day trial, so give us a try—nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

(Oh: and about that cupcake… Just Desserts is a famous bakery and an old favorite of those of us who live in San Francisco — check them out online and order yourself some cupcakes!  It’ll help to inspire your copy writing, guaranteed.)

For more information on our Yield Web Marketing Suite, go here.

For more of our blog series on Web Marketing 101, go here.

Unlike outdoor advertising (i.e. billboards) or radio and television ads, where precise correlations to ROI can be elusive, search engine marketing (SEM) enables marketers to track interactions and behavior at every step of engagement.

Though a huge number of web marketing professionals employ display advertising on sites like NYTimes.com or FOXNews.com or Yahoo!, a growing share of marketing dollars are being directed to the search engines and specifically pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.  By buying the “Sponsored Links” you see on search result pages on Google, Yahoo Search or Microsoft Live Search, marketers are able to track: (a) clicks on an ad link; (b) arrival at a website’s landing page; (c) what visitors do once on the site; and (d) whether or not that visitor converts to a paying customer, among many other possibilities.

Such tracking is typically achieved by using a third-party analytics package in your website.  Such packages range from free and easy-to-install (i.e., Google Analytics) to quite complex and powerful systems that are very expensive and time-consuming to implement.  If you’re a small or growing business, Google Analytics is a great tracking package that will give you much of what you need and is very easy to implement simply by following their detailed instructions.

Once a visitor converts to a paying customer, web marketers are able to do an ROI analysis on that particular individual and across all customers who similarly converted to paying customers from the same campaign.  By comparing the total amount spent to acquire customers through a web marketing campaign to the amount of revenue generated by those who clicked on links and converted to paying customers, a campaign ROI can be quickly calculated.

Obviously, most web marketers want to make at least one more dollar than it cost to execute the campaign.  And, there are some instances where web marketers will make well-calculated decisions to arrive at a negative ROI in order to achieve their campaign objectives (for instance, you might decide that acquiring a large volume of new traffic within a tight timeframe, even if there is a negative ROI, is the right long-term strategy for your site).  But ideally, campaigns will perform much better than either of these scenarios and the degree to which a campaign’s ROI is impressive or not will have much to do with a number of factors.  These include:

Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaign Management.  Achieving excellent placement in the Sponsored Links sections of search results pages is a holy grail of search marketers.  There are a number of factors that ensure a PPC campaign is well managed and optimized for the best outcomes.  These include keyword lists, bid management, geo-targeting choices, product pricing and promotion decisions, etc.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO).  While it is important to actively and accurately manage paid search campaigns, it is equally as important to ensure websites rank high in natural (or organic) search results.  Clicks on these links are free to the advertiser and can effectively lower the overall cost of a web marketing campaign when averaged with paid customer acquisition.  By effectively optimizing a website for search engines, web marketers can ensure the same paid links appear high up in natural (and therefore free) search results.

Landing Page Optimization (LPO).  Clicks from both paid and natural search results must resolve to a web page that is optimized for converting first-time or returning visitors into paying customers, which is why LPO is of such great importance to search marketing.  And, LPO is also concerned with keeping the sales cycle as short as possible.  There are both simple and sophisticated ways to manage how such pages are optimized—either dynamically or in limited tests.  Landing pages can be the homepage of a website, but more experienced web marketers will typically create a specialized landing page that ties directly to the links that generated the clicks in the first place.

Anyone interested in embarking on a web marketing campaign should do so with a measurement plan in mind.  Being able to justify the time and expense of such efforts is critical in understanding the best ways in which to attract and profitably retain customers.

So time for a Small Plug: our Yield Web Marketing Suite is a fully automated and fully integrated set of powerful modules to enable you to easily set up and manage your web marketing efforts.  And to effectively measure the ROI on your efforts.  It’s ideal for small businesses and those with limited marketing resources.  Even more sophisticated web marketers use Yield Software to make the management and tracking of campaigns fast, easy and profitable.

For more information about our Yield Web Marketing Suite, go here.

To see more blog posts in our Introduction to Web Marketing Series, go here.