If you pause to think about how different business disciplines have evolved over the last several years, marketing comes to mind as having experienced the most dramatic change (aside from seeing CEOs in orange jumpsuits.)

What brought on the drastic change?  Much of this evolution is from 1) the increase and accessibility of new marketing channels and 2) the advancement of tracking and analytics.

But just how, exactly, has marketing evolved?  And how do your skills and strategies stack up?

From Corporate Speak to Human Speak.  A formal and polished tone has become a turn-off in almost all circumstances.  People now expect companies to show their own personalities – as if the company itself were a human being that they can relate to, communicate with and have a relationship with.  Companies have invaded our personal space as “friends,” and we expect them to behave as such.

From Cheesy Fluff to Plain Speaking. Good riddance to the era of marketing fluff.  It was fun for a while, until all those buzzwords started to melt together into one big indiscernible pot.  In today’s era of information overload, people look for companies to cut to the chase by using words and phrases they understand and can easily digest.

From Sell, Sell, Sell to Relationship Building. In years gone by it was challenging for marketers to track direct contributions to sales. Now that it’s much easier, marketers have realized what it takes in today’s world to get initial and repeat sales: relationships.  In fact, it’s all about relationships, and the most effective marketers today are successful at establishing these with diverse audiences across potentially vast geographies quickly and efficiently.

From Soap Box Pontification to Conversations. One-way is so last century.  Marketers of today need to facilitate two-way interaction and conversations with their communities.  Interaction and involvement have become the success metrics of many of today’s marketing campaigns.

From Self-Important Content to Generous Educator. Marketing content used to have the purpose of “let me tell you about me” or “enough about me; what do you think of me?”  We’ve all grown tired of marketers talking about themselves.  Marketers of today are educators to their audiences – providing knowledge, news and entertainment, with no strings attached.  They also want to hear what their customers’ wants and needs are — what their pains might be and how it is a brand can address that pain.

From Control to Openness. This has been quite a challenging leap for many organizations to make. Not having tight control over content is something that caused many old-school marketers to avoid the new era of marketing as long as possible.  The marketers of today have gone from tight image and brand control to leveraging external communities to help craft and spread a brand’s promise.  Marketers have learned that open reviews and community conversations build credibility with far greater impact than controlled content. Today’s success comes not from control, but from response.

From “Spray-and-Pray” to Results.  Metrics, metrics, metrics – knowing the real results of all marketing activities today is mandatory.  Failing to make measurable, profitable contributions to an organization is no longer acceptable.  Marketers today have much greater credibility thanks to this.

From Outbound to Inbound. Marketing used to focus on projecting an image and message out to prospects and customers.  The marketing of today has shifted to being easily found and drawing people into conversations, frequently through having sticky content that people love to share.

From Sneaky Intel to “Open Book” Competition. Marketers used to have to get pretty crafty about gathering good intelligence on what the competition was up to.  Today, the volume of data available about competitors is overwhelming.  Ironically, many are learning that the era of open competition is actually a tougher game to win than in era of secrets.

Slow-to-Change to Rapid Testing. There used to be enormous upfront time and resources spent on offers, messaging and content.  Mistakes in marketing had drastic consequences.  Successful marketers today spend much less up-front time, but are constantly testing new ideas and iterate quickly based on results.

From the Most-Stylish-Dude-in-the-Room to the Heart-and-Pulse-of-the-Company. Marketing is more active now on the front lines than many other company functions.  As a result, marketers can sense and respond to events before the majority of the company even knows something is up. Increasingly, marketers today are turned to as the most reliable source of market intelligence and a valuable contributor to strategic direction.

From a Narrowly-Focused Discipline to Leveraging All Employees and Beyond. The scope and responsibilities of the marketing function has grown tremendously in recent years, yet resources for marketing activities are proportionately more constrained.  But the good news is that everyone within a company can help with marketing these days: from blogging to tweeting to social networking, everyone in an enterprise can be a marketer today.  Which means the CMO doesn’t simply lead just those in his or her org chart; the CMO is a leader for everyone in the company — from the receptionist to the CEO — because each person has a marketing role to play.

Personally I’m delighted with the changes.  It’s nice to dust off the orange cheese ball dust once in awhile, but no one listens to that stuff any more. Authenticity, honesty, transparency, connection: these are the watchwords for the 21st century.  Give them a try in your marketing efforts.

A great pay-per-click (PPC) keyword strategy is central to any campaign’s success, so getting your list right is absolutely critical. Once your campaign is live, the Yield Web Marketing Suite works every day to make recommendations to you about new keywords you might consider together with negative keyword recommendations. This guide, then, will help you create a great keyword list in advance of launching a new campaign in four easy steps: 1) Questions; 2) Keyword Tools; 3) Variations; and 4) Assembly.

1) Questions.

Use the following question categories to start making your list. As you go through and answer these questions, keep your thoughts organized into the different buckets – we’ll keep using these categories in future steps. Throughout this guide we’ll use an example of a restaurant for you to get a feel for how it works.

Names: What are all the names of the products or services that you sell? (i.e., restaurant, dining, dinner, bar, grill, happy hour, brunch, buffet, steak joint)

Adjectives: What are common adjectives used to describe those products? (i.e., steak, fine, fancy, all you can eat, affordable, 5 star, best)

Attributes: What attributes does your product have? (i.e., fireplace, live music, bands, entertainment, lounge, full bar, gift cards lakeside, lakeshore, shore, on the water, views)

Searcher Desires: What actions does the searcher want to take with your product? (i.e., eat, takeout, drink, dance, walking distance)

Website Actions: What are the actions you want people to take on your site? (i.e., reserve, reservations, order)

Website Information: What types of information do you offer on your site? (i.e., reviews, specials, pictures, menu)

Location: Where are you located? (i.e., San Mateo, San Mateo, CA, San Mateo, California, Bay Area, South of San Francisco, Close to town, in town, by town, around town, near town, local)

Emotions: How are your searchers feeling, or what do they want to feel? (i.e., hungry, romantic, casual, low-key, cozy)

Events: Under what circumstances does the searcher need you? (i.e., special occasion, group party, valentines, anniversary, thanksgiving, girls night out)

2) Keyword Tools.

Now that you’ve got a starter list, let’s expand it beyond the terms that you naturally think of. Following are some great tools you can use to expand your keyword list. As you find related terms through these following keyword sources, put them into the buckets you started to use above. It will make building your actual keyword list later on much easier. Also, as you go along and see words that you don’t want your ads to appear for, and make note of those for your negative keywords list.

Thesaurus.com: Enter your words from above and jot down all the applicable terms for saying the same thing. Their visual thesaurus can is a great way to see the data. Jot down antonyms that you wouldn’t want your ads to appear for as negative keywords.

Quintura.com: Enter some of your key product phrases from above. Click on items that are related to you to see more ideas appear. Be sure to read through the results on the right-hand side of the page for even more ideas.

Google Search: Wow, this one seems boring, eh? But, it’s a great tool. Enter you basic keywords – as you are entering pay attention to the related searches that Google displays as you type. Then after you click search take some time to read through the ad copy, the organic listings and check out some of the websites. You’ll be surprised how many variations on your keywords you’ll discover here.

Google WonderWheel: As long as you’ve got Google open, click on the Show Options link at the top. Then on the left-hand side click on the Wonder Wheel option. This works in a similar way to Quintura. Just click around the wheel to find related terms.

Google Related Searches: One more option inside of Google is the Related Searches. Click on the Related Searches link (you’ll see this right above the Wonder Wheel option). Click on any of the related searches at the top to view their results and scan through the page for great terms.

Competitor Websites: One of those few times your competitors actually have some value to offer you! Visit your competitor’s websites and look at the terms they use to describe their product and make sure you’ve got those covered as well. This is also great insight into the keywords they are likely using in their pay per click campaigns.

Google Alerts: Sign up for a comprehensive Google Alert pertaining to your product. This is a fantastic source to find out how people are talking about your product and what they are looking for. It’s also one of the best sources to develop a robust set of negative keywords.

TweetBeeb: Keep track of what people are saying about your product type, industry or location on Twitter. Similar to a Google Alert, but based on Tweets.

Yahoo Answers: Do a search for your product or industry and look for the terms that people are using to talk about it and what they are typically seeking.

3) Variations.

You should now have a pretty hearty list of categorized words and also a great start at a list of negatives. Now it’s time for just a few finishing touches to the words that you have identified so far.

Singulars / Plurals: Make sure to include the singular and plural version of all of your keywords.

Hyphen, Non-Hyphen, 2 words, 1 word versions of the word: web site, website, web-site,

Apostrophe and non-apostrophe versions of words: San Mateo’s, San Mateos

4) Assembly.

Drum roll please… all that’s left is to assemble your keyword research! Here’s how to put your keyword phrases together:

Names + Adjectives (lakeshore restaurant, fine dining restaurant)
Names + Attributes (restaurant with live music, byob restaurants)
Names + Searcher Desires (eat at bar restaurant, Chinese takeout)
Names + Website Actions (restaurant reservations, order restaurant gift card)
Names + Website Information (restaurant reviews, restaurant menus)
Names + Location (restaurants in san mateo, local breakfast buffet)
Names + Emotions (romantic restaurant, cozy steak joint)
Names + Events (restaurant for valentines, thanksgiving brunch)

To branch into longer-tail keywords, just use combos of three categories at a time. For example: Event + Name + Location (i.e., “special occasion restaurant in the bay area”).

Now you are off to the races. If you don’t have a big enough budget to support your fantastic list, start small and slowly introduce more as you find the keyword niches that bring you customers.

But we say Hogwash!

Yes, there are lots of advanced features and complexities to online advertising, but you don’t have to use them. You can get started in a very simple and quick manner.

Here’s your step-by-step guide for using Google to start getting more business today:

1) Go to Google’s Keyword Tool

a.  Select the “Website Content” option
b.  Enter the URL of your home page
c.  Scroll to the bottom and click the link to export the results to Excel

2) Create a Google AdWords Account (if you don’t have one)

3) Create your first campaign in your AdWords Account

a. Create Ad Groups from your Excel export

i. The common terms column translates into your ad groups – create one ad group for each unique common term

b. Put Keywords into your Ad Groups

i. The keywords column includes the keywords you can target – if you agree they are applicable to your business. Add the applicable keywords to each of the ad groups based on the common term they are associated with. For the terms which aren’t applicable to your business – highlight them in red – we’ll get to those later.

c. Write two Ads for each Ad Group

i. Include the common term / ad group name in your headline
ii. Highlight your unique benefits in the first line, but don’t use superlatives. Fancy adjectives are encouraged.
iii. Include a call to action in the second line — something like: Sign up now. Call today for special pricing.
iv. Include your phone number in your ad copy if you want calls.
v. For your display URL use caps to separate the words and remove the http:// — for example:

www.MyWebSite.com

d. Add in Negative Keywords

i. With the campaign selected on the left-hand side, click the keywords tab and scroll all the way to the bottom – click on the negative keywords link. Now add the words within the red-highlighted keyword phrases that are not relevant to your business to the campaign negatives list. Not the whole phrase here – just the irrelevant part.

e. Set up Geo-Targeting

i. With the campaign still selected, click the “Settings” tab. Under locations click the “Edit” link. Click the “Custom” tab – here you can select a radius around your zip code you’d like to advertise for. Save it when you are done.

f. Opt-out of the Content Network

i. On this same “Settings” page, next to “Networks” click the “Edit” link. Deselect “Content.”

g. Enter your budget

i. On this same “Settings” page, enter your budget. Don’t go too low – certainly don’t try anything less than $5.00 per day, but try for $10.00 per day or more if you can. This is one of those situations – like all other marketing situations — where you have to spend money to make money. The beauty of this is that you can track results. You can also pause your campaign at any time if the monthly spend becomes too much.

And Voila! Now you are off to the races. Be sure to ask your new leads where they found you so you can see which customers are coming from your online advertising.

Give it a try. We’ve gotten many non-technical local business owners online this way – and they are amazed at the results! (For businesses who are looking to save time, manage PPC advertising beyond Google alone, or improve results, check out our Yield Web Marketing Suite — it’s a complete, easy and profitable way to manage and optimize your total search marketing effort.)

Quality Score is an important component of Google pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. A great quality score will get your ads better exposure and actually save you money (which are the advertisers in Google’s “in” crowd). Conversely, if you let your quality score slip, Google will actually penalize you by increasing the cost for each click on your PPC ads (that would be the not “in” crowd). So, it’s time to spend some quality time on your quality score.

One of the most effective actions you can take to get a great quality score is to have “tightly knit” ad groups. That sounds easy enough.

However, the interpretations of “tightly knit ad group” we see varies quite a bit and is frequently the largest contributing factor to a poor quality score. Who can help us define “tight knit” then?

Fortunately, Google does not leave us in the dark about what a tightly knit ad group is. In fact, they are like a kind professor who has highlighted the answer in bold for us.

Let’s review, then, three key steps you can take to reach the status of the “in” crowd:

First, keywords in an ad group should be closely related.

Let’s say we are selling bed and bath items. Some of our keywords include “fluffy pillows”, “organic pillows”, “organic pillow reviews”, “cheap pillows”, “pillows with fluff”, “Egyptian towels”, “silk sheets”, and “shag bath rugs”.

Should you put the keyword phrases that have the word pillow in them into a pillow ad group? No. This one needs to be taken to a deeper level of ad group organization.

A user doing a search for organic pillow reviews is looking for something much different than a searcher who wants pillows with fluff. The only two keywords above that belong together are “fluffy pillows” and “pillows with fluff”.

Let’s think about the bold – if I’m using the same ad for all of the above pillow keywords, only the word “pillows” will be bolded in my ad; however, if I break these out into separate ad groups I can get many more keywords highlighted, making my ad boldly appear as the most relevant on the page.

Second, regurgitate keywords in your actual ad copy.

Searchers and Google both like ads that regurgitate keywords. If your ad group contains the keywords “organic pillow reviews”, “reviews on organic pillows” and “reviews of organic pillows” you should include the exact words organic pillow reviews in your ad copy. You’ll get a bold highlight as thanks from Google and stand out as most relevant to your searcher. Don’t just limit yourself to ad copy. The display url is another great place to regurgitate your relevance.

If you are writing ads for an ad group and can’t come up with ads that include most of the keywords, this means the list of keywords in your ad group is too broad and should be grouped at a smaller level.

Third, write ad copy that matches the searcher’s intent.

The searcher looking for “organic pillow reviews” and the searcher looking for “best price organic pillow” are in different stages of purchasing a pillow and you should show them an ad related to where their head is at.

For the searcher looking for reviews, this ad group should have ad text about the volumes of reviews on your site to help the searcher find the right pillow to buy.

However, the “best price” keyword will need to be in a separate ad group since this searcher knows they want to buy a pillow, but is just looking for the best price. In this case your ad copy should focus on your great prices, even calling out your price and other purchase benefits you have, such as free shipping.

Matching user intent will, again, get more of your ad copy to appear in bold. This should be your key objective.

Having tight ad groups can be a lot of work; it can mean hard keyword scrutiny and lots of painstaking ad writing. However, you will save actual dollars for your hard work and get far better performance from you PPC campaigns. So, when you lay your head to rest on your fluffy pillow tonight, dream of all the ways you can get your ads on the bold road.  And rest assured that you’ll be in Google’s “in” crowd.

For the most part, pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is all about goal achievement and profitability. However, there are situations when spending PPC dollars to attain valuable knowledge can lead to great cost savings for your business.

PPC is a truly unique medium – enabling you to test business strategies on volumes of people across the world in very short time periods. Given its speedy broad reach, it is a valuable data-mining tool that can help you make informed decisions.

Here are three key situations in which PPC can help your business save money:

1) New Marketing Message or Positioning

New marketing positioning is a very expensive venture. It often involves changes to your website, marketing materials, sales materials, employee training and more. PPC is a great way to get a lot of exposure fast and see what message resonates. Create a PPC campaign with targeted keywords trying out your possible new marketing message(s) in your ad copy and on your landing page. See what really resonates based on the click-through rate and click-forward rate for your campaign. Let your target audience tell you what marketing message is most effective so you don’t waste precious resources and dollars.

2) Geographic Expansion

Thinking of branching out to a new geography? This is also an expensive, risk-filled feat. Try out PPC advertising in the new geographic area to help you gage your potential success there. Create a new campaign for the proposed geography so you can easily measure the results. Make sure to tailor your campaign so it’s locally relevant. You can compare results to your other, existing geographies to help gage your potential success there before you invest your money in a full geographic expansion.

3) Keywords to Target for Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a slow process that requires ongoing effort in order to get to your desired outcomes. So, before you invest a lot of resources and time into optimizing your pages for particular keywords, make sure you test those keywords out in a PPC campaign. Do searchers find you relevant for these keywords? Do these keywords bring relevant traffic to your site? Do these visitors take the actions you want them to perform? How crowded is the space?  Once your new or expanded keyword strategy has been validated, you can go to work optimizing your site for those keywords.

A key to business success is managing risk and any potential downside to new strategies.  Using PPC to test your go-to-market assumptions can not only help you to save money over the long-run, but ensure success more immediately in the short-run.

Many people think starting a PPC campaign is as easy as opening up a Google, Yahoo!, and Bing ad center account, writing some quick ads and then watching the clicks and dollars roll in.

Were it only so simple.

Although PPC campaigns do give you results faster than a SEO campaign, starting a PPC campaign does require some up-front work on your part. You’ll want to use the following checklist to ensure you have everything needed to make a smooth PPC transition.

1. Determine your budget.

If you’re spending less than $500 a month, you might want to consider a single search engine such as Google or Bing. Why is that? Spreading such a relatively low budget across three search engines won’t give you enough bang for your buck.

Generally speaking, we recommend a minimum spend of greater than $500 per month in order to get the most out of a campaign, particularly one that relies on more than one search engine to generate traffic.

2. Read the manual.

Whether you use one, two or all three, each search engine ad center comes chock full of tutorials and how-to’s. Block out a few hours and bone up on how each one works. You’ll save yourself time and money down the road.

3. Make your keyword list.

We’ve covered this topic already – here and here. Once you have your keyword list in hand, separate similar keywords into ad groups. DO NOT do this on the fly – as in trying to do this step within the ad center interface. You’re setting yourself up for failure. We recommend you sketch out your ad groups using old-fashioned technology – a piece of paper and a pencil, or the less old fashion way using an Excel spreadsheet.

4. Write your ad copy and landing pages together.

Don’t make the mistake of writing out your ads within the ad center interface. One, you can’t catch typos this way, and two, if you’re writing ads on the fly like this, they won’t be as effective. It’s better to write first and final drafts of your ads in Word so you can catch type-o’s and spend time considering your ad copy. You also want to make sure the landing page that the ad links to will reflect both the ad copy you’re writing and the keywords you’re bidding on within a given group. Ensuring concordance between ad copy, keyword bids and landing page copy is the best way to get successful outcomes.

If you can afford it, pay a copywriter or direct marketer to help you write ad copy that compels people to take action and have this person write your landing page copy, too. Also ask him or her for variations on themes, which you can then test to see which ad / landing page generates the best conversions.

5. Keep track of results.

We’ve found that many small companies set up a PPC campaign and then forget about it. (Usually this is because the business owner or marketer is so strapped for time.) Make a date in your calendar to check your campaign results regularly – whether once a day for time-sensitive campaigns, or once a week for on-going ads.

Small plug: All this effort can be time-consuming, which is why we developed the Yield Web Marketing Suite and our complete services offering. Both help you to set up, manage and keep track of campaigns across all three search engines – while giving you the insight you need to make effective business decisions.  To learn more, request a free 20-minute consultation or give our Yield Web Marketing Suite a no obligation trial run for 15 days. We’re here for you!

It can be tough to be a small business these days. Once upon a time, one need only find a tidy shop on a busy street, hang out a shingle, and set about serving the people in your neighborhood.

Then came the internet. And Google. And terms like search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and pay-per-click advertising.  And that shingle? Forget simply hanging the little guy over your door: you now have to do things like “link out”; attract “inbound links”– especially the really juicy kind; and get crawled by search engines. (All of which sounds like a plot to a really odd horror movie.)

In other words, businesses today must be online and are governed, in part, by the concept known as the Link Economy – a term popularized by Jeff Jarvis, an early blogger, internet enthusiast, and journalism professor, and promulgated by successive Web entrepreneurs. Understanding how this economy works and why even small businesses should care is critical to finding success online, and how companies of all sizes market themselves in a neighborhood that is both intimately local and truly global.

Link Economy – The Basics

When speaking and blogging about the link economy, Jarvis and others, such as Arianna Huffington of The Huffington Post blog, speak mainly in terms of journalism and its myriad transformations since the turn of the millennium. But the link economy is much larger than the news profession and encompasses anyone with a website or who seeks to make money on the Web.

So what is it?

Let’s go back to the beginning – briefly – so you have some context.  When Google set about indexing the entirety of the Web, it needed to create complex sets of rules for gathering and presenting all that information. In the same way the Dewey Decimal System made it possible for librarians to organize vast numbers of books such that library patrons – browsers – could easily locate them, Google built (and continues to refine) a search algorithm that makes it possible for you to quickly seek and find just what you might be looking for.

Google’s algorithm (which has been lately joined by the Yahoo! Search and Bing algorithms, among others) considers a number of important factors to determine how to present search results to you. For instance, it looks at the words you type into the search box to see how these individual words or phrases match the words or phrases contained in the vast amounts of information it has indexed.

But because potentially billions of pages of content exist that may contain the exact words or phrase you’ve entered into that little search box, Google also considers things like:

> How many times a site has been visited;
> How long other visitors to the site have stayed after clicking on a link to it;
> The number of links FROM that site to other sites;
> The number of links TO that site originating from other sites, particularly sites that themselves enjoy many in-bound and out-bound links; and
> Many other variables, some of which are rather complex.

When added together, these factors determine the rank any one website will have for any given search query.  And most website owners really, really want to be the number one result on the first page of results for the queries they care about most.  Which is why it’s so valuable to understand how to get there.

Give Link Love, Get Link Love

From among these variables, the links, in particular, have a very powerful impact on where your website will rank in search engine results.  Why? Because Google, Yahoo! Search, and Bing each believe that links to your site from other sites indicate that others believe your site has value. And when the search engines see that your site links to others that you believe have value?  You get points for that, too.  Some call it link juice.  I prefer the term Link Love.

Many folks approach the concept of Link Love quite casually. They do so, however, at their own peril. Mastering the art of Link Love can seem confusing – daunting, even – but there are very real rewards for putting in the effort to get it right.

Link Love is a lot like when love is expressed between two people: to actually mean something it has to be the real deal. It’s one thing to toss off the words “I love you” and to seal the deal with a peck on the cheek.  It’s quite another to look into someone’s eyes, say “I love you” like you really mean it, and follow it up with a long, deep, lingering kiss on the lips.

In other words, it’s easy to link to lots of websites – to say “I love you” to every poor slob who walks by – but it’s harder to link to specific portions of a site that lends context to your own content.  It means you necessarily limit your outbound links to those sites that really do mean something to you.  The crawlers, believe it or not, pay attention to these nuances.  Indiscriminately toss out the I Love You’s, and you’ll get the wrong kind of notice. Make your I Love You’s mean something – well, that earns you respect.

It means your I Love You’s are the real deal.

Similarly, if you have credible, completely original or authoritative content within your own website, others will find it compelling; they’ll link to that content; and they’ll confer their own Link Love on your site.  For instance, if you sell curbside mailboxes – and you’re absolutely passionate about the interesting, inventive, totally creative mailboxes you feature – make sure you’re adequately expressing that passion through great writing, terrific photos and compelling videos.  Over time, folks from other sites will take notice of that passion and link to it for one reason or another. And those links will begin to add up.

As Jarvis cleverly puts it: “Link unto others’ good stuff as you would have them link unto your good stuff.”

All You Need Is Love. Almost.

Virtually every website on the Web is “crawled” by Google, Yahoo! Search, Bing and others so that the pages in it can be indexed by their search engines.  If you want your website to appear in search results when someone uses words or a phrase pertaining to your goods or services (or reporting or blog), you’ve got to be sure you have a website that is:

> Easily found;
> Can be easily crawled and understood by the search engine crawlers;
> Credible; and
> Authoritative.

The first two have to do with how well you’ve built your website, including where and how it’s hosted, and whether or not you do a good job creating each page in your website, which includes things like page titles (or Title tags) that only the crawlers can see.

Credibility and authority are established by examining your Link Love – by considering all the factors I discuss above.  It’s a key reason why the link economy came into being.  But it’s also important to remember that Link Love is the primary means of moving traffic around the Web efficiently and effectively, which is the other key reason the link economy exists today.

Think about it: those search engine results are nothing more than a collection of headlines, a little text and – most importantly – links.  Once clicked on, those links carry you instantly to a place of potential interest to you.  Similarly, links in news articles, blog posts, websites, display advertisements, text ads, tweets from Twitter, and news items in Facebook and LinkedIn all do the same thing: they move you from one specific place to another, allowing you to follow a line of thought or inquiry to whatever conclusion you might seek.

Conclusions like the discovery of breaking news. Source material. Education. Entertainment. Business connections.

Conclusions such as purchases.

For websites that seek to generate revenue of one kind or another, understanding and embracing the link economy isn’t just essential – it’s a matter of life or death.  Jarvis outlines four essential rules for the Link Economy, which were originally written to specifically address the field of journalism and publishing, but which are relevant in this context:

First: All content must be transparent: open on the web with permanent links so it can receive links…

Second: The recipient of links is the party responsible for monetizing the audience they bring… When you get traffic, you need to figure out how to benefit from it.

Third: Links are a key to efficiency. In other words: Do what you do best and link to the rest…

Fourth: There are opportunities to add value atop the link layer. This is where one can find business opportunities: by managing abundance rather than the old model of managing scarcity…

All of which could be summarized as:

Be open to links, but remember links giveth and links taketh away; what you do with what you’ve been given before it (we) leaves is completely within your power.

One of the great “old school” newsmen, Charlie Rose, recently interviewed the namesake of “new school” blog The Huffington Post and the head of the once-mighty Associated Press (AP), which is adamantly resisting the forces of the Link Economy. It was a spirited debate in which Arianna Huffington asserted the overwhelming evidence of the link economy working.  At the end, Rose offered this conclusion:

“We have seen the future and it is here. It is a linked economy. It is search engines. It is online advertising. That’s where the future is. And if you can’t find your way to that, then you can’t find your way.”

Welcome to the future.

MarketingProfs is always a great resource for information, education and networking.  I also subscribe to their email newsletters, which are uniformly terrific.  In this morning’s email marketing newsletter, they point to a blog post in CopyBlogger by Brian Clark called “Ten Timeless Persuasive Writing Techniques” that I thought would be helpful to Web marketers everywhere.

He points out that all marketers — from novices to pros — are interested in attracting the attention of their target audiences, drawing them in and convincing them to buy a product or service.  There are a number of ways to do this, of course, including strong graphics, use of video and the like, but compelling copy is almost always at the core of any good marketing strategy.  Check out Brian’s blog post for his detailed advice, but here are his high-level tips for writing effective copy:

Repetition

Reasons Why

Consistency

Social Proof

Comparisons

Agitate and Solve

Prognosticate

Go Tribal

Address Objections

Story Telling

I’ve been a marketer for more than 20 years and have used all of these techniques, so I know them to be effective.  Use one or more of these when writing copy for your newsletter, PPC ads, landing pages or other marketing devices and you’ll see better success.

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.