Boost Clickthrough Rates by 14,000 Percent
January 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Advertising.com’s Creative Director put together a real nice piece on how to boost clickthrough rates by a whopping 14,000 percent.
The piece at imediaconnection.com takes a static ad (with an adorable puppy) and puts it up against a not-so-cute flash banner that features rotating images and text. Guess which one won? The flash banner. By approximately 14,600 percent.
In the article, these five steps are outlined in creative Internet marketing:
- Make the design simple and intuitive.
- Make sure the message is simple. If they can’t figure it out in literally one second, they’re moving on.
- Make it work organically with the product. The concept should be in
line with what you are selling. - Don’t look desperate. Migraine-inducing graphics only tick people off.
- Build on what has worked before. No need to reinvent the wheel.
At Tech Solution, we tend to take a subtle type, minimalist approach to Internet Marketing through banner ads, and it has worked really well for us. Most of our client’s brands fall in that category, so we haven’t been forced to do anything totally off the wall.
There are two questions you need to ask yourself when thinking about utilizing creative media for marketing.. How do we get their attention, and how do we sell them? Once you figure those two questions out, the rest is a easy.
[via imediaconnection.com]
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PPC Bidding
November 9, 2007 | Leave a Comment
One of the most common questions I get asked is whether or not PPC is worth the expense. There are countless people hyping up Google Adwords and Yahoo Search at any given time. But there are others damning the whole system, saying it is all a waste of money. Is it true? Are small business owners losing their shirts because of faulty PPC campaigns?
The answer is yes… unfortunately. Pay per click programs are nice because they allow you to target specific areas of your site with a focused keyword. For instance, I set up one the other day with a ‘Safe Toys’ ebook. The site is brand new, so Google doesn’t trust it enough to start sending organic traffic to it, but we still want to get it in front of people. The response? Set up a PPC campaign.
A lot of people are fine going into it themselves. In fact, PPC marketing is a pretty easy process initially. You create an account, load up some prepaid funds, and pick your keywords. Where most people come up short is they don’t manage it. They just set it up once and think it will run itself.
Pay per click is an advertising medium that changes every day. It isn’t like you buy an ad in the Wall Street Journal for a set price, and it runs a set number of days! Bid prices change on a day by day basis, and sometimes hourly. The reason is, each person in there has the ability to pay as much for an ad, or as little for an ad, as they like. All the bid price determines is where your ad will be placed.
When we set up the ‘toys’ campaign, we had a top level bid price of $.20 per click. This was good enough to get us into almost 175 different keywords, all very well targeted. A couple hours later, we logged into Adwords and saw that someone bid the price up to $ .50, so we had to adjust accordingly.
The thing is, if we hadn’t logged in and seen that change, then the ad would have been at the bottom of the tier, being clicked on by fairly unqualified candidates. That would have wasted quite a bit of money for our client!
So you see, the key to PPC is actually the management of the campaign - not the initial setup! I can guarantee that all those people condemning Adwords didn’t take the time to go in and see how it was performing. After all, it’s your advertising budget! How well do you want it to perform for you?
Search Engine Optimization and Marketing Strategy
May 4, 2007 | Leave a Comment
We, at Tech Solution, are shifting our business strategy a bit. More so, where this blog and website are concerned.
This blog is going to be devoted to hands on search engine optimization and marketing. We also have our first Tech Solution book coming out regarding the same topics. Our focus is going to be empower small businesses in regards to online success.
Old marketing rules are out. As evidenced everyday. It is becoming more and more clear that if you can’t market on the web, then you can’t win. This doesn’t necessarily apply to the small, mom and pop grocery store or the privately owned garage, but you get the picture.
So, from this point forward, you are going to get SEO and SEM news, startup consultation, and entire pages devoted to making your business more profitable online!
Business Strategy
March 21, 2007 | Leave a Comment
For those of you consultants, business owners, and entrepreneurs, I have a book for you.
The title - “Art of the Strategist” by William Cohen. (If you haven’t been able to tell, I like to read.)
In the book, Cohen relates strategy to dating. If you approach a room full of women and concentrate on all of them, you will be going home alone. Instead, concentrate on one of them, and you have a much better chance.
Business isn’t any different. You make one initiative a focus. Granted, you back it up by alternatives, but your primary drive needs to be the key. Combined with other factors which you can read about, success is very likely.
Lately, I have been getting more interested in business strategy, not just for startups but in investing and consulting. It is an amazing field to get into at this point in time.
For a good introduction, check out Art of the Strategist. The narratives and author’s experience play a huge part in the writing.
The Tao of Warren Buffet
March 16, 2007 | Leave a Comment
Admittedly, I am not much of an investor. I like to play with the market, here and there. Thirty dollars here, thirty there.
One person I have truly come to respect is Warren Buffet though.
He has an unassuming way about him that demands respect. Not only is he brilliant as the day is long, he is even keeled and mild mannered.
This book, The Tao of Warren Buffet includes some random thoughts by a genius. It is a quick read, taking no longer than a day or two, but is infinitely worth the price of admission.
We are always told to learn from the best. This book clearly help that happen.
Duct Tape Marketing - The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide
January 8, 2007 | Leave a Comment
You can do almost anything with duct tape, right? Well, this book shows you how to apply all of those tricks, to the marketing world!Written by John Jantsch of ducttapemarketing.com, the book covers the do’s and don’ts of small business.
Duct Tape Marketing is the small business marketing road map - A collection of proven tools and tactics woven together in a step-by-step marketing system that shows small business owners exactly what to do to market and grow their businesses.
It’s very interesting reading and one I highly recommend..
10 Tips for Website Optimization
December 13, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Nowadays, basic website builds are easy enough. You can get your standard, off the shelf WYSIWYG software and muddle your way through it. The trick is getting search engines to know that you are there! It’s not like in the real world, where you open up a store and customers flock in. Amidst 8.7 billion websites, how can someone possible find yours?The answer… Search Engine Optimization
Here are 10 tips to get your site on track:
- Optimize your title tag
- Creating good content
- Stay away from Javascript in your site structure
- Meta Tags
- Robots text file
- Properly tagged images
- Text Sizes
- Remember filenames are important
- Internal linking
- Establish trust with your site
For more information, check out promotionworld.com.
VMware Virtual Machines
December 7, 2006 | 2 Comments
Over the last couple days, I have been reformatting two of my main computers here at the office. It is a bit selfish of me, but they are the ones I primarily use..What I did on each of of them is set up Windows XP as normal. I loaded all the main programs, anything I needed for software development, and such. Then I installed a virtual machine.
What those are a like computers inside computers. It is almost like running two different operating systems at the same time. You open up this application, VMware, and load a new system in it. I works just like you were booting right up to it.
What I am hoping this saves on is the garbage Windows seems to randomly collect through everyday use. It will save on spyware and viruses. And I am hoping I won’t have to reformat as ofter!
I just wanted to share. If any of you have any alternatives, be sure to chime in!
Need Remote Access Software?
November 21, 2006 | Leave a Comment
A brand new application called SimpleDesktop by Moog software has been introduced as a open source, free, remote access application. There are no ads, no spyware, and no time limits.
Here’s a short list of features:
SimpleDesktop Features:
* Revolutionary interface makes navigating a remote computer completely natural
* Cross Platform - works on Windows, MacOS X, Linux, BSD, Solaris … and many others
* Secure - up to 576 bit strong encryption of the entire session
* Seamlessly serves clients connecting through an HTTP proxy
* Scheduled upload of local machine IP address or Router IP
* Multi-Platform Client Download (1.2M) from your SimpleDesktop server via any standard web browser
For more information, check out raymond.cc. For the download, click here.
Do you need a better web browser?
November 4, 2006 | Leave a Comment
Are you looking for a web browser that is completely customizable? Does it have to be fast and secure? Well you are in luck.
With Mozilla Firefox, you get a ton of great features, but these are the most notable:
- Tabbed browsing
- Spell Checking (invaluable for people like me!)
- Search
- Web and RSS Feeds
- Identity theft protection
- Proven security model
- Infinite customization
To read more please check out mozilla.com. To download it, go to the sidebar and click on the button!