Paid Search strategies can vary widely. There is a different blend of direct response and branding that each company employs. How much does a company value educating new customers as opposed to getting sales from each click? How often are they testing new keywords to reach different and new target segments? How much are they […]
Paid Search Competitive Analysis Report Template (excel download)
This template is a snapshot for a particular month. It doesn’t show trends or give you the context of growth/decline over time. You can pull the Auction Insights report out of AdWords from a campaign or adgroup and then plug in the top 10 competitors to get these results. Ideally the first bubble chart gives […]
Ecommerce Blog Dashboard (Excel Download)
Many ecommerce sites have blogs as a means to drive traffic, help with SEO, drive new visits, engage with customers, make sales, increase credibility and more. All of the goals can fit into two silos: engagement and driving revenue to the site. The two depend on each other – the better the content the more […]
Making the Vaguest Marketing Objectives Measurable
Almost every marketing proposal and brief include one or more of the following meaningless goals: drive awareness and increase engagement. Of course we want to drive awareness and/or increase engagement. What is marketing if not one or both of those things? The point of marketing proposals are to allow the thinkers on the team to […]
A Web Analytics Measurement Model Strategy
We no longer live in a world where only last-touch direct response metrics suffice. The web influences both online and offline sales, every customer surveys competing sites and brands, they spend more time researching online and they research across multiple devices. This makes for a very convoluted purchase funnel. As people continue to browse constantly […]
Online Marketing Moving Towards Passivity
Online marketing has been positioned from the beginning as a much more interactive marketing medium than TV. As the web becomes more of a constant thing in our lives will our interactions with it become more passive like TV and thus change the way we market online? Online marketers have always stuck their noses up […]
Should You Pay For A Paid Search Bid Management Tool?
Bid management tools (Marin, Kenshoo, Acquisio, DoubleClick For Search) tout productivity, and increased efficiency but not without a hefty cost – charging 3% – 5% of spend. So is it worth it? Here are some of the pros and cons these tools promote and a comparison of what you get for free from AdWords: Â Cross-Publisher […]
Should Affiliates Bid On Your Brand Keywords?
The only affiliates that really want to bid on your brand keywords are coupon sites – Slickdeals, Couponcabin, Retailmenot, etc. because discounts are incredible clickbait, and with the 30 day post-click attribution windows (which most affiliates are set up on), discount ads on brand terms work out to be very lucrative for affiliates. So brand […]
Two Most Important Steps For Managing Product Listing Ads
Product Listing Ads are currently one of the least transparent, (no avg. position, no impression share, no keywords) yet highest converting products in AdWords. By holiday 2013 I think PLAs will be one of the highest cost sections of any ecommerce paid search account. After you have set up your Product Listing Ads campaign(s) and […]
Marketplaces The Future Of Ecommerce?
Amazon, Ebay, Sears, WalMart and Newegg are a few examples of the stores that offer marketplaces for third parties to sell their products alongside the company’s own inventory (won’t be long until Facebook and Apple are there too). These marketplaces are making huge strides to weeding out competition and consolidating the ecommerce landscape by providing […]