Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Are Google AdWords Image Ads the way of the future? Will graphic representations soon replace all those text ads filling the Google landscape? Probably not any time soon, but it certainly wouldn’t hurt to take a closer look at trying Google Image Ads as an additional marketing tool for your business, especially if AdWords is performing well for you.

Google Image ads appear on select Google Content Network sites. By integrating the proven targeting of AdWords and the appeal of graphical images, image ads can help you reach an entirely new audience for your product or service. The key difference between the old banner ads and Google Image Ads is that the Image Ads can be matched to a website page’s content. This added level of targeting helps focus the Image Ads on the audience you want to reach, allowing you to better spend your advertising dollars on the customers you want to attract. Some Content Sites only show Image Ads, so the only way to reach some of this audience is by adding Image Ads into your marketing mix. You can even use Flash ads, giving your product or service a little bit of extra pizzaz.

JumpFly is happy to announce that we are now offering high quality image ad production for PPC management clients. There are eight different sizes of Image Ads you can run, so there is a nice variety of potential ads you can create. You can advertise with a large 728 x 90 Leaderboard Ad, or use a smaller 200 x 200 Small Square Ad. One can only wonder if graphical ads are the next evolution in the PPC marketplace. You may want to venture into those waters now while they are still shallow. You may reap the benefits much quicker than those who wait timidly on the shore.

More about Jack

I like to think of my pay-per-click (PPC) advertising keywords as my sales team. Each keyword, whether it be a broad match variation, a phrase match variation or an exact match variation is a unique sales entity. Each keyword, whether it be a singular or plural, puts a different spin on the sales pitch inherent within the words themselves. Each keyword, whether it be a tightly focused model number, a brand name, or a generic catch-all kind of word, puts forth its own individual call to action.

So, what do you do with a member of your sales team who is performing under expectations? Well, for starters, you can “reduce his pay” by lowering his bid. Note: I’m using “he” just for simplicity sake. If a member of your sales team is underperforming, certainly you don’t want to keep paying him at his normal rate. Bring his pay down to a level that is acceptable to the performance he is delivering. Bring a keyword down in position if it’s not delivering in a high position.

What if you have already “reduced the pay” of an underperfomer? Then what? Well, ultimately you are going to have to fire him. There is no sense in keeping a sales person around if he has proven time and time again that he cannot deliver the results that are expected of him. So, fire him. Shut him down. Pause that stinker. Sometimes it’s hard to let go, but in the long run you’ll be glad you did.

Now, on a happier note, what do you do with a member of your sales team who is kicking butt? What do you do with the guy who’s outperforming expectations? Well, one obvious thing to do is give him a raise. Push that keyword position a bit higher if you have room to grow the position. This doesn’t always translate into more sales, but you should certainly give the keyword the opportunity to shine if it’s proven in the past that it can deliver results.

What if he is already at the top of the pay scale? Then what? Then you might need to start looking beyond raising his pay. Now you need to start looking to him for “referrals.” Does he have any trustworthy friends who need a job? Does that keyword have a few variations that you haven’t considered? Dig deeper into the keyword and see if you can find a few of its “friends” to come join your team. You might be surprised at what you find.

Happy Holidays to all.

More about Jack
JumpFly PPC Account Executive

I’ve lost count of how many websites I’ve gone to where the immediate question comes to mind: “Hello, is anybody home?” The website looks like it hasn’t been updated for years. It’s not necessarily a color scheme issue, or a graphic design issue, or the fact that the site could just be plain ugly. It’s just the fact that there’s no indication of anything current happening on the website. It’s hard to give potential customers confidence in a site, or convince them to purchase something from a website, or entice them to fill out a contact form, if they are not sure that someone is actually minding the store.

I’d like to offer a few simple solutions to help rectify this “empty” feeling. First, you can put up a date stamp on the site that reflects the current date. This can go in your header, near your navigation bar, or anywhere in the upper portion of the website. Yes, it’s a potentially useless bit of data that even an abandoned site could be using, but at least one of the first impressions that a new customer will get is one of “now.” And first impressions are absolutely critical for first time visitors, especially in the pay-per-click (PPC) advertising arena where you are paying per click for each one of these new visitors.

Second, put up a current bit of news about your company, your business category, the products you sell, the brands you carry. Date the news and update it about once a week. Again, it’s all about giving the website a “lively” feeling, that someone is actively minding the store, putting up fresh current tidbits of information. The news really could be about anything, but you’ll get more mileage out of it if it relates to your business and products. This could include starting a blog, which is very similar to this. Or you could just carve out a small space on the home page and update that with some timely bit of information every week or so.

Finally, and I think most importantly, give your calls-to-action a sense of urgency by giving them an end date that’s no more than a few weeks or a month out. If you offer Free Shipping, then also mention the month in the same sentence. For example: Free Shipping in December! Maybe you will offer Free Shipping in January, but then again maybe you won’t. The same thing goes for any sales you might run. If everything is 5% off, then offer 5% off in December. Maybe you will offer 5% off in January, but maybe you won’t. If you leave Free Shipping or sales offers open-ended, then you don’t give customers a strong incentive to buy now. They’ll think they can just come back later and get it, but of course then they have a good chance of never coming back at all. Once they are on your site, you need to do everything you can to close that sale as soon as possible. This all ties back to giving the site a sense of being “current.” By putting an end date, or a month name, into all of your promotional pushes it gives the site a sense of being “alive” and “fresh.”

More about Jack
JumpFly PPC Account Executive