Featured

I’ve prattled on about the marketing stack for a few years now, but haven’t really explained each chunk. This 5-post series explains the stack as a whole, then piece-by-piece. I’m not some TV series jerk who will keep you hanging, though, wondering which of your favorite characters will die next (cough HBO cough cough). Instead,… Read More

PPC

In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. This is the last post of the six-part blog series in which Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson lay down the knowledge on best practices for achieving PPC success. Follow… Read More

Analytics

The short version, if you want to skip me ranting like a lunatic: Google Webmaster Tools query data is, as far as I can tell, completely, 100% useless. It’s not a good ‘relative comparison.’ It’s so wrong that it might actually be a bad idea to use it at all. Now, here’s the whole, tragic… Read More

PPC

One of the most exciting (and frustrating) parts of PPC marketing is that it’s a constantly changing landscape. A big part of anyone’s job when working in PPC is to keep up on the latest changes to the systems you’re using. The only problem is that Google releases roughly five billion changes to AdWords every… Read More

Copywriting

The undead are white hot these days. From the “Walking Dead” to “World War Z,” zombies have hit the mainstream—they’re everywhere. Some talk about a Zombie Apocalypse as if it’s a forgone conclusion. A friend recently told me he’s shopping for a new vehicle, and it needs to be a four-wheel drive SUV so he… Read More

PPC

In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. We’re in week five of our six-part blog series in which Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson lay down the knowledge on best practices for achieving PPC success. Follow along… Read More

Random

Words are powerful. If you’re like me, 10, 11, 40 times a day you mentally slam your head in a drawer and say “That was STUPID.” That’s the wrong word. 99.99999% of the time, you can replace ‘stupid’ with ‘experimenting.’ You didn’t do whatever it was that blew up in your face, failed, imploded, left… Read More

PPC

Last October before the big Product Listing Ads (PLA) transition, in my panicked wisdom, I crafted a PLA Dashboard. It wasn’t pretty, and there wasn’t much to it, but it did help me keep a better eye on my PLA campaigns and improve them short-term. The dashboard looked like this: Since then, Google Analytics has introduced a… Read More

PPC

In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. We’re in week four of our six-part blog series in which Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson lay down the knowledge on best practices for achieving PPC success. Follow along… Read More

PPC

In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. We’re in week three of our six-part blog series in which Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson  lay down the knowledge on best practices for achieving PPC success. Follow… Read More

Here at Portent, we have many Internet marketing teams: SEO, content, and design, just to name a few. But the best team, objectively speaking*, is the PPC team. *This is completely subjective as I am a member of the PPC team.  That does not mean what I say is not the truth. We are a… Read More

Internet Marketing

Marketing wasn’t supposed to be a zero-sum game. Your competitor bought a TV commercial, you bought a TV commercial. They bought radio time, you bought radio time. Even if they bought every available second of radio time on one station, you could buy time on another, or go to a completely different medium. That promoted… Read More

PPC

In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. Over the course of the next six weeks, Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson will be laying down the knowledge in a six-part blog series detailing… Read More

Internet Marketing

We’ve all seen it happen. An employee is doing killer work, initiating great ideas, and displaying a willingness to take on larger projects. The employee is quickly promoted to a manager position. But while this top employee has excelled at the tactical parts of the job, he or she has never managed a team before.… Read More

When I meet with clients or present at conferences, I am always asked: “How do I rank high on Google for (insert keyword-phrase-du-jour)?” I give the standard answer: “Only the search engineers and Google can tell you and they aren’t talking.” Inevitably, the questioner looks dejected, mutters a slur on my credentials, and walks away. … Read More

PPC

In charge of building your first PPC account? Don’t have a lot of time or money to spend within AdWords? Well you came to the right place. Over the course of the next six weeks, Portent PPC Strategists Chad Kearns and Tim Johnson will be laying down the knowledge in a six-part blog series detailing… Read More