But hiring a PPC agency doesn’t have to be a fingernails-dragged-slowly-across-a-blackboard event. I swear! If you have a few fundamental business questions answered before you start your search you will put yourself and your firm in excellent position to hire the right partner.

If you can answer the following questions you’re in good shape to begin working with an agency. If you can’t, you should strongly consider taking the steps to find an answer before your agency search begins.

Tell us About Your Business

1. What problem are you looking to solve?

Why are you interested in hiring a PPC agency to support you in the first place? The most common answer to this question is that you want to grow revenue while saving money and an in-house solution isn’t an option.

However, there are plenty of other legitimate reasons for needing support. Perhaps you feel woefully under-qualified and experienced in all things PPC. Maybe you simply don’t have the time to effectively run a paid digital presence and also cover your other 3,453 job responsibilities. You may even be an absolute PPC rock star, but need someone to review your work and help with new strategies and pushes.

The point is, knowing WHY you want to hire someone is a must so prospective agencies can present coverage based on your specific needs.

2. What’s your company’s purpose?

The basic question at the heart of every company’s existence is ‘Why are you in business?’ In other words, what product or service do you provide? Even more fundamentally, how does your offering appeal to your target market–meaning how do you save others money, time, or otherwise provide value that results in business for your company?

Once the “what” has been established the logical next question is the “who”. More specifically, who is your target audience? Assuming you’ve identified a primary audience, how are they currently interacting with your website and your brand’s other digital presences such as social media accounts, Amazon, Yelp, etc.?

3. Why are you great?

Having a target audience is a start, but you’d better be da** sure you actually appeal to said audience. Taking it further, you need to understand why clients or customers choose you over competitors. Are there unique properties to your goods or services such as better reliability, efficiency, higher success rates, or some other swaying factor?
Helping you stand out from the rest of the field is one of the pillars of PPC and any other direct-response marketing, so being able to effectively communicate why you’re better than the rest is a necessity. If you can’t tell your prospective agency, you (and they) sure as heck won’t be able to tell your customers compellingly.

The PPC Questions

After the overarching business questions are solidly answered there are a few crucial PPC questions that should be addressed pre-engagement.

4. What are your growth goals?

Setting improvement goals is a natural business practice. Still, many businesses don’t have specific goals in mind. The old, generic “increase revenue at a lower cost” mentality runs rampant among businesses big and small.

If you’re unsure of what your goals should be, start with a simple figure and work from there. One example could be “10% year-over-year revenue growth each month.” Thereafter, factor in current and future costs and chat with colleagues or superiors in order to get their feedback.

Setting monthly, quarterly, or even annual goals (or all of these) will help the agency you select create a strategic plan focused on achieving said goals.

When in doubt, get back to S.M.A.R.T. goal setting fundamentals. Here’s a great primer on this kind of S.M.A.R.T. goal setting from HubSpot if you’re unfamiliar.

5. What is your starting paid search budget?

When it comes to budget flexibility there are two types of firms: Those that have a set budget that MUST not be surpassed in a given month and those that have a flexible budget based on results.

First, figure out on which end of this spectrum your company sits. Next, after the flexibility question is answered you’ll need to figure out a starting monthly budget.

If you have a set budget to work with that’s perfectly fine. Prospective agency partners should always be able to tailor a solution that works with your budget. However, if the agency’s projected outcome in leads, revenue, etc. isn’t what you need, that’s a great forcing function to reexamine your budget and goals with stakeholders and management.

Perhaps you don’t know where to begin. Here’s a great resource from a few months back on the Portent blog, all about how to set a PPC budget.

In short, start by examining your goals and your current average cost per acquisition. Determine how many sales or leads you would need to attract from paid search at current cost levels and that should leave you with a rough starting budget. This is by no means an exact science, and costs as well as external and internal factors can fluctuate over time, but it gives you a place to start from and iterate.

6. What additional services do you need?

It’s not uncommon to need additional services that will support your PPC efforts. Perhaps you need landing pages created, or you don’t have anyone in-house who can create banner ads for retargeting on Google’s Display Network or others. Maybe you don’t have anyone familiar with the nuances of Google Analytics, and how that integrates with AdWords, Bing Ads, or smaller PPC platforms.

Being honest with yourself and your stakeholders about what your internal capabilities are vs. what must be outsourced is another important step in the pre-hiring process.

“Captain Obvious” moment: not all PPC agencies are created equal as far as services offered, and that should factor in to your evaluation criteria. Some have dedicated in-house analytics specialists, designers, paid social experts, or platform partnership relationships (e.g. Google Partner status), while others do not. That’s not always a knock, since many agencies simply know their niche and that their core customers don’t need ancillary or complementary services.

Know what you need and ask about a given firm’s capabilities for the specific things that your business needs help with, both now and down the road.

The good news is that once you select an agency, developing and actually implementing a winning PPC strategy is on their shoulders, at which point you become their support and stakeholder.

By having clearly-articulated answers for the questions in this post before starting your search you’ve got a much better chance of selecting the agency that’s right for your specific needs, while also reducing the likelihood of missteps and misunderstandings once everyone is off to the races.

The post 6 Questions to Ask [Yourself] Before Hiring a PPC Agency appeared first on Portent.

These days businesses have an abundance of data at their fingertips. That makes knowing how to sift through information an essential part of every marketer’s existence.

Personally, Google Analytics (GA) has been making my professional career easier since 2007. Why only since 2007? Well, I was unaware of GA before then, so shame on me.

GA often holds the key for unlocking new growth opportunities when important performance indicators like revenue and conversions have slowed to a crawl. You simply have to know where to look.

Luckily for you, this post will cover 3 different breakdowns of GA data to help you identify new opportunities.

Assisted Conversions

What are assisted conversions?

Assisted conversions break down which channels played a role in a given conversion. They add clarity by breaking down how each channel in your purchasing process contributes to your desired outcome, which is often someone making a purchase, download, or contacting you for more information.

Where can they be found?

Go to: Conversions > Multi-Channel Funnels > Assisted Conversions

Please note that you must have conversion tracking set up in GA in order to see assisted conversion data.

Why are assisted conversions useful?

By my very scientific calculations, 95.19% of businesses pay attention only to the online click that results in a conversion. Thing is though, that’s a terrible way to do business.

In most cases, customers navigate to a site or social media profile a number of times before making a purchase or submitting a contact form. With assisted conversions, you have data revealing the role channels such as PPC and organic search play. Say someone initially finds your business via a paid ad, later returns via an organic search result, and finally converts after navigating to the site directly. That’s a pretty common scenario that assisted conversion data fully covers.

You can also change the importance of each touch point. Giving substantial credit to the first interaction someone has with your brand, as well as the last one, or giving increasing importance to each touch point, can be easily done with the model comparison tool. If you don’t like the default attribution options, custom models can also be created within GA.

How should one use assisted conversions?

Assisted conversions can give you a useful overview of what channels are contributing to your bottom line. Select an attribution model that is right for your business and start funding each channel with an eye on how it’s performing for both last-click and assisted conversions. Areas of focus can also be derived with the help of assisted conversions.

How does this look in practice? You may be missing an opportunity to focus on a channel that is holistically helping to drive a ton of conversions. For example, if you have a $5k a month PPC budget under the assumption that it results in 10 conversions, but find that with assisted conversions PPC has a hand in 20 conversions, there may be an opportunity for further budget expansion and reach for PPC. It all depends on how you treat assisted conversions and factor them into your overall cost per acquisition.

Landing Page Performance by Channel

What is a landing page according to GA?

A landing page is the page a visitor first lands on when arriving at your site.

Where can I review landing page opportunities?

Go to: Behavior > Site Content > Landing Pages

Why is landing page data useful?

Landing page data helps marketers figure out which pages are driving people to a site and also how people are interacting with each landing page.

How should one use landing page data?

Having data on which landing pages are performing well (or poorly) helps identify opportunities for optimization. For example, let’s say one of your product pages has an extremely low eCommerce conversion rate, even though demand and cost remain equal. That’s definitely a red flag.

From there, a side-by-side comparison of the product page relative to others should be made, and you can install some click-tracking software like Crazy Egg in order to see how people are interacting with the page.

Another easy, yet pertinent, stat to review is bounce rate. If a given page has an abnormally high bounce rate relative to others in its category, you will likely want to review the meta description, title tag, URL, and content on that page. That will allow you to ensure they align perfectly with the top term, or terms, driving traffic to that page and make changes if they don’t.

Comparisons of revenue (assuming eCommerce tracking exists), time on site, sessions, new vs. returning users, and other key metrics can be easily done with a little sorting.

Goal Funnel Opportunities

What is the goal funnel in GA?

The goal funnel illustrates how visitors flow through your checkout process and eventually convert.

Where can I review the goal funnel?

Go to: Conversions > Goals > Goal Flow

Please note that you must have conversion tracking set up in GA in order to see goal flow data.

Why is goal flow data useful?

The goal flow data can highlight hang-ups and opportunities in your conversion path for specific subsets of site visitors.

Time spent improving the conversion experience can often lead to a better overall conversion rate, meaning more conversions vs. abandons once people enter the conversion funnel.

How can goal flow data be used?

Goal flow data is particularly helpful in improving your goal conversion rate. For example, let’s say you recently launched some updates to your checkout funnel and conversion volume has been lower since the launch.

Goal flow lets you look at user data such as browser, operating system, and screen resolution in order to see if a subset of users are heavily dropping out of the funnel at a specific point. You can then test to see if that step in some way is hampering the user experience for that group of visitors and make changes as needed.

Another example is understanding how mobile users interact with your site. You can review people navigating through the checkout process via mobile vs. non-mobile in order to review drop-off points in the process. If mobile has a massively larger drop-off point than desktop at one of the steps, improving the experience for mobile (less text entry required, more drop-downs used, etc.) would be a logical next step.

In Summary

As I said earlier, a little digging within Google Analytics can go a long way towards helping marketers uncover new growth opportunities. You just have to look in the right places.

And, if you feel like the recommendations within this post are just a bit too elementary for your skill level, feel free to delve into this webinar on using analytics to study audience engagement or this one on connecting your CRM & web analytics platforms, both by the brilliant and talented Michael Wiegand (you didn’t hear this praise coming from me ;) ).

The post Breaking the Sales Plateau with Google Analytics appeared first on Portent.

I was recently blessed with the birth of my 2nd child. We’re almost 7 weeks in and both mother and child are doing well. And to celebrate this beautiful, life-altering change I’ve pledged to sleep much less and have very little free time for the next few years. Whoo-hoo!!!

Since there are sadly still only 24 hours in a given day, determining how to most effectively spend my time has become an absolute necessity.

That said, my sleep deprivation is your gain as it has me thinking about prioritization in work, specifically how to get the most out of PPC management when time and sanity are scarce.

The concepts covered here are fundamental and intended to provide better structure to your account, saving you time and money after some initial setup. If you’re sleeping as little as I am these days, saving time for things like sleep is, well, a marvelous concept. For that reason, we’ll hold off on going too deep into the advanced optimization under each concept.

Final note: I’m going to focus specifically on the Google AdWords platform. Bing and other search providers have made up ground in recent years, but they still lag far behind Google. That said, many of these concepts are transferable to other platforms. Especially those that have modeled themselves after Google in order to achieve user friendliness…cough…Bing….

Ad Scheduling

What is ad scheduling?
Hypothetical question:  do customers commonly shop for new sun glasses at 3 AM? Do they enquire about business consulting on a Saturday afternoon? I think / hope the answer is generally “no”.

Just about all businesses have times throughout the week when customers aren’t actively looking for their goods or services. This often includes weekends and overnight (when non-parents are sleeping). The hours just before the business day, during, and right afterwards are often prime targets (especially in a B2B lead generation practice).

With AdWords you can set the precise days and times when you want ads to run. So, why not preserve spend for the times of day and days of the week when your customers are most active?

How is ad scheduling set up?
You’ll need to pull data within AdWords to see which days of the week and times of each day provide the most transactions or leads. Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) will also be an important KPI in your evaluation.

To pull “day of week” data, simply:

In AdWords go into Campaign settings > Dimensions > Click the View button > select View: Day of the week. You’ll want to select a year of data or at least 6 months in order to ensure your decisions stem from a decent sample size.

For “hours of the day” do the following:

In AdWords go into Campaign settings > Dimensions > Click the View button > select View: Hour of the day

The Result
More great visibility, of course! With your ads showing up only when customers are most likely to buy, you’re increasing your chances of getting sales or conversions from your target audience.  You’re also decreasing the volume of window shopper visits and lower quality clicks.

Negative Keywords

Why are negative keywords important?
Remember our hypothetical sunglass retailer? No sane luxury sunglasses purveyor wants their brand associated with anything remotely related to the word “cheap.” Oh, and “free” is another big no-no.

Again, these are easy examples of the must-do stuff, no matter how little time you have to spare. You should absolutely spend the few minutes to pick off the worst homonyms, stop-words, and off-target attributes like “cheap.”

For another quick example, let’s look at a marketer or business owner trying to generate leads for “business consulting” services.  Here, being tremendously specific with the type of consulting you do is critical. Further, if you have a more common name (think “Acme” Consulting), this gets even more important and challenging.

Bottom line: without at least some simple refinement, you can quickly find yourself bidding against a sea of businesses that aren’t really competitors. We’d ideally avoid bidding on all traffic in searches for anything other than your exact services.

Luckily, you can create just such a list of terms for which you don’t want ads to show. Having an in-depth list of negative keywords will help ensure you’re not throwing away your budget (and time) on terms that are never going to result in customers for you.

How is a negative keyword list set up?
Simply do the following:

In AdWords click on the Keywords tab on the main account page > Negative keywords. You can set up negative keywords on the Ad Group or Campaign level.

The Result
By taking the few minutes to throw out those useless keywords, you’ll have more money left for the terms that are generating great leads or shoppers for your business. Taking the time to reserve more of your budget for the winning terms now should lead to more revenue, leads, and time-saved down the road.

Geotargeting

What is Geotargeting?
Let’s stick with the familiar example. Many people looking for “business consulting services” would prefer a consultant within their approximate geographic area. Meaning searches within a certain distance are more likely to convert. So why not focus more of that precious time and budget on prospects within your geographic area, especially if you’re a regionally based business?

By default, if you’re based in North America, Google targets the whole USA and Canada. However, Google absolutely allows you to target by country, region, city, or even postal code.  Geotargeting is a must for businesses who have customers only in specific geographic regions or even confined to a particular town or part of a city.

How is Geotargeting set up?

At the Campaign level go into an individual campaign and click on the settings tab. From there go into the “Locations” section.

The Result
Geotargeting will help you keep your ads tightly focused on the areas where most of your best prospects are based. You can even create specialized ad copy and landing pages targeting specific geographic areas. While all of this takes some time, it’s very likely to improve your overall click-through rate as well as the quality of the visitor clicking through on your ads. Again, just a little extra time now, to earn dividends in the future.

Location Extensions

What are location Extensions?
Let’s start with the “business consulting services” example again here. Since most people prefer a consultant within their approximate geographic area why not make it immediately obvious in your ads that your physical location is close by?

Simply, Location Extensions allow you to have your company’s address show up in your ad without giving away precious characters in already short text. Better still, if you have multiple locations, the address of the closest store or office will show up in the ad based on someone’s IP location.

How are location extensions set up?

1. To set up this feature, go to the All Campaigns page, click on Ad Extensions, Change the view box to “Location extensions” and click on the +Extension box to get started.
2. OR if you already link your AdWords Account with your Google Places Account, choose “Upgraded” from the Location Extensions section.

From the drop-down menu select “View: Location extensions” Choose “Upgraded” from the menu Click +EXTENSION You will then be prompted to link your Google My Business Account.

The Result
With Location Extensions a customer will have an easier time locating the most convenient office, or brick-and-mortar store in their area. That translates to more visits and potential customers as well as less frustration with the purchasing process. Higher in-store visit volumes should follow.

Sitelink Extensions

What are Sitelink Extensions?
To touch back on the luxury sunglass example: as a retailer, we want to get shoppers to the best bits of your store as quickly as we can.  Whether that’s a best-sellers page or a buying guide, your analytics should offer good insight on where to start. Taking the time to set this up well can increase the visual real-estate your ads get on a page, and even fast-forward shoppers to the right part of the shopping or conversion process.

Mechanically, Sitelink extensions allow you to pick specific pages on your website to be linked to from within your ad. They provide an opportunity to link to the most popular or high-converting pages on your website.  The link text and URLs can be updated easily and even sales and special offers can be featured when they’re running and halted as you please thanks to the scheduling feature.

How are Sitelink Extensions set up?

Simply go to All Campaigns page > Ad Extensions > Sitelinks Extensions > +Extension

Pro Tip:  You’re limited to 25 characters, but you’ll want to use around 20 characters max for desktop, and 15 characters max for mobile, in order to ensure the ad content doesn’t appear cluttered. Character limits will also prevent the clickable text from getting cut off.

The Result
With Sitelink Extensions your ads will take up more space than competitor ads, not to mention helping conversion rates by getting people to the exact parts of your site that they needed. A small trade-off of time today, for better user-experience, visibility, and ultimately revenue.

In Summary

Taking a few minutes to tackle the basic features we looked at here will absolutely help you run a more efficient, productive, and profitable paid advertising program.

Go forth and implement. Hopefully earning you some much deserved R&R. And if you don’t have a newborn child sleep, sleep, sleeeeepppp whenever you can!!!

The post PPC Management When Time and Sanity Are Scarce appeared first on Portent.

Here’s the problem. Most people don’t actually understand PPC. Many aren’t even sure what PPC is. In many minds it’s like the functionality of a TV set – you just turn it on and BAM, it works!

Well, surprisingly enough that’s not the case. That’s why I’m here to tell you about the basics of PPC and why you should care.

PPC….What is it?

Here is a handy-dandy (extremely brief) overview of what PPC is.

At its core, PPC is a 3 part process:

1. Advertisers create ads to show in search results and select the keywords they want associated with that ad.
2. Advertisers set how much they want to spend each day + how much they want to spend every time an ad is clicked.
3. Search engines show the ads when relevant searches that match the advertiser’s keywords are shown.

At its core, PPC is that simple.

However, these days the search engines are constantly tweaking search results. Here are just a few of the multitude of examples:

Traditional Result – Text ads at the top of the page and in the right navigation area

Product Listing Ads – Image ads with product name, price and source

Sitelinks – Links to pages on a given site that can be included as part of an ad

So what’s with all of the variations? Well, their outward goal is always to provide users with the best possible search experience. That said, ads are often very prominently displayed whenever possible in order to “contribute” to the experience. Why not enhance usability and make $50 billion dollars like Google did from advertising revenue in 2013¹, right?

Why should we care?

PPC marketing is the way of the future – now!

In all seriousness, marketers are beginning to understand the massive value in PPC marketing. A recent PPC Hero survey found that Internet advertising will make up nearly 25% of the entire ad market by 2015! Furthermore, 72% of PPC marketers have plans to increase PPC budget this year.

One massive reason for the increase in focus on PPC is how quantifiable it is as a marketing option. A whole plethora of key performance indicators can be easily tracked such as clicks, average cost per click, the conversion rate, and total conversions. Most importantly, revenue and return can be tracked in almost real time.

PPC is also great from a branding perspective.  Why make it hard for customers to find you? For a much lower price than you pay for non-branded terms, you can get top branded paid results to accompany a top branded organic listing. On that note, if there’s a short-term slogan, sale, or incentive, that can also be easily advertised via branded.

Microsoft is a great example of maximizing available branded real estate. They use sitelink extensions (both paid and organic) and are not afraid to display incentives with non-branded terms.

Naturally, if competitors are bidding on your branded terms you don’t want them to have the top spot and steal traffic. Luckily search engines tend to give an advantage to brands. Plus, it’s way cheaper to bid on your brand than it is for competitors to pay to show up for your branded terms.

What’s the magic tonic that brings ads to life?

We’ve now covered what PPC is and why it’s important. Let’s now delve into how the PPC magic is created.

Actually, for most advertising platforms, it’s pretty simple. Each domain (www.yoururl.com) normally has 1 domain per account (more are possible, but not advised). Under this account, there is a campaign. Let’s use bedding as an example. A campaign is composed of a set of ad groups that share a common overall theme, such as “Pillows” or “Blankets.” The ad groups (an ad group contains ads, keywords, and bids) share a budget, targeting based on geographic location, and some other settings. They hold settings like daily budget and ad scheduling. In general, campaigns organize services or products you offer.

Below the campaign level is the ad group. The ad group level is where product type is distinguished. Using our bedding example one group could contain “Down Blankets” with another one covering “Fleece Blankets.” Specific keywords, ads, and bids fold up into each ad group.

The final level is ads and keywords themselves. When searched for, the keywords push to an ad. Settings for how exact a search query must be in order for the ad to display can easily be modified by campaign, ad group, or even individual ad, those are called match types.

Here’s a visual aide to clarify the typical levels of a given account:

Recap

Here’s a brief reminder in case you opted to scan through this post.

A. PPC is a 3-part process:

1. Advertisers create ads and select associated keywords to be displayed in search results

2. Advertisers set the daily and per-click spend of an ad

3. Ads are displayed by the search engines when a relevant search matches an advertiser’s select keywords

B. There are many ways in which ads are displayed by the search engines including traditional, shopping, and site links, to name just a few.

C. You should care about PPC because it’s a growing and proven method of advertisement, results can be easily quantified, and PPC can help grow and protect your brand name.

D. Most PPC platforms are set up in the following top-to-bottom fashion:

Account > Campaign > Ad Group > Ads + Keywords

Please feel free to share any comments or questions you may have below.

If you only remember one thing from this now long-winded tutorial it should be that PPC is great and your company should be doing it.

The post Pay Per Click Advertising Explained by a Non-PPC Person appeared first on Portent.

So how do you successfully navigate the early contract waters? Easy: focus your attention in the right areas. Here are a few best practices on launching yourself and your team towards client + agency glory.

Talk to your Sales Team

Hopefully this guy doesn’t work at your company…

Step #1 is to talk to your sales peeps. Don’t be shy. After walking the client through the sales process, your sales team should know more than a thing or two about the client, and they’ll have some essential information that you and your team can use.

Pick their brains on what the client’s primary goals are. What does the client really want to achieve? Who are the decision makers? What personality types do the main contacts have? These questions will all aid in effectively managing the client moving forward.

Prepare the basics

What questions will your team need to have answered? Prepare a list and get it to the client right away. If the client’s overall goals are not clear, ask questions to define them. Learn about their available resources, important logins, competitive advantages, shortcomings, upcoming campaigns, and all sorts of wonderful marketing goodness.

The list will be an invaluable foundation of information for you, and a good way to make the client feel invested in the project. Even better, these answers will present your team with the requisite background they need in order to hit the agreed-upon goals.

Do your homework

Look at their site! It may sound too obvious, but this is a huge priority that many account managers overlook. Do a quick visual test and figure out what’s working and what isn’t. A 5 – 10 minute review should present at least a few opportunities.

Then, search for their brand name. Are they showing up first in search results for branded searches? If not, that’s a massive issue that will need to be addressed ASAP. Unless, of course, your client named themselves Adidas Advocates or Kleenex® Consulting… in which case they shot themselves in the branding foot from the very beginning.

For extra credit, set up Google Alerts for the client’s name, top keywords (learned from sales + questions you sent them), and do the same for their competitors. If something big in the industry comes up, you spot it, and you briefly advise them on appropriate action you’ll win the gold star for awesomeness at the very start of the engagement. Do it!

Spread the word

Managers will need to assign resources to each project. Make sure your scheduling people are well aware of the upcoming deliverables so resources can be properly allocated and deadlines are met. Managers don’t like resource shortage surprises and most people don’t like working 80 hour weeks.

Don’t forget to prep the allocated resources on the client. All participating individuals must be fully award of a client’s KPI’s, strengths, limitations, business style, and the like.

Don’t Forget

Once you have all the information you need, remember to keep it well-organized throughout the duration of the engagement. Oh, and don’t be shy about keeping your team in the loop as the project unfolds! What you may perceive as being annoying and overly communicative with details could end up providing the success vs. failure tipping of the scale.

The post A Survival Guide to Project Kickoff Land appeared first on Portent.

For those of you who were unable to attend SMX West 2012, this post is your cheat-sheet for 2 of the hottest topics covered: social and mobile search.

Social Search

Naturally the onset of Google+ as the most important thing since, well… Facebook, has search marketers clamoring for G+ information. Here’s what I can offer you:

• Google claims that personalized results are “just trying to make the interaction for you “as a human” in line with what you’re trying to do.” In their eyes social search exists to encourage interactions between connections based on searches.
• Is social the new link building? No, but it will become increasingly important as more interaction occurs. We already know Google+ will build your search traffic.
• Freshness of content is becoming more and more important.
• Utilizing Google+ features like Direct Connect can help businesses connect with customers.
• How often a link is shared on the web and Tweeted is a ranking signal.
• Google and Bing currently don’t know what social updates from your friends you ignore and what you’re interested in. Expect that to change.

Mobile Marketing = Very Important

Targeting mobile users was a consistent theme throughout many of the presentations. We’re clearly still in the infancy of mobile browsing, but mobile searches will become increasingly prevalent in the coming years. Here’s what you need to know:

• Mobile Mindset: People perform mobile searches because they’re micro tasking, searching locally, or bored.
• Design for visibility. A phone is about 10% the size of a desktop screen.
• Make your mobile landing pages seamlessly integrate with the desktop site to make information more accessible for customers.
• Use mobile site redirects. It’s important to give users the chance to go to the full site.
• Use the GoMoMeter – a tool that shows you what mobile users and competitors are doing.

Recap

So that’s a brief recap of the SMX West 2012 mobile and social discussions and speeches. Did any of you attend? I’d love to hear about other SMX West 2012 experiences, or answer any questions you may have below in the comments section.

As a bonus, I’ve included some pictures from old school Google below.

Did you know Google got its start in SVP of Advertising Susan Wojcicki’s garage? Here’s a lovely picture from 1998 of two studious fellows who would eventually become insanely influential world figures at some internet company or something.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Image taken from Orchidbox.com

Here’s the first server they ever used, dating back to their Stanford days. Yes, it’s partially encased in Legos.

Image taken from the Stanford Infolab.

The post SMX West 2012 Lessons in Social and Mobile Search appeared first on Portent.

Yet, there are some definite commonalities that apply to many, if not all, projects and clients. Below are 6 principles for account managers in the internet marketing realm to follow.

Clients care about money and traffic

At heart, clients are very simple. They want you to make them more money and they want more people to visit their website (to make them more money).  Unfortunately, changing a title tag or making the alt text for an image keyword rich doesn’t directly translate into dollar signs and traffic.

That means the onus is on account managers to prove to clients the value of everything the agency does. An account manager needs to connect items being worked on to gains in revenue and traffic increases whenever possible. It will help affirm in a client’s mind their investment in an internet marketing agency.

Honesty Prevails

Don’t lie to your clients. That should be obvious. And don’t take a passive-aggressive approach to keeping clients in the loop when problems arise, either. If your team isn’t going to make a deadline, your client must know that as soon as you do. Even better, tell the client when it will be completed and throw in some added value to help defuse the hardship caused by the delay.

Your client will appreciate your honesty, and probably increase their trust level in both you and your agency.

Don’t stop learning

The Internet world is filled with over-achievers. Every day, companies and individuals come out with tools and platforms that obliterate existing technologies.

So it should come as no surprise that account managers in this industry MUST stay on top of trends and changes.

Naturally there is no shortage of good blogs and resources available for free.  I recommend PPC Hero for paid search updates and tips, and the SEO Moz blog for SEO news and advice.  Also, in the shameless plug department, Portent CEO Ian Lurie’s posts are always a great read.

Advise, don’t follow

The client/agency relationship can be trying at times. Clients always have a notion of what’s right and wrong for their business.

But sometimes that notion is a bit misplaced when it comes to marketing themselves online. That’s why it’s up to an account strategist to guide the process. After all, they’re paying you to be the expert, and your advice is normally well-founded in past experience and data.

Don’t chastise or ridicule their ideas. Just be honest and clear that other options may better suit their interests. If the client remains steadfast on an idea, look for ways you can modify or expand it to ensure the value remains present.

Organization is essential

Staying organized is a crucial element of account management. There’s an abundance of moving parts on every project, so figure out how to keep track of them. Use project management software, keep detailed to-do lists, and organize your emails so that you can easily reference conversations later on.

Communication is key

Always let your clients know what your team is doing. It worries them when they don’t hear from you. They want to know that you’re working hard to get them visibility and earn them money.

Communicate ongoing work, projects, growth, decline, key performance indicator changes, and the like. That doesn’t mean just sending gigantic emails. You also need to have regular phone calls (like people did in the not-too-distant past).

With that said, be reasonable. Don’t send 332 emails to a client in a day. Respect their time and make sure that you’re reporting valuable news – not mundane and trivial items.

Do I follow all of my advice all of the time? Nope.  In fact, I’m not sure if that’s possible.  What’s really important is remaining focused on all of these areas, and keeping in mind how important each one is in fostering and nurturing a successful client/agency internet marketing relationship. Put forth the effort and the positive results will follow.

The post 6 Crucial Internet Account Management Tips appeared first on Portent.

The problem is that many businesses opt to have the CTO’s 12-year-old create an account and throw in some cheesy stock image style artwork.  They then proceed to spam the account and miss opportunities left and right.

Luckily there’s hope for even the worst offenders. Optimizing your Facebook presence is not rocket science. There are a few simple strategies you can follow to “magically” improve your standing.

Here’s a list of 11 simple suggestions every business on Facebook can and should use:

1. Don’t be too salesy.  The number of businesses that think Facebook is a pure sales driver is appalling. Facebook is still a place for conversations.  Informally teach your Likers about your company and your products. That way when it becomes time for them to make the purchase they will remember you.

It’s ok to offer buyer incentives at the right times. Offering a special Facebook-only discount, or free shipping, or a pre-purchase window for new products can directly lead to new customers and sales. Just remember to do this infrequently. Offering a 1-2 week sale bi-monthly, or even quarterly, is a safe starting point.

2. Post original content. Don’t just regurgitate what you hear or read elsewhere. Use Facebook to interact with your Likers and tell them about cool new product innovations. Teach them about your production process. Introduce them to the human side of your business by displaying photos of your employees at a charity event.  Likers want to see new and interesting content when you make updates – not something they’ve already seen 83 other places.

3. Post Regularly. If you let your Facebook page sit dormant your company will slip out of mind for existing Likers. Worse, new Likers won’t be attracted to your page. You must post new content regularly.

But how often is “regularly?” After all, Facebook is not like Twitter where you find people posting about an A-hole driving too fast on the freeway. Remember, the last thing you want to do is annoy your beloved Likers with all-to-frequent updates.  As a business regular posting in Facebook entails 1 – 2 times per day, maximum.

4. Fill out your profile and use custom tabs. Most companies understand enough to fill in the standard Wall, Info, etc. tabs. If you haven’t filled these out in their entirety, please do so right after finishing reading this article.

However, many businesses neglect custom tabs. One of the cheeky components of business profiles is that you can create custom tabs. These can be used to create everything from FAQ’s to cool landing pages offering special Facebook-only incentives. Don’t limit your business to the bare essentials of Facebook.

5. Use Images.  Why do businesses avoid the Photos area like it’s diseased? As I alluded to in the “Post original content” segment, images can show the fun and human side of your company. Show your Likers the office prank you pulled, or the facial hair competition you held.  Give them a glimpse of a new prototype you’re working on.  Show them how your employees use your products. All of these images enforce the human element of your company and strengthen the bond your customers have to your products.

6. Do NOT ignore Liker comments. If a Liker comments with a question, critique, or even praise write back immediately. Doing so will clearly express your interest in what your customers have to say. If that person is irate make sure and convey your concern in your reply and, if feasible, call the troubled customer. That will show your customer that you won’t stand for their displeasure and that you too want to find a nice resolution.

7. Check political and religious views at the door. This should be obvious, right? Your 100,000 customers come from a plethora of backgrounds and mindsets. Please respect them accordingly. The one exception is if your company is in the political field, or is openly known to be religiously affiliated. Otherwise politics and religion should be avoided entirely.

8. Don’t forget cross-browser testing. Cross-browser issues are such a hassle. Even to this day most internet users prefer Internet Explorer. Sure it has 343,332 issues, but it also doesn’t need to be downloaded like Firefox or Chrome. Hence, 55 year old users like my mom love it!

The point is, don’t forget to test in IE, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome at bare minimum.  If you push a new lander live, chances are there will be an issue in one of these browsers, even if it looks flawless in all of the others.

9. Use company colors and themes. This is especially true if your colors and style are very well known to customers. If a visitor hits your Facebook page expecting to see a specific logo or color and gets something else that visitor will probably bounce, thinking it’s the wrong place. Be creative with image and experience, but don’t change your company’s identity just because you want to be fresh and unique on Facebook.

10. Advertise. Facebook advertising is dirt cheap, and you pay based on clicks, not impressions. You can build the number of Likers you have by creating ads that offer free shipping, a free product preview, or a nice discount to new Likers. Just make sure you have a worth-while incentive. If you don’t the ads will be soundly ignored, no matter what they promise.

11. Check spelling and grammar. It’s amazing that I even need to mention it, but I’ve seen spelling and grammar issues over and over again on Facebook. Please check your work! Using abbreviations like “Nice ta see U” on your personal page works. NEVER do that on your company’s page.  End of story.

So that’s it for my tidy list of recommendations for your business’ Facebook presence. At Portent, Inc. we have an abundance of cool Facebook tricks and ideas up our sleeves, so if you need Facebook marketing help please don’t hesitate to contact us.

The post 11 Tips for Making Facebook Your Business’ BFF appeared first on Portent.

So it’s safe to assume I’ve always had 23,343 fans on Facebook, right? Negative Ghostrider.  I got my first invite to Facebook back when it was college students only (suddenly I’m feeling old), and I’ve had a Facebook page for a long time.

The catch? It sat dormant for said long time.

Why would such an internet enthusiast openly reject Facebook privately? Out of fear.  I’ve had a long-standing fear that Facebook would become just another cog in my internet vice. Rather than spending 11 or 12 hours a day on the Internet, my new allotment would be 14 hours. Take that non-internet activities!!!

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had plenty of Facebook interaction and experience from a professional perspective – I know the quirks and features of company pages. It’s just that, well, I have enough addictions to contend with.

But last month my Facebook world changed in a heartbeat.  A friend on my rec soccer team miraculously found my dummy account. Until that point I had 4 friends (all coworkers) and basically no profile information filled out. For once actually ignoring my no-touch policy, I accepted his request.

Several minutes later another soccer companion sent me a request. A few minutes later another one came through. The flood gates had been opened. At this time I had a choice. Either I would start ignoring requests, and pile up a group of Facebook haters, or I would FINALLY give in and become a Facebook regular.

Naturally I became a Facebook fiend. I put up a sweet profile pic, filled in my profile, added some status updates, and started rolling. If you’ve ever doubted the central role Facebook plays in many of our lives you’re wrong. By the end of the weekend I had 80 friends, and a week later I had cracked 100.

Many people check Facebook more often than email. I’m luckily not in that boat….yet. So far I’ve been posting about once a day, and limiting myself to a breakfast, lunch, and dinner peek at what’s going on in the Facebook world. I think that qualifies as moderate addiction. Who’s with me?

Only time will tell how Facebook plays out for me on a personal level.  For now, please stay tuned for my post on best practices for your business’ Facebook presence. I promise to offer good and tangible advice rather than spilling my mind on personal experiences like I did here.

The post Facebook Fandom: One Portentite’s Evolving Experience appeared first on Portent.