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Posted by M.D. on June 14, 2006, 11:10 am
Please log in for more thread options
Please, if any experienced Mortgage Brokers can help me (and others) for I
am new in the industry, just recieved my license not to long ago and I need
some help, advice, tips, any info on marketing strategies to gain leads.
PLEASE HELP. Anything you can post will be MUCH appreciated, thank you.
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|
Posted by marketing.sem.seo@gmail.com on June 24, 2006, 10:46 am
Please log in for more thread options
Leads and sales are the life blood of any business. Here are some
tips, you can apply to your search campaigns. Yes, you can manage it
yourself... However, it is effectively harder to do it.
If you need additional advise or would like to discuss opportunities
please fill out the form on our site. You will also get a free PDF of
Perry Marshall's AdWords a 200.00 dollar value.
CLICK HERE
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising offers you one of the fastest ways to
get a quick return on your marketing investment. Below you'll find the
hottest insider PPC tactics from PPC Guru Andrew Goodman.
Email Lead Generation, Increasing Response Rates and Customer Retention
Tactics are the next three Special Focus Issues for this newsletter. If
you're not subscribed, you won't get these issues as soon as they're
released.
In this issue, you will find the top 10 Insider Tactics for PPC. These
tactics come from the ultimate inside PPC Guru himself, Andrew Goodman.
Andrew has been practicing PPC longer than anyone I know.
If you use Pay-Pay-Click Advertising and you haven't read his book,
"Winning Results with Google AdWords" (published by McGraw-Hill, Sept.
2005), you're leaving money on the table.
Here, now, is PPC Guru Andrew Goodman with those Top 10 PPC Insider
Tactics you must know about. Take it awaaaay, AG...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My good friend Larry Chase has asked me to update you with some of the
latest best practices in paid search advertising. Which gives me a
thought: the "latest" isn't always the best, or the most important to
you. (Remember New Coke? Taste tests showed it was "better," but the
public still didn't buy it.) So in the ten tips that follow, some are
"classics" and some are based on more recent evolutions in the field.
1. [Classic Tip] Your objectives - not a vendor - should drive your
strategy.
The quirks of marketing platforms like the Yahoo Direct Traffic Center
may cause you to put your campaign together in certain ways. For
example, if it's difficult to edit ads or test ad effectiveness, you
might give up on doing so. Or perhaps a third-party vendor tells you
that frequent bid changes are a must. (That might be true in
fast-moving retail, but less so in other businesses.) Don't focus on
what a platform forces you to do, or shift your priorities to try to be
perfect in one area based on a vendor's advice. You're the marketer.
Get your message out to your target audience at the price you want to
pay - period - even if that means researching a bit on how get
around technological limitations.
2. [Classic Tip] If you can't measure results, don't turn on your
campaign.
If your customers frequently call you on the phone, or frequently just
browse your site without performing a significant action, that doesn't
mean you're off the hook for measuring campaign effectiveness and
coming up with metrics such as cost per acquisition, broken down by
groups of keywords. You have options. You can track phone calls
seamlessly back to parts of your campaigns (even individual keywords)
if you use multiple 800 numbers or a service that routes extensions
based on your campaign, for example. Or you can take a site that has
only "browsing" potential and tweak it so people are at least
occasionally reaching out to you - downloading a sample, reaching a
certain significant internal page (even if it's only driving
directions), etc. It's all about what the user does on your site, and
what kind of tracking regimem you put in place. Install tracking code,
and customize it correctly. You can and should come up with creative
ways to measure cost per action in cases where this appears impossible
on the surface. Beware of magic bullets - some of the measurement
process is bound to involve legwork and collating different sets of
data.
3. [New Tip] Google AdWords ranks your keywords based on Max CPC X QS.
What the heck does that mean? It used to be that ads with a higher
clickthrough rate [CTR] got higher positioning on the page, although of
course increasing your bid (Max CPC) would have a similar effect, as
the two factors were multiplied together. Now, CTR has given way to
"Quality Score", which includes CTR. Quality Score is a bit of a black
box, but the essentials include the relevancy of your ad text and the
track record of not only any given keyword, but likely your whole
AdWords account. Taking steps to consistently improve performance will
help your campaign perform better over time. The "power of incumbency"
is at work here. If you've had a smooth running campaign for a long
time, spending big bucks and generating high CTR's, you will find it
easier going. So what can you do if you're trying to establish that
history? Test and refine your ads, send users to appropriate landing
pages, and don't choke the system with irrelevant keywords "just to see
what sticks". If you really need to get high on the page, of course you
can always bid higher, too.
4. [New Tip] Check out some new AdWords features.
Here are a couple of interesting ones... "Position Preferences" -
located in the advanced options area under edit campaign settings -
allows you to keep your ads turned off unless they match your position
criteria. Let's say you never want your ad to rise as high as position
1, but never want it shown if it's going to be lower than 7. You can
specify "only show my ads in positions 2 through 6". If you know your
performance tends to be better in those positions, give it a whirl. A
second new feature is "Content Bidding" - if you turn "content
targeting" on (ads that show up on websites related to your keywords,
not search results), you can bid less by enabling "content bidding" and
entering lower bids for content inventory. Previously, this required a
painful workaround.
5. [New Tip] MSN adCenter is worth a look.
MSN adCenter is finally getting out to the wider advertising community.
Although you won't get as much traffic from MSN as from Google, the new
features are worth the price of admission (fr@@, ha!). Not only can you
"boost" your bids on certain demographic categories (let's say, for
women of a certain age if that's whom you're targeting), but you can
"day-part" seamlessly. Best of all, you can research demographic
breakdowns when doing keyword research. Want to know who is searching
on the phrase "BMW coupe"? adCenter can give you a breakdown by age,
sex, geography, etc. - within reason, given search frequency. The
answers may surprise you! And not just because "Andrew Goodman"
searched on that phrase eight times this morning when he was supposed
to be writing this article and/or taking his old Acura to the
dealership.
6. [Classic Tip] Appeal decisions that are obviously wrong, and do so
politely.
Google and Yahoo both have a heavy human component when it comes to
assessing ad copy. Sometimes, they goof. Google has some technology
that checks out your ad right at the beginning for potential policy
violations, spelling errors, etc. Sometimes, it goofs. So appeal
politely where appropriate, either by entering info into the box
provided, or by emailing your service rep, or calling customer service.
The phone numbers aren't a secret.
7. [New Tip, Sort Of] Stay on top of how matching options work.
By keeping my ear to the ground, I hear Google staff sometimes release
small bits of information at trade shows and such that differ
significantly from official documentation or that simply offer
additional information that isn't formally disclosed anywhere. One such
recommendation is not to use all three phrase matching options in a
single ad group. Many of us used to do that "just to see what happens".
It appears that some Googlers are quietly saying: "Um, don't do
that". I think Google is implying that using all three will lead to
confusing performance. Sometimes, I also believe they don't have the
greatest faith that their ad serving technology works anywhere close to
the way it's billed. In essence, ad serving can be confusing, and
they're hinting strongly that the cleanest possible account structure
will help you get more insight into which keywords are working.
I tend to use exact matches only in rare instances where there is a
clear reason to do so. Keep in mind, also, that broad matching (using
keywords with no quotation marks or brackets) continues to enable
something called "expanded broad matching". If you sell very specific
products, you may find that expansion into "related phrases" gives you
a lot of unwanted clicks. To be safe, you can rely on phrase match
instead. Another reason to keep simple ad groups with not too many
keywords is related to Google guessing at the "meaning" of the ad group
for the purposes of showing your ad on content targeting (if you have
this enabled). 10-15 keywords is a nice amount for Google to discern a
"meaning" based on their proprietary linguistic map that helps compare
your ad group against content pages - determining how close one is to
the other. Too few or too many keywords will make this mapping less
effective, supposedly.
8. [New Tip] Second-guess your tracking.
There are significant discrepancies in the reporting of ROI tracking
and Web analytics services, particularly between those offered for fr@@
by Google and third-party services. If you're not confident in what
you're seeing, uninstall one and try another for awhile. Or try using
two at once. In general, the methodologies for capturing the details of
"user sessions" on your site vary widely, and so do the criteria for
what counts as a clickthrough. Comparing data from two analytics tools
might give you too much food for thought, but then again, it might help
you gain a better understanding of the shortcomings of some tools and
the imperfect nature of all the data you're gathering.
9. [Classic Tip] Patience! For a number of reasons, Yahoo campaigns can
be very disappointing at first.
Concrete reasons may include delays in getting your ad approved through
the system to show on partner sites, and who knows, possibly some
introductory "click fraud hazing" inflicted on new advertisers by their
competitors. Even more concretely, Yahoo campaigns really must be
refined carefully for appropriate bid levels and ad copy that converts.
Keyword expansion efforts are a must (even more important than on
Google AdWords) for several reasons outlined in Mona's handbook.
Without taking all the right steps, you'll be tempted to just shut the
campaign down. Stay the course.
10. [Classic Tip] Rewrite that ad copy.
It's tempting to let your Yahoo campaign be governed by a few generic
ads. But the user seems particularly responsive to well-written,
specific ad copy. Where you have hundreds of individual products in a
retail environment, your only way to compete against the big buck
advertisers may be to do what they are unwilling to do: write hundreds
of enticing and clear descriptions that speak directly to your target
audience, and of course, send them to targeted landing pages. It helps
if you've already got a good idea of which style of landing page
converts best (possibly having done tests using Google AdWords, which
makes it easier to split-test ads and thus landing pages). Don't forget
seasonal offers and specials! Have you tested which call to action,
benefit or fr@@ shipping offer is the most effective? Do the extra work
and reap the performance reward. This may take a couple of days. ;)
Respectfully,
William C. Vela
954-600-5514 www.intervisualtechnology.com
M.D. wrote:
> Please, if any experienced Mortgage Brokers can help me (and others) for I
> am new in the industry, just recieved my license not to long ago and I need
> some help, advice, tips, any info on marketing strategies to gain leads.
> PLEASE HELP. Anything you can post will be MUCH appreciated, thank you.
|
|
Posted by marketing.sem.seo@gmail.com on June 24, 2006, 10:47 am
Please log in for more thread options
Leads and sales are the life blood of any business. Here are some
tips, you can apply to your search campaigns. Yes, you can manage it
yourself... However, it is effectively harder to do it.
If you need additional advise or would like to discuss opportunities
please fill out the form on our site. You will also get a free PDF of
Perry Marshall's AdWords a 200.00 dollar value.
CLICK HERE
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising offers you one of the fastest ways to
get a quick return on your marketing investment. Below you'll find the
hottest insider PPC tactics from PPC Guru Andrew Goodman.
Email Lead Generation, Increasing Response Rates and Customer Retention
Tactics are the next three Special Focus Issues for this newsletter. If
you're not subscribed, you won't get these issues as soon as they're
released.
In this issue, you will find the top 10 Insider Tactics for PPC. These
tactics come from the ultimate inside PPC Guru himself, Andrew Goodman.
Andrew has been practicing PPC longer than anyone I know.
If you use Pay-Pay-Click Advertising and you haven't read his book,
"Winning Results with Google AdWords" (published by McGraw-Hill, Sept.
2005), you're leaving money on the table.
Here, now, is PPC Guru Andrew Goodman with those Top 10 PPC Insider
Tactics you must know about. Take it awaaaay, AG...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My good friend Larry Chase has asked me to update you with some of the
latest best practices in paid search advertising. Which gives me a
thought: the "latest" isn't always the best, or the most important to
you. (Remember New Coke? Taste tests showed it was "better," but the
public still didn't buy it.) So in the ten tips that follow, some are
"classics" and some are based on more recent evolutions in the field.
1. [Classic Tip] Your objectives - not a vendor - should drive your
strategy.
The quirks of marketing platforms like the Yahoo Direct Traffic Center
may cause you to put your campaign together in certain ways. For
example, if it's difficult to edit ads or test ad effectiveness, you
might give up on doing so. Or perhaps a third-party vendor tells you
that frequent bid changes are a must. (That might be true in
fast-moving retail, but less so in other businesses.) Don't focus on
what a platform forces you to do, or shift your priorities to try to be
perfect in one area based on a vendor's advice. You're the marketer.
Get your message out to your target audience at the price you want to
pay - period - even if that means researching a bit on how get
around technological limitations.
2. [Classic Tip] If you can't measure results, don't turn on your
campaign.
If your customers frequently call you on the phone, or frequently just
browse your site without performing a significant action, that doesn't
mean you're off the hook for measuring campaign effectiveness and
coming up with metrics such as cost per acquisition, broken down by
groups of keywords. You have options. You can track phone calls
seamlessly back to parts of your campaigns (even individual keywords)
if you use multiple 800 numbers or a service that routes extensions
based on your campaign, for example. Or you can take a site that has
only "browsing" potential and tweak it so people are at least
occasionally reaching out to you - downloading a sample, reaching a
certain significant internal page (even if it's only driving
directions), etc. It's all about what the user does on your site, and
what kind of tracking regimem you put in place. Install tracking code,
and customize it correctly. You can and should come up with creative
ways to measure cost per action in cases where this appears impossible
on the surface. Beware of magic bullets - some of the measurement
process is bound to involve legwork and collating different sets of
data.
3. [New Tip] Google AdWords ranks your keywords based on Max CPC X QS.
What the heck does that mean? It used to be that ads with a higher
clickthrough rate [CTR] got higher positioning on the page, although of
course increasing your bid (Max CPC) would have a similar effect, as
the two factors were multiplied together. Now, CTR has given way to
"Quality Score", which includes CTR. Quality Score is a bit of a black
box, but the essentials include the relevancy of your ad text and the
track record of not only any given keyword, but likely your whole
AdWords account. Taking steps to consistently improve performance will
help your campaign perform better over time. The "power of incumbency"
is at work here. If you've had a smooth running campaign for a long
time, spending big bucks and generating high CTR's, you will find it
easier going. So what can you do if you're trying to establish that
history? Test and refine your ads, send users to appropriate landing
pages, and don't choke the system with irrelevant keywords "just to see
what sticks". If you really need to get high on the page, of course you
can always bid higher, too.
4. [New Tip] Check out some new AdWords features.
Here are a couple of interesting ones... "Position Preferences" -
located in the advanced options area under edit campaign settings -
allows you to keep your ads turned off unless they match your position
criteria. Let's say you never want your ad to rise as high as position
1, but never want it shown if it's going to be lower than 7. You can
specify "only show my ads in positions 2 through 6". If you know your
performance tends to be better in those positions, give it a whirl. A
second new feature is "Content Bidding" - if you turn "content
targeting" on (ads that show up on websites related to your keywords,
not search results), you can bid less by enabling "content bidding" and
entering lower bids for content inventory. Previously, this required a
painful workaround.
5. [New Tip] MSN adCenter is worth a look.
MSN adCenter is finally getting out to the wider advertising community.
Although you won't get as much traffic from MSN as from Google, the new
features are worth the price of admission (fr@@, ha!). Not only can you
"boost" your bids on certain demographic categories (let's say, for
women of a certain age if that's whom you're targeting), but you can
"day-part" seamlessly. Best of all, you can research demographic
breakdowns when doing keyword research. Want to know who is searching
on the phrase "BMW coupe"? adCenter can give you a breakdown by age,
sex, geography, etc. - within reason, given search frequency. The
answers may surprise you! And not just because "Andrew Goodman"
searched on that phrase eight times this morning when he was supposed
to be writing this article and/or taking his old Acura to the
dealership.
6. [Classic Tip] Appeal decisions that are obviously wrong, and do so
politely.
Google and Yahoo both have a heavy human component when it comes to
assessing ad copy. Sometimes, they goof. Google has some technology
that checks out your ad right at the beginning for potential policy
violations, spelling errors, etc. Sometimes, it goofs. So appeal
politely where appropriate, either by entering info into the box
provided, or by emailing your service rep, or calling customer service.
The phone numbers aren't a secret.
7. [New Tip, Sort Of] Stay on top of how matching options work.
By keeping my ear to the ground, I hear Google staff sometimes release
small bits of information at trade shows and such that differ
significantly from official documentation or that simply offer
additional information that isn't formally disclosed anywhere. One such
recommendation is not to use all three phrase matching options in a
single ad group. Many of us used to do that "just to see what happens".
It appears that some Googlers are quietly saying: "Um, don't do
that". I think Google is implying that using all three will lead to
confusing performance. Sometimes, I also believe they don't have the
greatest faith that their ad serving technology works anywhere close to
the way it's billed. In essence, ad serving can be confusing, and
they're hinting strongly that the cleanest possible account structure
will help you get more insight into which keywords are working.
I tend to use exact matches only in rare instances where there is a
clear reason to do so. Keep in mind, also, that broad matching (using
keywords with no quotation marks or brackets) continues to enable
something called "expanded broad matching". If you sell very specific
products, you may find that expansion into "related phrases" gives you
a lot of unwanted clicks. To be safe, you can rely on phrase match
instead. Another reason to keep simple ad groups with not too many
keywords is related to Google guessing at the "meaning" of the ad group
for the purposes of showing your ad on content targeting (if you have
this enabled). 10-15 keywords is a nice amount for Google to discern a
"meaning" based on their proprietary linguistic map that helps compare
your ad group against content pages - determining how close one is to
the other. Too few or too many keywords will make this mapping less
effective, supposedly.
8. [New Tip] Second-guess your tracking.
There are significant discrepancies in the reporting of ROI tracking
and Web analytics services, particularly between those offered for fr@@
by Google and third-party services. If you're not confident in what
you're seeing, uninstall one and try another for awhile. Or try using
two at once. In general, the methodologies for capturing the details of
"user sessions" on your site vary widely, and so do the criteria for
what counts as a clickthrough. Comparing data from two analytics tools
might give you too much food for thought, but then again, it might help
you gain a better understanding of the shortcomings of some tools and
the imperfect nature of all the data you're gathering.
9. [Classic Tip] Patience! For a number of reasons, Yahoo campaigns can
be very disappointing at first.
Concrete reasons may include delays in getting your ad approved through
the system to show on partner sites, and who knows, possibly some
introductory "click fraud hazing" inflicted on new advertisers by their
competitors. Even more concretely, Yahoo campaigns really must be
refined carefully for appropriate bid levels and ad copy that converts.
Keyword expansion efforts are a must (even more important than on
Google AdWords) for several reasons outlined in Mona's handbook.
Without taking all the right steps, you'll be tempted to just shut the
campaign down. Stay the course.
10. [Classic Tip] Rewrite that ad copy.
It's tempting to let your Yahoo campaign be governed by a few generic
ads. But the user seems particularly responsive to well-written,
specific ad copy. Where you have hundreds of individual products in a
retail environment, your only way to compete against the big buck
advertisers may be to do what they are unwilling to do: write hundreds
of enticing and clear descriptions that speak directly to your target
audience, and of course, send them to targeted landing pages. It helps
if you've already got a good idea of which style of landing page
converts best (possibly having done tests using Google AdWords, which
makes it easier to split-test ads and thus landing pages). Don't forget
seasonal offers and specials! Have you tested which call to action,
benefit or fr@@ shipping offer is the most effective? Do the extra work
and reap the performance reward. This may take a couple of days. ;)
Respectfully,
William C. Vela
954-600-5514 www.intervisualtechnology.com
|
|
Posted by Jeff Strickland on June 24, 2006, 11:44 am
Please log in for more thread options If ever there was a business where it takes money to make money, mortgage
lending is it.
I sent out 10,000 mailers to a targeted group, and got one lead. The lead
paid for the ad campaign, but I made no money.
> Please, if any experienced Mortgage Brokers can help me (and others) for I
> am new in the industry, just recieved my license not to long ago and I
> need some help, advice, tips, any info on marketing strategies to gain
> leads. PLEASE HELP. Anything you can post will be MUCH appreciated, thank
> you.
>
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