Monthly Archives: July 2009

Adwords Marketers – Do You Love Me Enough?

Here’s a challenge and an exercise for AdWords Marketers … but you’ll have to bear with me for a moment.

When I first became a psychologist I thought it was going to be like being a detective. I honestly thought people would walk into my office, lay out their problems, let me connect the dots, and then they’d walk away and fix their lives.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why therapy was supposed to take years, because it only took a few sessions to see the patterns, diganose the problem, and see what the solution was. Honestly, it didn’t take too much book knowledge either. (With apologies to my University).

But it didn’t work like I thought.

People did come in and lay out their problems.

And within a few sessions, I WAS able to connect the dots.

Problem was, when I pointed it out to them, they’d give me some version of “I already knew that”, and they became instantly blind to delving further … and more importantly, to CHANGE.

“I already know I’m driving my wife away with constant criticism, I’m trying to stop” (He didn’t know he was even harsher on himself and thought it was a normal and healthy way to achieve)

“I already know my son’s involved with drugs because he sees me smoke pot in the yard on the weekends, I’m working on quitting” (What he didn’t know was how empty he felt inside because his father gave so little to him, and he was unintentionally doing the same with his boy)

You see, what I learned the hard way was, people aren’t all that willing to go beyond their “already knews”. It takes a lot of courage. They need to feel safe. And that only happens when they love you enough to take a chance.

So it turns out, being a successful psychologist had more to do with my ability to help people love me than everything I learned in school.

What does this have to do with marketing?

EVERYTHING.

Because all of we marketers have our “already knew its” too.

“I already know I can reduce my AdWords costs and increase conversions if I run the Search Query report, peel and stick, and mine for negative keywords” (What you don’t know is your overly complex account structure makes it very difficult for you to keep up with this on a regular basis)

“I already know my conversion would go up if I studied the conversation in my prospect’s head more thoroughly, did Glenn’s survey methods, and thoroughly reverse engineered my single most important competitor” (What you don’t know is that you find this task daunting because you’re not focussed on a single “bulls-eye” keyword and haven’t articulated the conceptual boundaries of your keyword strategy)

“I already know I need to more aggressively split test to keep up with AdWords bid prices” (What you don’t know is there’s only so much efficiency you can squeeze out of a PPC campaign. After that the highest and best use of your time is developing back ends and working on the conversion and visitor value of your system as a whole, while you delegate the PPC upkeep and improvement)

“I already know my market backwards and forwards” (What you don’t know are the key differences between buyers and prospects, repeat buyers and trial buyers, and hyper-responsive vs. regular customers)

The list goes on and on.

So my question for you is, do you love me enough to face something new in your Adwords account today? Something you haven’t seen before?

Try this exercise.

I know it sounds silly, but go for a walk in a familiar place, someplace you can loop around 4 times on the same path. It could be right in your back yard, your mall, or on a mountain trail. Ideally it’s someplace you’ve been dozens of times before so you “feel” like you know it like the back of your hand. It doesn’t matter how long it is.

Now, walk the loop 4 times, and each time you walk it, notice something you never saw before. It can be anything … a pebble, a piece of dirt, a spot on the wall, a bird … as long as you never noticed it before.

When you notice this, REALLY notice it. Take in everything about it … color, lighting, shape, … and how it makes you think and feel to see it.

When you get back, write down as much as you can about the new things you saw.

Then go look in your AdWords account and find 4 new opportunities you haven’t been paying attention to. They could be in the account itself, or about your landing page, follow up systems, salesletters, products, or business as a whole.

Don’t say this is corny.

Don’t say you already know.

Just love me enough to do it (pretty please) and I know you’ll thank me.

All my best,

G 🙂

DONE FOR YOU: www.RocketClicks.com

DO IT YOURSELF: www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com

Negative Keyword Webinar (Free)

Negative keywords are usually the quickest and easiest way to sqeeze extra margin out of 90% of the accounts we see at Rocket Clicks. That’s because the vast majority of AdWords marketers really have no idea how to mine for literally thousands of keywords which can soil their traffic with worthless searchers.

Rob Sieracki, the Director of the Pay Per Click department at Rocket Clicks, has innovated a VERY interesting and immediately useful paradigm for finding NEGATIVE KEYWORDS in your market.

You haven’t heard this before, and I’ll be shocked if anyone spending more than $100/mo in AdWords doesn’t save money within a week after watching this FREE NEGATIVE KEYWORD WEBINAR.

Enjoy!

PS – We finally nailed the webinar reply audio-visual issue … this one is very easy to watch. Click here to watch the FREE NEGATIVE KEYWORD WEBINAR.

PPS – The Free Quality Score Webinar is also still available.

Are You Getting Killed?

People tend to use very powerful, frightening language when previously profitable AdWords campaigns start to drop in efficiency, or go into the red.

Whether it’s due to the recession, increased competition, or tightened quality score requirements, people feel and speak as if they’re actually “bleeding”, “dying”, “getting killed”, etc.

Sometimes it’s important to step back, breathe, and look at this language with fresh eyes.

I’m NOT talking theory. Most of you know Sharon and I went through near-bankruptcy losing $2M when we only had a little less than $1M. Did you know you can lose $2M without having it first? It’s not like losing your car keys where you can at least remember having them all in your hands at one point in the recent past. (NOTE: my bankers did NOT think this analogy was very funny)

What you might not know is that by continually frightening myself I created an emotional situation which I ran to food to escape. (Well, not really food, more like chocolate, pizza, and ice cream)

I gained 60 pounds, drove my triglicerides into the 800s, my cholesterol near 300… and created a bunch of other numbers which almost gave my DOCTOR a heart attack.

Seriously… I was not only broke, I was almost dead.

The thing is … I COULD have just been broke.

And in the end, the whole experience turned out to be what gave me the courage to make a life transition I was wanting to make for a very long time. (A good psychologist can make about $150K/yr without too much struggle, but my skills were worth many times that in marketing… I really had no choice but to push forward. Look where I am now)

So …

I KNOW things are tough all over.

I KNOW the numbers in your account don’t look so hot … maybe downright frightening.

But my question is … are you really bleeding? Being tortured? Getting killed? Dying a slow death?

How are YOU scaring yourself, and what’s it costing you to do so?

Breathe.

It’ll pass.

You’ll be here when it does, and with the right perspective, you’ll have a smaller hole to climb out of.

Glenn 🙂

Adwords Quality Score

* FREE 90 MINUTE ADWORDS QUALITY SCORE WEBINAR:

My Best Thinking on AdWords, SEO, and Competitive Intelligence

Below you’ll find a FREE MP3 of an intriguing 45 minute conversation I had with my Director of Copywriting and Director of Sales at Rocket Clicks. (NOTE: The call has been slightly edited to remove the details of our clients and their sites)

We did NOT intend to distribute this conversation, so I apologize for the speakerphone, but I thought it represented a unique opportunity for you to be a fly on the wall to see:

A) How a high-level copywriter interviews “in the trenches” sales people to elicit the benefits and objections necessary to write A level copy

B) How my thinking has evolved into a more comprehensive, yet simpler system for building a solid internet marketing structure

The original purpose of the call was for Tony to get the material he needed to develop a consultation form like the one we’ve got here, but targeted at people who wanted more than PPC management… instead desiring a more comprehensive package including market research + site design/repositioning + PPC/SEO.

You see, it’s been several years since I originally innovated and presented the How To Double Your Business process, and I’ve moved WAY beyond the advanced survey methods I originally presented. The way I approach markets presently is simultaneously simpler and more powerful.

1) MAKING MORE MONEY WITH FEWER KEYWORDS

The most successful of the 100+ clients I personally audited at Rocket Clicks last year (especially those who seemed to survive the economic earthquake in the fall of 2008) were focused on many, many fewer keywords, leading me to develop a set of algorithms for choosing the smallest number of keywords likely to make you the most money.

In fact, I now believe it’s ESSENTIAL to have a well articulated rationale for choose ONE dead-center bulls-eye keyword for your business… the one you’d advertise on if Google restricted your account to only ONE adgroup with ONE broad match keyword in it. (The “ultimate elevator speech”).

Considerations of relevancy, volume, and bid price are essential in making this choice.

And once you know your Bulls-Eye, I think it’s also essential to define a very small set of concentric circles around it … no more than six keyword groups. And you’d better have a good written definition of the CONCEPTUAL BOUNDARIES OF YOUR KEYWORD SET, or else you’ll wind up wasting time, money, and diluting your conversions by aiming off your “keyword archery target”

2) GATHERING MORE FREE COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE THAN ANYONE IN YOUR MARKET

Once you know exactly where your keyword archery target starts and ends (and why!), I’ve innovated a NEW method for leveraging social media, competitive intelligence spy tools, and RSS fees to set up one systematic and comprehensive competitive intelligence dashboard…

Then identifying YOUR SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT COMPETITOR and totally reverse engineering their web testing diary. (I’m not just talking about the stupid PPC spy tools … I’m NOT NOT NOT talking about figuring out what web changes they made which made them successful in the first place)

3) IDENTIFYING POINT OF DIFFERENCE BENEFITS WITH A NEW 80/20 VERSION OF MY SURVEY INTELLIGENCE PROCESS

On the foundation of a more clearly defined and simpler keywords set AND comprehensive competitive intelligence, we then utilize the survey process to find point of difference benefits for the market.

4) DESIGNING YOUR SITE, COPY, AND FOLLOW UPS TO BUILD ON ALL THIS UNIFIED INTELLIGENCE

With a clearly defined bulls-eye and keyword archery target, the knowledge of who’s winning the game on that target and why, the consumer language, emotional benefits, and point of difference benefits in hand, the process then proceeds to UNIFY ALL YOUR MARKETING COMMUNICATION AROUND A SINGULAR, WELL RESEARCHED USP.

5) BUILDING OUT PPC AND SEO CAMPAIGNS FOR YOUR VERY FOCUSED TARGET:

SEO and PPC are expensive and time consuming. The gorillas who survive are the ones who know exactly where to FOCUS their time and money. The new Livingston Process ensures you eliminate waste and laser focus on a hyper-responsive message for the short set of keywords which define your business.

6) OPTIMIZE YOUR CONVERSION: Multivariate and Taguchi testing are still VERY powerful tools (always will be). But they’re only useful when you’ve got the RIGHT INPUT to test. The new process above ensures you’ve always got a prioritized list of options for continually bringing your business to the next level.

Enjoy the FREE MP3 below please! 🙂

ACTION OPTIONS: Do all this yourself, hire us to do for you, or have me coach you through it personally.

Google vs. Bing, New AdWords Interface, More

Just wanted to let you all know how proud I am of our PPC blogging team. Rob Sieracki just made a new post on AdWords vs. Bing which is definitely worth reading both from an advertiser AND consumer perspective. And Nicole Nerad posted on the top features and tricks of the new AdWords Interface which can quickly save you some time (and money)

AdWords Mobile and The Rocket Clicks Blog

Today, I want to alert you of a major new AdWords blogging initiative headed up by the Director of our PPC management department at RocketClicks.com. Each of our in-the-trenches ppc managers will be attacking critical AdWords and SEO issues such as (click the links below to visit the relevant topics):

– Targetting 405,000,000 people via AdWords mobile text ads
– Avoiding Duplicate Content Penalties
– How Quality Score operates differently on Google’s Search Network

… and much, much more.

So get out your RSS readers, head on over to the new much more active Rocket Clicks Blog, and reap the benefits of a dozen search marketing professionals regularly revealing insights and tips you won’t see elsewhere.

Testing Email Sequence Order (Cheat Sheet)

If you’ve ever run an analysis of WHEN your customers buy from your email follow ups, most marketers will find a highly disproportionate number of buyers in the early weeks (even the early DAYS) immediately after signing up. As Gary Halbert says “You’ve got to get them when they’re in heat!”

Yet despite this very clear and convincing skew, almost NO ONE goes to the trouble of testing the ORDER of their follow up sequence. That’s a BIG MISTAKE because, if email #12 happens to be your strongest pulling follow up, there’s a damn good chance you’ll snag more buyers by moving it closer to the sign up date when a greater proportion of your list is “in heat”…

Moreover, sometimes a particular email does a better job immediately after another email, and, conversely, there are certain messages which will actually decrease the efficacy of their followers. The bottom line is, there’s usually money on the table for marketers willing to go through the time and effort to optimize the ORDER of their email sequence.

Logistically, this can be difficult, in fact, I’ve found only one or two other people who’ve ever run these kinds of email sequencing tests. To try and ease the burden, I’ve prepared a simple cheat sheet which outlines exactly how to do this using aweber, step by step. (Instructions are logically translatable to ANY autoresponder system)

Last, in case you don’t know it yet, I’ll be opening my business coaching practice for the first time in three years (and quite possibly for the last time ever) on January 1st, 2016. Read the letter and get on the priority notifications list if you’re at all interested please since the spots will go quickly!

Upwards and Onwards!

Dr. G 🙂

Perry Marshall on AdWords Autoresponders

Perry Marshall is letting me release this FREE AdWords Autoresponder MP3 we did last year, as a kind of preview call for his upcoming AdWords Autoresponder Workshop.

You see, one of my deepest, darkest secrets is, my sales-letters wouldn’t work more than 30% as well as they do without my autoresponder sequences. In fact, for most of my markets, sending traffic right to the sales-letter is a losing proposition.

If you’re on MY list, you know what I’m talking about. If you’ve been with me for years, you know I’ve sent out literally 65+ MP3s, videos, and cheat sheets which truly deliver value and build trust. (If you’re new, just stay tuned and you’ll get them)

What you don’t know is the MAGNITUDE of the trust that’s built by a solid autoresponder sequence. Like, the kind of trust which makes the right people very comfortable with hourly rates
(e.g $1000/hr) I could NEVER charge to a cold referral. The kind of trust that thrust hundreds of prospects into Rocket Clicks consults and grew us to 21 employees in the first nine months we were incorporated.

The kind of trust that turns visitors into dollars.

Now, there are TWO SIMPLE PIECES OF AUTORESPONDER ADVICE the vast majority of marketers don’t take, and even if you don’t attend the AdWords Autoresponder Workshop, if you do NOTHING besides correct these mistakes, this will probably have been the most valuable post you’ve read all year:

“The Most Frequent Mistake People Make With Autoresponders Is Not Having One”

“A MUCH BIGGER MISTAKE IS LETTING YOUR EXISTING RESPONDER RUN OUT!”

Why anyone would go through the trouble of buying traffic and acquiring names in a valuable market and then abruptly stop talking to them after 7 emails has always been a complete mystery to me.

But simple autoresponder advice ends there. There’s MUCH more to it. Like…

– How to get a NEAR ZERO UNSUBSCRIBE RATE
– Complex Email Frequency Patterns Which Motivate and Hold Attention
– 21 Email Strategies that hit pay dirt with customers FAST
– A 100% counter-intuitive email message that builds trust by pushing customers AWAY from you
– How to design your sales funnel to accommodate those who want the drip-drip-drip of constant follow ups, yet also engages the ones who want to drink water from a fire hose, FAST
– How to expose and leverage other people’s lies
– When and how to use sub-listing strategies (you’re probably leaving 75%+ on the table if you’ve only got one list)
– How to build a huge email list even in a skeptical, email-resistant, over-crowded market.
– 175 emails from Perry Marshall’s own multi-million dollar sales funnel with license to modify for your use

If you choose to attend the AdWords Autoresponder Workshop, you’ll also get a copy of MY autoresponder presentation from last year’s event. (In fact, Perry’s giving away a video of the WHOLE event last year to this year’s attendees)

AND … in the Gold version Perry actually has his copywriters WRITE TEN FOLLOW UPS FOR YOU … then he reviews them personally. (Details on his site):

After the event last year, even after developing my markets and autoresponders for 5+ years, I came home and had to aggressively re-work my approach.

Now here’s one last deep dark secret, which I probably should have asked Perry’s permission to reveal first, but I figure it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than permission sometimes, right?

In my humble opinion, Perry Marshall’s success is based more on his email follow methods than on his Adwords brilliance. So if you miss this, you’re really missing more than half the story.

By the way, the price goes up on July 4th so if you’re interested, listen to the MP3 and then please have a look at the bootcamp right away.

The FREE MP3 is below.