Monthly Archives: December 2009

LAST CHANCE: Beat the 2010 Price Increase

For those of you who don’t know, here’s how the Hyper-Responsive Marketing Club developed.

I started out as a psychologist and a Fortune 500 advertising consultant, doing work for large companies like AT&T, Lipton, Novartis, Whirlpool, Exxon, Nextel, Citibank, Colgate-Palmolive, Panasonic, Nabisco.

But I freaked out at all the travel and corporate nonsense (one time I had to go to Japan for a one hour meeting and turn right around and come home, seriously).

So, with Perry Marshall’s help (amongst others), I wound up in niche marketing, applying the same advertising research techniques to keyword research and analysis (and then product and sales funnel development) as I had used with the large companies.

It was kind of like an atom bomb… I entered 17 markets successfully (more or less consecutively). People noticed and started asking me to speak at seminars, develop my own course, and teach teach teach.

Well, the problem was, early on I didn’t realize the average person found my systems hard to implement. Not hard as in difficult… hard as in most people didn’t want to take the kind of time I was taking to research the market before they started marketing. (Hard for me to understand this, but that’s how people are I guess).

Anyway, after about 1,000 copies of the $1,000 system were sold, I had coached enough people who implemented it successfully IN PIECES AND PARTS to see that it WAS possible to get about 50% of the benefit with 20% of the work. Moreover, I just got SICK SICK SICK of people telling me it was brilliant but they’d never do it. (I haven’t actually vomited in 20 years… but if one more person told me that I swear I was going to break my streak… especially since I was getting letters and calls from the few people who DID do it and were paying off their mortgages, building full time incomes, thanking me profusely, etc)

So I TOOK THE THING OFF THE MARKET, and re-worked it into a much simpler system. At the same time, the internet had evolved dramatically, especially where Google’s rules for Quality Score were concerned, and it was no longer possible to just jump in and buy PPC traffic for a survey without having a substantial site which anticipated to a certain extent what would please the audience.

AND… I had started Rocket Clicks, the done-for-you PPC service which grew faster than any of us could have imagined, and gave me the opportunity to look deeply into literally hundreds of business models… not just in theory, but actually evaluating dollars in vs. dollars out so I could see what worked. (In the middle of the economic disaster in 2008 to boot)

The outcome was clear to me… I had to help people use my techniques on FEWER keywords, which they’d conquer with focus and determination, so they could establish a CENTER OF GRAVITY IN ADWORDS…

Turns out, the stronger you are on a bulls eye keyword, the more Google’s fuzzy logic algorithms can succeed in bringing your more traffic.

FEWER KEYWORDS = MORE MONEY!

COURTESY NOTICE: Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

Thankfully, fewer keywords also meant:

-Less competitors to study

– Less time spent managing advertising

– A clearer focus in SEO

– A pristine filter for separating the noise from the gold in the social media chatter

– An easier to write salesletter and autoresponder sequence

– Less money and other resources wasted on inefficient advertising

– A simpler and more hyper-focused web design task

-A generally more focused and successful business (and owner)

But if you’re going to focus on one center of gravity, you’d better have a logical, systematic way to choose it, otherwise you’ll never have the CONFIDENCE to put so many eggs in that one basket.

So I developed and tested a mathematical formula which accounts for volume, relevance, bid price, and combines them into one metric, as well as a process for identifying candidates and choosing the ABSOLUTE BEST ONE for your business.

It turns out that this FOCUS was the GOLDEN KEY which made it possible for people to start IMPLEMENTING my systems successfully. Because it cut down the work dramatically and amplified the results.

Moreover, as the social media world has entered the fray, it’s now possible to gather enough intelligence about your market without spending a dime, that you can put up a reasonably good site before you do your survey.    (In fact, for competitive markets I recommend to many people that they launch their project and build their survey into their opt in process)

Anyway, I can’t over-emphasize the power of what I’ve found. FEWER KEYWORDS = MORE MONEY.    And month by month I’ll show you how to implement this:

– Month 1: Choosing Your Bulls Eye Keyword

– Month 2: Building an Automated Hyper-Intelligence Machine

– Month 3: The Modified Survey Method

– Month 4: Turning Intelligence Into Words That Sell

– Month 5: Hyper-Design Principles for Your Bulls Eye Target

– Month 6: Building a Hyper-Responsive Follow Up System

– Month 7: Hyper-Converting High Quality Landing Pages for Adwords

– Month 8: Business Launch Cash Flow Planning

– Month 9: Over My Shoulder Adwords Launch Method

– Month 10: Public Relations for Bulls Eye Targets …. and so on.

But perhaps the best thing I’ve discovered is that people seem to learn best when they WATCH ME IMPLEMENT the techniques on a real business… NOT when they just hear me talk about it in a lecture like a stodgy old college professor.

So after a few months I got up my nerve and decided to crack the weight loss market and let you watch. (The first 2 months are on Migraines). Guess what… it’s working!

COURTESY NOTICE: Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

Anyway… I suppose the last thing I’d like to say about the club is, because I’ve been around the internet marketing game a long time, and because this initially was more of a labor of love than a true business venture (I just couldn’t stand people not implementing my work), … I decided to deliver approximately 6 to 12 hours of content every month, rather than the traditional 1 or 2 hours most gurus provide for a LOT more than I charge!

I figured, the real business changing events in my life were full day seminars, where I really got immersed in a focused topic, and walked away with a single, practical insight.    Not dozens of rah-rah things I COULD do, but ONE thing I WOULD do to change my business when I returned.

So that’s kind of how I think of the club each month. And I WAS rewarded for my efforts…

– Over the first 9 months, I lost only 5% of members each month. That’s unheard of in this market, where the average retention is 70% (some people might want to join, just to see how that’s done)

– People DID start implementing and succeeding – I was able to raise the price every few months and because of the reputation (I plan to keep raising it until I hit major resistance, while letting people lock in their original order rate)

COURTESY NOTICE: Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

So please permit me to summarize why you should join TODAY:

1) WATCH A REAL BUSINESS BEING DEVELOPED: This club is one of the very, very few places you can actually watch a real business being developed from scratch. In other words, I don’t only TALK about what to do in some electronic classroom in the sky, I actually SHOW YOU me DOING it as I develop a REAL business.

2) GET 6 To 12 HOURS FOR 1/2 THE PRICE OTHERS CHARGE FOR ONLY ONE: While most other gurus are charging $97/mo for only an hour or two of THEORY, Glenn’s delivering virtually a whole seminar (6 to 12 hours/mo) for much less.

3) LEARN FROM AN AGENCY OWNER: I’m not only a marketing educator, I’m a Rocket Clicks founder and I’ve seen hundreds of business models from the inside out. Which means, I don’t just guess about what’s working and what’s not, I’ve seen the dollars in vs. dollars out reports. I’m not talking theory!

4) I’VE LIVED IN THE REAL WORLD: I’ve consulted for dozens of real companies … Lipton, AT&T, Novartis, Panasonic, Whirlpool, Colgate-Palmolive, Bausch & Lomb, Nextel, etc. I might be known in our circles as “the guinea pig direct response guy”, but my techniques are explosive in these circles because they come from an entirely different industry.

5) I’VE DONE WHAT I’M TEACHING: I’ve launched over 17 markets profitably, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with the IM crowd. I’m not a guru who’s done nothing but be a guru.

6) I’M HONEST: You won’t get rich next month using my work. It’s not even within the realm of possibility. But you WILL learn how to build a secure foundation for your business so it can grow and grow and grow.

7) YOU’LL LEARN A DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK ABOUT MARKETING: Perhaps most importantly, I’ll teach you a different way to think about marketing which will last you a lifetime. *

COURTESY NOTICE:  Last chance to beat the 2010 price increase on the Hyper-Responsive Marketing club: (lock in your rates today)

Dr. G 🙂

More Unusual Adwords Tips to Save Money in 2010

OK, well, the year is rapidly drawing to a close, so let me leave you with several additional quick adwords tips to save you money in 2010 (Thanks VERY much to Jerrold Burke, Jered Klima, Dan Zuzanski, Laureen Hoeft, Rob Sieracki, and all the rest of the Rocket Clicks PPC team for helping me compile this):

  • Don’t judge the success of the content network without cleaning it up first.  Aggressively look for site and category exclusions (in the content placement report AND the standard user interface for the campaign).  As a last resort consider managing effective placements discovered on a CPM basis while you gradually throttle  down the automatic placement campaign (you can drag and drop placements between two campaigns using the Adwords Editor)
  • In your most profitable adgroups, don’t necessarily split test a new ad with 50% of your traffic unless you’re very early in the game and you’re fairly sure you’ve got a good change to beat the control. Instead, use the Adwords Editor to make several copies of the existing ad, and change only ONE of them.  This way, you’re only exposing the TEST to a small percentage of your otherwise profitable traffic… if it’s a bomb, you lose a lot less.  If it starts to look like a winner, you can delete many of the other copies to increase the exposure frequency of the test ad (but be careful not to delete the CONTROL copy with all the history until the winner has been firmly declared)
  • Don’t be content using just text ads. Local Business Ads, Ad Extensions, and Ad Site Links are very effective yet underutilized media for many businesses.  (And in the content network, don’t forget to test display advertising)
  • Test something wildly and insanely different from your existing control ad. I mean, something which kind of irks you to try.   Onesentance.org is a good source of inspiration for ad copy in this light (thanks to David Bullock for pointing this out).   Another good source is to write a controversial ad which goes 100% against all the benefits your competitors are touting.  For example, in the adwords market itself you used to see ads saying “You will make money tonight”… so what you’d do instead is say “Some of these animals are lying!  Be the tortoise, not the hare”… see where I’m going?
  • Take advantage of Google’s Betas, especially if you’re a more traditional e-commerce marketing with an actual catalog of products sold through a shopping cart.
  • Don’t use the same copy or landing pages  in the content network as you do in search. Content surfers are READERS, searchers are SCANNERS.  (We’ll do more on this in a future audio)
  • Go through the reporting center once a week to see if there are new metrics available which could be of use. (These days, new data points seem to be accelerating on an almost monthly basis)

And for heaven’s sake, if you’re not a member of my Hyper Responsive Club already, get out there and join before the price increases forever on Friday (or when I hit 1,000 members, which is looking like it might happen before then since Perry Marshall decided to tell his list of 250,000+ people to jump on board today).

Because without the information in this club, I can virtually guarantee you haven’t carefully defined a very specific keyword target to conquer online with focus and determination.  And if you haven’t done that, I know you’re suffering with much lower click through, conversion, and quality scores than you’d otherwise have. Join now

I know everyone hesitates to join a new monthly club, and no one wants to commit to a new monthly expense. (Note: you can cancel any time, and even the first month is refundable if you decide you don’t like it for any reason, or no reason at all)

But the thing is, hardly anyone is sorry once they’ve joined mine.  Join now

That’s because:

1) YOU’LL SEE A REAL BUSINESS BEING DEVELOPED: This club is one of the very, very few places you can actually watch a real business being developed from scratch. In other words, I don’t only TALK about what to do in some electronic classroom in the sky, I actually SHOW YOU me DOING it as I develop a REAL business.  Join now

2) YOU GET 6 To 12 HOURS FOR MUCH LESS THAN WHAT OTHERS CHARGE FOR ONLY 1 HOUR: While most other gurus are charging $97/mo for only an hour or two of  THEORY, Glenn’s delivering virtually a whole seminar (6 to 12 hours/mo) for much less.  Join now

3) YOU’LL LEARN FROM AN AGENCY OWNER: I’m not only a marketing educator, I’m a Rocket Clicks founder and I’ve seen hundreds of business models from the inside out. Which means, I don’t just guess about what’s working and what’s not, I’ve seen the dollars in vs. dollars out reports. I’m not talking theory, and I’m not going to pee on your back while I tell you it’s raining.  You’ll get the straight truth, even when it’s not sexy.  Which is what you NEED in order to succeed, rather than just to feel good for a few months while you consume another piece of intellectual entertainment.  Join now

4) I’VE LIVED IN THE REAL WORLD: I’ve consulted for dozens of real companies … Lipton, AT&T, Novartis, Panasonic, Whirlpool, Colgate-Palmolive, Bausch & Lomb, Nextel, etc. I might be known in our circles as “the guinea pig direct response guy”, but my techniques are explosive in these circles because they come from an entirely different industry.  Join now

5) I’VE DONE WHAT I’M TEACHING: I’ve launched over 17 markets profitably, the vast majority of which had nothing to do with the IM crowd. I’m not a guru who’s done nothing but be a guru.

6) I’M HONEST: You won’t get rich next month using my work. It’s not even within the realm of possibility. But you WILL learn how to build a secure foundation for your business so it can grow and grow and grow.  Join now

7) YOU’LL LEARN A DIFFERENT WAY TO THINK ABOUT MARKETING: Perhaps most importantly, I’ll teach you a different way to think about marketing which will last you a lifetime.

BEAT THE PRICE RAISE (On January 1st): Join now

And have a Happy New Year!

Dr. G 🙂

Using Emotional Nudity in Marketing

Here’s an interesting observation:   I get complaints on my blog when I diverge from strictly teaching marketing ideas in a kind of professorial manner, yet it’s these very same posts which generate the most interaction and sales (hands down)… why do you think that is?

Here are this year’s favorites (they all open in a new window):

Of all the above, only TWO contained extremely strong, immediately usable marketing information you could take and profit from within days.   Yet, the other 130 some-odd posts I made which DID concentrate on providing such information garnered half the sales and 1/3 the comments. (Go through the archives day by day, particular those posts categorized under Adwords, you’ll find incredibly valuable information if you’ll actually put it to use)

Why is that?

Shouldn’t it be the other way around?  I mean, don’t you all read my blog for money-making information?  For valuable marketing insights?

I’ll tell you why.

It’s because your market only pays you if  you make them feel happy while you’re delivering your core benefits.

It’s kind of like going to the doctor.   Medicine isn’t sexy.  Shots hurt.

Which is why people don’t choose doctors who are all business.

Sure, they want to know the doctor’s reputation and previous success rate with their particular problems… but all other things being equal, PEOPLE CHOOSE DOCTORS WITH THE BEST BEDSIDE MANNER.

You want a competent doctor who treats you like a PERSON, not a bug under a microscope, right?

While you can’t feasibly interact with thousands of individuals, the next best thing is personal sharing, stories, and “emotional nudity”.   Which means TAKING RISKS, getting criticized, feeling humiliated and embarrassed at times, yet forging forward no matter what.

Speaking of which…

My 7 year old nephew Ben asked me why I don’t ever share my piano compositions with my list. (He wants to be a concert pianist and composer and I think he’s gonna get there).   I reflexively went to tell him “because they’re not really relevant”…

But you know what… that’s the cowards response, and it’s not how I want to influence him.

Because the more risks I take with my list to let you get to know me, the more risks I know you’ll take with YOUR lists to let them get to know you… which should mean more money, interaction, sales, and happy people all around.

So, somewhat against my better judgment, but in full keeping with the philosophy I’m espousing above, here’s a little something I wrote and played on Christmas at Ben’s house this year (the lady holding the camera is my sister Laurie), with nervous mistakes and all,  dressed in sloppy jeans and very messy hair from flopping around with the kids for hours on the floor:

Which begs the question… are you getting naked with your market?

Hope your Holiday week is going fabulously, and you’re planning for a successful decade ahead.

All my best,

Dr G 🙂

PS:   I really DO put all my best thinking, step by step, into the hyper-responsive marketing club, and the price really is going up forever on January 1st.  (“Forever” as in, this is the lowest you’ll ever see it again, ever). I wouldn’t push it so hard if I didn’t think it was in your best interest… won’t you take me up on my offer to have you join and lock in the lower rate today?

Yet Another Easy Way to Save Money in Adwords

OK, so everyone knows how valuable constant and never ending improvement is.  And when it comes to Adwords, MOST advertisers aggressively split test their highest traffic groups.

The result is (hopefully) an upwards evolving click through rate associated with a continued creeping in of new and/or better benefits, or better language the primary benefits offered by the Adwords ads, at least until you reach a point of diminishing returns and it becomes difficult to raise your CTR any higher (usually because you’ve hit on an ad which convinces most of the qualified people you COULD get to click to do so).

With me so far?  It’s all good.

Now, here’s what hardly anyone does, … and by hardly anyone I mean, like, almost no one.

  • In the 20% of adgroups responsible for 80% of your traffic, you should NEVER let your split tests grow your Click Through Rate without making a corresponding change to your landing pages. (This implies, of course, that each of these top 20% adgroups will need their own landing page!)

Let’s think about this in plain English first.  Suppose you’ve got an ad like:

Natural Migraine Relief
A Fast and Effective Migraine
Treatment You Can Take Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

And this ad links to a landing page with a headline that says “Finally, a Fast and Effective, Natural Migraine Treatment You Can Take for Relief Tonight”. Furthermore, because the headline on the landing page is CONGRUOUS with ALL the benefits promised in the ads, conversion is likelydecent.

If the above were an opt in play, I’d venture to guess we’d see about 3% click through (keyword = “migraine relief”) and a 20% conversion.

So far so good right?  (I haven’t said anything you don’t already know).

But here’s what happens in most people’s accounts when they start split testing…

They improve the CTR of the ad BY CHANGING THE BENEFITS AND LANGUAGE, but they then make NO corresponding changes in the landing page.   So they run a split test in Adwords and find something like this (same keyword):

Natural Migraine Relief
A Fast and Effective Migraine
Treatment You Can Take Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

CTR = 3% (original ad)

Herbal Migraine Relief
Safely Kill Your Migraine with
All Natural Herbs Tonight!
www.NaturalMigraineRelief.com

CTR = 4.7% (test ad)

Now this would be a VERY positive test except for one thing… they neglect to change the landing page.  And so the user clicks on the winning ad with the expectation of finding out how to “Kill” their migraine with “All Natural Herbs”, but finds something only about 70% congruous with this (same as before “”Finally, a Fast and Effective, Natural Migraine Treatment You Can Take for Relief Tonight”)

They think “wait a minute, where’s all that stuff about ‘killing’ and ‘herbs’?

And as a result, conversion goes DOWN.  Oh sure, they still get SOME conversion because the landing page still talks about an effective, natural treatment for migraines, and ultimately that’s what the user was looking for… but we’ve eliminated all of the intelligence we’ve gotten from the split test result by refusing to use the LANGUAGE AND BENEFITS we’ve learned take priority for this audience.

Something like this most often happens:

BEFORE =  3% CTR x 20% CONVERSION

AFTER  = 4.7% CTR x 15% CONVERSION

You wind up erasing at least part of the gains you make in CTR with a corresponding decrease in CONVERSION by letting the split test erode CONGRUITY.  (And sometimes it does more than partially erode the gain, it down right decimates it, or puts you in a worse position than you were to begin with)

This is the answer to the seemingly impossible “AdWords Catch 22”  where it seems like every gain in CTR is offset by a corresponding loss in conversion.

Moreover, when you DO obsessively address congruity between ad and landing page (at least in the 20% of adgroups responsible for 80% of your traffic) you’ll find it’s much easier to make the SALE, not just get the opt in.

That’s because keeping congruous landing pages is the exception, not the rule in Adwords.  Don’t believe me?  Go check out a dozen Adwords landing pages in your market and compare them carefully to the exact promise of the ads that took you there.

Do you see the opportunity?

Short story?

  • Link your top adgroups to their own landing pages
  • As you make split testing gains, try changing the landing pages to match the evolving promise in the adwords winning ads

Get rewarded with all those blessings conferred on advertisers able to garner high CTR and CONVERSIONS… an evolving dominance of your particular corner of the internet.

Hope it helps,

Dr G 🙂

COURTESY NOTICE: Lock in your rates today, the price is going up on January 1st: hyper-responsive club. Watch over my shoulder as I develop a real business.   Learn how to conquer a market with focus and determination, not the tricks and bullshit “lifestyle business” mirage painted by the majority of internet gurus today.    I’ve been around a long time, run a marketing agency, consulted for dozens of Fortune 500 clients, and entered 17 markets profitably.  And I’m still delivering approximately 6 hours of step by step education for less than most marketers charge for 2.   Make 2010 a banner year with the hyper-responsive club (lock in your rates forever before the price raise on January 1st)

PPS:  I rarely speak at seminars anymore, but  I’ll be SPEAKING in Maui, Hawaii at Perry Marshall’s Advanced Adwords Retreat.  Won’t you meet me there?

3 more ways to save money in Adwords

Here’s a few more simple tips for your AdWords checklist which may help you find some extra money this year:

  • For successful content network campaigns, never turn them off for a few days during a slow period (for example during the Holidays).  Instead, use bid scheduling and/or reduce your budget somewhat to slow your traffic. (When you turn OFF a successful content network campaign, you have to fight for your placements again when you turn it back on)
  • Never let a successful content network text ad run in a high traffic adgroup without testing a display version of same.  You may find (especially if you’re willing to increase your bid at first) that you’re able to garner 300% more profitable traffic with a display ad.
  • Never run content network campaigns without regularly processing the content placement report, at minimum to identify poorly performing sites and pages to exclude as negatives.  (Simple, yet a surprising number of people don’t do it).   If a site gets 500 impressions and zero clicks it probably doesn’t belong in your campaign.  Oh, and be sure you’ve evaluated whether Gmail and/or MySpace is performing for you in content, and switch them off if they’re not!

More tomorrow,

PS –The hyper-responsive club price is going up again on January 1st or when I reach 1,000 active members, whichever comes first.   Lock in your rates today.  hyper-responsive club

PPS – I’ll be SPEAKING in Hawaii at Perry Marshall’s Advanced Adwords Seminar.

PPPS – If you’re a content network advertiser, you might seriously consider signing up for Perry Marshall and Shelly Ellis’ Intermediate and/or Advanced Content Network Bootcamps.    The content network really still is a wonderful opportunity for those who know how to use it.

PPPPS – Thanks to Rob, Loreen, Jered, and Nicole at Rocket Clicks for today’s tips.

How to Pay Your Holiday Shopping Bill: Unusual Things Never to Do in Adwords (#2)

Here’s another way to pay that oh-so-dreaded credit card bill associated with your Holiday shopping this year…

In the new AdWords user-interface, you can segment your data by device type.  Assuming you’re tracking conversions, you’ll be able to quickly see whether (a) you’re achieving mobile distribution to devices with full internet browsers; (b) whether these prospects are worthwhile to you. (You get this data by going to any active campaign, choosing Ad-Groups –> Filters and Views –> Segment By –> Device)

We often find high performing campaigns on Google and Search don’t do nearly as well on the mobile network.  And when that’s the case, you can just turn it off.

So… “Unusual Things Never to Do in Adwords Tip #2A” is:

  • Never let the mobile network run without evaluating its click through rate, cost per click, and cost per conversion

And while we’re talking about segmentation, let’s throw in Tip #2B:

  • Never let an adgroup run for more than 2500 clicks without checking it’s performance by day of the week.

More often than not there are some higher-than-average responsiveness days, as well as some which fall below the mean (sometimes far below).   Once you know this, you can go into the day-parting settings and adjust your bids accordingly.  Can you smell the money?

Here’s a little secret sauce for getting this right.

Determining a “winning” vs. “losing” day of the week is just like split testing two ads.  You consider each day to be an ad, and then evaluate the number of clicks and conversions (or if you have enough data you use the ultimate metric which is “profit per impression” –> see SuperSplitTester.com) against the MEAN for all days of the week which is listed at the very top of the segmentation list for each adgroup in the new interface.

You definitely want to be SURE of your findings before you hit the dayparting buttons, otherwise you’ll waste money instead.  So let’s walk through an example:

(You get this data by going to any active campaign, choosing Ad-Groups –> Filters and Views –> Segment By –> Day of the Week)

  • In the data above, it looks like Wednesdays performance is significantly above the mean for the group in both Click Through Rate (6.16% vs. 4.50%) and Conversion (29.63% vs. 21.6%).  If that’s true, we should be hitting Wednesday harder.  But if we’re wrong and this is just due to chance, we’d be wasting money.
  • When I  head over to SuperSplitTester.com (note: I used $10 as a “value per sale/opt in” for simplicity – insert your own) and enter these numbers, including the associated impressions for each of these “ads”, I find, indeed, a 90% confidence level that impressions shown on Weds are worth a LOT more than impressions shown on any average day of the week.  While I’d prefer to see a 99% confidence level for day of week analyses (they tend to be less stable and include a lot more random noise than normal split testing), the data I’m seeing is strong enough that I’ll go ahead and bump up my bids significantly on Wednesdays, and watch the results carefully.  Once it reaches 99%, I’ll take additional steps to grab every Weds impression I can!
  • When I run Thursdays data against the average for all days, I initially see it looks like it’s worth a LOT less than the average day, and in fact I’m LOSING money those days.  However, SuperSplitTester.com also tells me I don’t have nearly enough data to be sure even of the difference click through rates, much less the difference in conversion or profit per impressions… so I’ll need to let it run longer.  But I WILL need to keep checking it because there’s a good chance I’m losing money
  • Note: the astute statistician will notice I’ve purposefully introduced an error into my tests above which makes it less likely you’ll find day of week differences until they’re reasonably large.  Extra points for anyone who points it out!

Now, there certainly ARE more sophisticated ways to run segmentation to get an extra bump (especially when you involve your Analytics account), but the average person–even the average advanced marketer– just will never do them so I’m not going to list them here, and if you’ll do the above you’ll be ahead of at least 90% of your competition, I’m sure.

Short story?  Take 20 minutes to run and analyze these simple reports, available right in the basic user interface, and you just might find Santa left you a surprise!

Hope it helps,

Dr. G 🙂

PS – As the hyper-responsive club has developed, it’s evolved to include more and more about my adwords methods since these are most frequently requested by my best customers.    Why not come watch me build a business step by step, and apply the cheat sheets and over my shoulder videos to your own dream?  (The price is going up again on January 1st or when I reach 1,000 active members, whichever comes first)  hyper-responsive club

PPS – I’ll be SPEAKING in Hawaii at Perry Marshall’s Advanced Adwords Seminar.   (I rarely speak at seminars anymore but I couldn’t say no to this one!).  Grab your early bird spot and come meet me there, won’t you? Rob Sieracki, the Director of PPC at Rocket Clicks will be attending and also speaking in his own slot … truth be told, he knows way more than I do at this juncture!

PPPS – Thanks to Jerrold Burke, kick ass ppc analyst at Rocket Clicks for inspiring me to write this post.

Unusual Things Never to Do in Adwords (#1)

I know it’s been a rough year for a lot of you financially.

One of the easiest places to find money is still, believe it or not, in your AdWords account.

So I thought I’d end the year with a list of 8 unusual things never to do in AdWords, one per day.

Watch the blog, work the system, and let me know how much money you’ve saved in the comments OK?

The first unusual thing NEVER to do in adwords (if you’re following the Glenn Livingston method) is:

  • NEVER let a keyword run in the RED ZONE for Quality Score for more than 2,500 impressions (Red Zone = Quality Score of 4 or less)

Some experts will certainly argue with this, suggesting there’s no other way to pick up the impressions and profits on certain keywords, or that their sites are so wildly profitable they don’t care how inefficient their advertising is.

But here’s the thing…

When your Quality Score runs in the red zone, you not only start paying more per click, you lose impression share… fast.   On top of this, you develop an account history as an advertiser who runs poor quality keywords.  Although this is admittedly not the most important factor in determining your overall performance, it definitely does play a role, particularly on new campaigns and keywords as you roll them out.

What Google’s Red Zone is telling you is you’re pushing beyond the boundaries of what their algorithms think is relevant for your ad-site combination.

GLENN SAYS:  Your entire Google account, other than those few adgroups and keywords you’re testing and aggressively monitoring to improve, should always run at a Quality Score of 5 or above. I’m NOT talking about an AVERAGE Quality Score, I’m saying  the MINIMUM Quality Score across your entire account should be no less than 5.

What to do with those poor performing keywords?

Well, you can gripe about it, bang your head against the wall, get on the forums and talk about how unfair and tyrannical Google’s being, how ridiculous it all is, how they’re being stupid and why won’t they just take your money, etc.   You could also call my Mom and ask for her sympathy (she’s really a very sweet woman).

But the bottom line is… you can’t fight City Hall.  Their algorithms are the ONLY ones that count, period.  And if you’ll rise to the challenge, you’ll come to think of Quality Score as your best friend (really).

Here’s how I personally handle it if the keyword is important to me.  (If it’s not that important, I’ll just delete it)

  • First, I check the quality score indicator for that keyword by hovering my mouse over the little icon in the user interface next to the keyword itself in the keywords tab.   If I’ve got landing page, load time, or keyword relevance problems, I’ll build another landing page system (including a few linked pages with an article or two specifically about the keyword).  Note: If your quality score is below 3, you’ll probably need to call Google and have a human editor review the changes before anything will change… it won’t get picked up algorithmically
  • Usually the above is not the case however, in which case I can conclude my primary problem is CLICK THROUGH RATE (CTR is 65% of Quality Score)
  • So the first prong of attack (assuming I’ve been running broad and/or phrase match) is to look in the Search Query Report for longer tail QUERY phrases which have been getting high click through… and then construct an ad using those phrases and split test it against the existing one.   (Note: This almost always increases CTR… and I generally will NOT let the split test run to full statistical significance because I want to eliminate the poorer performing ad as quickly as possible to get my Quality Score up.  I do NOT want to accrue any more poor quality score impressions in that adgroup than I absolutely must.  Thus, the risk of inadvertently choosing the losing ad due to ending the test too early is much less, in my estimation, than the risk of a further downgrade in Quality Score.  It certainly IS a risk however, so decide for yourself!)
  • Of course, anything and everything else you can do to split test yourself into a higher CTR for that adgroup is of paramount importance.  (See Perry’s and Howie’s standard books).   As a very rough rule of thumb, I find that if I can DOUBLE my click through rate, I can move a QS of 4 fairly quickly to a 6… and then once it’s run stably at that CTR level for a few thousand impressions, it starts to inch up to the 7 and 8 range.  But I’m pretty sure this isn’t a linear formula… I think it’s normative, which means it depends very much on the other advertisers in that particular keyword auction, and it may have certain key threshold values.
  • If you can NOT get your click through rate high enough to get out of the red zone, but you still want the associated traffic, what you want to do next is delete the keyword itself, but install it’s “component parts” as individual adgroups.    You can find the component parts in two places (1) the search query report; (2) the keyword expansion tool within the adgroup itself.   Essentially, look for the high volume, longer tail related phrases (especially those getting high CTR in the search query report) , and the most related longer tail “buckets” google wants you to consider expanding to from that group (those  on the top of the list in the keyword expansion tool)
  • Remember, whenever you delete a keyword from an adgroup, install it in the same adgroup as a negative

Now, here’s the REAL secret sauce no one’s talking about because it’s not at all sexy.

As keyword auctions become more and more competitive, we think what Google REALLY wants to see is entire sites devoted to those keywords.   So, for example, it’s going to get harder and harder to compete for “migraine” traffic on a site about “headaches”.  Eventually, you’re gonna need a site all about migraines.  On the other hand, if your site IS all about migraines, the odds are pretty good Google will push you into the headache traffic on a “migraine” broad match (I hope that makes sense).

Of course, for most advertisers, developing entire sites just to hit one keyword doesn’t make ANY sense until they’ve exhausted the other means available (like the ones above, which really DO work very well and probably will continue to for a few years).  But for high volume, ultra lucrative keywords which don’t respond to the above, that’s the strategy to consider.

Anyway, I’ll bet  you’ve all got good money sitting in your account which you can pick up by the end of the year if you spend some time examining what you see above.

For the purpose of simplicity, here’s the short-short story:

  • The minimum QS across your entire account should always be 5 or greater.  Don’t let keywords run in the red zone for more than 2500 impressions
  • When you’ve got an important keyword in the red zone, first check to see if you’ve got landing page, load time, or keyword relevance problems and fix them before trying other things
  • Then work on your CTR using longer tail phrases ultra-related to your problem keyword (from the search query report and/or the google keyword expansion tool in the adgroup itself),  as well as all the normal means
  • Get the low performing ad out of the mix as soon as you’re reasonably certain you’ve got a better one
  • If the above doesn’t work, delete the original keyword and install new adgroups consisting of it’s “component parts” (longer tail ultra-related phrases, for example “how to stop a migraine” and “natural migraine supplements” instead of “migraine”)
  • Remember to install the deleted keyword as a negative in the original group

OK, that’s it, I hope I just bought your family a few Holiday presents 🙂

Dr. G 🙂

PS – As the hyper-responsive club has developed, it’s evolved to include more and more about my adwords methods since these are most frequently requested by my best customers.    Why not come watch me build a business step by step, and apply the cheat sheets and over my shoulder videos to your own dream?  (The price is going up again on January 1st or when I reach 1,000 active members, which ever comes first)  hyper-responsive club

PPS – I’ll be SPEAKING in Hawaii at Perry Marshall’s Advanced Adwords Seminar.  Grab your early bird spot and come meet me there, won’t you? (Rob Sieracki, the Director of PPC at Rocket Clicks will be attending and also speaking in his own slot … truth be told, he knows way more than I do at this juncture!)

Human Nature and Your Marketing Mindset

Something kind of bad happened to me a few weeks ago which is sapping my energy, making me bitter, and interfering with my normal content-gifting mindset.

I’m wondering how you’d all go about restoring a positive outlook if it were you?

In early December I went for a winter hike up a mountain stream to my favorite icy waterfall. Winter is my favorite season up here in New Hampshire… the snow, the ice, the majestic mountain views with precious few people to clutter them up… it’s nothing short of astounding.

You see, once you know how to dress for the cold, it’s actually rather comfortable and cozy. And the cold mountain air is extremely invigorating.

Despite this, we occasionally find a frozen tourist on the trails thawing out in the spring after the frost lifts (seriously)… winter hiking is NOT something to be taken casually.

Anyway, I was on the trail wearing crampons (kind of like ice picks that stick out of your boots so you can walk on a sheer sheet of ice and granite without killing yourself) carrying my special hiking poles with ice piercing super-grip tips, just loving the breathtaking scenery… a series of almost frozen cascades surrounded by hills on all sides on the way up to my 80 foot waterfall, where I planned to sit for an hour or so just to clear my head.

Then I happened across a couple of tourists walking in sneakers, entirely under-dressed, trying to cross an almost frozen stream with absolutely no equipment. They were asking all about the trail, where the waterfalls were, etc.

I explained to them the waterfalls started just up ahead, but they were going to have a very hard time crossing the streams and I was concerned for their safety. They were quite insistent on crossing anyway, so I crossed the river first with my equipment, and then THREW my favorite hiking poles back across the river to them so they’d have a better chance of making it without getting a concussion (or worse).

Anyway, they made it across, at which point I realized that I was planning on hiking further ahead than they were, which would leave them without the poles to get back.  So without thinking too much about it I simply insisted they take my poles, and asked if they’d just leave them by my car in the parking lot. (It was only one of 3 cars in a very big and desolate lot)

It seemed like the only humane thing to do, even though it took me years to find this particular pair of hiking poles which I’ve grown very attached to (they’ve carried me over many a 5,000 foot mountain top). And I was perfectly capable of doing this particular hike with just the crampons and no poles, but they were NOT capable of safely crossing the stream without poles.

So they agreed, and took my business card in case they couldn’t find my car. (Yes, I found I WAS carrying a business card on the mountain, don’t ask me why)

Anyway, long story short, there were NO poles leaning against my car when I returned to the lot, which could mean only one of four things:

1) They both wandered off the trail and froze to death out of my line of sight when I returned. I think this is very unlikely given they seemed very interested in staying ON the trail and there’s not much reason to wander off this particular path since all the scenery is right on it.

2) They DID leave the poles on my car, but someone else came by and stole them while they were leaning there unattended. I think this too is very unlikely given that so few people ever drive through that particular lot on such a cold winter day, and my car was at the very far end. (If they had intended to leave them for me, they would have easily known to put them on the blind-side so even if someone did drive in, they wouldn’t have seen them)

3) They decided they preferred to mail them back to me at my business address on the card. (But I haven’t received anything in 3 weeks, and you’d think they would have telephoned to let me know)

4) They were abducted by aliens who took them to Tunisia and forced them to take hallucinogenics and worship the African Sun God.

5) They said “Hey, this guy doesn’t know who we are and this is a nice set of expensive hiking poles… let’s keep’m!”

Unfortunately, as much as I’d LIKE to believe it was one of the first 4, I really think it’s #5.

Now, I’ve never been a fool about human nature. I know that the majority of people are driven by base instincts, that society is an evolutionary experiment, and that most of you are probably thinking “Well, Glenn, what did you expect?”

I made a conscious decision a long time ago to be a giving person regardless… and to make giving its own reward.

Still, I might have saved this couple’s life, and they repaid me by steeling my favorite sticks! I mean, I know it’s the Holidays and all, but man, they really were my favorites… C’mon!

From a marketing context, this is actually an important story. Because the more competitive the internet becomes, the more you’ve got to be willing to pour your heart and soul into providing value for your market, often for long periods of time before you start reaping the rewards. And sometimes there are NO rewards, just the giving itself.

More and more, AdWords advertisers are willing to go negative on the first sale in order to acquire the customer, and sometimes even the opt in. (By definition you DO have to go at least somewhat negative and give before you receive if your first goal is to acquire an opt in, because you subordinate the sale to establishing the relationship)

So I think it’s important we all keep on the lookout for feelings of bitterness and negativity regarding our uncompensated gifts.

Therefore, I suppose I answered this one myself by writing this post, and I don’t have any choice but to go on giving, but is it so awful that I’m hoping to find them thawed out on the trail this spring?

Have a Wonderful Holiday,

Dr. G 🙂

PS – What do you think? How would you handle it? I’d really like to know! (Leave me your comments please)

PPS – After writing this post, I ditched my computer and hit the road to get back to the icy waterfall.  Took a picture this time, which definitely doesn’t do it justice (really, it’s 80 feet tall and you feel kind of puny sitting at the bottom), but I thought you might like to see anyway:

And here’s a fairly poorly shot video:

Using the Search Query Report for CTR Boosting Ad Copy Ideas

I’ve got a short but powerful observation for you today which involves the Search Query report.   And I THINK it’s something new no one’s really talking about.

But first… You ARE tracking conversion and running the Search Query report at least monthly, right?  Good!

(Hint: over 70% of the AdWords accounts I’ve audited, including many accounts spending $10K+ per month had NOT run this report and had no idea what to do with it… even just running it and staring at it will give most Adwords marketers who’ve been tracking conversions instantaneous ideas for saving money, increasing Quality Scores, and getting more traffic… what are you waiting for?)

Anyway, here’s the simple idea.

When you’ve got broad match running in a relatively high volume adgroup, for example “migraine relief”, the search query report will show you all the queries it’s expanded the keyword to using it’s fuzzy logic (except those which have not yet received a single click).

And you’ll also see the individual click through and conversion rates for each of these fuzzy-logic keywords.

Now, the traditional advice for processing the search query report is to mine it for negative keywords (low performing queries which might be dragging your CTR down on the broad match), and possibly peel and stick under-performing keywords out into their own adgroups so you can write a more specific ad, and possibly a more specific landing page.

Good advice.

But here’s the part people aren’t using.

A lot of the high-click-through longer phrases you’ll find in the report are actually BENEFITS which make for great click through enhancing ad-copy, not only in the adgroup you found them in (in the search query report), but across a good deal of your campaign.

So for example, in the search query report for a broad match bidded phrase like “migraine relief” you might see the following high performing phrases (suppose the average clickthrough on the broad match by itself, as reported in the interface, is 2%)

“natural migraine relief” –> 3.4%

“kill your migraine” –> 5.2%

“herbal migraine supplements” –> 7.2%

(Note: these results are fictitious)

Well, what I’m saying is, start testing ads with all these text benefits in  headlines, body copy, and the display URL… FOR THE ORIGINAL ADGROUP AND SEVERAL OTHERS, and you might very well find you’re significantly boosting your click through rate.  That’s because the fact people are searching for them represents a desire in and of itself, and the fact they’re clicking on your ad in large number after searching represents the synergy between the search phrase and your general proposition.

For example, we might test a new ad like the following in our original broad match group (excuse me for the overly simplistic illustration– you’ll need to be more creative than I to really make this work but I think you’ll get the point):

Natural Migraine Relief
Herbal Migraine Supplements
to Safely Kill Your Migraine
NaturalMigraineRelief.com/Herbal

See where I’m going?

Good, now you go there too!

Hope it helps,

Dr. G 🙂

PS – As a FREE bonus for joining my Hyper-Responsive-Marketing-Club, you’ll get immediate access to my advanced Adwords bonuses AND a FREE copy of Adwords Checkmate AND How to Choose Your Market.  (Important Note: The price on the club will be raised on January 1st or when I reach 1,000 active members, whichever comes first, so this is your last chance to lock in the current low rates)

PPS – Tomorrow, my long time weekly mastermind partner Markus Roman is going to release a brand new, never before seen resource for dramatically boosting your click through rate.  He’s going to provide a special price for my list through the end of the weekend, so PLEASE watch your email very closely as he can’t provide exceptions for people who email customer service on Monday, etc.  (My apologies in advance)

Guilt, Marketing, and Redemption

In 1990,  I was a 25 year old intern at a hospital, just shy of getting my doctoral degree.  At the time, like most interns, I was overwhelmed with new responsibilities.  (I was also simultaneously finishing my dissertation, publishing 3 professional papers, and helping Sharon run her company)

One of my primary responsibilities was intake interviews… the first point of contact for a new patient at the hospital.   Sometimes the patients needed to be hospitalized for a few weeks.

One such patient (let’s call him Bob, and let’s change a few other detailed for confidentiality) really connected with me, and felt relieved to be admitted to the hospital.  He was in danger of hurting himself and thanked me profusely for getting him in.

As he was leaving my office Bob casually asked if I’d ever seen the movie “Lawrence of Arabia” with Peter O’Toole.   I hadn’t, and didn’t make much of the comment.

But that month I ALSO did a rotation on the inpatient unit, where I saw Bob every day.  And every day Bob asked me “Did you see Lawrence of Arabia yet?”.

At the time I felt rather annoyed, and just politely said “no” each time.

There were two reasons I didn’t watch the movie.

The first was that I was a “big important intern, about to be a doctor from a prestigious university”… and I didn’t have the time.  The second was I HATED  Peter O’Toole.

You see, I’d recently been in a NYC restaurant with Sharon, gone to the bathroom, and come back to find Peter O’Toole hitting on my wife. (Seriously, I’m not making this up, he was sitting way too close at OUR table when I got back, and Sharon seemed to kind of like it, though she’d vehemently deny this now)

The point is, for personal reasons I refused to enter the patient’s metaphor.

I didn’t want to take the time.  I was more interested in other, “more important” aspects of developing my career.  I thought it wasn’t my responsibility since I had “handed off” the patient to the inpatient unit.

Long story short… Bob tried to kill himself on the ward 🙁  (He didn’t succeed)

My supervisors told me it wasn’t my fault, that the whole purpose of being an intern was to learn with a safety net, and that the psychiatrist and/or the treatment team members on the ward should have caught the problem.

It’s all true.

But it’s also entirely intellectual.

Bob connected with ME.  He chose ME to communicate his metaphor.  For all I know, he could have clammed up entirely on the ward.  I was his connection and he was reaching out.  I had put myself out in the world as a clinical psychologist… HIS clinical psychologist when he had the courage to ask for help. (And as an aside, I’ve subsequently learned this is a moment to be treated with great respect, as many, many people will only ask once in their entirely lives!)

So, of course I’m going to tell you your market is reaching out to you with THEIR metaphor, and ask you to give some thought to what you’re ignoring because you don’t have the time or because you think other things are more important.

Of course I’m going to do that, that’s a totally Glenn Livingston thing to say.

But there’s one more piece of the puzzle, which has to do with my thoughts on forgiveness, redemption, and spirituality.

When I tell people I’m “as agnostic as they come”  most seem to think I can’t have morals, or spiritual pursuits.    But they couldn’t be further from the truth.

The fact I don’t believe I can be forgiven forces me to live with my actions every day for the rest of my life.

Can I forgive MYSELF?  Of course I admit I WAS very young, my supervisors WERE right in pointing out it was a learning experience, and I went on to use that experience to benefit hundreds of future patients.

Yes, of course that’s true, and intellectually I forgive myself.  I think 99% of juries would too.

But you know what?  The memory haunts me no matter how I frame it, and no matter what anyone says.

It took five years before I finally watched the movie.  (I kept renting it but couldn’t get myself to watch).   It’s an amazing movie which would have enriched my life AND my abilities as a doctor if I’d made the time in 1990

I used to think my experience was neurotic, that I was holding on to unnecessary guilt due to something unresolved in my past.  Now I know it was both normal and extremely helpful.

Because the result is…  I don’t want to create any more “Bobs” in my life at any cost.

If I had dismissed it casually, forgotten about it, or minimized it, I wouldn’t have so carefully examined what led to the situation, and taught myself to so keenly listen in on my client’s metaphors.

I would have gone right on creating more Bobs.

Now, when I think of my marketing experience, of course there were a few Bobs in the early days.

In the early days of excitement over my low-level fame, I did some joint ventures with people who, looking back, I never would have invited to dinner, and whom I wish I had never introduced to my list.  And in the very early days, I went along with the crowd and made things seem easier than they really are.  (Internet marketing is a REAL business which requires time, energy, character, and capital… not a stupid “lifestyle” business!)

I guess we all have our Bobs in the beginning of any endeavor.  And the more willing we are to enter their metaphor, the less damage we do and the quicker we sharpen our skills and ourselves.

Which, in part is what I’m always trying to do for you.

Ultimately you could say my job is to get you to ask yourself…

“Got any Bobs?”

What painful stories are reaching out to you in your market if you’ll only take the time to listen and enter their world?

Food for thought.

G 🙂

www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com

PS – You don’t have to read every book your market recommends, that’s impossible, and the analogy breaks down when you’re not doing individual counseling, consulting, or coaching.  But listening to your market’s metaphor does mean spending significant time talking with, surveying, and watching social media on your keyword target.  It’s not just “entering the conversation inside the prospect’s head”… it’s entering their souls, feeling their pain, and letting it all change you as a person. In that way, every marketing campaign should feel like a spiritual journey.

PPS – I used to feel obliged to sell very softly, or never push an offer too hard.  But part of getting older has made me realize that if you really have confidence in what you’re selling, people suffer when you don’t get them to buy it.    Sure, people get annoyed when you raise prices on a deadline, make limited time offers, put a sales link in front of their face, etc.   But in the long run if you’ve got good medicine, it’s better for everyone if you sell more of it, even if the shot doesn’t feel good when they get it.   (Now go sell something)  www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com