Monthly Archives: May 2010

Important Split Testing Innovation

Like everyone else in direct marketing, I spend a lot of time extolling the virtues of split testing.  As well I should, because with ongoing, small improvements, implemented like a bull dog, you can radically change the performance of your whole sales systems.

Unlike everyone else, I urge people to have the patience to do their research and competitive intelligence thoroughly and precisely, so they’ll have the RIGHT INPUTS for their tests, to maximize the probability of results.

But here’s something I haven’t talked much about, which I really should (but Howie beat me to the punch)…

“Testing Juice” is a limited resource.  We only have so much traffic and money to pay for it, and every test we do eats some of it for a while.    Accordingly, it’s vitally important to PRIORITIZE your tests correctly.

Howie Jacobson, author of Adwords for Dummies, has developed an excellent paradigm for doing just that.  In this MP3 interview (and accompanying slides) you’ll hear him walk you through it.

Of course, I won’t hide the fact that this is also a blatant attempt to get you to attend Camp Checkmate via my affiliate link (which entitles you to the EARLY BIRD pricing if you order soon, even though the deadline’s passed). But as always, both Howie and I took extra special care to ensure the content itself should be immediately valuable to you.

Enjoy!

Dr. G 🙂

SURVEY: Implementation vs. Procrastination in Marketing

* ANONYMOUS IMPLEMENTATION SURVEY:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/296821/Implementation-Survey
I’m developing a series of FREE teleseminars to help with
the actual IMPLEMENTATION of the marketing principles and
strategies that I teach.
If you have any specific questions or issues on which you’d
like to receive additional coaching, guidance, or clarification
from me — then I’d love to hear what topics would be most
helpful to you.
Would you kindly take 2 minutes to help me out with this
quick survey?
Much appreciated, thanks!
G:-)
* ANONYMOUS IMPLEMENTATION SURVEY:
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/296821/Implementation-Survey

* ANONYMOUS IMPLEMENTATION SURVEY:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/296821/Implementation-Survey

I’m developing a series of FREE teleseminars to help with the actual IMPLEMENTATION of the marketing principles and strategies that I teach.

If you have any specific questions or issues on which you’d like to receive additional coaching, guidance, or clarification from me — then I’d love to hear what topics would be most helpful to you.

Would you kindly take 2 minutes to help me out with this quick survey?

Much appreciated, thanks!

G:-)

* ANONYMOUS IMPLEMENTATION SURVEY:

http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/296821/Implementation-Survey

PS – Would appreciate responses in the survey itself (link above) rather than in the blog comments, though I won’t refuse those either.

Facebook PPC – A Few Thoughts

People have been asking quite a lot about Facebook PPC.

While I’m not ready to claim real expertise in this yet by any stretch of the imagination, I DO have a few thoughts which I think you’ll find useful…

1) Facebook IS about the most incredibly targeted advertising I’ve ever seen.

The creative combination of interests one can target boggles the mind. (For example, for my emotional eating project, I chose to advertise to women, aged 35+, who like the Oprah Winfrey show AND Little Ceasers Pizza)

2) Facebook is NOT a search engine with a passing parade of people you can target with an ongoing campaign requiring similar management efforts to traditional PPC.

The ads appear repeatedly on Facebook pages, and the ads wear out very, very quickly. (You’ll usually see the click through rate of a given ad decline precipitously if you graph it over time using their tools).

Because of this, Facebook is much better thought of as “a poaching medium”… good for event marketing, or “skimming the cream” off of as many interest groups as you can brainstorm, but NOT for setting up an automated marketing funnel.   (At least, I haven’t seen one yet).  It requires VERY active management.

Also, because of this wear out phenomenon, in my opinion, the recent hoopla about Facebook replacing Google is much over-hyped, and you shouldn’t close down your AdWords account just yet.

3) To apply my marketing research techniques to Facebook advertising, you need to replace the keyword/adgroup with the Facebook interest group, and use the latter as your unit of analysis.  In other words, rather than conceiving of every tightly themed keyword group as a different conversation in the prospect’s mind, think of the INTEREST group the same way.   (But again, you’ll need to go back to that group with different ads after the survey).

Here’s another, more advanced, but more powerful way to make this work.  Do your survey research on Google, but include demographic and interest variables in your survey form.    For example, if I had included a checkbox in my GOOGLE survey asking “Do you watch Oprah?” and “Do you like Pizza?”, I could analyze the survey to find the unique language, needs, objections, and concerns of  pizza loving Oprah watchers.  Then I’m armed to the teeth when I target that interest group in Facebook.

Of course, the added twist is that Google needs to represent a specific keyword (for example, “emotional eating”), but there’s no point in advertising my emotional eating site on Facebook if these Oprah loving pizza eaters aren’t also interested in emotional eating.

I hope that makes sense.

Well, that’s the Dr. Glenn show for this sunny New Hampshire Sunday.

Hope you’re all enjoying the weekend,

All my best,

Dr. G 🙂

www.HyperResponsiveMarketingSecrets.com