Check out this Internet Marketing mind map from Aaron Wall, one of the SEO guys out there who knows what he’s talking about (besides me). 
I personally think Aaron did a nice job of laying out all the necessary components to Internet Marketing including customer feedback, market research, web design, onsite marketing, link marketing (including social bookmarking) and monetization.
It’s worthwhile. Check it out: http://tools.seobook.com/imme/
An important point to remember with Pay-per-Click (PPC) campaigns is “technology without a strategy is not a strategy.” We should think through what campaigns we will set up, ads to create, relevant keywords to use and landing pages needed. In other words, we need to map out a strategy, before beginning any PPC campaign(s).
However, even before starting a PPC campaign(s), implementing organic SEO is best. With organic SEO, a company usually fine tunes their SEO plan until they eventually hit a plateau. When a plateau occurs and it is hard to increase rankings any further for some keywords through organic SEO and link building, then the next best step is to initiate paid search marketing.
If your PPC campaign(s) has tens of thousands of keywords, it is best if you use an automated bid management tool to manage all of your keywords. The problem is that there are not many commercially available automated bid management tools. We don’t endorse any, in case you were going to ask us.
One crucial step to remember if you are using an automated bid management tool, is to manually review your campaigns daily or every other day. Sometimes companies put too much trust in these tools instead of remembering to manually check details, and therefore the campaigns suffer.
The bottom line is there is no substitute for human review for quality control of PPC campaigns.
Check out our press release announcing our new podcast web marketing service: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2007/09/prweb555697.htm.
And, yes of course there is a podcast download available at this link…
The key to successful landing pages for Pay-per-Click (PPC) Internet marketing campaigns begins and ends with testing, measuring and tweaking constantly. This is more crucial than ever since keyword bid rates are rising and competition is fiercer. According to Jupiter Research (www.jupiterresearch.com), 61% of small-sized companies, 65% of mid-sized companies and 72% of large companies will increase their PPC spend over the next 12 months.
Did you know it takes an average of 4-8 seconds to get a potential customer’s attention with your landing page? Not long, right? If you do not capture their attention in that amount of time with a good landing page, they will most likely leave your landing page instantly. This can cause high bounce rates to occur.
Targeting landing pages to ONE SPECIFIC TOPIC OR THEME with a CLEAR CALL TO ACTION is best! You may start your testing with 3-4 different landing page variations based on 1 main landing page with 1 specific theme. After running these landing page tests for at least 2 weeks (sometimes longer to confirm data, especially if it is not a heavy traffic industry), you can then narrow them down to just 2-4 ads with the 1 landing page that is performing the best per campaign. It is best to concentrate on landing pages receiving the most traffic and conversions. If they are not receiving good conversion rates, then I suggest pausing or deleting them.
A good place to start testing is with a sign up button. Start testing 1 simple landing page but have the sign up button be a different message (i.e. a button in red in the middle of your landing page can have 4 different messages such as “Sign Up Now!” “Start Now!” “Click Here to Learn More” “Click Here to Sign Up” and “Click Here to Read More”). You can also test 1 landing page with different simple content variations within your landing page, different text size and font and different simple headlines. You can also use specific website pages as landing pages and test them with different graphics, font, quotes, text, etc. And, you do not always have to have a form on your landing page in order for it to be successful. Sometimes, in certain industries it is better for them to read more information and then sign up if they want to by clicking to another page where a form would be located.
Now, you may ask what items should be incorporated into each landing page. Well, here are some important items as follows:
1. a testimonial or quote to validate your product/service and add credibility
2. 800 x 600 resolution size
3. create a clearly defined path (i.e. a sign up button or something like this in the center of your landing page that stands out and leads to a sign up form)
4. make your text specific to 1 particular product, not generalized to many different products
Monthly ad spend for successful results depends on your product/service, industry, competition and traffic…this is why testing is very important. Since bid rates and competition can change daily, you can count on one thing for sure, TESTING, MEASURING and TWEAKING is here to stay as a major part of successful PPC campaigns.
This podcast was recorded live at the TBTF Tech Jam 2007 at Raymond James Stadium, August 16. This was the 6th Annual “Party with a Purpose”, benefitting several computer literacy and workforce education programs for local youth in the Tampa Bay area. For more information about TBTF and the Membership Drive, check out THIS PODCAST, or the TBTF WEBSITE.
Amy Norman, President & CEO of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum (TBTF) recently recorded a podcast discussing the TBTF membership drive and the many reasons people should consider joining during this promotional period. TBTF is a professional association representing over 400 technology and business firms, investors, government agencies, educational institutions, and economic development organizations who comprise Tampa Bay’s technology ecosystem. For more information about the membership drive, and special discounts, contact Bonnie Eaton, Member Services Coordinator, at (813) 341-8283 or beaton@tbtf.org.
Bernie | 
09 29th, 2007| 
