Performics Performance Marketing Blog: SEM, SEO, Social & Display

Your Brand Needs Google Ad SiteLinks

Posted by Steve Durisin, Account Manager

Recent industry press has questioned the cost efficiency of Google Ad SiteLinks.  While these articles are quick to point out conversion improvements, there seems to be some apprehension.

The debate centers on whether marketers should even be paying for clicks to their brand names.  Detractors are quick to point out high organic positioning and customer reacquisition as justification for discounting SiteLinks’ value.  And there are a number of reasons why they are wrong.

Free and Paid Facebook Marketing Opportunities

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

With more than 400 million users, Facebook is now the number two trafficked website in the world according to compete.com. Only Google commands a larger audience. Facebook’s massive user base can no longer be ignored by marketers; but some are still not convinced that Facebook advertising should be a staple in every brand’s marketing mix. The Financial Times recently quoted WPP’s Martin Sorrell as saying, “[i]nvading these [social] media with commercial messages might not be the right thing.” Sorrell stated that unlike TV, Facebook is a “personal phenomena” akin to “writing letters to our mothers” that is unsuitable for commercial marketing. Yet Sorrell overlooks that fact that Facebook’s audience—which now includes our mothers—is open to marketing messages within the platform. In fact, Performics’ 2009 Social Marketing Study found that twenty-seven percent of consumers are receptive to advertising offers communicated through social sites. Twenty-seven percent of Facebook’s audience is 108 million people, which happens to be more than the 106 million U.S. consumers who watched this year’s Super Bowl.

Facebook is a branding and selling channel bigger than the Super Bowl that can be well-suited for commercial messages. Facebook marketing tactics do differ from search, display, or offline advertising tactics, but are similarly grounded in (1) gaining exposure to your target market and (2) engaging that market with the right message at the right time. Here are a few tips for leveraging Facebook’s commercial marketing opportunities:

Pretty Pretty URLs for Pretty Pretty AJAX Search Engine Visibility

Posted by Sam Battin, Senior Search Strategist

Do you want to optimize your site's AJAX content for visibility on search engines? Here's Google's grand plan explained!

Recently, Google announced a new technique that will allow better visibility for your site’s AJAX applications.  AJAX is a usability technology that delivers instantly updated information to your visitors; it’s like being able to deliver the speed, power and accessibility of a desktop application through a browser.  When you use AJAX well, you can encourage longer visits and keep your visitors coming back again and again.  To see the potentials of this new technology, try searching for “Good examples of AJAX” on Google.  No, seriously, you should do this.  Here’s a link:

See good examples of AJAX

All right – now that you know what AJAX is, you probably also know that all that awesome stuff it delivers is very tough or even impossible for search engines to see.  While your visitors may know that your site offers a fantastic interface that speeds things up beyond what was even conceivable a couple years ago, a search engine won’t send new visitors your way because AJAX is really difficult to crawl.

Search Happenings: Weekly Search Headlines

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

From the Engines:

• Facebook granted patent on the news feed.
• Google launches new Android Shopper app: find product information by taking pictures of books, CDs, etc. or scanning bar codes with your phone.
• Facebook becomes #2 most popular site in the United States.
• Yahoo! partners with Twitter to bring real-time search to the Yahoo! SERP.

Other Topics of Interest:

• One in five search results are personalized by Google.
• Fortune 500 still lagging in SEO.
• 50 million tweets per day.  Only half are in English.

Some Fun Stuff:

• Vending machines that wash dogs gain popularity in Japan.

Performics Boosts Revenues for Client up to 20% with the Google AdWords Bid Simulator

Originally posted by Google in its Consumer Technology Industry Knowledge Center:

Decisions, decisions
As a top search and performance marketing agency, Performics provides marketing solutions to more than 125 of the world’s top brands.  The company’s search marketing experts know how vital it is to focus on the right keywords in any search-based advertising campaign and adjust maximum cost-per-click (CPC) accordingly. With this in mind, Performics has developed its own bidding algorithm that it uses on all of its accounts.  Performics also has a team of dedicated Bid Strategists.

“Optimizing keyword bids is a critical ongoing decision we make for clients,” says Jeff Licciardi, Account Managerat Performics. “We’re constantly looking for ways to increase visibility into keyword performance to see areas where there is strong ROI and room to grow impressions.”

The devil’s in the details
In its constant quest to improve campaign performance, the agency saw a major opportunity when it learned about Google AdWords bid simulator. While it can’t predict the future, the bid simulator allows Licciardi and his team to explore what could have happened if they had set different keyword-level bids. Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of impressions for which their clients’ ads could have shown had they chosen a different maximum CPC, how many clicks the ads could have gotten for those impressions and how much those clicks would have cost. The feature provides increased visibility into the AdWords auction and gives the Performics team the insight to make more informed bidding decisions to meet clients’ advertising objectives.