Digital Marketing Guide - Digital Fewsure

Facebook Social Ads - The Dummies Ad Targeting Platform

Facebook Social Ads Make it Easy for Advertisers to Create Ads, Target Ads, Analyze Audiences, and Manage Payment Options.

When Facebook decided to open its doors to outside advertisers, they knew it would be a big revenue stream for them.  At first, the idea of advertising on Facebook was simple.  You have profile data, you can target ads and operate the ad network much like a Google AdWords campaign. However, Google and search had caught on mainstream with business and this made it easy for advertisers to trust and operate the Google Ad network.  Facebook was still a mystery, especially to new users in the business world.  The social networking platform is still very new to most people and Facebook was smart enough to realize this before moving forward with their advertising service.

Say Hello! to Facebook Social Ads.  Facebook Advertising

Facebook social ads make is very easy to create and manage your advertising campaign.

• Design - The Facebook ad program allows you to design your Facebook ad on-site and you are allowed to insert a graphic and text copy.  The ads look simple and clean cut.  You area allowed up to 25 characters for your Title (blue at the top) and 135 characters for your ad body text (under the graphic).  You can upload any picture that you want as long as you have the rights and it is appropriate in the eyes of Facebook.

photo courtesty of  http://www.ballotrevolution.org/images/facebook-ad.jpg

• Target Your Ad - You are allowed to target your audience by using demographic and psychographic filters such as:

Age

Sex

Relationship Status

Keywords

Employment

Education

Languages

Location

Interests and Hobbies

• Pricing Management - You spending limit is set around a daily schedule. You have to spend at least $1 per day to maintain a Facebook Ad campaign.  It is entirely up to you the amount of money that you want to spend per day.  You set your own price cap during the ad setup.  This price cap can be altered at any time throughout the campaign as long as it stay above the $1 minimum.

Now comes a big decision for your campaign - Do you use a Pay Per Click strategy (when a user clicks), or do you want to pay for impressions (displays).

1. A PPC strategy is you paying for every time a user clicks on your ad
2. Impression payment is for every certain amount of impressions or ad displays. You are not charged for any clicks

There are some best practice guides to decide.  Read what Facebook has to say: Facebook Payment Guide

• Review and Analyze your Ad

Once you put an ad into place, Facebook has an internal analytics tracker that you can use to track who is looking at your ad, who is clicking on your ad, what pages bring them to the ad, etc. It works much like a typical analytics tracker except it is somewhat dumbed down.  The analyzing is very clean cut and doesn't go TOO far into details.

Facebook has done a great job of making the advertising process easy for businesses to use.  I also think small businesses could really take advantage of a program like this because you could have a fixed cost if you wish.

photo courtesy of allfacebook.com

Use LinkedIn DirectAds to Target Business Owners for B2B

LinkedIN Opens Up Their Network for Direct Ad Targeting and Now Businesses Can Place an Ad Right In Front of Their Targets Face

Linked is the largest business focused social network with over 50 million professionals that connect, share and network with other business professionals.  In the past LinkedIn was somewhat limited when it came to advertising.  In fact, I believe part of LInkedIn's growing success in the business demographic has been due to their lack of advertising.  If there are limited ads, the website doesn't feel as SPAMMY.  And since spam and privacy is the number one concern of older business executives when it comes to the internet, LInkedIn was a safe haven for them.

Recently however, LinkedIn has began to allow users to purchase ad space on the LInkedIn network.  There are some qualifications that must be met in order for users to purchase ads, such as a certain amount of connections (friends).  This is meant to keep the SPAMMING out. 

Why this is HUGE!

If you think about how the LinkedIn platform is setup you will understand why allowing targeted ads is such a HUGE deal.  Think about it:  You are a business and you sell IT services to CIO's of large companies that have large revenues.  If you don't already know, LinkedIn is a great way to locate these CIO's.  Most of them have LinkedIn profiles and all it takes is a simple search to find them.  Once you locate them you can learn quite a bit about them before ever connecting with them. So you study a certain CIO you are targeting.

Once you learn more about him you begin to formulate an ad that you believe is what will GRAB his attention.  Now with the LinkedIn DirectAds you can target that AD specifically at that user and ensure that the ad ends up on his pages at some point.

How do you ensure this happens?

LinkedIn allows you to Target:

• Company SIze
• Seniority
• Industry
• Job Function
• Geographical Location

All of your target market can be targeted in ONE place.  Forget Google PPC, with LinkedIn you are almost guaranteed to have your ad put right in front of the market you want to reach out to.  This may be the latest tool to drastically improve digital marketing to company executives.  Executives trust LinkedIn and you now have the ability to build your brand with LinkedIn DirectAds.

Pricing

Pricing options vary with LinkedIn.  The most common is Pay Per Click.  Which means you pay a certain amount for each user click and every 1,000 impressions.

Here is a Great Video on this service:

photo courtesy of linkedin.com

Pinger - Send a Voicemail to Groups of People, Track and Store on Your Computer

Send Personalized Messages to Your Internal Employees, Best Customers, and Anyone else with Pinger

Pinger is a great way to get personal with your customers.  Let's say that you are a musician and you are playing an exclusive last minute show in Chicago, IL.  You have a database of Chicago fans through your marketing program and you want to offer them tickets.  With Pinger the artist can send a personalized message to all of his/her fans to encourage them to come out to the show!

Pinger is also known for allowing mobile phone users to crop images and send them off to their friends.  They are very popular in the iPhone Appmosphere.

How it Works

You simply record a personalized voice message that you want to send out to fans, internal employees, etc.

Once you record the message you input the recipients and send the message on its way.  The recipient will receive a text message that tells them they have a voicemail.  Once they click listen, your message is played back.  It's that easy.

Visit Pinger Voicemail to learn more about how Pinger can be used to help your business.  One more thing------You can test the product for free if your recipient group is small.   

Why Pinger is Effective

• Pinger is personal - A text message can seem impersonal at times - if the phone user knows they have a voicemail that can feel more personal to them, therefore resulting in a more user  participation

• Star Power - For famous people trying to market products or themselves, this tool is fantastic.  You are sending a personal voicemail in your voice to your fans.  Think about getting a voicemail from your role model and imagine how effective that can be

• There are still a lot of NON-SmartPhone users out there.  Text messaging is still the giant marketing tool.  Pinger uses text to power their message

• You can store your voicemails forever!

• Send the voicemails right from your computer

• Works on EVERY Phone - No Flash or Java download required

Photo courtesy of Pinger.com

Create a Map Visual for your Business with Google Mapletts

 

Google Mapplets is a Free Web Gadget that ALL Business Owners Should Take Advantage of

Google Mapplets are mini applications that run within Google Maps. Basically they are small visual web pages that appear when a user puts their cursor over your business location.  There is actually a lot that you can do with this Mapplet page.  It sort of works much like a regular webpage.  The code you can use allows you to include images, rich media like flash, and obviously body content text.

Google Mapplets Basics

EXAMPLE: You are the Owner of a Restaurant

When a surfer is looking for a restaurant around their hotel, they can browse over the map results and come upon YOUR restaurant.  When their cursor scrolls over your business a Mapplet will pop up and showcase your mini-webpage.  This Mapplet for instance could have a picture of your restaurant, a short menu description, and possibly some reviews.  Instead of the customer having to go directly to your website, you provided them with a brief content and visual overview which is convenient for them and easy for you.

As part of the Google Gadgets applications - of course this gadget is free.  Google continues to offer excellent free services that are very helpful.  The problem is, many businesses are not taking full advantage of these free tools.

Link Back to Your Website

The Mapplet tool also allows you to link back to your website which cannot hurt your search marketing campaign.  It is just more visibility for your website and your business.  Also Google provides the free hosting and the free bandwidth.

What Can Google Mapplets Do for your Business and Why should you us it?

• Free visual listing of your business on one of the most popular map layouts in the world
• Very simple setup and easy to write. Don't have to be a genius with the Google platform
• Expose your brand to millions of Google users
• Does not require you to download anything
• Helps your SEO

Watch the Video to Learn More:

Share and Get the Most Out of Your Online Documents with iPaper

iPaper from Scribd.com is a great way to display documents online without having to download.  It can also make you money

iPaper is a service tool that should have came into existance a loooong time ago.  Have you ever visited multiple sites looking for reports or research documents and been really annoyed when you had to download each one?  Well I have. First and foremost, iPaper from Scribd.com solves that problem.  iPaper allows you to display documents on a webpage in rich media format.  It is a rich document format (adobe flash) built for the web.

Because iPaper documents are in rich media format, they can be viewed in multiple operating systems including Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc.  Beforehand, certain word documents that were made with Microsoft were restricted from download with Mac users that didn't have the Microsoft software.  Visit the website to learn more of the technical qualifiers - Scribd iPaper website

No More Annoying Downloads

For web visitors, this tool eliminates the annoying downloading processes and messages that they must encounter before reading a document.  The document is placed in clear view on the website and the tool even allows you to turn pages, much like a PDF document...but without the PDF download.

What Doc. Formats can iPaper convert to Rich Format?

• Adobe PDF (pdf)
• Adobe Postscript (.ps)
• Microsoft Word (.docx, .doc)
• Microsoft PowerPoint (.ppt, .pps, .pptx)
• Microsoft Excel (.xls, .xlsx)
• Open Office Text Document (.odt, .sxw)
• Open Office Presentation Document (.odp, .sxi)
• Open Office Spreadsheet (.ods, .sxc)
• Plain Text (.txt)
• Rich Text Format (.rtf)

Make Money with iPaper

iPaper features a tool that you allows you to post your documents to the net on your own sites and others if they want to share your work.  iPaper has the ability to input advertisements much like those seen in Google AdSense in between the pages of your document.  Of course the ads featured are meant to be relevant and if the user were to click on the ads you would receive some of the royalties.  Now iPaper can make you money just by you sharing your knowledge.  If you build many how-to-guides, iPaper is a great tool to implement on your website.  It will make the process for your users easier and can even make you some money along the way.

Check out the video Below to learn more:

Photo courtesy of thesacredweb.net

A Quick Beginners Guide to Google AdSense

Google AdSense - Quick Guide on How You can Make Money with Google AdSense

Google AdSense is an advertising service offered by Google.  On the surface level, Google Adsense places relevant ads sponsored by Google onto your web pages.  These ads act as Pay Per Click links and you (the web owner) are rewarded royalties whenever a user clicks on the Google Ad.

As a site owner you are not in charge of the Ad content themselves.  Google decides which ads are relevant to your web pages and you determine where you would like to place those ads.  Depending on the structure of your website these ads can be customized to be visually appealing with the rest of your content. 

• Size, color and placement ARE in your control.

• Content is not - The content is controlled by the advertiser and sometimes Google.

As far as the layout of the ad is concerned there are a variety of options.  You can use banner ads of various sizes - these will appear much like any of the other banner ads you see out on the web.

• Banner Ads of Various SIzes
• Skyscraper Ad Layout - Ads on the sides and/or navigation tabs of your site - Can be generic list of links, or a single ad in large picture form
• Button Text Layout - Just a small box with a simple ad description and link
• AdSense AdLinks layout - AdLinks are small lists compiled in one box that contain a keyword or phrase link.

How do you get Google AdSense Ads on your site?

The process is very simple.  You register your website with Google AdSense.  You can do this by visiting Google AdSense Website.  Once you register, you will receive HTML code to implement onto your web pages.

The process can be done by anyone with basic web/HTML knowledge.  Once you add the code to your website, all you have to do is monitor and evaluate the visual effect the ads have on your site.  Other than that, you just sit back and make money off of relevant ads that Google produces for you.  It sounds too good to be true but that is how it works.

If you have a high volume of web traffic, Google AdSense can make you a lot of money.

Where does the Money Come From?

The Google AdSense tool is an online advertising network.  The advertisements are paid for by the website (ad owners) themselves.  Meaning =  Marriott Hotels uses Google Pay Per Click ad service and they target specific keywords - like - Cheap Hotels Chicago.  If your website is a website that reviews Chicago hotels, there is a good chance that the Marriott ad will be selected for your AdSense ads display.  Marriott has bid a certain amount on this keyword.  Let's say they bid $3 for this keyword and they are the highest bidder.  Chances are Google will place the Marriott ad on your site that deals directly with Chicago hotels.  Once a user clicks on the Ad, Marriott owes Google $3 for that click.  You then receive a share from that $3.

Tracking your AdSense Performance

There are two different channels that allow you to track your AdSense program.

1. You can click on the navigation bar within your AdSense profile that says "Channels"  from channels click on "web channels."  Within the input field, type in your website homepage.  Now you can use the Google AdSense tracking tool to monitor your AdSense campaign.

     2. You can select "user defined channels."  This allows you to track ads per sections of your website           and also allows you to track ads on multiple websites with one profile.

Fields Within an AdSense Report

AdSense will run reports for you on a daily, weekly, monthly, etc. basis.  You can run reports at any time with any time frame in mind.  If you want to see the results of your AdSense campaign from Monday to Thursday, you can.  Just choose the Monday through Thursday field within your report calendar and Google will run the report for you. 

The fields within your report

Date - Displays the AdSense data from the current date

Channel - Shows the name of your AdSense channel

Impressions - Displays the number of AdSense impressions(on-site displays) you have had

Clicks - Number of Clicks registered

Click Frequency - Number of AdSense clicks vs. AdSense impressions

Effective CPM - Calculated costs per 1,000 impressions.  Your earnings/1000

Earnings - Displays your current AdSense earnings

AdSense Search

Google AdSense gives you the option of placing a Google search toolbar on your website.  This toolbar is mildly customizable and can be a great additive to your site.  Google also gives you the option of keeping the search results on YOUR website instead of redirecting the user to google.com.  Once a visitor uses the search engine there can be more AdSense ads within the search results.  Which creates a new sub-channel of advertising for your AdSense program.

There are rules!

Google does not allow you to advertise the ads themselves.  Meaning = You cannot write "Support us by clicking on these ads" next to your AdSense ads.

photo courtesy of Google.com

AffSpy - Speed Dating in the World of Online Affiliate Marketing

AffSpy - An Affiliate Marketing Search Engine that Relies on Relevancy and Quality - Seek Out Advertising Partners with the Most Potential.

AffSpy makes finding affiliate marketing partners easy and fast.  So let's say that you are looking to find someone to advertise on your website or you want to advertise on another website.  In the past you would most likely use Google and your internal knowledge of your industry to find other website's to partner up with.  The process of determining your partner was not that difficult.  When you found one that you deemed as relevant, you would contact them and ask them their pricing strategy.  The rest of the details were worked out in the final deal and eventually your ad was placed on their site their ad was placed on yours.  If a company was looking to find multiple partners for affiliate marketing the process took a lot of time. 

AffSpy claims that it is changing all of that! It claims to be the game changer in terms of internet affiliate marketing.

Their service allows you to utilize their search engine to find your most valuable partners.  Let's say you are an online DVD store and you want to advertise the new American Pie DVD on college populated sites.  You type in college radio and the AffSpy engine provides you with a list of options that are relevant your search phrase. Once listed - you receive the following:

• The payout for the leads that you drive to their site

• What they can do for you in terms of creative = the limitations you have

• A link to their landing page

• An official affiliate rating

Check out the AffSpy homepage for a more detailed description of what they offer: Affspy Website

Marketing on Amazon with Clickriver

How Clickriver Works and How You Can use it to Market to Amazon Surfers

Before I describe what Clickriver is, you must remember that 1 in every 3 internet users visit Amazon to do a little online shopping.  Which means that Amazon is a place to go for people that are just "searching around."  Although Google is the primary destination for web surfers that are just "surfing," one can not count out Amazon as a major "surfing" alternative.  Users often visit Amazon to compare prices and get an idea or review on a product. If someone wants to find a new toaster for their kitchen, they may turn to Amazon to compare prices and models. 

With Google AdWords, companies can bid on certain keywords in hopes of getting highly rated impressions on Google's in-organic search results.  These are called Pay Per Click ads and work much like ad banners on a website in terms of billing.

Clickriver thought**** since a lot people utilize Google for Pay Per Click ads, why couldn't these also be used on the Amazon search platform?  Clickriver is just that.  A Pay Per Click service that makes it easy to advertise on Amazon.com

1. Set up an account

2. Set up your budget

3. Select your target keywords and create text for your ad

4. Submit your credit card information

5. Analyze your click thru rates and determine your ROI

Clickriver

Clickriver is a great way to market your products/services on Amazon and it works because it makes the process simple for the user.

The only problem with the Clickriver ad placements is what I call "knowledgeable consumer users" KCU.  With Google AdWords and Clickriver you are charged for the amount of times a web user clicks on your ad.  Although a lot of people DO make purchases on the internet, there are a lot of people that are just looking to learn more about a product - product research with no intent of actually buying in the moment.  A KCU may click on your ad but they are not going to buy your product, they just want to know more about it.  So it comes down to ROI.  Is a Pay Per Click ad making you money in the long run.  Meaning... does the amount of money you make of your purchases from the ads outweigh the costs.

Clickriver is a simple and easy to understand service that can be beneficial if you monitor it consistently.  Also, the service would be very useful for large inventory sellers.

Clickriver is actually run under Amazon's search division called A9.  Here is a guidelines tutorial featured on Clickriver - Clickriver Guidelines