thank you – panictank

What is it about?

This year online advertising expenses overtook traditional marketing expenses. A lot of this money is invested into Search Engine Marketing. Brad Geddes explains how to market your product/service with Google AdWords.

What can I learn?

Be user-friendly: This mantra applies to SEO as well to Google AdWords. Write relevant ads and landing pages. If someone searches for buy ipod nano, you should display an ad about buying an iPod nano, not about buying an iPod or buying a MP3-Player. Why should you do this? Firstly, it increases your conversion rate because people actually find what they are looking. Secondly, you position gets better if your maximum CPC remains constant.

Use thank you pages: After subscribing to a newsletter or buying a item, you often get these thank you pages. Don’t miss this opportunity to strengthen your relationship with your customer. You can provide white papers, offer them subscription to special deals or recommend other products.

Test everything: Everything. Test your headlines, your ad copy, your landing page and different keywords. Google AdWords offers you tools for testing your ads. So how do you test? A simple method is to write three headlines and three ad copies and combine each with another. Therefore, you got nine different ads. If you got enough conversions on the ads. Go with the winner and look for an other keyword to optimize.

Conclusion

Advanced Google AdWords is such a great book. It covers nearly everything you want to know about Google AdWords and SEM. There is so much to learn about in only about 500 pages. There are even plans for starting and running your AdWords campaign. Great book. If you want to learn about Google Adwords, buy this book!

What is it about?

How to market a service business? Harry Beckwith tries to show how. He introduces you into the whole bandwidth of marketing from advertising to sales.

Key points?

Have a good product/service: If you product/service sucks it is hard to market it. First of all, you should focus on your offering and make it good.

Focus on one characteristic: And again, the good old positioning. Try to stand for one thing. Don’t be the cheapest, best, most regional and whatever it be. Be cheap. Be regional. Be fast.

Decrease risk: Often customer won’t buy the best solution. They will rather go with the least risky, one which has the fewest flaws. If you can offer a trial, offer one. If you in consulting, close a contract for a small piece of work and play the salami tactics.

Make your efforts visible: A lot of stuff happens behind closed doors and your customer and prospects will never hear of them. You have to communicate them actively. If your company got a great customer, make it public. If you have increased the profitability of your customers by 25%, make it public. Beware, not everything is interesting for anybody. You shouldn’t just brag, show how you can improve the business/life of your prospects.

Thank your customer: Often you buy something and you will never hear of that company again. You already know that acquiring new customers is much harder than selling to your existing ones. Send them thank you notes. Send them Christmas’ cards. Build a steady stream of information, they will remember you and they will feel good.

Conclusion

This is definitely a primer on marketing. Selling the Invisible covers so much different topics that it allows you to build a good basic understanding for marketing your service. Great book!