Ozone SEM

Want Free Facebook Advertising?

John Somerton — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:10:44 +0000

Join the Visa Business Network.

For a free $100 coupon code, Install the Visa Business Network Application. Make sure that you install the application and fill out your business profile.

While you’re there, feel free to connect with us by adding us to your associates.

Once you’ve completed the basics you will be e-mailed a coupon code as follows:

Dear John:

Thank you for joining the Visa Business Network! To help you grow your business,
we’re giving you a $100 coupon good towards Facebook advertising credit. Your
coupon must be redeemed and used by 2/24/2009.

Your coupon code is: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX

If this is your first time advertising with us, you can create your first ad and redeem your coupon at:
http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/?coupon=…

If you are a returning advertiser, you can redeem your coupon by the following:
1. Log into your Facebook Ads account at http://www.facebook.com/ads/manage/?act=…
2. Click on the “Billing” at the top of the Ads Manager.
3. Click on the “Funding Sources” tab on the Billing Summary page.
4. Click on “Enter Coupon Code” and enter your code as shown above.

Thanks for joining The Visa Business Network!

Sincerely,

The Facebook Ads Team

Facebook Ads can be a pretty powerful way to reach out to a very highly targeted community. And they get even more interesting when coupled with Facebook’s “Social Actions” capabilities. Here’s your chance to test drive Facebook Ads for free. Give it a try and let me know how they’re working for you.

Technorati Tags: Facebook, Facebook Ads, Visa Business Network

How to Pick the PPC Ad That Makes You the Most Money

John Somerton — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 02:15:44 +0000

Any decent pay per click marketer knows that the best campaign results are obtained through a rigorous test and measure approach. A/B split testing of PPC ads and landing pages in an effort to continually improve response rates for email opt-ins, lead generation, and sales is essential to win in any competitive market place.

On the surface, that sounds like simple common sense. The not so simple part though is in making the decision of which ad to run with, and which to can. In other words, when A/B split testing, do you choose ad A or ad B? Based on what criteria? And how confident can you be in that choice when, after all, it’s based on a statistical guess about which ad will outperform the other going into the future based on past evidence?

Well, Glen Livingston has come up with a fantastic (and free) tool to solve just that very dilemma based on the one metric that matters most - money in your pocket - also known as profits.

Here’s a video on how exactly he goes about using the various metrics available to any sensibly-run pay per click marketing campaign to select the most profitable ad - it’s not intuitive and you’ll find the result a little surprising!

For more information and to access the tool, visit www.supersplittester.com.

Technorati Tags: conversion, lead generation, multivariate testing, pay per click, ppc, split testing

John Somerton Attains Google AdWords Qualified Professional Status

admin — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 20:56:12 +0000

Ozone Search Engine Marketing Corp. is pleased to announce that President and Principal Search Engine Optimization Specialist Mr. John Somerton has recently attained certification as a Google AdWords Qualified Professional.

Mr. Somerton has been managing Google AdWords campaigns for more than 5 years, and has been a Google Advertising Professional since 2007. This recent certification upgrades his status from Google Advertising Professional to Google AdWords Qualified Professional.

About AdWords Qualified Professional Status

In order to attain the “Qualified Individual” certification, an individual must meet additional requirements under Google’s Advertising Professionals Program. These requirements include having managed client AdWords accounts for a minimum length of time and at a minimum spending level, as well as passing an official exam demonstrating mastery of Google AdWords.

Benefits to Our Pay Per Click Marketing Clients

In addition to having a Google Qualified Professional manage your AdWords campaign, which will save you time and maximize your ROI, new pay per click marketing clients can also take advantage of $100 in promotional credits for FREE AdWords advertising.

To learn more about our pay per click / Google AdWords marketing services or how to claim your FREE promotional credits, please contact us.

Technorati Tags: advertising, AdWords, Google, pay per click, ppc

Why the Quest for Higher Search Engine Rankings Almost Never Makes Sense

John Somerton — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 16:12:52 +0000

Seth Godin on his blog today talks about signaling strategies - essentially the mental shortcuts people take when deciding which products or services to buy or which politician to vote for. Things like big expensive billboards, being on the New York Times best seller list, and celebrity endorsements all send strong signals to the marketplace to “buy this product!” And of course marketers know this and will work hard to game the systems and distort the signals.

One major form of signaling that I deal with every day is in the form of search engine rankings. Imagine your company sitting at the top of Google on a major keyword related to your business … sends a pretty strong signal, right?

But consider for a moment how that signal is helping you win in your market. Is it driving more bottom line business your way? Are those clicks turning into customers? Are you even getting much traffic from that coveted Google # 1 position?

In some cases, yes, the value is there (particularly if rankings are sought for branding or as a credibility indicator), but for the vast majority of keyword ranking efforts, I would agree with Seth that “the effort you expend gaming one signal or another is almost never worth the distortion that gaming produces.”

Instead of focusing your SEO on ranking number one for keywords x, y, and z on Google, why not instead focus on “delighting authentic voices”, as Seth so aptly puts it?

When search engine optimizers and web marketers focus solely on keyword rankings to the exclusion of everything else, they’re only addressing the tip of the iceberg, and are at risk of missing out on all the authentic voices that may be lurking just below the surface.

How do you measure the success of your SEO program?

Technorati Tags: Google, long tail, rankings

Web Design SEO Tips - Build a Search Engine Ranking You Can Be Proud Of

John Somerton — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:38:41 +0000

Planning to launch a website? Have you (or your web designer) given any thought to how your design might affect your search engine rankings?

Going through the grueling task of designing and building a website can be a stressful enough experience. By the time you’ve gone through strategy planning meetings, hours of design comp reviews, website programming and development (and debugging), and finally get to the point where you’re ready to launch (or re-launch) - let’s just say it can be a monumental task.

But imagine going through all that tiresome work and expense only to realize that your site has not the ghost of a chance of getting a high search engine ranking - well, that would be just downright deflating! Search engine rankings may have been the furthest thing from your mind during the design process but rest assured it will rear it’s head at some point, and it’s better to know how to address it sooner rather than later.

Don’t be blindsided by the often overlooked but absolutely essential aspect of quality website design - search engine optimization. Good search engine optimization can be the deciding factor between free, high quality, targeted traffic landing on your site instead of your competitor’s.

Before you start your website or hire a web designer, get the skinny on web design for SEO with these tips specifically aimed to address the most common search engine problems that can trip you up along the way to getting your new website online. Even if you’re part way through or almost complete, these free web design SEO tips will save you time, money, and grief in the end.

You can sign up for this FREE 7-part web design SEO course via email - it’s called “7 Common Web Design Mistakes That Destroy Your Search Engine Traffic”

Technorati Tags: seo, tips, web design

How to Get Google AdWords Conversion Tracking on WordPress

John Somerton — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 20:21:01 +0000

Getting the dreaded “Verification Failed” message when trying to add AdWords conversion tracking to your WordPress blog?

Look no further! Here’s a simple fix (a little bit of a hack) that will get you tracking Google AdWords conversions on your WordPress pages in no time flat.

Step 1 - Install Website Optimizer Plugin

Download, install, and activate the Google Website Optimizer Plugin for Wordpress. This plugin is intended for use with Google’s Website Optimizer, but in this case we’re going to use it for tracking AdWords conversions instead.

Step 2 - Grab (Copy) Your AdWords Conversion Tracking Code

In your AdWords account, grab the code snippet for the conversion action you want to track and copy it to your clipboard. The conversion tracking code looks something like:

<script language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript">  </script> <script language="JavaScript" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js"> </script> <noscript> <img height="1" width="1" border="0" src="http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/XXXXXXXXXX/ ?label=lqn9CIa8VRDXhf7-Aw&script=0"/> </noscript>

Step 3 - Add The Tracking Code As A Custom Field

Update: BEFORE you add and save the tracking code, note the following important caveat pulled from the website optimizer plugin readme.txt:

Make sure the WYSIWYG editor is disabled in the WordPress administration area under “My Account” - uncheck “Use the visual editor when writing”. Switching between the “Visual” and “code” tabs in the 2.1.x WYSIWYG editor won’t work - it needs to be disabled.

In the WordPress admin, navigate to the page you want to add conversion tracking to, and scroll down to the Custom Fields section under Advanced Options:

1) In the Key field, enter the website optimizer key for tracking conversions: go_tracking_script_conversion

2) In the Value field, paste your AdWords conversion tracking code in its entirety.

3) Click Add Custom Field and then Save / Publish your post. Make sure your post is not set to “private” otherwise the Google verification checker will not be able to see and therefore verify that tracking is installed correctly.

Step 4 - Verify Action Code

Go back to your Google AdWords account and verify that the action code is installed correctly. If you followed the steps above, everything should be installed correctly and you should see the success message!

There you have it -now you have an easy way to track AdWords conversions on your WordPress blog.

A few caveats to keep in mind:

This plugin is designed to be used with Website Optimizer - not AdWords Conversion Testing. I have not tested whether it can be used simultaneously to track both.
Tested on WordPress 2.5. Your mileage may vary, although I think this method should work on any version supported by the Website Optimizer plugin.
As noted in step 3, be sure to disable the WYSIWYG editor before adding the tracking code.

P.S. How are you tracking conversions on your WordPress blog? Share some of your favorite plugins and methods in the comments below.

Technorati Tags: AdWords, conversion, WordPress

Compete vs. Alexa and the Dangers of Toolbar Metrics

John Somerton — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 14:02:58 +0000

Relying on toolbar generated metrics such as Alexa to make important decisions can be very dangerous if you don’t ask yourself the single most important question of any data collection tool: What is the source of the data?

Yes it’s the toolbar, but ultimately who is using the toolbar? That is, who has actually gone and taken the time to install the toolbar widget. I would have to guess that people install the toolbar for one primary reason - to get metrics - and not for the secondary reason of supplying metrics.

And who is most interested in getting metrics? Internet marketers! SEO’s (like myself) usually have a variety of toolbars installed in order to evaluate markets and perform competitive analysis.

Guy Kawasaki recently interviewed the chief marketing officer and product manager of Compete, Inc. They discuss how Compete competes with Alexa and Comscore for measuring site traffic metrics across the web.

Most importantly, they use a large sample (2,000,000 users) and a diversity of data sources (more than 10 different data streams).

Personally I use Compete’s service and like it very much. I’ve compared their metrics to actual web analytics metrics from sites that I manage and the correlation is pretty good - much much better than Alexa. And now I feel even more confident knowing that they derive their data from multiple sources (10) other the toolbar widget. You can get the Compete toolbar here.

Technorati Tags: alexa, compete

The All New “Bum” Marketing in 5 Easy Steps

John Somerton — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 17:39:15 +0000

Now…I should preface this post with the following: I do not believe nor imply that this was a blatant marketing stunt. But…if it was it was pure genius! And a great example (template, perhaps?) of how to build buzz in the era of the social web.

Step 1 - Launch a website

Entrepreneurs Sean and Dave Diamond recently launched www.UTours.ca. UTours.ca produces DVDs that help prospective Canadian university students choose a university that best fits their academic and social goals. From their site:

UTours showcases 5 and ½ hours of
video content founded in our research allowing students to match their
own personalities with the right university. Seeing what the campus has
to offer from the perspective of current university students brings out
information never previously possible. Be entertained while we take you on a tour showing you everything you need to know about your future school.

Step 2 - Know your audience

The UTours.ca DVD product helps answer a specific problem faced by many in the 16-24 age bracket, specifically “what university should I attend?” That audience is also the most likely to be heavy users of social networking sites and consumers of social media . They also tend to be more resistant to traditional “push” marketing approaches and seek to be entertained online.

Step 3 - Get an interview on a live television program

Admittedly this may be the hardest part of the entire process, but if you’ve got something unique or newsworthy any capable PR person should be able to secure you a spot in some small local or niche market. The beauty is that you don’t have to necessarily get on Oprah for this to work - any small show will do and this is a perfect example of how the web is democratizing media.

And as any smart guerilla marketer would do, make sure every marketing piece you do is documented, recorded, and saved so that it can be reused or repurposed in the future.

Step 4 - Recruit some buddies or college kids to MOON the host during the live interview!

Achannel Morning News anchor Kurt Stoodley puts it best: “Once in awhile
things happen on a live television program that you have no control
over.” Yes, that is true…I’ll let the video speak for itself:

http://my.break.com/content/view.aspx?ContentID=387920 - Watch more free videos

Step 5 - Enter the social web!

Get those same buddies to post the video to a social networking site. Start spreading the word.

Step 6 (bonus) - Rinse and repeat

Have someone contact the same show and mention that the video is being spread all over the internet.

In this case the video landed on break.com, which ended up getting a ton of publicity for itself in a…yes…FOLLOW-ON SEGMENT about the mooning segment!

Morning Show Mooning Revisited - Watch more free videos

Results (to date):

Almost 400,000 views of the original
Almost 350,000 views of the follow-on segment
Another ~30,000 views on YouTube.com

Do the math and it adds up close to 1 million people, mostly in the sweetspot (for this business) high-school and college age demographic are now aware of utours.ca. And all from a small local television news segment.

Technorati Tags: achannel ottawa, video, viral marketing