When you have a business that relies on attracting new business online the sheer volume of options can be confusing. Should offline advertising efforts transfer to online? Maybe email marketing? What about SEO or the hot topic, social media? So much focus is placed on tactics and channels, that a lot of misplaced digital marketing budget gets wasted or spent inefficiently.

To bring some clarity to the myriad online marketing options available, I think it’s worth marketers taking a holistic approach that starts with an essential understanding of goals and customers. Who are your best customers? Who are your worst? What do your best customers care about? What are their pain points and goals? While you’re answering those key questions, think about how your solutions meet the needs of your target audience and what stories you can tell to bring align those interests to a common goal.

To be an effective online marketer in today’s fast changing environment, it’s important to understand the customer journey though the sales cycle. That empathy helps internet marketers adapt to any changes in consumer behaviors. Curiosity about technology and trends will help marketers become smarter regardless of what changes occur in the industry, with specific channels or applications.

If you want to learn more about how a more customer centric and content focused internet marketing approach could work for your business, please give us a call or come to one of the events listed below. Over the next month or so, I will be speaking at a number of events drilling down into the strategy and mechanics of such an approach. Of course, a great complement to these events would be the book that Joe Pulizzi says will, “help take your online and content marketing to the next level”.

May 16, 1:00 pm Central
Webinar:  Optimize & Socialize for Better Content Marketing
Online Marketing Institute: Register Here (free)

The answer to better content marketing isn’t simply adding more content. Designing content that’s meaningful vs. mechanical for customers that inspires engagement and business outcomes enables brands to reach more people ready to buy, refer or share. This webinar will provide a framework for an Optimize and Socialize approach to content marketing that attracts, engages and inspires community and sales.

Key Takeaways:

• 3 Key consumer trends that spell opportunity for Social SEO
• A Framework for an optimized and socialized content marketing program
• How to plan search and social content across the sales cycle
• Essential KPIs and business outcomes for Social SEO and content marketing

May 23rd, 4:45 pm Pacific
Solo Presentation: Sales Cycle Optimization With Content, SEO & Social Media
Marketo Users Conference (Client), San Francisco: Register Here

While Google.com handles over 11 billion queries a month, competition for attention on the search and social web is at an all time high. There are over 65,743,590 blog posts published each month and more video is uploaded to YouTube in that time than the 3 major US networks created in 60 years. Content flows in every direction throughout a variety of platforms, formats and devices. The mass adoption of the social and mobile web has facilitated a revolution of information access, sharing and publishing.

Guiding customers on their journey through the sales cycle in that environment requires an integrated approach to content, optimization and social media marketing. Optimizing the sales funnel is essential to attract, engage and inspiring customers to buy and this presentation will provide attendees with a framework and tactics to develop their own Optimize and Socialize approach to sales cycle optimization.

June 1st, 8:00 am Central
Presentation: Optimize – How to Attract and Engage More Customers by Integrating SEO, Social Media and Content Marketing
Social Media Club, Redwood Falls MN: Register Here (free copy of Optimize for all attendees!)

How can small businesses approach their online marketing to achieve better visibility where customers are looking and socializing online? This presentation on Optimize will provide attendees a framework for organizing their content marketing that leverages both search and social media to attract more customers, shorten sales cycles and retain existing customers. Some of the key presentation topics to be covered:

• Major shifts in consumer search and social trends
• Key opportunities to improve online marketing strategy and performance
• How to integrate customer-centric SEO with social media and content marketing
• Using this knowledge to attract, engage, and inspire more sales online

June 7th, 9:00 am Eastern
Track Keynote: Optimize and Socialize for Better Content Marketing
BlogWorld New Media & Expo, New York: Register Here

Search, social media and content marketing are converging, and consumers are using numerous ways to discover, consume and act on content. In this session, you’ll learn how to use content marketing best practices to design information that inspires audiences to share, buy and recommend your brand.

Key Points
1. Learn the framework for an optimize and socialize approach to content marketing
2. Understand the framework for optimizing across the customer lifecycle
3. Know the difference between KPIs and business outcomes for web and social measurement

June 8th, 11:30 am Eastern
Solo Presentation: Attract & Engage More Customers With An Optimized State of Mind
Vocus Users Conference (Client), Baltimore: Register Here

The worlds of Marketing and Public Relations are converging and now, more than ever, communications professionals need to accelerate their internet marketing skill sets to create a competitive advantage. This presentation provides an integrated approach to using content for optimizing awareness, engagement and action.

June 11, 10:30 am & 3:30 pm
Enterprise SEO
Content Marketing Optimization
SES Toronto: Register Here

Enterprise SEO: This session will also include a proven model of organization for your enterprise-level SEO campaign as well as a summary of key metrics that you should be measuring to drive ongoing SEO strategy.

Content Marketing Optimization: Pandas and Penguins and Zebras Oh My!  If your SEO is all about chasing tricks and shortcuts with content and links, then this session isn’t for you. If you are interested in building a competitive advantage focusing on customer centric content marketing that works with or without search engines, then make sure you have a front row seat.

It will be a busy 30 days but there’s been so much interest in a more integrated approach and with Optimize, that it’s been a real pleasure meeting and exchanging ideas with marketers looking for a more holistic perspective to marketing on the web. I hope to see you at one of these events.  To get a tase of these types of presentations, take a look at this deck from the Fusion Marketing Experience conference that I presented last week in Antwerp. It’s currently featured on the home page of Slideshare.

For anyone that liveblogs these events, please be sure to email me the link to your post and I’ll send you a copy of Optimize. If you have one, I’ll send you one to give away to your readers.  lee at toprank dot org

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© Online Marketing Blog, 2012. |
Holistic Optimization Across the Sales Cycle: Optimize Speaking Events May & June | http://www.toprankblog.com

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AdSense Optimization for Online Classifieds

We’ve all read the generic Google AdSense optimization articles. They claim you can double or triple your eCPM’s (aka. RPM’s or revenue per thousand impressions) if you follow their special tricks. Problem is, these “special tricks” are basic changes that are more relevant to people with tiny blogs. AdSense optimization is a different beast depending on the type of site and how large it is. Things are a lot different when you’re looking at an online classified with millions of unique users per month rather than a few thousand. These dramatic RPM increases are a lot harder to come by and if actualized, result in increases of millions rather than dollars. This article will focus on how to optimize Google AdSense on a high traffic online classified site.

Below is a step-by-step process of how to maximize your AdSense revenues on your free classified:

1. Implement DoubleClick for Publishers

We’ll start off with the first and most fundamental step. Serve Google AdSense with DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). If you decide to go for DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business (DFP SB), you can use it for free. You can use DFP SB if you have less than 90 MM non-AdSense impressions. If this is the case for you, you’re golden. DFP SB doesn’t have all the fancy features as DFP Premium, but it works as a great ad serving solution that continues to improve. You can’t really go wrong when you invest in Google technology.

After implementing DFP for our clients, we have seen immediate increases in AdSense RPM’s. DFP simply serves AdSense in a much more optimal fashion. This alone makes it worth implementing DFP. DFP also allows publishers to splice in direct sales ads and other ad networks. You’ll have many more features available to you to optimize AdSense further and easier. Bottom line, DFP allows you to complete the next five steps of AdSense optimization for online classifieds.

You’re thinking, “DFP may be free for me but it’s going to cost time and programmer resources to implement it.” True! However, there are simple options to implement DFP. If you decide to not segregate your ad inventory and start with a run of network setup, you could implement DFP in hours. We recommend this from the start and then phasing into a more sophisticated setup as you gain RPM traction. Therefore, you don’t commit to many resources off the top and you can invest more once you see the results.

2. Find the Optimal Text Ad Creative Combination

The second step is to find the best text ad creative combination that fits your site. These ad creatives include text size, text font, border colour, background colour and title, description & URL colour. You can find the optimal text ad creative combination the simple way or the more sophisticated way.

The simple way involves changing the creatives and recording the RPM changes in a procedural fashion. You would essentially try a new combination every 24 hours. When recording the results you’ll record the exact combination as well as the day of the week and the day of the month. Keep in mind what days of the week tend to perform best and be mindful that RPM’s tend to be stronger at the end of months and end of quarters. There’s no way you’ll be able to try every single combination possible with this process. However, you can make educated guesses by only choosing colours that are on your webpage. The goal is always to integrate the ads into your classified as much as possible.

You can do this the more sophisticated way using multivariate testing with your AdSense creatives. We would recommend using Google Website Optimizer in this case. You would essentially setup up multiple variations of your website with the different combination’s and let Google Website Optimizer find the best performing AdSense creative according to CTR.

Whichever one you choose, we highly recommend you take this second step. By finding the most integrated creative combination, you could see quick boosts of up to 50%.

3. Place Ads in Optimal Spots

Similar to the first step, you have a choice of doing this the simple way or the sophisticated way. However, it is very important that you do not combine the testing of step 2 and 3. Otherwise, you’ll get mixed results that won’t be genuine.

You can move the ads around using educated guesses every month to test different ad spots and sizes. The sophisticated way involves using multivariate testing for your ad placement. This would test for the optimal combination of ad size, and ad placement. The implementation of this sophisticated test isn’t easy and would require a decent amount of programmer resources. Again, we would recommend Google Website Optimizer for such a test. Although, this method does suck up the most resources, the ROI would be higher for this method of testing.

4. Optimize the Browsing Pages with Google Custom Ads

If you are a Google Preferred Publisher you are able to use the customizable Google javascript ads. This allows publishers to customize the ads to a higher degree. The benefit of this is you are able to integrate your ads even more, which is very useful for online classifieds.

Best practices have online classifieds implementing the Google Custom Ads in the internal search and the browsing pages of the classified. These ads are integrated into the top and bottom of the ad lists. It is recommended to implement the ads using the “AdSense for Search” code rather than “AdSense for Content”. We recommend to place 3 ads at the top of the ads and 3 ads at the bottom just above the ‘previous’ and ‘next’ buttons. To further integrate the ads, you should add a default no image attached photo with the ads. Remember, the main goal is to make the Google AdSense ads look like the organic ads.

Kijiji just nails it with these Google Custom Ads. They are as integrated as they can get. The ads are the same size, colour, font style & size with the no image attached photo beside each one. This is the level of integration you should strive for your online classified.

5. Open Google Ads up to All Potential Ad Types

You should always opt into all different ad types. This opens you up to much more advertisers which will boost your RPM. The reason why Google AdSense performs so well is its optimization engine. It chooses the highest paying ad type and advertiser possible. Google AdSense’s predictive algorithms are the tightest in the industry. If you opt out of certain ad types then you’re missing out on advertisers that could outbid your current inventory. It’s important you give access to Google to do what they do best: optimize.

In addition to opting into all ad types, you must detail and structure your ad “placement” structure. Placement ad types are the advertisers on Google AdWords that pick your site out specifically out of a huge list of websites to advertise on.

It’s the closest to direct advertising as AdSense gets. These ads generally pay more than contextual ads. Therefore, you’ll want to open your entire ad inventory to these types of ads. You’ll also want to put the important details for each ad spot and segregate your inventory according to category. The more you segregate, the more advertisers can target within your site. You really have to put yourself in their shoes and ask, “What would they want?” We recommend getting an AdWords account and checking the placement section to see what your inventory looks like from the AdWords advertiser perspective. Does it make sense? How does it compare to the other placement sites? How can you make it stick out?

Detailing your ad inventory on Google Ad Planner is important too. Many large ad agencies use Google Ad Planner for media buying. You could get some very large placement buys just from being transparent on Google Ad Planner. In fact, after detailing ad inventories on Google Ad Planner we have seen consistent growth in placement ad impressions and RPM. Make sure to be as detailed as possible about your site description and ad descriptions. Make sure to opt into the traffic stats pulled from Google Analytics. Google Ad Planner generally under predicts traffic without the Google Analytics opt-in. Remember, advertisers are more interested in publishers with more traffic. Finally, make sure to choose relevant categories that yield high CPC’s. Don’t choose pharmaceuticals when you run a puppy website. Choose the most relevant category that yields the highest average CPC’s.

6. Optimize Google Ads by Serving Other Ad Networks

Like we said from the start, the best way to optimize AdSense is with DFP. DFP was made for ad management with the competitive advantage of AdSense optimization. You are able to optimize AdSense much easier through DFP to a point that no ad management tool could even come close to matching.

In addition to internal AdSense optimization, DFP allows online classifieds to splice in other ad networks. This will show the single largest increase of AdSense RPM’s. Every time you add a new ad network you are squeezing the AdSense impressions. This is the same effect as opting into every ad type that AdSense has to offer. You are opening your online classified up to more advertisers. The more advertisers you have competing for the same impressions, the higher your RPM’s will be. It is important to drive the internal competition of your ad inventory as high as possible.

As you can see the traffic is the supply. Let’s assume traffic stays the same so we can isolate the increase in advertisers. When you add new ad networks to your inventory, you increase the amount of advertisers competing for your ad space.

This represents an increase in demand for you ad space. When demand increases and supply is restricted (Therefore and upwards shift for supply), the revenue grows. Since revenue is your X axis and unsold ad impressions are your Y axis, the equilibrium is the RPM. Therefore, the more you grow demand the higher the RPM goes up. This is why opening your ad inventory to so many more ad networks yields such higher RPM’s. This means dramatic increases in ad revenue at the same traffic level.

In fact, you will see higher AdSense revenues with less ad impressions. Whaaat!? You bet, the RPM’s will grow so much from all the above six steps, the increased variety and the growth in internal competition that you’ll actually earn more from less. Check out a detailed explanation of this phenomenon here.

It would be a mistake to miss out on the opportunity to dramatically boost your ad revenues without traffic increases and only serve AdSense instead. There is a lot more money to be made for you AdSense buffs.

From Show: Brand Personalization Live 557 BPN.to Host: Dustin Salmons FAQ 3 – What is Adsense? – Q&A by Brand Personalization bpn.to Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google ads on their website’s content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your site � or matched to the characteristics and interests of the visitors your content attracts � you’ll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages. It’s also a way for website publishers to provide Google web and site search to their visitors, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages. Video Segments are recorded during the Brand Personalization Live Show – Monday through Friday @ 7PM EST. If you have questions about SEO, Social Media, Local SEO, WordPress, or Online Branding that you would like to have answered On the Air, submit your questions @ BPN.to All recordings of BP Live and the individual topics are available as a Podcast in Video, Audio, and Article formats. To subscribe to this show, BrandPersonalization.com

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SEO Myth – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is Complicated

The first myth I would like to focus on regarding search engine optimization is the myth that revolves around the notion that search engine optimization (SEO) is complicated.

I am always interested in the reasons people give for certain thoughts and I have heard many regarding how complicated search engine optimization (SEO) can be – especially for non-seo professionals. But I must say that I have not found this opinion to be true regarding search engine optimization.

I do not feel that search engine optimization (SEO) is complicated.

I know many people who have achieved great search engine rankings using SEO, including myself, and most have stated that using search engine optimization on their websites was not complicated. At times some stated that depending on what they were doing it took time to complete the SEO work; but seo being complicated – no.

I tend to feel that if individuals have an average amount of computer knowledge and skills and they have good SEO information that they can use to guide them through the SEO work process, they will not have any problems concerning search engine optimization.

Basically, it is not search engine optimization that makes SEO work difficult; it is the lack of access to good information concerning SEO that can make search engine optimization (SEO) appear to be much more difficult than it actually is in all honesty.

SEO work can take time to complete depending on the level of detail involved; but it is not brain surgery.

Now can anyone do SEO? – the answer is no; however, the people who would have trouble doing SEO work are the same people who would have trouble completing a large variety of computer related tasks.

Generally, if an individual can operate a computer well enough to follow instructions to install software, they usually can complete seo work successfully provided they have good instructions and information.

Search engine optimization work is not as simple and/or as quick as adding a few meta tags; but search engine optimization is not nearly as hard and time consuming as you might have been lead to believe from prior discussions and/or from information you have read concerning SEO.

I feel the main reason that some people portray search engine optimization (SEO) as being complicated concerns the amount of money that is generated directly and indirectly from the utilization of search engine optimization (SEO).

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a multi million-dollar industry.

Great organic(free) search engine results literally help generate billions of dollars each year for website owners and search engine optimization is a beneficial technique in helping to achieve those organic(free) search engine rankings.

It is no wonder with billions of internet sales and advertising dollars available on a yearly bases that search engine optimization (SEO) which can provide an individual or company a competitive edge in the ultra high pace internet world will attract a variety of opinions, ideas, supporters and detractors.

Moreover, through a combination of perception and reality that highlights search engine optimization as a key to increasing internet sales, search engine optimization is a very popular topic for decision makers within many companies and frankly if these individuals along with the general internet community can be convenience that search engine optimization is complicated then many of these people will decide to outsource SEO related services, hire search engine optimization employees and/or contract consultants to complete their search engine optimization work. Thus, money is a key player in how search engine optimization is portrayed in the media, inside the seo industry and at large within the general internet community.

If used properly search engine optimization can help to achieve a higher search engine ranking for a website.

Many people are almost afraid and/or in awe of SEO because much of the information concerning search engine optimization (SEO) is not shared with the general public, which has created a cloud of mystery around the entire industry. Therefore, the average person does not understand search engine optimization and/or its benefits because of this situation.

However, the lack of good information should be expected considering the current competitive nature of business on the internet and the amount of money that can be earned from achieving good search engine rankings for a website.

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