Twitter Open For Small Business?

Just finished reading an excellent post over at John Battele's Search Blog about the new business.twitter.com centre for business.

What a great resource for businesses (and agencies) looking to get their head around Twitter and its relevance for business, both large and small.

The business centre is categorised into easy to follow sections including:

• What is Twitter
• Getting Started
• Learn the Lingo
• Best Practices
• Case Studies
  
• Other Resources

If you are serious about harnessing the power of Twitter for business, this is a must read.

Google Adwords Position Importance – Is It Really That Important?

A recent eye tracking study released by User Centric comparing Google versus Microsoft’s recently released Bing search engine got me thinking about the importance of ad position and how it relates to ad performance.

There are a lot of theories (read myths) about which ad position users are more likely to click on. Google caters to these theories by providing a Position Preference tool for those people who believe that users only click on the 1^st and 2^nd (or 5^th and 6^th) ad in the sponsored list. Instead of propagating more myths here are a few facts with you about ad position.

Fact #1 - Ad position is determined by what Google refers to as your Ad Rank. Your Ad Rank is determined by your keyword’s cost-per-click (CPC) bid times its Quality Score.

Quality Scores are dynamic and are calculated by Google every time your keyword matches a search query. Google use a number of factors to calculate your keyword Quality Score including (but not limited to) ad relevance, landing page quality, relevance to the search query and your overall account performance.

According to Google, the main contributor in calculating your Quality Score is the historical clickthrough rate (CTR) of the keyword. Google also factor in the actual ad position to weight the CTR of the keyword where higher positioned ads get lower weighting on their historical CTR. This is based on Google’s own research that ads with a higher position achieve better CTRs.

Fact #2 - The best ad position for your ad is the one that gives you the best return on your investment.

Let’s say for example I am one of ten advertisers all bidding on the same keyword and for the purposes of the example all ten advertisers have a Quality Score of 10/10. Two of the advertisers have a max cost-per-click (CPC) of $10 and the other eight including myself have a max CPC of $5.

I’m currently hitting my cost per sale target of $20 by achieving a 25% conversion rate from the paid traffic I’m receiving from my Adwords campaign.

I want to increase sales volume and believe that achieving position 1 will probably increase my CTR. I increase my max CPC bid to $10. Regardless of how much more traffic I receive I now need to double my conversion rate to 50% to keep the cost per sale the same.

If my conversion rate stays at 25% then doubling my max CPC will also double my cost per sale to $40. Can my business afford this increase?

Fact #3 – The only way to improve your Ad Rank is to increase your max CPC bid or increase your Quality Score.

Increasing your max CPC bid is easy but before you do, go back and read Fact #2. Is this really the best option for your business?

Make sure that you have taken the time to calculate your target cost per sale and work backwards from there to determine just how high your max CPC bid can go before you start eating into your margins. (Be sure to check out Traffika’s free downloadable ROI, CPA and LTV calculators.)

Improving your Quality Score is a whole series of blog posts you can look forward to, but in my experience one of the easiest ways to increase Quality Score is to improve the relevance of your ad to the keyword. Increasing ad relevance not only improves your Quality Score it also improves ad performance (which also increases it’s Quality Score). Which leads us to our fourth and final fact…

Fact #4 – Users will click on the ad that is most relevant to them regardless of the ad position

OK so maybe this isn’t a fact as such but it’s certainly common sense and supported by Traffika’s own clients Adwords performance data where ads with an average position of 6 are achieving CTRs and conversion rates just as good (and sometimes better) as an ad in position 1.

Why? Because we take the time to understand our clients’ target markets. We create tightly themed ad groups and ads to ensure that the ads are extremely relevant to the keywords and actual search queries used. We use negative keywords to further pinpoint the right searchers at the right time. We include strong call to actions and highly relevant terms in ad copy and we take every opportunity to optimise our client’s Adwords account performance at all levels.

To summarise, don’t get hung up on making sure all your ads appear in position number one. You are much better focusing your efforts on achieving your ROI goals by creating ads that your target market wants to click on. Make sure that you reach those searchers in the most cost effective way that you can.

This article was posted by Bret Buckland. Bret is a Google Qualified Adwords Professional and SEM Campaign Manager at Traffika. You can follow Bret on Twitter @bjbuck

Social Media in the Marketing Mix Video Part 1

We've posted up part 1 of 4 in our Social Media video series to Traffika's Facebook page. Please find below for your viewing pleasure :).

Social Media - A Necessary Component in the Marketing Mix?

With Social Media now being a staple part of over 1/3 of Australian Internet users online activity it is important that businesses and brands consider Social Media in the marketing mix.

This week, Traffika presented at the Digital Strategies for Business Success seminar at the Point Hotel in Brisbane. Hosted by Llew Jury and the team at Reload Media, the evening covered the latest trends, developments and strategies in SEO, SEM and of Traffika's session on Social Media.

We covered a lot of ground in the 30 minutes we had to present. Below are some of the key points from the presentation as well as the full slide deck. We'll shortly be posting video of the full evenign to our our Facebook page, so stay tuned.

Marketers need to consider Social Media's place in the marketing mix becuase:

• Facebook is now the 2nd most visited site in Australia (source: Hitwise July 2009)
• Of the top 5 searches in Australia social media sites account for 4 of them (source: Hitwise July 2009)
• Facebook has 5.3 million adult Australian members (source: Facebook Advertising July 2009)
• Twitter has approx 750,000 Australian members, although this number is a rough estimate based on unique visitor figures (source: Neilsen Netview May 2009)

Sucessful Social Media campaigns contain the following elements:

1. The right strategy
2. Understanding of your audience
3. Knowing the right things to measure
4. Are properly resourced - people & budget
5. Valueable content
6. Use the right tools to maximise productivity

Social Media Marketing - Digital Strategies Seminar

View more presentations from Matt Forman.

New Traffika page on Facebook is a go!

We're stoked to have our Facebook page for Traffika live. You can join us at facebook.traffika.com.au

Below is our short welcome video.

Welcome to the More Quality Clicks Blog

Hi and welcome to More Quality Clicks, the blog about Internet Marketing and Digital Media from Traffika.

We aim to make our blog a useful resource for anyone wanting to learn or share information about smarter and more profitable marketing over the Internet.

The team at Traffika will be regularly contributing posts about their areas of expertise including search engine marketing, performance media, social media and conversion optimisation.

From time-to-time we'll also feature guest bloggers to help us share new information about trending topics and new developments in the Internet marketing world.

The true power of the web comes from collaboration and a collective intelligence so please freely share your comments, thoughts and suggestions with us.

If you'd like to connect with us, you can find us on Facebook at facebook.traffika.com.au, on Twitter @traffika or on the web at www.traffika.com.au.

All the best,

Matt Forman
Managing Director

PS - to get the party started I've included a selection of recent blog posts from my personal blog below.

Us Now - the power of mass collaboration & the Internet.

Just finished watching this eye opening film Us Now about the power of mass collaboration, government and the Internet.

Some very interesting insights into how the web and social media are causing a power shift of seismic proportions.

It includes some great examples of how social media is changing the way people communicate and decisions get made right now.

After watching it, I am left thinking about 2 words..... Imagine If?

I've embedded the trailer below or you can watch the full film online for free at watch.usnowfilm.com

Facebook Fanomenon - 3 Tips for Building Your Brands Facebook Fan Base

Facebooks' relentless growth and roll-out of new products and features to create more value for users and brands seems to be gathering pace rapidly with a string on new API features and astonishing growth in new users.

According to Inside Facebook, the social networking giant is now growing by over 700,000 new users per day with a user base of around 250 million.


There is the plethora of new tools Facebook has opened up to brands like Facebook Connect, Open Stream and Live Stream that brings the viral power of social media to 3rd party websites outside of Facebook.

Then there is the Facebook Page for businesses - "a public profile that enables you to share your business and products with Facebook users". This is the starting point for building a brand presence on Facebook.

With the massive scale of Facebooks' user base and all these options available, it is understandable that businesses might feel lost when trying to understand how best to establish and build a brand presence for customers, or fans, to connect with them on Facebook.

While the tools from Facebook are free, like any marketing initiative it is important you have a strategy and plan in place before rushing out and jumping on the Facebook bandwagon. Many a brand has come unstuck by poorly executing their entry onto Facebook.

Once you have determined that Facebook is right for your business and established your plan you need to register your Facebook Page for you business. This will establish your brand presence and protect IP from imitators or cyber squatters.

Much like your corporate website, a Facebook Page isn't much value without visitors to your page. In the same way that you 'friend' your personal relationships on Facebook, customers and brand advocates 'fan' your business Facebook Page.

Building a fan base is critical to the success of your Facebook Page and here are 3 tips to get you on the way.

1. Value, Value, Value
If there 2 things that are going to destroy your reputation on Facebook quickly its spam and poor quality content. While Facebooks' user engagement time is impressive, if the quality of your page is poor and the value it provides low, visitors will leave your page, never to return again.

Your page must provide value - engagement, entertainment or education - pick 1, 2 or all 3, but provide genuinely valuable content.

There are so many content options available: 3rd party applications, news streams, videos, games, FAQs, blog feeds and the list goes on. Invest the time in creating valuable content.


2. Tagging
Everyone loves to see their own name up in lights, the viral power of Facebooks' news feeds help spread the word.

Uploading and tagging pictures and videos of company events that feature your customers, team members, partners, suppliers and even competitors will dramatically extend your reach by featuring in their personal newsfeeds.


3. Competitions & Sweepstakes
Facebook users love competitions, and lets face it, who doesn't want to win something for nothing? Many brands, both large and small, have successfully used competitions and sweepstakes to grow huge fan bases on Facebook.

Competitions that include a tagging element (like Dunkin Donuts recent Keep It Coolatta promotion) are a great way to get fans engaging with your brand and virally spread the good word on your business.

The are some great Facebook Apps available to help you quickly build and launch a Facebook competition, one we work with is WildfireApp. So no matter what size your business is there is no reason why you can't successfully run a your own competition on Facebook.

Like any new medium there is still so much for brands to learn to truly harness the full potential of Facebook.

If you have had experience and learned some lessons on using Facebook for business I'd love to hear your comments?