Blog Archive

Archive for the ‘PPC’ Category

Omniture & Facebook

Tuesday, March 9th, 2010

At Nina Hale Inc, many of our clients use social media ads, particularly Facebook, to reach their target audience and connect with social media users. The reporting currently available through Facebook leaves a lot to be desired. We’ve searched high and low for opportunties to improve reporting for our clients and provide more actionable data to help increase this engagement in this channel.

Now for our Omniture clients there is good news! 

In May 2009, Omniture announced an exciting partnership with Facebook.  Just last week they announced that they are expanding on that partnership with Facebook (and apps) to include analytics capabilities. The SearchCenter Plus product, available to SiteCatalyst customers, will initially focus on automating the media buying process and access to analytics that measure consumer engagement on Facebook.  The idea is to make it even easier for clients to purchase ad space as well as compare metrics alongside their other media channels with a tool they are familiar with using. 

Some of the key features of the partnership will give clients the ability to:

  • Gain deeper insights into user behavior throughout Facebook apps—Improve the overall user experience and conversion
  • Understand how apps “go viral” amongst Facebook users
  • Segment users by number of friends and categorize these segments by social activity performed to better understand adoption rate
  • Correlate Facebook reports and key events with other online channel reports such as Web, mobile, video, etc.
  • Tools to understand how these channels are impacting conversion
  • Measure 100% of Facebook apps including: FBML, iFrame and Flash-based apps
This tool will streamline the ad buying process and reporting for SiteCatalyst customers and may make it much easier for hesitant marketers to make the leap in allocating budget to the wildly popular social networking site. 
 

While we know not all of our clients are using Omniture now, we see this as a great step forward and hope that Google Analytics follows suit.

 

Google, are you listening?

 

 

Sources:
Washington Post
Omniture.com

Posted in Analytics, PPC, Social Media | No Comments »

Great Results for Our Clients!

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

Wow, how fabulous is this screen shot of a bunch of our clients Google Analytics accounts? Almost everyone is way up, and a lot of those are from Search – both organic and paid. Everyone’s been working hard for our clients and it shows!

]Google Analytics Screen Shot

Posted in Analytics, PPC, SEM, SEO | 1 Comment »

More to Love with Google AdWords Editor

Sunday, November 29th, 2009

I have have to drop in a comment about how much I love the Google AdWords Editor for PPC management. The reason is because they are always adding small improvements that display a constant awareness of how SEM campaigns are built, managed and optimized. Case in point: to optimize well, it’s a good idea to run search query reports that show you the keywords that people actually used that resulted in a click to the site (and hence a charge). These often reveal irrelevant keywords so you need to add them to a "negative" list to filter them out of the keywords you pay for your ads to show on. Any-who, when adding these new keywords, you have to add them to each campaign. Sometimes you want to add them indiviudally to campaigns or adgroups, but sometimes they apply to the whole account. In the past I would copy and paste to each campaign. But a small enhancement makes it easier to add across campaigns. 

AdWords Editor is filled with all these small considerations, some of which make it much easier, and others you just save a few minutes. But it shows a remarkable attention to all those little things that make optimization easier. Now after my little love note, do you think they’ll wear my letter jacket?

Google adwords editor improvement

Posted in Google, PPC, SEM | No Comments »

Facebook PPC Ads – Case Study from Minneapolis SEM

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
We don’t just like Pocket Hercules because one of the partners is my brother-in-law. We like them because they create memorable, impactful ads. Heck I still remember some Ikea ads from the reel Tom showed us all about 10 years ago. Pocket Hercules was just named “Midwest Small Agency of the Year” (2009) by Advertising Age. I went down to the Pocket Hercules offices this winter, and over lunch helped them launch a PPC test on Facebook. The story goes like this:
 

Facebook PPC Case Study –
Pocket Hercules & Schell’s Lakemaid Beer

 
Challenge
Pocket Hercules’ client Schell’s wanted to sell a new line of beer called “Lakemaid Beer” which features fresh-water mermaids.  It can be hard to get noticed with a new beer, even with a beer-drinking nymph on the bottle. But once people saw and drank the beer, they were “hooked.” One of the tactics was to create a Facebook page that featured their sharp wit and hilarious videos. But now how to get fans?
 
Lakemaid Facebook PPC
 
Solution
We launched a one-month test using Facebook PPC advertising to target the appropriate demographic and interest groups on Facebook. Using the imagery and irreverence of the brand, the ads encouraged people to watch the videos and become fans of Lakemaid Beer.
 
Results
In one month and only $300 in ad fees, the Lakemaid fan page grew from 60 fans to over 600. They currently top 1,000 fans.
 
 
Facebook advertising is easy to launch and can be inexpensive to test. Nina Hale, Inc. recommends and generally tests Facebook for most of our B2C clients. 
 

 

Posted in PPC, Social Media | No Comments »

Google Bid Estimator Tool

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

Google has a new bid estimator feature that is pretty cool. Reminds me of the old Yahoo days when you knew exactly how much each competitor was bidding on keywords.To find it: when you are adjusting individual bids, there is a tiny squiggly line next to some of the keywords. When you click on it, it will give you an estimate of how many impressions you’ll get depending on your bid. Yes, there are elements of "the best answer is to bid higher!" However, there is some nice directional advice, and often you’ll realize that you really don’t have to spend a huge amount to be #2 and get almost the same impressions. 

                   Bid estimator tool in Google AdWords.

 

 

Posted in PPC, SEM | No Comments »

Sponsored PPC ads in Google search suggestions

Saturday, May 30th, 2009

I noticed this morning that Google put a sponsored result into the suggested searches that populate when you start a search. The implications for this are the same as with Chrome: having the #1 spot in Adwords takes on a much greater role. But it also raises issues of people who are a bit click-happy, and of potentially wasting money. I was looking for operating hours of the Minneapolis Macy’s, and clicking on this would have been a cannibalization of natural results. This indicates the necessity of careful goal measurement in PPC.

sponsored-links-in-suggested-results

Posted in Analytics, PPC | No Comments »

Fundamentals of PPC Advertising

Sunday, April 5th, 2009

Two of my favorite things, the MIMA summit and paid-search are coming together. I’ll be presenting on PPC in the fundamentals track at the MIMA summit this October 5. The MIMA summit is hands-down the best conference on interactive marketing for the money, and one of the best in the country at any price. It sold out way too quickly last year, but they’ve moved the location and it will be at the Hilton this year and I think will have larger capacity. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to talk about PPC and hope people will find it very useful.

Posted in PPC | No Comments »