A question to ask here is: when is the last time you attended or even heard about a such an open, accessible, and informal meeting with representatives from a company as large, pervasive (as in embedded/utilized/available/etc.), and important as Google? These folks from Google, execs and evangelists, engineers and public affairs managers, wanted to meet with actual users of their professional systems. This is a company that operates under a microscope, with no end of analysis and press coverage, who decided to go around these sources of broadcast information to interact with real people.
This was not a focus group or some kind of measured and cross-referenced experiment. This was an environment to have interesting and relaxed conversations, to hear frustrations, suggestions, and praise. This was an environment for no-pressure networking between people, local and out-of-town, Google and non-Google.
I have a hope that Google will be able to pull off these kinds of meetings across the country, and hopefully even back in Boston. Due to Google’s extreme popularity, I think that this might be difficult unless they are prepared to put a cap on the number of attendees. I personally couldn’t believe that the event was for real and that I managed to get in. I know that many people who attended this event are eager for the next one and would sign up for it as soon as they hear about it. Count me in – I can’t wait for it to happen.
I also have a hope that other companies would follow Google’s example and provide this kind of access, it’s in their own best interests, it’s proof of availability, and it’s proof of goodwill.
It seems like a million years ago but back in December I did a presentation about web analytics for members of a local technology collaborative. One of the members of the audience was Diane Sabato, a professor in the business school at Springfield Technical Community College. Diane is also very involved with STCC’s Entrepreneurial Institute and has tailored one of her classes so that groups of students team up to help real businesses establish online lead generation using Google AdWords. This was the first time I went onto the old Springfield Armory part of the campus – what great history and what wonderful architecture, I can’t wait to go back and get a tour.
Knowing from my presentation that, as VP of Marketing, I manage several Google AdWord campaigns for Atalasoft, Diane asked me to speak to her class to give them an overview of the platform so this last Tuesday night I dropped by and ended up spending the evening with her class discussing mainly AdWords but also digressing into web analytics, and even Twitter.
I had prepared an outline (below) that was to cover about an hour of Google AdWords basics, but questions from her class led to us creating an actual campaign from scratch as well as answering business-specific lead generation strategies for their clients. The majority of her students asked questions, some of them asked several. I think the informal tone went well and I saw only a couple heads nodding by the end of the 3 hours that we spent together, and I don’t blame them. I can’t thank Diane and her class enough for their time, their patience, and their incredibly focused questions. [If any of the class reads this post, please feel free to email me with follow-up questions: tomdog "AT" gmail.com]
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- What are AdWords? AdWords are for Lead Generation – they aren’t really a part of the Traditional Advertising Mix. Your ads will only be presented to those who are looking for the specific keywords you are targeting. The size and format of the ads prevent any real branding.
- Are there other adwords options? Why go with Google AdWords? Google gets 58.9% of all search queries worldwide, they are distantly followed by Yahoo! at 22% and then MSN at 9%. Take care of the majority of search first – everybody is pressed for time, if you have the bandwidth to take care of these other lead generation venues, their priority is secondary.
- How can you connect AdWords to your business? You will be compiling lists of words that should be core to business. These are terms that shold be integral to the business and its customers.
- We’ve heard the term: Customer Centric. The premise of AdWords is as customer-centric as it gets because it is the customer who is in control, it is the customer who will be typing the words, as they perceive them, about their needs, as they perceive them.
- AdWords force you to think about the customer. Who are these potential customers? Where are they geographically/socially/domographically? How do these prospects talk about themselves, their needs, and the products/services they are interested in? Where do they hang out online? You will have to create customer profiles and customer roles.
- How to get started with Google AdWords:
Don’t be intimidated
You are in control
There is nothing that you can do that is “wrong”
You won’t spend any of your budget until you are ready to
The sooner you open up the interface and start a “fake” campaign, the better
- Start a New Campaign
- Placements vs. Keywords (Content vs. Search) = Do not do placements as a preliminary project
- Start With Keywords
- Choose via language (English I am assuming)
- Choose via location: you will be in better shape if you can do some geo-targetting of your campaign(s)
-Create an Ad:
Headline (25 char)
Description Line 1 (35 char)
Description Line 2 (35 char)
Display URL (35 char)
Destination URL (1024 char)
- Keyword Input (you will need to work closely with your clients to get their keyword list, this is their homework):
Put in your list and pay attention to the “suggested keywords” that appear in the right column
Add the appropriate “suggested keywords”
Pay attention to and review Match Types:
keyword = broad match
“keyword” = match exact phrase
[keyword] = match exact term only
-keyword = don’t match this term
- Hopefully the URL your ad links to will have some kind of action or goal on it: Product/Service Page, Newsletter Sign Up Page – you and your customer/client will need to find some way to measure the success of your ads [As you get more sophisticated, web analytics with conversion measurement should be employed]
- Don’t be intimidated. Just get started. Read as much as you can about the basics. Ask questions.
I December I did a presentation about using web analytics for organization success. The presentation ended up being about 90 minutes long, about 1/2 hour longer than I wanted to but as I do these more often I know I’ll trim the content down to what matters and figure out how to communicate on fewer points more effectively.
I had been trying to do more straightforward and inspiring presentations throughout the year, mainly presenting my analytics findings as well as the performance of blog content created by our engineering staff. I think I did pretty well on those but those were much shorter in lenght, around 25 minutes maximum. To adopt a new attitude about presentations I read Garr Reynolds’ excellent book, “Presentation Zen”, which I hightly recommend to anyone in business. “Presentation Zen” is not just about presentations, it illustrates a philosphy towards information, sharing, transparency, and maybe even, life.
After reading “Presentation Zen” I was really on a roll so I decided to read Nancy Duarte’s“slide:ology”. Duarte is best known for her work in helping create Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” presentation. “slide:ology” is beautifully put together – great use of empty space, nice colors and typeface, but it is a huge project to read this book. The problem I had with “slide:ology” is that it tries to do everything:from technical particulars of slide design to color palettes and texture options, from a primer on font and typeface design to animation. Each of those topics deserve their own books so I felt that “slide:ology” doled out enough information to make you dangerous but not effective. The simplicity of Reynolds’ approach vs. the noise and volume of “slide:ology” made my favorite very obvious.
This post isn’t meant to bash Duarte, I’m sure there a lot of people who have enjoyed this book very much, but in retrospect I should have taken what I learned from Reynolds and ran with that. Reading more took away focus from devoting the time my presentation needed. The first 1/2 of my presentation was great but I just ran out of time and ended up with more text on my slides than I wanted which meant I spent more time talking about each slide which slows everything down and can get boring. When I gave the presentation and found myself in that situation I cut back on what I said and asked if I could go on unless there were questions, this kept the pace going a bit better.
When doing a presentation there is a degree of paranoia and there is a lot of self-criticism after the event so I’m probably harsher than necessary. I think it went well and I can’t wait to do another one. I gave the presentation to the Pioneer Valley Regional Technology Corporation on December 5th at the Springfield Technical College. When the presentation was over, a representative from Springfield Tech asked if I could expand the presentation into a daylong or multiday course and I’m developing it to that end now. I’ll post more as I find out where it’s going. If you have any recommendations on developing coursework, I’d love to hear them.
PR 20/20’s blog post, “10 Public Relations Trends That Will Change The Industry Forever”, is a great little summary of what you should already be doing. Some of them are very basic (Value Based Pricing, Web Development), some of them are a bit harder to address (Mobile Marketing – how does one even begin to develop an initiative for this?), and some are deceptively simple (Measurement).
I highlighted 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, and 10 because the effectiveness of those efforts and their calibration will be determined by #5, Measurement. If the measurement infrastructure isn’t there, and if the time isn’t set aside to gather and analyze the data, it is 100% guaranteed that organization resources: money, and perhaps even more importantly, time, will be spent ineffectively, thus jeopardizing delivering on goals and otherwise undermining the organization’s mission. It could be argued that if you don’t have the time to establish metrics to determine the success of your projects, then you don’t have the time to even begin the engagement of your project.
