Yahoo and Microsoft have merged their PPC – you can save £800

08/05/2012 By

So it’s finally happened!

After several years of waiting we can now report that for almost all our clients there’s no longer any traffic being reported by the Yahoo PPC management platform – it’s all coming in via Microsoft Adcenter. This is great news because it means that to advertise on both Bing and Yahoo (plus a few others) you now only need to run one PPC account. That makes advertising on Yahoo and Bing much more accessible to smaller businesses.

It also means that the traffic is going to be coming in faster, meaning accounts can be optimised faster. Optimisation is the process of making the account drive you the right traffic at the right price – so the quicker that can be done the better.

What you need to do:

If you’ve already got a Yahoo account you need to go through the migration process asap to make sure your ads will still appear on Yahoo.

If you’ve already got a Microsoft Adcenter account – you need to review it to make sure you’re making the most of the new traffic coming through.

Or if you’ve got neither – now’s the time to test out the new combined platform.

Special Offer for May Only:

May is a great time to talk to us about Yahoo/Bing as in honour of the merger finally happening we’re offering free account set up (or migration) to anyone who signs up for 3 months.*

So if in May 2012 you sign up to us managing your Microsoft Adcenter PPC activity for just 3 months, we’ll do all the set up work for you for free (worth at least £800). As our Microsoft Adcenter Management service starts from just £200 / month - it’s an offer not to be missed. To take advantage of the offer today, or to find out more please contact us.*

  • Phone: 01865 980 630
  • email: info@indiumonline.co.uk
  • Or fill in our contact us form

* Terms and Conditions: You must sign a contract for 3 months (or longer) of one of our Yahoo and Microsoft PPC Management packages. The contract must be signed in May 2012. All set up activity will be done for free. We reserve the right to withdraw this offer at any time.

Filed Under: Editorials, indium News, PPC Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Cookie Law Thoughts

25/04/2012 By

The Cookie Laws have created a confusing situation for all website owners in the EU (and technically the whole world!). There are pages and pages of comment online trying to interpret what needs to be done to be compliant – and as yet no clear answer. The key point of the UK version is that you need “prior consent” of a user in order to drop “non-essential” cookies on them. Prior consent is easy to understand, but hard to implement. There are hundreds of interpretations of what counts as an “essential” cookie. Cookies are dropped at a machine level not a user level. And the UK law is only applicable to people sat in the UK, for site visitors from France you have to obey the French regulations etc.

It’s tempting to see this as another PCI DSS, or 3D Secure. But it’s worse – at least with them it was black and white what needed to be done to be compliant. The penalties for not being compliant are big (£500k), but the ICO doesn’t have the resources to prosecute lots of companies – it will be interesting to see if they prosecute anyone.

Consumers don’t know what cookies are, and results so far show massive drops in tracked traffic (analytics tracking down 90%) when an opt in is required. So as yet almost no-one has gone live with their interpretation of compliance. If on the 26th May Amazon, Tesco, eBay, The Times and the BBC all put in place a Cookie Opt-in box before you can access the websites then it’s likely that within 12 months consumers will be surprised when they don’t see the opt-in on a website. But if none of them appear to do anything, then what should smaller businesses be doing?

To understand what we should do I think you have to go back to core ideal behind the legislation – which was to protect individuals from having their data abused. So step one of any approach to becoming compliant has to be to find out what cookies your website is dropping (just Google “Cookie Audit Tool” and you’ll see a list of free and paid options). Then you can work out which you don’t need and remove them (some businesses have found this a really useful exercise to increase site speed), work out which are essential, and finally those you need to get permission for. Step two – you need to review the privacy policies on your site, make sure they’re accurate and easy to find. Step three is to document what you’re doing and the decisions you’re making. Step four depends on what you found in the audit.

Key resources:

Filed Under: Editorials Tagged With:

Successfully Adapting to Facebook Timelines

14/03/2012 By

Last week I blogged about what you need to do to get your Facebook Business Page ready for the Timeline changeover. Now that blog post was focused on what you HAVE to do to keep your Page looking good. But there’s a few other areas you also need to consider to make sure your Page keeps performing for you. Below I’m going to run through what those areas are, and give you some ideas too.

Fan-Gating is Dead

Fan-Gating is (was!) presenting a page to non-Likers of your page that suggested they couldn’t do anything until they Liked you.

That’s now not an option because the landing page can’t be changed – everyone arrives on the timeline view. This was an essential tactic to growing a Pages’ Likes, which is probably why Argos haven’t yet upgraded their page to Timeline:

argos fan-gate

So, how do I keep growing my Fans?

  • On Facebook you should make your most compelling content really obvious – put it in the Favourites bar, and Pin the best/most recent post about it to the top. (instructions on all this are in last week’s post)
  • What you do away from Facebook is now even more important, you need to make sure you’ve got prominent Like buttons on your website and throughout your other marketing

Everyone lands on the Timeline

As well as not being able to Fan-Gate this change means you can’t direct people to your YouTube tab, or images tab, or any other tab actually – everyone will land on the Timeline.

So you need to make sure the content you want to drive people to is easy to find. Again this relies on getting that content into your Favourites bar and Pinning important posts to the top.

 

Classic Sailing Facebook Pinned Post

Classic Sailing have "pinned" their strong offer on an Easter course to the top of their page.

So, what I put in the Favourites is really important… how do I choose?

Well, in the Favourites strip there are 4 buttons. The first one is always Photos, the other 3 you can choose and select an image for and rename. So make the most of the Favourites bar you need to:

  1. Make sure you have some good images – Photos is going to be first so you need to have something in there
  2. Decide what the balance is for you between interaction with existing fans AND recruiting new fans
  3. Fill your favourites bar accordingly, here’s some examples:

 

Garden Trading favourites bar

Garden Trading are using 2/3 of their favourites bar to target Likes, and the rest to advertise an event that's coming up.

manchester united facebook faves

Manchester United are using their Favourites bar to encourage even greater engagement with fans by encouraging them to sign up for the App.

 

Family Guy Favourites

Here Family Guy is using the Facebook strip to encourage visitors to interact with other Fox shows and the polls and quizes in the App.

Hopefully these examples give you some ideas of what you could do with your Facebook Timeline Page.

Please share your Facebook Pages once they’re updated below!

Filed Under: Editorials, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , , , ,

Get your Facebook Page ready for Timelines (deadline 30th March 2012)

08/03/2012 By

On March 30th Facebook will automatically change all Pages to the new Timeline format. This will change your Page from:

Facebook Before Page Timelines

Before

Facebook Page After auto Timeline update

After automatic update

So if you don’t do anything…. your Page is not going to look great, in fact it’s going to look a little empty, and sad!

With a little bit of effort though you can quickly get your Page looking great again!

Your Facebook Page Timeline MUST DO Checklist is:

  • Cover Photo
  • Profile Picture (logo)
  • Edit your “Favourites”

You can also do a lot more besides, so to take advantage of the new Timelines you should:

  • Add your company milestones
  • Highlight key posts

So, how do you do all of this?

Well the first step is to click the “Preview” button – from here you can see what your Page will look like in Timeline format and edit it. You can then publish once you’re ready (or if you don’t publish Facebook will publish it for you on March 30th).

Facebook Page Timeline Update Warning

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorials, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: , ,

Don’t Mention the “O” Word!

01/02/2012 By

It’s that time of the year when all good marketers are looking at what’s coming up that we can tie our marketing activity into. And 2012 is packed full of opportunities:

  • Golden Jubilee
  • Extra Bank Holidays
  • London 2012
  • …

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorials, General Marketing, News

Why Remarketing is a Must-Do for 2012

25/01/2012 By

If I told you I could identify the people on your website who left without buying, and then I could get them back to your site again to buy – you’d be interested wouldn’t you?

Well that’s exactly what remarketing (or retargeting in some circles) enables you to do. With a cunning implementation of cookies, a little marketing know-how and a Google Adwords account you can be remarketing to your “lost” customers in no time at all.

Why Remarketing in 2012?

Well, it’s been around for over a year now – so it’s not because it’s just arrived. There are a number of reasons remarketing should fit really well in any 2012 marketing plan:

  • in this economic climate you need to maximise the return on your marketing spend – by remarketing to people you’ve already paid to get your website you’re improving the performance of ALL your marketing activity
  • it should be really profitable – as you’re advertising to people who are already interested in your brand
  • the fear factor has gone – LOTS of companies are doing it now, so consumers are used to seeing the ads of sites they’ve been too – you don’t need to be scared of what your customers will think
  • you can be very clever with it…. show pictures of women’s clothing to those who looked at womenswear and men’s clothing to those who looked at menswear – so it gets very targeted
  • you can use to reduce abandoned baskets – advertise just to those who’ve created a basket but not checked out
  • you can… well there’s a lot you can do, based on your business and your website structure

We think remarketing is going to bring great results for those who use it in 2012 – if you want to be among them get in contact and we’ll be happy to discuss how it could work for you.

Filed Under: Advertising, Editorials, PPC Marketing Tagged With: , ,

SEO 2012 – the death of linkbuilding?

11/01/2012 By

In late 2011 (and continuing in 2012) Google made so many changes that affect the SERPs (search engine results page) that I believe 2012 will see the end of pure linkbuilding, in favour of social, PR and brand awareness tactics.

So, where did linkbuilding fit into SEO in 2011?

In 2011 and before, Linkbuilding (the process of getting other websites to link to your website) was central to any plan to climb the SERPs. Broadly speaking the site with the most and/or best links going to it would come top.

The end game of any SEO activity is to get more (and better quality) traffic to the website. If everyone who searches for your keyword sees the same results, then it follows that having the most links and being as position no. 1 is where you’ll get the most traffic.

So it was key to any SEO strategy to work on increasing that number of links, employing a wide range of methods to do so.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorials, News, Search Marketing, SEO Marketing Tagged With: , , ,

How to Create a Simple, Effective Online Marketing Plan – ECMOD Presentation

08/12/2011 By

Last week I spoke at the ECMOD conference in London’s Business Design Centre.

My session was a practical run through of how to create a simple, effective online marketing plan. So we ran through:

  • what an online marketing plan is
  • how to audit your current activity
  • how to work out what your “gap” is – the gap between what you think will happen with natural growth vs your objectives
  • how to fill that gap (the really important bit!)
  • and how to measure performance and change your strategy as you need to

You can find the full presentation here, including my little bonus of my top online marekting tactics you should be considering in 2012.

If you’d like to know more or have a chat about your online marketing plans please get in contact.

Chloe

Filed Under: Editorials, General Marketing, indium News Tagged With: , , , ,

New Google Analytics – what’s it all about?

28/11/2011 By

If you’ve logged into your Google Analytics account recently you’ll have seen it’s had a bit of a makeover. Well, it’s actually a bit more than that – so in this post I’m going to run through the best bits and how they can benefit you.

Before we delve into the new stuff though – they’ve also changed the navigation structure so if you can’t find something try switching tabs:

analytics nav tabs

Within the “Home” tab you’ll find:

  • The Dashboard – and you create new dashboards
  • Intelligence Events – where you can set up alerts
  • Real-Time (more on that below)

Within “Standard Reporting” you’ll find all the normal analytics stuff we all love:

  • Visitors
  • Traffic
  • Content
  • Conversions – which includes Ecommerce, Goals and Funnels.
  • Advertising (where they’ve moved Adwords)

And “Custom Reporting” is now being encouraged as it’s got its own tab too.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorials, General Marketing, News Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Google+ a Quick Guide

25/11/2011 By

There are lots and lots of posts out there about how you can use Google+ to do x or y or z. There are even a number of ebooks available already! But I haven’t yet found a good simple guide that explains just what Google+ is, so here’s my attempt to that for you – feedback in the comments section please!

So, quickly, what is Google+

It’s a “social network” run by Google.

Essentially a way for Google to get all of us to be logged in, so they give us a better experience because they know who we are…

So increasingly existing Google stuff is migrating into it (just as some existing Google stuff is currently being culled).

Plus there’s the CORE of Google+ – your personal Google+ page, your circles of friends, and any Pages you set up.
And then there’s the +1 button – how you can signal all over the place what you like.

How does it work?

At the moment it’s a bit like Facebook, with some differentiating bits (that Facebook’s fast copying). The 2 biggest differences to Facebook:

  1. Circles – you can easily segment your connections using ‘circles’ – and then define which segments can see what about you
  2. Hangouts – a way to have an open webinar / video conference call with your friends

What about Google+ Pages?

Google+ Pages are rather like Facebook Pages – in that they’re how businesses have a presence on Google+.

At the moment they don’t have the functionality of a Facebook Page – but I’m sure that will come.

Should I create a Google+ Page for my business?

Yes.

2 reasons:

  1. You’ll be reserving your space on Google+, so no one can squat in it
  2. Google (biggest search engine in the world) are allowing you (for free) to create a Page on Google about your business – with LINKS. So it’s an SEO no brainer

The Plus 1 Button….?

OK, as well as being able to add plus 1 buttons to your website – they’re now appearing in Google search results.

plus one button on ppc adSo when you’re logged in and you click a plus 1 button you are recommending that page.

Google is using that information to inform what you see in your tailored search results, and your friends will see it in Google+.

So put it everywhere. It is going to have an impact on seo as well as social media.

So, be honest, how much time should you invest in Google+ right now?

The numbers of people active on it aren’t anywhere near the other social networks and Google haven’t shown their hand fully yet – there is much still to be revealed.

So it’s not yet worth (for the average business) getting heavily into it. BUT it will be influencing your search performance, and customers will start to use it – with or without you. So you need to make sure you’ve got it set up.

So you should:

  • Create a profile
  • Create a Page for you Business
  • Add the Plus 1 Button to your website – and if you’re ecommerce add it to every product
    (and at the same time add a Facebook Like button and a twitter sharing button)

Once all that’s done – just keep an eye on it all. And keep an eye open for further updates.

Filed Under: Editorials, Search Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With: ,
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