It’s a new world these days when we think of businesses.  If people didn’t trust corporations & the financial industry 10 years ago, what must they think of them now?  The only way to earn back the trust of the masses is by doing business transparently.

Comedian Louis CK showed us all this week how much that point drives-home with all of us.  On December 9^th, Louis released an online comedy special which he produced, promoted, and without utilizing any distribution channels (RIAA and MPAA).  For the cost of $5.00, you could download his comedy special which has no DRM(Digital rights management) or regional restrictions & comes with the freedom of 100% ownership.

“The experiment was: if I put out a brand new standup special at a drastically low price ($5) and make it as easy as possible to buy, download and enjoy, free of any restrictions, will everyone just go and steal it? Will they pay for it? And how much money can be made by an individual in this manner?”

In the age of P2P & Torrent networks, would there even be enough people in the world paying $5.00 to cover production costs?  The result was staggering.  In just 12 days, Louis CK’s special grossed over $1 million dollars.  That’s over 200,000 paid downloads.

Continuing the transparency with his customers, the comedian released the following statement:

“I’ve never had a million dollars all of a sudden and since we’re all sharing this experience and since it’s really your money, I wanted to let you know what I’m doing with it. People are paying attention to what’s going on with this thing. So I guess I want to set an example of what you can do if you all of a sudden have a million dollars that people just gave to you directly because you told jokes.”

250k is going to pay back what the special cost to produce and the website to build.

250k is going back to his staff and the people who work for him on the special and on his show.

280k is going to a few different charities

220k is going to Louis CK

It’s not often that you feel so good about a person making a million dollars in 12 days without despising them just a little bit.  It’s interesting how our perspective changes when people are open & candid with you.

We have heard from many of our clients over the years who have worked with other Search Marketing Agencies. We have heard how they are neither given ownership nor logins to their own accounts, shown key data metrics from the actual interfaces, nor ever presented with auditable billing information.  Why is this not shared? Is there something to hide?

Engine Ready prides itself on our transparency.  We will walk our clients through each search engine and show how each dime is spent, each refund attained, and when the time comes, transfer ownership and  logins for every account we built or managed (if they didn’t have it already).

It’s your money and you have stake in how it is spent.

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There are many PPC account managers out there who are so tied to their original campaign structures that their account performance remains stagnant or even falters in the ever changing landscape of search engine marketing.

Whether it be out of fear or pride, we cannot expect a campaign which was created a year or more ago to still be relevant today.  Trendy strategies which were developed under different rules (such as Quality Score), under different economic conditions and under different webpage designs may now be inhibiting the goal of continued growth within a PPC account.

When an account starts to slip, strategies no longer work, CPA & CPC increases – You need to ask yourself… When is enough, enough?

I chose a late verse out of the song ‘In the Year 2525′- By Zager & Evans, to illustrate the concept:

In the year 8510
God’s gonna shake his mighty head
He’ll either say I’m pleased where man has been
Or tear it down and start again

The song has to do with the evolution of man from his original ‘design’ and how, overtime, that design lost relevance.  Ultimately towards the end of the song man is wiped away. The last verse begins with the same lyrics as the 1^st verse – Thus restarting the cycle.

Visit the following links for the YouTube Video and Song Lyrics: Lyrics / Video

How does this relate? – Don’t be afraid to take your account, tear it down, and start again. Reevaluate the structure keywords, negatives, ad creative, grouping and overall account structure and begin it all over again.  You have learned many things over the past year, now re-apply that to a structure more conducive to those strategies.

Google allows you to undelete any/all campaigns which made it into an account; don’t allow fear to be the reason inhibiting you from making drastic changes.  Don’t fear that your historical data will start from scratch, if you need it, you can still run a manual.  Don’t allow your pride to get the best of you.  That masterpiece you constructed in Google over so many countless hours may now be at time in which to say goodbye to.  “Pride is a personal commitment. It is an attitude which separates excellence from mediocrity.” – Unknown

I can affirm to you – Your beloved keyword history/click-discount WILL translate into your new campaigns.  Of the dozen or so times I have used this strategy, it has been effective for me 100% of the time.  Below are the performance changes of my last rebuild. An ever increasing average CPC was our main challenge to overcome.  We rebuilt it, started our keywords at a much lower CPC, and adjusted it up form there based on its new performance starting on July 22nd, 2009.

This is the 3rd rebirth of this account.  It is built to address the world of today, not of yesterday.

Account Structure, PPC

One of my favorite movies growing up was Weird Science. I recall watching the film for the first time with my babysitter back in the 80s. Thanks to Netflix, I was reminded of this classic a few days ago and, as strange as it sounds, thoughts about the movie have popped into my head since. “What is the name of the actress who played the female lead?” “I was way too young to be watching a rated PG-13 movie” “I wonder if the premise of building a perfect woman from a computer infuriated 1980s feminists” and sitting at my desk today at work “what if I could build the perfect something”. And that last thought brought me to today’s posting idea: the perfect PPC Advertiser Platform.

Obviously there are other things I would like to make first if I could, such as my dream home or an amazing car, but an awesome PPC advertiser platform would diminish a lot of frustrations as far as my work is concerned.

A powerful Account Editor with Real-Time Stats

Don’t get me wrong, the Google Adwords editor is pretty great. Editing keywords, creating ad text, and just plain account organization is easy and efficient thanks to this desktop application. It is one of the main reasons I enjoy working with my Google accounts over other pay per click accounts. Although the Google editor is a huge time saver, what is the deal with the “Choose Stats Interval” feature? I hate it that I can only go back 30 days and the data hardly ever loads anyways. Basically, it’s a waste of space. In my perfect creation of an account editor, I would be able to pull live statistics for any date range.

Transparent Bidding

I remember the devastation that my colleagues and I felt the day transparent bidding died in Yahoo. That was always one thing we could all agree on: Yahoo’s bidding model exemplified a market that was reflected supply and demand principals. It was nice to know why my ad moved down in position and having the option of outbidding someone in order to get that position again. And unlike Quality Score, at least ad positioning and keyword pricing was straight forward. As long as Quality Score is determined in part by “other relevance factors”, I would prefer transparent bidding because at least I know exactly what is determining my minimum bid and ad position.

Phone Call Tracking

In general, conversion numbers are pretty dismal when it comes to selling high ticket items online. I think consumers continue to feel uncomfortable about using a credit card online to buy expensive goods and services. They also might have questions to ask the retailer before spending their last month’s paycheck. Although many ecommerce websites are now tracking lead forms or contact form submissions as separate actions, I am not aware of many websites that are tracking call-ins generated through PPC. Tracking this piece of information is important for keyword and advertisement evaluation because decreasing a bid for a keyword that doesn’t appear to be converting may not be the best move. That particular keyword could be generating a huge number of call-ins from interested customers. Having call-in information available in reporting would allow PPC marketers to see the true value of each keyword and advertisement.

Believe me, this list could go on. Quality scores column added to reports, customized cookie length and more precise ad scheduling would be great too. Clearly, there are numerous other elements that would make up a “perfect” PPC advertising platform, but these are the main three features I would personally love to see the next time I log in to an account.

Adwords, PPC, Quality Score

A few months back, Google sent me Survey request email.  Normally I ignore them, basically because Im fairly content with the current state of customer service and usability of the systems.  But this time Google offered a Free Gift. Who wouldn’t give 15 min of their time for free Google Schwag? So I participated.

3 weeks later I get a package:

Being an avid outdoors enthusiast, I was ecstatic that I got a quality product with Google plastered over it!  This will go great with my: Crank Flashlight/Radio, Frisbee, Lava Lamp, USB drive, T-shirts and various other chotchskies they’ve given me over the years.

I was however dismayed to find out that Google was in-fact trying to scramble my brain, prevent me from having children, and ultimately kill me!  You see, I just recently read a report about Bisphenol contained in polycarbonate plastics and learned that:

“BPA mimics estrogens, binding to the same receptors throughout the human body as natural female hormones. And tests have shown that the chemical can promote human breast cancer cell growth as well as decrease sperm count in rats, among other effects.”

Any plastic which you encounter with a #7 listed on the bottom should be avoided.

Normaly I would be eating my red M&M’s & washing it down with my Google bottle full of milk, but I really believe that this one is not good for you. I’m not sure why companies are making products out of this material but perhaps they could use some sort of a lead-based paint to seal the Bisphenol in and prevent it from seeping into the water.  Hmm… I’m sure they could outsourse the reconditioning to one of the many reputable manufacuring companies in Bejing for next to nothing.

Do no Evil pshaw!  I shall destroy my water bottle and save my brain cells so that I might find new and more innovating ways of lowering our clients average CPC.

Your move Google.

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