Partners Blog
What's new @ Google? Tips and tools for agencies
Get local with the Local Business Center newsletter
Monday, August 31, 2009
Have you ever wanted more information about the traffic that your clients' Local Business Listings receive? How many people are seeing their listings? What are people searching for to find them? Wonder no more: You can learn how to use the new Dashboard within the Local Business Center to answer those questions in the inaugural issue of the
Local Business Center newsletter
.
In the newsletter, you'll also find tips and tricks for optimizing your clients' listings, adding driving directions to a website, and more. To subscribe,
log in
to your Local Business Center account and check the box next to "Newsletters" on the Settings tab.
Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
For those (agencies) about to rock, we salute you
Thursday, August 27, 2009
With
Advertising Week
less than a month away, we're excited to announce that voting for the
YouTube Battle of the Ad Bands
is now open. This competition puts the industry's finest -- musically speaking -- in the spotlight for a chance to be known as advertising's rock 'n' roll kingpins.
Last September, McCann Erickson brought down the house and took home the coveted trophy. Who will emerge as this year's champion? Wunderman with
their rendition
of AC/DC's "Live Wire"?
Lowe NY's version
of The Kinks's "You Really Got Me"? It's up to you!
RCKBAND, from Digitas, with their own take on a-ha's "Take on Me"
An independent committee from the Association of Music Producers (AMP) has narrowed the field down to 8-10 bands and singers (see
official rules and regulations
on Advertising Week's site), and your votes will decide which entrants make it to the finals.
So vote for your favorite act on the official
Advertising Week YouTube channel
until September 7. The bands with the most votes will live out their rock fantasies at YouTube Battle of the Ad Bands at the
Highline Ballroom
on September 22 in New York.
Posted by Kristin Kovner, Industry Marketing Manager
Go fish with "Cast a Wide Net" webinar recording
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Last month, we hosted a webinar highlighting new strategies to help you get the most from Google Content Network. I am pleased to share that a
recording
of this session is now available for on-demand viewing.
The webinar provides insight into contextual targeting and reviews strategies and tools to help clients expand their reach while keeping their ROI constant. In addition, it walks you step-by-step through how to "cast a wide net" to enhance existing Content Network campaigns and streamline new campaign creation.
Interested in more webinars and on-demand trainings like this? Check out upcoming sessions on the
National Agency Training site
.
Posted by Melissa Porter, Agency Training
Quality Score resource: Search ads quality guide
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
It's that time of the year again, when kids dust off their textbooks and head back to the classroom. In the spirit of learning, we wanted to help you make the grade on Quality Score knowledge with the
Search Ads Quality Getting Started Guide
. The guide covers a range of topics relating to Quality Score, including how it
affects your rank
, how it
affects your cost-per-click
, and
how to improve it
. You'll even hear from our Chief Economist, Hal Varian, on how the ad auction works.
Use it to learn, refresh, or review the foundations of Quality Score. You may even want to share it with clients to help them understand how their ads are shown on Google.com.
Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
Business to Business Spotlight: Reaching B2B decision makers
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
I am pleased to bring you post #4 of our semi-regular
industry spotlight series
. This month we're looking at the B2B space, focusing specifically on where small business decision makers go for information on services and suppliers, and how this insight can help inform marketing strategies for your B2B clients.
To better understand the role of the Internet to small businesses, Google and
Slack Barshinger
surveyed purchase decision makers from 444 companies, ranging in size from 1 employee to 499 employees. The survey, conducted online from March 11-13, 2009, focused on finding answers to four main questions:
1. What is the role of the Web overall?
The Web plays a central role in small business owners' activities, whether it be solving business problems, researching business purchases, or paying for the purchases. Overall, 94% of respondents shared that they use the Internet for work-related activities.
2. What is the role of Search in finding suppliers?
Over 3/4 of respondents turn to search engines to find business suppliers, with 52% sharing that this is the first tool to which they turn. In addition 99% find search engines to be the most effective tool for finding suppliers.
3. How is Local Search used?
About 1 in 5 respondents use maps online to find suppliers. Of those who do, 90% go directly to a map site for their search, while 52% click on a map from a search result.
The majority of respondents, though, do not place a high importance on suppliers being local. Through qualitative interviews, we discovered that competitive pricing and availability were the most important to SMBs. Services that respondents feel are more important to be local are Professional Services (42% say it is important to be local), Contractors (38%), and Printing Services (24%).
4. What is the value of Social Media?
Respondents find business value in social media, with around 1/2 sharing that they use online forums, blogs, social networking site and video sites for business purposes. Video site usage ranges from finding customer feedback (30%), to finding competitor research (35%), to watching how-to videos (46%).
In addition, blogging participation more than doubled to 40% in 2009 (compared to 18% in 2008) and 40% of respondents maintain a social network profile for business reasons.
Conclusion
With the Internet playing a key role in small business owners' day-to-day problem-solving and decision making, it is important for your B2B clients to have a multi-faceted online marketing strategy.
To maximize reach on search engines, turn to tools such as the
Search-based Keyword Tool
and
Wonder wheel
. These tools can help you identify search queries at different stages of the purchase funnel, whether they be long-tail keywords entered by users who start their decision-making process on a search engine, or branded keywords entered by users looking for specific products or services.
Next, having your clients upload their business listings through the
Local Business Center
can cost-effectively capture traffic from users specifically searching for local vendors.
Finally, make the most of
YouTube
and the
Google Content Network
. Create a
YouTube channel
, upload a client's videos then drive traffic with
Promoted Videos
. Use
Ad Planner
to identify social networking sites within the Google Content Network that reach your target demographic.
Posted by Leslie Hernandez, B2B Marketing
A taste of social media from SES San Jose
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Last week at
SES San Jose
, Google and YouTube, in conjunction with ClickZ, hosted the
first-ever Social Media & Video Strategies Forum
.
Attendees got the inside scoop from
Forrester's Nate Elliott
, as well as from H&R Block and Digg marketers, and learned how Coldwell Banker is
going social at a global level
. For those of you who couldn't make the trip out to San Jose, here are some key messages from the sessions:
Know your audience.
Before you set out to engage users via social media, know where your users already are. As Nate Elliott reminded us, you only have permission to ask users to extend what they're already doing. If your audience isn't on Twitter, don't ask them to submit tweets; if your audience isn't active on social networks, don't develop a strategy around growing a Facebook friends list for your brand.
Have an objective.
Marketers and agencies echoed each other: the best social media campaigns have clear objectives at the outset. Whether it is awareness, consideration, or sales, having a clearly defined objective can help inform the social media campaign you choose to create.
Make your videos discoverable.
With 20 hours of content being uploaded to YouTube every minute, search becomes an important discovery tool for users. Tag and name your video smartly. Include detailed descriptions of your video's content -- including key text or time codes for important moments. Your description gives the algorithm more data to work with. According to marketers like
Zagg
,
Promoted Videos
is an efficient way to drive views, and lets you bring your search prowess to the video space.
Think beyond the web.
TV ads can drive search and increase your bottom line. Marketers like
ooVoo
are bringing their video creative offline with Google TV Ads to drive results. And what if you don't have video content? Services like
Spot Mixer
can help build it for you.
Behind-the-scenes interviews with many of the day's presenters have been added to the
SES Channel on YouTube
, so take a look, and we hope to see you next year!
Posted by Kristin Kovner, Industry Marketing Manager
Google Website Optimizer in 60 seconds
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
With Google Website Optimizer, you can test different versions of your client's website in order to see which design converts best. But if you need help identifying which pages to test (and only have about a minute to learn how), check out this Website Optimizer in 60 seconds video.
You'll learn how to use Google Analytics to identify the right pages to test with Website Optimizer, such as places where potential customers are leaving your client's site. For more Website Optimizer videos, visit the
Website Optimizer YouTube Channel
.
Posted by Agency Ad Solutions Blog Team
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