At this year’s Software Industry Conference, myself and Sharon Housley (NotePage, Inc.) co-presented a session on Marketing in a Recession. The session went well, yet the feedback we received was fascinating. It turned out that most of the people who attended the talk believed that the worst of the recession was now behind us, and that we had taken our … Read More
What do you mean you haven’t heard of Baidu?
From Wikipedia: “Baidu is the leading Chinese search engine for websites, audio files, and images. Baidu offers 57 search and community services including an online collaboratively-built encyclopedia (Baidu Baike), and a searchable keyword-based discussion forum. In October 2008, Baidu ranked 9th overall in Alexa’s internet rankings. In December 2007 Baidu became the first Chinese company to be included in the … Read More
The internet has exploded!
Yesterday morning I returned from the Software Industry Conference in Boston. My three bags made it back, but a significant amount of my brain has yet to catch up with me. So my apologies if this post sounds as though it’s been written by someone else. During the conference I delivered four presentations, one of which (an A – Z … Read More
Fed up with Adwords ads pending review? Make your voice heard!
On April 10th, 2009, one of the SoftwarePromotions AdWords team posted a blog entry entitled New AdWords Ads Increasingly Getting Stuck in the ‘Under Review’ Black Hole. “It seems like every new ad I create takes longer and longer to actually begin running. Depending on the client, and which AdWords GUI format they’re using, the new ads assume the label of … Read More
AdWords conversion tracking – you probably didn’t know this
When Google AdWords updated their interface, you probably noticed their new conversion tracking metrics: The 1-per-click and many-per-click columns. I wrote about these new metrics some time ago, but do you know what happens with these values when you use multiple conversion actions? At the time of writing this, Google did not have any information on this topic within their … Read More
Loyalty is easily destroyed when the product is free
I’ve been a long-time user of the Cligs URL shortening service, and have recommended them to countless colleagues and friends. Yet they’ve recently been experiencing technical issues that have forced me to jump ship to one of their competition. There are two main issues, both of which remain unresolved. 1: Their shortened URLs don’t always work. This is a problem … Read More
Google to Begin Testing Product-Specific Ads
Google recently began beta testing a new product specific ad format with a select group of their advertising customers. The new product ads are not intended as a replacement for the traditional AdWords text ads, and the two ad types will appear together in some sort of expanded “sponsored links” area. According to an email sent by Google to participating … Read More
Websites reviewed – interesting data and opinions!
Yesterday’s Website Critique Webinar was a great success, and as well as looking at six different websites in detail, we also asked attendees a series of questions in the form of live polls, with some interesting results. We’re just collating the data now, so watch this space. As the webinar was limited to only one hour, some attendees emailed me … Read More
Think small, stay small
Our company provides a range of marketing services, and each week we typically send out around 4-5 price quotations. We also turn away around 9-10 requests, when we feel that our services are not appropriate. Most of the companies that we turn away understand what we’re saying, and appreciate our not taking their money under what would amount to false … Read More
Small website changes can have a huge impact on conversions
You work hard to bring targeted traffic to your website, spending time and money to draw in potential customers. So what’s your bounce rate? How many people arrive at your website and leave within a few seconds? 30%? 50%? 70%? I am often asked what constitutes a “good” bounce rate, but the truth is that there’s no concrete answer. If … Read More
