PETALUMA, CA – February 1, 2011 —

Kazak Media, a Petaluma Web Design and Internet marketing company announced today it has recently become Sonoma County’s first Google AdWords Certified Partner.

The Google Adwords Certified Partner recognition is part of Google’s Adwords Professional program, which certifies companies as being qualified to manage AdWords accounts Under Google’s certification program, companies employing Google Qualified Individuals may achieve Google Certified Partner status. In order to become a Google Qualified Individual, one must pass two Google certification exams regarding AdWords policies, account management, strategies and best practices.

For more information on Kazak Media’s PPC Campaign Management services visit: http://www.kazakmedia.com/services.html or view the company’s Google Certified Partner profile page at: http://goo.gl/4wwE2

About Kazak Media

Kazak Media is an award winning web design and Internet marketing firm based in Petaluma, CA. For over 5 years, the company has been providing a complete line of Web services that have yielded positive returns on investment for small-to medium-size businesses across the nation. Kazak Media is a Google AdWords Certified Partner. To learn more about the services Kazak Media provides please visit: www.kazakmedia.com.

Earlier today I received an email from LinkedIn telling me to try their new service called LinkedIn DirectAds.  I knew it was only an amount of time for LinkedIn to either partner with Google or create an some sort of in-house advertising model.  They have 66 million members worldwide, 32 million of them residing in the United States.  LinkedIn says, “for example you can target 7.9 business decision makers, 5.5 million high tech managers, 1.3 million small business, and 4.2 million corporate executives.”  You will be able to refine your search to target your EXACT demographic.

LinkedIn has made it relatively simple to create your first Ad.  Take a look below, I will guide you through the process.

Creating a New LinkedIn DirectAd

STEP 1 – Create Your Ad Campaign

Step one is the longest of the 4 steps, especially since it is vital to create at least 1 ad variation so you can at least split-test the effectiveness of ad1 and ad2.  LinkedIn allows you  to create up to 10 different ad variations under one campaign, all with different text and images if you’d like.  They also allow you to have a 25 character title and up to a 75 character description spanning no more than 2 lines as well as a field for your display and destination URLs.

STEP 2 – Target Your Audience

Step 2 is all about targeting your website’s audience.  They have a pretty cool way of showing you exactly how many people you are targeting.  For instance, this  screenshot shows you that there are 66,266,528 possible people that I can target with my campaign.  Let me refine my target market to demonstrate.  I run a web design firm who is looking to acquire new clients so I am going to go through the methods of refining my search to target my ideal client in LinkedIn Direct Ads. I know that I mainly design websites for small businesses so I am only going to check the boxes that would define my target client.  Take a look at the number of potential people that I now can target after filtering out the ones that generally wouldn’t buy my service, it is only 18,508.

STEP 3 – Set Your Campaign Budget

LinkedIn allows you to choose your payment method, either Pay Per Click (CPC) or pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM).  In my specific case LinkedIn says that my default bid is $4.91, with a suggested bid range between $4.91 – $5.95; Minimum Bid: $2.00.  The CPM choice says my default bid is $3.05, with a suggested bid range between of $3.06 – $3.52; Minimum Bid: $3.00.  You are allowed to select a daily budged , no lower than $10 per day, defaulting at $25. Once you have chosen your daily budged the last step is inputting your credit card information.

STEP 4 – Billing Information

Of course, the last step in the process is the billing information.  They ask for all the general billing information and also provide a helpful FAQ sidebar on all step throughout the process.

Take a look below and read what LinkedIn said in their blog post:

As the world’s largest and fastest-growing professional network, LinkedIn is a fantastic place for businesses of all sizes to reach professionals with targeted messaging.

That’s why today we’re announcing LinkedIn DirectAds, a new online product designed for LinkedIn members who want to market their business, product, or service to other members. While large brands and companies will be best served by contacting our sales team, DirectAds lets LinkedIn members purchase audience-targeted text advertising on the site for their businesses of any size. For example, maybe you’re a tax accounting firm looking to reach young professionals, or you’re a design agency looking to find potential new clients in key industries, or maybe you’ve just written a new book on a career or business topic. You can use DirectAds to get the word out to your target customers.

Using DirectAds, members can specify the audience that will see their ads (based on seven different criteria), write targeted messaging for their products, and pay by credit card – Premium Account holders even get 50% off. The whole process takes just a few minutes. We’ve opened up the product to a large number of our members, so you can try it out for your own business at https://www.linkedin.com/directads .

Like existing ads on our site today, DirectAds advertisements are intended to be non-obtrusive messages that accompany the overall experience of LinkedIn. Note that you won’t see any additional ads with the introduction of this product and every DirectAds ad includes the advertising member’s name and profile data, so you’ll know who is trying to reach members like you.

Rich content is now one of the most important techniques for driving consumers to websites from natural search results.

Speaking at the ‘Connect to Content’ session at World Travel Market, Frommer’s Unlimited general manager Joel Brandon-Bravo said natural search had become the biggest battleground for travel companies.

He also estimated that website content requires about half the investment of cost-per-click advertising.

Frommer’s conducted research among eight of its clients to reveal the content costs about 17p per visitor. This compares to the average cost-per-click in travel search of 33p according to US figures from Efficient Frontier released in the summer.

Market figures show 70% of people click on natural (organic) search results.

To get to the 17p cost per visitor, Frommer’s divided the total investment in content against the number of unique visitors brought to a client’s website from natural search. The sample of eight clients included online travel companies, hotel sites and airlines and looked at a mix of syndicated content, custom content as well as a blend of the two.

Brandon-Bravo also talked about the importance of integrating content properly within websites.

“Investing in content is a bit like buying a gym membership, you have to use it. It’s about integrating that content with your products and really making it work. If a customer has to do more than a couple of clicks they are just going to go away.”

Recent research carried out by Frommer’s shows travel companies plan to increase their online marketing budgets next year with social media, search engine optimisation and online content – the three hot areas for investment.

More than three quarters of respondents also said the cost per visitor across their online marketing mix was under US$5.

Managing small-budget pay-per-click campaigns (under $3,000 per month) is typically more difficult than managing campaigns with higher spend levels. Lack of “workable” data in smaller accounts often pushes campaign managers to make decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information. Below is a checklist of seven items you can do today to improve performance of your smaller PPC campaign.

1. Use Negative Keywords to Block Irrelevant Traffic

Negative keywords allow you to filter out irrelevant traffic. There is no reason to pay for clicks that were generated by search queries such as “(your product) defect”, “(your product) manual”, “broken (your product)”, and so forth. Read “Negative Keywords for Your PPC Campaign” to help understand this.

2. Research Long-tail Keywords

Clicks generated from keywords reflecting purchase intent are more likely to turn into actual buyers. Examples of such keywords include “buy widget” and “get widgets” Some useful tools to research keywords are listed at “Keyword Research Tools”.

3. Separate Search Network from Content Network

Google, Yahoo! and Bing, the primary search engines, offer both search distribution and content distribution. Traffic generated via the content channel is inherently different quality from that of search. More information about developing a solid content strategy is found at “Advertising On The Google Content Network”.

4. Split Keywords into Tightly Organized Ad Groups

Make sure your keywords are organized in the most logical order. For example, keywords describing one product should not be mixed with keywords describing other products. Imagine that you’re retailer selling socks and wine. It would be illogical to place both keywords (“socks” and “wine”) into the same Ad Group. The same rule applies to less obvious examples. “Green widget” and “blue widget cover” should be placed in separate Ad Groups, for example.

5. Include Different Match Types

“Match types” allow you to improve the quality of the traffic by more closely matching users’ search queries with your keyword choices. Additionally, having all three match types (Broad match, Phrase match, Exact match) in Google and MSN might help you get more clicks for the same overall price due to the quality score discount (which occurs due to ads being ordered based on multiple relevancy factors and not solely on the per-click bid price). In Yahoo!, running multiple match types simultaneously is not permitted. Nevertheless, it’s a good idea to see if “standard match” would generate better return on investment than “advanced match.”

6. Re-configure Campaigns/Account Settings

Here is a list of standard settings that will typically optimize a smaller budget campaign.

Google (Campaign Level):

• Targeting: United States only
• Language: English
• Network & Devices: Google Search; Desktop and laptop computers
• Bidding: Manual bidding – Max CPC
• Position preference: Off
• Delivery method: Standard
• Ad rotation: Optimize

Yahoo! (Account Level):

• Sponsored Search: On
• Content Match: Off
• Match Type: Advanced
• Blocked Continents: Check off all
• Campaign Level Targeting: Block 0-18, Select U.S. only

Bing (Campaign Level):

• Tracking conversions: Checked
• Target by Location: United States

7. Use Free Pay-per-click Tools

Use free pay-per-click tools to work on your campaigns. Don’t waste time going through slow account interfaces. Use these account tools to help you navigate through Google and MSN:

• Microsoft adCenter Desktop
• Google AdWords Editor

Online marketers looking to improve their digital advertising strategies should ensure that they have high quality landing pages for their pay-per-click (PPC) advertisements.

This is the opinion of Graham Charlton, who said on the Econsultancy blog that consumers searching online will often do so with the intention of purchasing goods.

He explained that conversion rates could be made higher if firms take

AdsSpy: 15 sites by this AdSense ID

the time to set up effective landing pages.

Web pages that are brought up when internet users click on a link need to include a reasonable amount of information to persuade the potential customer to proceed to the checkout.

Mr Charlton said marketers could improve their click-through rate by linking the paid search advertisement to the landing page.

“A good landing page is one that reinforces ‘conversion intent’,” the expert explained.

He noted that online shoppers who click on a PPC advert and are brought to a generic page that requires them to search again might not bother to continue using the site.

This, he said, could reduce the effectiveness of this form of online marketing.

Earlier this month, Simon Mansell, managing director of TBG, said spending on advertising on the internet
is likely to grow in proportion to the amount of time consumers spend online.

Source:

• Live PR

In an announcement making some waves in the SEO world last week, Yahoo announced that they would be ending their paid inclusion program.  SearchEngineLand.com points out access to Yahoo’s paid inclusion sales page has been redirected to their advertising.yahoo.com.

“Both the “Search Submit Basic” program that charged an annual fee per URL and the “Search Submit Pro” cost-per-click program will end as of Dec. 31, 2009.”

Yahoo’s paid inclusion has faced some criticism from those who believe including paid ads in an organic search makes the results biased. At the press conference announcing the Yahoo/Microsoft deal in July the company said “we’ll decide on that later”.  Well it looks like they decided.

This may turn out to be a good thing for PPC on Yahoo. With paid inclusion gone advertisers will be looking for that same traffic and those ad dollars could shift to PPC.  Any kind of uptick in PPC would be a benefit to domain owners parking with Yahoo. We’ll see.

Source:

• Domain Name News

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is one of the most effective marketing tools on the internet. It’s cost-efficient, because you only pay for ads which are clicked on; and it’s a great way to promote your site.

However, there are pitfalls in the world of PPC advertising. Believe it or not, even big companies tend to run a PPC campaign wrong.

One of the biggest mistakes a PPC campaign can have, is designing an ad that navigates to a home site. To strengthen an offer’s value message, a PPC ad should direct browsers to a page that is dedicated to a specific special offer or promotion.

Some experts even prefer that there should be no links out of the page, except to the order forms. As asserted by Katherine Andes of Furniture World: “The idea is not to have the visitor surf your website, but to be motivated to purchase your product or to contact you for more information.”

Andes says that one can provide a link back to the home page, if it just sells one basic item. However, she emphasizes that the home page should be appealing to the browser, prompting him/her to take action.

A properly crafted PPC ad can generate lots of added revenue for a Website. You just need to avoid its pitfalls to experience its benefits.

Source:

• Last Click News

The online community is definitely a large market place that you cannot ignore, especially if you have an internet business. There are thousands if not millions of consumers that you can tap in the internet.

At the same time, the internet also poses a quite different challenge. The easy access that internet provides also gives you as much competition as you can imagine. It is too crowded and congested.

Having a website is not enough to make your business running and able to compete. You must take other alternatives to give way for the online community to access your website at any rate or chance possible.

You have to expose your website. Make it known. It has to be visible. It has to be frequently targeted by consumers and surfers.

Invest in marketing your internet site.  There are basically two options available to you, the SEO and PPC. These two are probably the most desirable alternatives you can get for your internet business as strategy for search engine marketing.

1. SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Some researches indicate that 60% – 70% of internet surfers and users actually resort to using the Google search engine to find and locate web sites and pages, for any topic they desire. SEO is the process taken to make sure that the internet uses will find your website when ranked among the top results of a search. This way you can make sure that you will be visible and can clearly stand out from the rest.

To get a search engine optimization, you will have to build on your own internet site frequently hit internet links to web site pages. The process will involve IBLN or Independent Back-Linking Network, wherein hundreds or even thousands of pages will be utilized to promote a particular website of a client.

In SEO, there is no need for you to pay for the clicks although it will require you to spend time doing research to get a favorable combination of ads and target audience. The SEO process is a long term one. It requires months, 6 months at the least, before the proper outcome is fully achieved, but once the goal is accomplished, you will definitely get a steady source of profit.

2. PPC

PPC means Pay Per Click. It gives way advertising on a search engine. These are sponsored listings that you see whenever you make a search. There will be a charge whenever a visitor or web surfer clicks on any of your ads. There will first be a bidding process. The highest bidder for the price per click will definitely get the chance to be first listed in the search engine.

With this kind of advertising, you can still basically control your campaign as you get to create your own ad. You will also manage the target audience and still stay within the bounds of your budget. Most of the providers of PPC advertising will allow you to specify the target market, either by topic, industry or geographical location. You can also very well check if your ad gets to be shown at all and if it is competitive with the rest.

There are some guaranteed benefits when you get to maximize the PPC strategy.

*    PPC lets you advertise to the whole of the online community. It is also relatively easy to set up.

*    At first glance, PPC advertising may seem very expensive. Could it possibly happen that someone out there will go on clicking on your ad? This will definitely give you a large bill without the expected profit on your part. If this provides a lot of worries, be rest assured that there is a protection for you. Networks are able to recognize fraudulent clicks.

*    You can also set a budget for a certain period. The moment your budget has been used up by the target number of clicks, your ads will no longer be displayed until the next period you want it again displayed.

*    You will also be able to adjust well to changes in market demands and trends.

In deciding which of the two strategies will work right for you, think of your goals and of your resources. They definitely offer benefits and advantages that will work for your good. The better way to approach this two is to evaluate according to your short term and long term plans. Take the PPC course for your short term goals and choose SEO if you have long term ones.

There world is out there for you now. Just make sure you do what will work best for your entrepreneurial endeavors and visions. The secret to success lies in your hands. Just study your options well and you’ll get exactly what you want.

Engaging in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has its own benefits and drawbacks. But what exactly is PPC advertising and what it can do to your business?

Business nowadays is doing different kinds of austerity measures when it comes to advertising their products and services. This is because of high rates of placing ads on print and on television. But there is a fast growing approach that businessmen can utilize to bring their services closer to the people and that is through Internet Marketing.

One tool that is causing internet marketing popularity is PPC advertising. This is a technique used in search engine marketing that requires one to pay a fee every time someone clicks an ad on your website. Usually this placement is done through a bidding process. If you are a top bidder for your keywords/phrases, you are sure to be on the number one spot on all search engines. Just be sure of the effectiveness of your ad copy to get the most number of clicks you need for your business.

Here are the benefits of PPC advertising are:

1.    You need not be a genius in computer and technology to be able to run this ad campaign.
2.    Immediate results are seen after a few days.
3.    No need to make a website conform to the SEO rules.
4.    Nothing to lose even if you do not top the pages of different search engines. You can still always choose PPC advertising.
5.    You can make use any search engine available.
6.    You can type in any keyword you like.

Cons of PPC advertising includes:

1.    Fixed payments every month to the search engine you choose.
2.    Pay for each click received by your website. At times, visitors are just competitors or people playing pranks on search engines. This hassle wastes money you put in to this advertising.
3.    Inability to pay for the fees next month would mean removal of your website on the paid listings.
4.    This advertising can only be used temporarily because it is difficult to handle in the long run.
5.    Pay-per-click pricing can be costly for long periods of time, therefore, this should be stopped after an ad campaign.

But how exactly PPC advertising can increase traffic, leads and sales?

PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.

INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few hours which means immediate increase in sale.

CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. This is to get your website on top of the sponsored search results for free. You just have to choose the keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages. After this, you are done.

PPC advertising enables advertisers to control their advertising campaigns. Advertisers have effectively targeted their audience and set their own price per click. PPC advertising networks provide the platform to identify the desired audience by geographic setting, topic and industry.  These networks have a list of websites of the publishers where the ads will be placed.

Tools are provided by the networks to check how the pay per click limit is working for a certain advertiser. If its still competitive, would it be even listed among the paid search lists or does it generate sales? Of course, if the advertiser made the highest bid, the better chances the ad will be seen in the search engine. These networks too provide protection for the advertisers against click fraud. This advertising set-up allows advertisers to set a daily budget for his ads, thus, less spending for unnecessary clicks. Advertiser will never go over his budget.

In PPC advertising, what are important are the keywords and phrases. You have to select at least ten “very specific” keywords that would give you the best traffic in the search. Then, write the ad creatively but straightforward. Tell the truth about your product or service and do not lie. Good thing if your product or service will not disappoint those that are relying on your ad’s promise – but what if it did otherwise? Important too is the clarity of the ad. Do not use very vague languages. Include important details like the price.

You should also remember to budget your bids. Do not go overbidding because you will only lose your money and do not go so low that your ads will never get the chance to show up. Check your profit against your spending. If you see no progress then most likely you have to drop your ad campaign.

More and more advertisers have been using PPC advertising and it will continue to grow faster than any online advertising techniques. From revenues of $2.6 billion in 2004 to $5.5 billion in 2009, cost per click will dramatically go up as well from $0.29 to $0.36.

PPC advertising is new in online marketing and it is going to continue in the years to come. For advertisers, this means increase revenues with fewer advertising expenses, savings, more sales, good return of investment (ROI) and effective ad campaigns in the days to come.

PPC stands for Pay Per Click – a popular advertising technique on the Internet. Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser’s web page.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services – the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it “keyword auctioning”). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

·    Pay per placement
·    Pay per performance
·    Pay per ranking
·    Pay per position
·    Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.

2. Creating a keyword list.

3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.

4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.

5. Writing out an ad copy.

6. Setting up the ‘landing pages’ for your ads.

7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business ‘online’. Some of them are listed below:

·    Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly – they can go ‘online’ within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.

·    Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into ‘qualified’ people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer – those who are more likely to become a ‘lead’ (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.

·    Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or “organic” search engines.

·    Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive – the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:

1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).

2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.

3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right – a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.

4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program – if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.

5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.

6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:

·    Discount offers
·    Testimonials
·    Celebrity/famous endorsers
·    Money-back guarantees
·    Free trials or sample offers
·    Freebies
·    Reverse psychology
·    Major benefits (“Lose weight”)
·    Direct instructions (“Click here”)

7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple – designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.