You may have carefully reviewed your campaigns’ settings when it first launched, but when was the last time you went in and fully optimized your campaigns in order to achieve maximum results? Below is a quick overview of Pay-per-Click campaign (PPC) settings offered by AdWords.

Geo Targeting: In what areas of the world do you want your ads to appear?

Languages: You can select from over forty different languages, which you can simultaneously target. It is important to keep in mind that you will need to translate the ads yourself, as this is not a service that Google provides.

Networks:  You have the ability to have your ads displayed on Google’s search result pages, partner search engines and within Google’s Display Network (publishers who agree to display your ads).

Devices: You can customize what devices you would like your ads displayed on, such as desktops, laptops, and mobile devices. You can even choose specific carriers.

Bidding options: Based on your campaign goals, you can determine which bidding option will get you results. A cost-per-click (CPC) bid is the amount you’re willing to pay for a click on your ad. You can have AdWords manage your bids by choosing automatic bidding, or you can manage the bids manually. In more advanced options, you can also choose to pay per thousand impressions (CPM bidding) or set a cost-per-acquisition bid (CPA). 
 
Budget: The daily budget you choose should be based on the advertising goals you have. Keep in mind, however, that the budget should be the amount you’re comfortable spending on AdWords advertising each day. To help guide your budget choice, AdWords automatically provides a recommended daily budget for each campaign. Note that your daily budget represents your average spend over the month; but actual spend on any given day may vary.

Position preference: This option lets you tell Google where you’d like your ad positioned among all the ads on a given page, but it does not guarantee that your ad will appear in the position you specify. Ranking and relevance rules still apply so if your ad doesn’t qualify for position #1, setting a position preference of 1 will not always position it there.

Delivery method: This setting will affect how quickly your ads are shown (still taking your budget into consideration). You have to determine if it is more beneficial use standard delivery which spreads out your ad impressions across the day to make sure don’t accrue all your clicks early on; or, you can use accelerated delivery to increase the likelihood of spending your full budget each day by showing your ads as quickly as possible.

Ad extensions: A feature that lets you add extra elements to your ads such as the address of your location, extra site or product links, and phone numbers.

Schedule: Set the start and end date for campaigns as well as which days of the week/hours of the day you wish for your ads to be shown.

What worked six months ago, may no longer work for you today. Google AdWords sets defaults, but they may not necessarily work best for your campaigns so it is important to take advantage of each one of their settings in order to control delivery of your ads and best optimize your campaigns.

In our everyday life we are bombarded with multiple advertising and marketing messages that a lot of us just tune out.  So how does one take advantage of internet marketing techniques to reach your audience?  I think the answer is simple, put yourself in your customer’s shoes.  A lot of internet marketing professionals spend countless hours locked behind closed doors, thinking, planning and then executing on ideas that people really have no interest in.  The reason why is that they don’t consult, question, ask or engage their potential customers to find out what’s important to them.

As a consumer I need products and services everyday….gas, dry cleaning, power, job related information and the list goes on.  However some of these are necessities so we are going to exclude them.  The ones that aren’t need to have significant value to move through all of the online clutter.  That means that the marketer has to show me value in a very short amount of time in order to engage me.  For me, personally, I look for good content that is going to enhance my professional career, products that will simplify my life and services that aren’t hard to find.  So if your focus is on internet marketing, are you just focusing on your product or service and its benefits, whereas your focus should be on your customers pain points or benefits that they will receive from your product or services. 

Every company has great products and services, just ask them and they will tell you, but is this really the case?  If marketers would put consumer’s needs and wants first, instead of what the product or service can do, then companies would be able to increase sales, brand following and loyalty.  The goal is to make the connection with the customer for life, establish a relationship and solve their problems and needs.  However if your marketing includes how great you are, what new features you have implemented or what you have done for other customers, your missing your mark.     

Okay, so’ “Bing-ified” isn’t a real word, but I’m not sure how else to explain the new Google Image Search.  When Bing was launched fourteen months ago, we discussed some of the interesting features in a MoreVisibility Round Table post to our YouTube channel. 

One of the features that stood out to me at launch was the image search functionality in Bing. It’s one of the areas that Bing scored a clear victory and a better search experience over Google.  Google Image search was very paginated and offered little in the way of segmenting results.  Contrast that with Bing’s free-flowing, one page layout and filtering capability; it was a win for Bing. 

Fast forward to July 20, 2010; Google announced a new interface for Google Image Search which seems to borrow heavily from Bing.  In the official post, Google mentions “… some heavy-duty algorithmic wizardry…”  to make it all work; which seems to hint that perhaps some of the technology is borrowed or leveraged between Google Image Search And Google Goggles.

If you’re not in the I-phone or Android set, Google Goggles is a smart phone application for the Android which allows you to search Google using an image taken with the phone’s camera.  Hypothetically, if you are at the Miami Seaquarium and want to learn more about the dolphin you are about to swim with; snap a photo and Google could return more information about habitat, range, diet, etc.   Currently, as with most Google Products, Google Goggles is in beta and the functionality above does not exist, yet.  It will however, translate menus, search landmarks or tell you more about the bottle of wine on the shelf in front of you. 

In their post announcing the new image search, Google mentions that it can even look at the spots of a leopard and return the proper subspecies.  That statement reveals the awesome power and future of Google Goggles and image search.  The possibilities are staggering, and the applications could help law enforcement or allow you to learn everything about your daughters’ beau with one click.

Google also announced that image search can be targeted separately for AdWords; so for advertisers there are some immediate benefits.  If you’re selling image related products or “Free Lindsay Lohan” t-shirts; you can target those gawking at her in Google Image search.