Search Engine Monkeying

Why is it, that we all spend thousands of our company’s dollars, hundreds of hours of our time and countless moments tweaking that “oh so clever” 70 character text ad? Well, you tell me. If you can’t tell me, then you are blissfully in denial of the fact that your search campaign is a runaway train that needs to be stopped in its’ tracks. It’s easy to get caught up in ROI, CPA and CTR – More Bang for the Buck! But one crucial aspect, of this rather simple puzzle, is determining – “What is the Bang?” In order to successfully utilize the tools that Google and the other SE’s provide, we need to all be absolutely clear about what our goal is. This may seem obvious, but for the beginner or even an established business, the “bang” is sometimes unclear. This makes the vision even less clear for you,the employed search engine marketer. Are we looking for leads, sales, or maybe just clicks? Though… just clicks is ridiculous. If you are running a branding campaign via text ads…you have a whole other issue to deal with! My message is simple: Don’t forget to clarify what your company’s goal is and then determine ROI from that. Figure this out first: What is the Point?

Popularity: 6% [?]

I’ve been reading a lot to finish this summer class and I came across a couple of awesome books:

 A Whole New Mind by Dan Pink is a brilliant book that encourages the reader to cultivate the right-side of the brain and develop a greater emotional understanding.  I would suggest skipping the first three chapters because I found them lame and I didn’t like the way he generalized about computer programmers.  But, the six right-brain talents he explorers are dead-on and I think anyone who is marketing will benefit from this book.

Design: Differentiate and personalize your creations and you will find your job more fulfilling.
Story: People have an easier time remembering and relating when facts are given as a story.
Symphony: People who can grasp the big pictur, find relationships between seemingly unrelated things, and find and assess similiarities in systems are going to be more successful then those who can’t.
Empathy: Empathy unifies people and allows us to relate (and Marketers NEED to relate to their audience).
Play: It’s easier to learn and teach  when you make it a game.  Besides, it’s healthy.
Meaning: If you can’t find meaning in the things that you do, maybe you shouldn’t be doing them.

The book also offers a variety of good ideas on how to improve these skill at the end of each chapter.  Well worth the read.  I’m gonna buy like 20 for all my friends and family.

Waiting for Your Cat to Bark is a methodology for developing better advertising campaigns.  The main focus of the book is empathizing with your customers and building persona based on these composites that you can relate to, speak to, and sell to.   Though it was a bit long-winded, the book did offer a lot of good advice and I would suggest reading it before you start building your next advertising campaign.  The book is especially beneficial to search engine marketing professions and offers a whole section on keywords.

Popularity: 14% [?]

So, I got promoted and this blog has paid. I’m now the Director of Internet Marketing at my place of employment and Search Engine Marketing go moved from being 100% of my job to a mere 30%. I still love SEM and find it fascinating but I’m learning about a lot of new marketing channels and a lot of the stuff I’m finding interesting doesn’t necessarily apply to SEM or seem relevant to this blog.

Stuff that keeps getting up on the back-burner:

AdWord Editor 4.0: I love the new features, haven’t had time to write about it.

The Danger of Google Invoicing: Surprise! Heres your bill.

Maybe I’ll find sometime later this week but the outlook looks grim. I’ve got a lot of homework for my Masters class which I have been putting off for two months. Oops.

Besides, in the grand scheme of thing, people are more interested in stupid stuff and SEM only appeals to a select few individual who are undoubtedly smart and above-average looking. My other site I started, PhotosOfHookers.com (PhotosOfHookers.com) gets so much more traffic and all I do is steal the content from other websites.

Hopefully, SES San Jose will inspire me and I’ll be able to find some time to post but the outlook looks grim.

Popularity: 4% [?]