Week 8 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 The seventh chapter of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords talks about Ad extensions. An ad extension is an external link and extra information that helps your ad become “more competitive”. In Adwords there is a tab for ad extensions, so this is an easier process than you may think. Often times, these extensions will increase the clicks to your ad and should boost the click through rate. Site links that are added should relate to the sections of your website you would like to highlight. 

For me, maybe I would do golf club repair and fitting as well as teaching golf. If that were the case, I would want to highlight golf club repair and club fitting, because someone might be looking for those services rather than coaching. I would like to have an online program with instructional videos on the mental golf game as well, so this might be another area I would highlight. Maybe someone comes to the site looking for lessons and leaves with a time set up for a club fitting from that site or a separate site you have made. It doesn’t matter as long as people are visiting your website or websites. The more clicks you get, the more possible customers you have.

The chapter asked the reader to do a google search of their own. Naturally, at this time of night when I decide to do schoolwork, I was thinking about sleep, so I Googled Mattress and was left with the following result. Not only was the near by Mattress Firm linked and shown on the map, The company's website showed up. As expected there were several ad extensions listed for "Sale & Clearance", "Queen", "Mattress Guides", and "Mattresses". Sale and clearance coming first is wise as many are likely to click on this link. Mattress guides would likely be clicked on by someone who doesn't really know what they are looking for. Side note, if you have noticed that there seems to be a Mattress Firm on almost every corner in larger cities, so have I. There is a rather intriguing conspiracy theory about that, just saying. Either way, the company uses ad extension which makes it a perfect example for this blog. The ad extensions must be working well enough for them to stay in business at all of their locations, even though it seems there are never any customers at the store. Definitely, couldn't be any illegal activity ... cough cough.

All jokes aside, if you have read your way through my 8 weeks of blogging thank you for your support! stay tuned for more blogging in the future!

Week 8 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 For the final week of the course, I decided to read both of the last two chapters. Chapter 7 from Introduction to Social Media Marketing talks about Hootsuite. If this is something new to you, Hootsuite is a service that helps you manage all of your social media accounts at once by linking them together in one spot. While the book states there is a free account for Hootsuite, in my searching on line, it seems that the only option is a 30-day free trial which would eventually turn in to a paid account. This could be updated since the publishing of the book. 

Hootsuite gives you the ability to schedule your tweets and posts as to not forget on important dates. Hootsuite also makes it possible to post the same post to multiple social media accounts at once. This allows you to not take the time to sign in to each social media account and make a separate post every time you need to post. Besides saving time, this also might be important in getting the information to each social media platform at once and not miss viewing for anyone who was active on Twitter while you posted on Facebook or vice versa. Hootsuite even allows you to keep up to date on what people are saying about your social media accounts. Afterall, these are the people you are trying to sell to. This is possible as Hootsuite gives you a feed of people mentioning you on social media to allow you to see what people are saying.

 

This leads us in to the final chapter which speaks of the importance of listening to what people are saying. All of the analytics are great for knowing the numbers, but social media also allows for spoken (typed out) words to be viewed. It is important to take note of the consumer’s opinions as they might help you improve your social media accounts. If you have social media accounts you might as well monitor them. 

https://twitter.com/Birkeys?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

https://www.facebook.com/Birkeys/

Here is the Twitter account and Facebook account from A local farming equipment company in my hometown. Luckily, I was able to talk to one of the owners (my father) and learn that the company uses a program similar to Hootsuite. As you can see here, on a Sunday when none of the marketing team is working there were posts four hours ago. This means the posts were scheduled to post today likely leading up to the coming week. Also, the same post was posted at the same time on both platforms.

Week 7 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 Having discussed Facebook and Twitter to this point, we now move on to a more “business-to-business” related platform of LinkedIn. In other words, a company marketing to other companies. The best way to improve your marketing through LinkedIn is to improve your LinkedIn by adding groups for networking and discussions. Chapter 6 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing speaks very highly of improving your presence on LinkedIn as the optimal way to take advantage of marketing through LinkedIn. For many companies, having a business-to-business platform could be useful for trade, collaboration, etc. Furthermore, LinkedIn can be a great place to recruit and post job openings. 

One suggestion from the chapter is to create business cards with your LinkedIn information to build your LinkedIn connections. Another suggestion is to email just about anyone you know with the information to your LinkedIn profile. Not everyone will decide to connect on LinkedIn, but it doesn’t hurt to send it to a large mass and gain several connections. Remember, emailing is free communication. The more connections you can make the more potential jobs or clients you gain.

Similar to the information found in the chapter, on LinkedIn marketing solutions, most of the steps involve bettering your LinkedIn page. The marketing solutions does have a few solutions that build off of the information found in the chapter...

https://business.linkedin.com/marketing-solutions/how-to-market-on-linkedin

The other tips speak further on how it is important to grow your followers and how to cater to your followers using visuals. It then speaks of the LinkedIn ad campaign.

Week 7 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 Chapter 6 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords moves on to talking about strategizing your campaign. Luckily, Google has a built in “Help function” with automated suggestions similar to the function for keywords. While there is a phone number to call for help, anyone with phone phobia will be happy to know, Google scans your add campaign to look for potential flaws and ways you can make improvements. Otherwise, there is email support, however, phone calls would likely result in a faster response. As seen in the chapter, even if you are not in urgent need of help it is still a good idea to use the email option. A google team member is likely to send a rather lengthy email with ideas and tips so you can improve your campaign. If you prefer to not do that you should receive notifications from Google’s scan of your campaign with ideas on how to make improvements. Often times you will not receive these notifications right away, so if you are in need of help soon after starting your campaign, I would recommend a call or email.

Now when it comes to strategies, there are several ways to set up your campaign. You can use the suggestions from Google itself, or you can manually setup your campaign paying attention to the suggestions as Google scans your campaign. The chapter gives a tutorial on both, and it really just boils down to your comfort level. 

On the Google support page there are 8 types of campaigns you can create with the Google templates. These include search, display, video, shopping, app, local, and smart campaigns. A search campaign is meant for text ads on search results for people searching on Google. Display campaigns include more visually engaging ads on websites, apps, and Google itself. A Video campaign is the ads you would see before or during a Youtube video. Shopping campaigns allow for product listings for retailers seen after Google searches. App campaigns attempt to boost sales within your app and boost app users. Local campaigns are meant to being local people instore. Smart campaigns are general ads that are the easiest to operate.

Here is an example of the information for a Search campaign shown on the Google support page. 

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2567043?hl=en&ref_topic=10286612&visit_id=637864376985000218-450379390&rd=1

week 6 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 After covering Facebook, we have now moved on to Twitter in chapter 5 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing. The question when it comes to marketing on Twitter, is whether or not your potential customers are Twitter users. Similar to Facebook, people using Twitter tend to have less desire to make purchases compared to those searching on Google. The bright side about Twitter is it helps reach a younger demographic and is a good platform for people to discuss their experience with a product or service from your company. Sometimes, companies even join in on the conversation. A helpful or even humorous comment by a company could easily help their public appeal. Similar to Facebook as well, Twitter allows a company to keep customers up to date with news, deals, sales, and so on. Personally, I love seeing large companies posting humorous Tweets or getting in to feuds with rival companies. To me, it makes the companies seem more personable and relatable.

One way in which Twitter can be used, is by posting a short comment along with a link to a page. Personally, if I were to market my own golf lesson business, Twitter could be very helpful. Let’s say I have a client who improves vastly from working with me. If that client plays in a tournament, I might decide to post a comment about their round and include a link to their scores for others to see. Not only would this give the client a sense of satisfaction for the shoutout, it might show potential clients they could improve as much as this client. Twitter also allows for tagging accounts to directly correlate that person to the post, making Twitter the perfect platform for showing off my clients. Twitter would also be a great place for me to post a link to Youtube videos of my coaching along with a short description of the video.

One down side of Twitter is the inability to pay extra money to boost performance. On Google, you are able to pay extra money to boost your bid and get more exposure. On Twitter, exposure is boosted through increasing your following. The more followers your account has, the more people will see the information you are posting. This is a positive, because the company is not paying money to use Twitter, however it may take longer to see a Twitter page paying off.

Here is an example of two fast food restaurants in a feud against each other on Twitter, which I find rather comical. I believe this use of Twitter is actually helpful to business as the companies seem more personable and humorous. 

https://bettermarketing.pub/fast-food-twitter-has-gone-full-insane-and-i-love-it-4ab972d562ac

week 6 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 We have touched on using keywords somewhat to this point, however, chapter 5 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords goes further in depth with keywords. Luckily for any new user, Google has plenty of suggestions to help with your keywords search. Google analyzes your campaign and suggests keywords you haven’t tried prior. The great thing is, most people have searched on Google before, so they have some experience with keywords on Google. Whenever you make a search, you enter in some sort of keywords to allow Google to do the work and find what you are looking for. To find a more specific search, all you need is to add more words in to your search. The nature of our use of Google growing up could help us understand what sorts of keywords we would search. This may have even resulted in you clicking on a Google ad and experiencing what Google ads are all about.

The sad part is, just because you insert certain keywords for your ad, you will not always show up before other web pages. This is because companies have the ability to bid on key words, meaning they will show up higher on the page, or on a lower number page than you. The chapter suggests to search another book named “Introduction to Social Media Marketing” and think of what keywords might lead you to it. When I did this, the first 4 Google ads to pop up were from Cornell, Coursera, Business-tiktok, and Chegg.

Obviously, None of these were the desired search I was looking. Once I added a key word of the author's name, however, the first few purchase ads were for the book I intended.

This is different than the results from the chapter, showing us that different companies are constantly bidding on key words making it harder for you to be shown on Google. Because of this, it is important to have specifics in your keywords. More specific keywords will better lead the searcher to the product. Even though it is good to have general keywords, more than likely, those words have been bid on by a large company. Keep in mind, when creating your keywords to be both specific and general.

Week 5 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 Chapter 4 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords takes place once the ad campaign has been created and is in progress. The most efficient way to monitor your campaign is to have a set number of days or weeks between checking your campaign results. If you build a consistent time in your schedule, it should be easy to take full advantage of Google Ads. Progress reports can be fully customized to the time period you would like, so it would make sense for your time frame to be the same as the days between each time you check the campaign. That being said, it is also nice to have the option to view other weeks, months or years to see how the ads are trending. Say one day I receive 10 calls about golf lessons, I could go back to a specific time to see if there is any correlation between new clients and the ad campaign. 

The chapter moves on to explain what all the data means. The click through rate for example can be used to see how effective the ad actually is for the people seeing the ad. It is great if people are looking at your ad, it is even better if they are actually interacting with your ad. A low click through rate might indicate your ad needs to be displayed in a different area or using different key words. The best way to boost your click through rate would be to optimize your keywords for searches that might actually be interested in your business. This is easy to do in google ads, as you are able to view how key words rank based off their clicks and click through rate. Keep in mind, the highest click through rate key word will not always be the key word generating the most clicks. Clicks might be good enough to get your business name out there and some people might search your website rather than click on the ad. Not all keywords will work as well as planned and it might be worth removing less successful keywords to find other possibilities. 

Google's support page even has ideas for how to boost your CTR or click through rate.....

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/6167130?hl=en