Week 3 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 In chapter 2 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords it is assumed the reader has already began an ad campaign. Thus, it would be smart to have created a Google Ads account in order to follow along with the book. The chapter gives an in-depth guide of what to do with the setting when creating a campaign, as many first time GoogleAds users would likely use all default setting which is unnecessary. There are even screen shots of each step of the process making the guide very relevant to anyone who needs visual guidance. Personally, my first GoogleAds campaign, I just clicked through this part and kept everything as default.

 Some great advice from the chapter, “Don’t be too concerned about the web page itself, or how perfect the ad is, etc. I recommend just trying it so you can say you did” (Kelsey, 2021, p.19) For me, I was most worried about doing the ad campaign because I was advertising a company that did not even exist. I was advertising my coaching services with no intention of actually giving lessons for now. Nevertheless, learning how the campaign worked and what information you could get out of it was worth it. 

In my case, advertising golf lessons, it is important for the ad to reach potential local clients, which is nice as GoogleAds can target certain locations. Being able to set a budget is also important especially as a business of 1 person. If you were to forget to stop the ad campaign you might continue losing even if the campaign is unsuccessful. Luckily, with a certain dollar amount budget you are safe from overspending.

One interesting part about GoogleAds is the ability to bid for more clicks similar to the way you would bid on an item at an auction. Say you set your spending limit to $20, Google would not automatically take that $20 which is rather interesting. Most people think of a large company like Google and think they are money hungry. Instead, the more clicks you get, the more you spend within your budget. GoogleAds then gives the user the ability to track how effective the ads are by comparing your clicks with other information you might have such as sales, making return on investment very easy to calculate. 

I decided to research more on the bidding process and came across this video.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNUSRL5kbYg

I recommend watching this video to understand what the bidding truly is especially if you have any questions about smart bidding strategies given by Google Adwords. These are pictured below...

The rest of the chapter is very informative on all of the tutorial related details one might need to know for their GoogleAds campaign. This includes scheduling the Ad campaign to end as to not keep spending on advertising longer than your company can pay for. Another option is to pause the campaign to continue later when there is more funding. There are also more details on creating the campaign and steps that were mentioned in chapter 1.

Week 3 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 Chapter 2 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing is encouraging of the reader diving in to their own social media endeavors. One section speaks about making a blog through blogger, which is a requirement of this class, so I should have that skill down. That being said, I have created blogs for other classes in the past and I highly recommend anyone doing the same. A blog allows for a great amount of creativity as no specific questions need to be answered, the blogger can just speak their mind.

One new learning from the chapter for me is how to change the template of the blog. I kid you not, I spent over 30 minutes looking for a way to change the appearance of my blog once it was created, however, I was unsuccessful. At the endow the blog you will get to see my decision of a template. Another idea mentioned in the chapter is to create a website. The major difference between a blog and a website should be the frequency each needs to be updated. A blog has new information rather often, while a website will likely keep similar information that is vital to the customers relationship with the company. The chapter suggests that to start you create a free website through Google Sites. This is an exercise I have already completed, so I decided to continue on with my previously created site. From my past experiences, even with no idea what I was doing, Google Sites was very easy to use and turned out looking very professional. Absolutely recommended by this blog!

The chapter moves on to talking about creating a video. I totally agree with the book that it might be a good idea to hire a real film crew for commercials and such, but you can easily make a video on your own. Personally, I enjoy watching non-professionally filmed videos as they don’t hide some things. For example, I love to explore videos about places I might eat in the near future. That being said, I would much rather watch an honest homemade review of the food than a professional commercial talking about how great the food is. I also know that Iphones and Ipads do a good job filming. My golf coach, ranked in the top 100 teachers in America, runs his own company and has created an app with over 200 videos all filmed on an Ipad. Filming your own videos can be extremely useful, especially in a small business. 

 

Everything I want to do in life would be related to a small business, or myself being the business. As a result, these are all very good exercises for me. If I want to appear professional, it is important to do a good job with blogging, creating a website, and creating videos. Today, videos have really taken off on different platforms such as Youtube, Tiktok, and Instagram meaning this skill has become extremely important.

As previously mentioned here is my journey to finding a Blog template...

At first I really liked the aesthetic of a template which ended up not working with my blog.

Obviously the picture made no sense, I believed I could change that and make it work. The real problem was the size of images.

The "Soho" template had large pictures which would become blurry and look unprofessional. That being said my blog is more meant for information, not large pretty pictures. I then stumbled upon another template labeled "Picture Window Screen". Again the images were a problem at first.

Luckily I was able to change the layout and fix this problem....

Week 2 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

Social media is a fairly new platform for advertisement. Personally, in my young lifetime I have seen the increase in the use of social media. Naturally, as more people began to use social media there became a greater opportunity for companies to market their company to more people. In chapter 1 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing  it is stated that social media marketing was the "hottest skill that got people hired in 2013". Think about how much social media has grown since 2013, obviously marketing through social media also must be increasing. 

There are two main types of social media marketing, one which involves marketing to individual buyers (B2C) and one which markets to businesses (B2B). As there are differences in these types of marketing it is important to understand how to market to each depending on what you will be marketing. An example of a difference, is the extra information needed in a purchase by a business as it is using the company's money not one's individual money. Another important understanding in social media marketing is the need for engagement. Thus, it is important to know how to get peoples attention through advertisement. In fact, the chapter relates engagement through social media to public relations or PR as it needs to be constantly monitored to be sure that the ad relates to people and is not hurting the company's perception.

The name of the game is appealing to the audience. The more a social media account posts, the more potential there is to get clicks. Plus, the people who click on the advertisement if they like what they see, might decide to share their findings with others and get even more clicks. The different platforms where a company might market themselves are called channels. Some channels include Facebook, Twitter, or linked In for business people. In 2016, for appealing to customers, Facebook and Youtube were the most successful channels for marketing through social media. That being said, different social media platforms are continuing to grow. For example, Snapchat, Instagram, and Youtube have all noticeably increased their advertisements in recent years. As a result, anyone who is thinking about working in social media marketing needs to be continuously adaptive to the media environment. 

https://www.wordstream.com/social-media-marketing

Here is a picture of different social media accounts and who uses them as well their marketing strategies. This could be used to guess which platforms will be successful in the future.

Week 2 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 Chapter 1 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing an Adwords begins by introducing the process of creating an ad in google. When creating an ad you are allowed a headline, a description, and a display URL. Each of these has a limit on the number of characters available as to keep the ad clean. The chapter gives some helpful suggestions on how to not go over the word limit, mostly by using choice words to combine two words. The display url is also condensed down to a cleaner format, but the ad would be linked to the entire url. The word limit seems very effective in helping unexperienced advertisers as it eliminates the possibility of cluttering the ad. 

The chapter moves on to the next step in creating an ad, picking keywords. These words are what can link google searches to your ad. This means determining relevant keywords can have a major impact on your ad's performance. One interesting finding in the chapter, is the ability to bid on key words. As a result, the more a company bids on a key word the more their ad will pop up before any one else who bid less on that word.

Another highly desirable aspect of Adwords is its ability to track data. There is plenty of feed back to see how many people have clicked on the ad which can then be compared to company sales to see the success of your ad. This helps a company decide how much money they want to invest in to their advertisements. Furthermore, there is feedback on the keywords chosen through a quality score. This is done by Google analyzing where ads are sending the web surfer and whether or not the content matches the key word. Google also can give an idea of which page your keyword will show up based off how many other pages use those key words. This allows you to be more specific or less specific when choosing keywords in hopes of increasing clicks. There are ways to increase clicks with out paying money through organic search results, however, this is much more difficult. As a result, a company who is serious about advertisement would be wise to spend money in order to make money.

In beginning looking in to making a Google Ad account, I looked further at the process of creating an Ad. One thing I had not known about Google Ads was there are 4 different types of advertisement depending on what you are looking for. Google ads has a way to increase calls, sales, visits, or views. This allows Google Ads to advertise for many different types of companies. With these four options I have more to think about in which type of website or YouTube video I would like to begin a campaign for.

Week 1 - MBA 6102 - Google Ads

For week 1 of my quest to better understand social media market, I have decided to begin with creating a Google Ads account. First I chose to do some research to really understand what Google Ads are. It became very clear right away that GoogleAds was more than I previously imagined. As seen in in the introduction from CASAmarketing, GoogleAds is a large part of Google. It is not just a side-hustle Google made in order to make some extra cash. Rather, Google made an extremely successful way of advertising that allows data tracking for the company.

You might have noticed in recent times any Google search you make comes with a list of advertisements. I  for one, tend to scroll through until I reach a page that is not an advertisement. For many, that is probably not the case. Google makes these advertisements so readily available as they are being paid by these companies to advertise their products. Convenient for the consumer and the seller, and of course Google makes money. The Companies are able to track their clicks and see how appealing their products are, which can help the company make further advertisement decisions. 

We all know Google is a smart company, and that is evident in their idea to make their advertisements on a "cost per click" basis. This means the more people click on products the more those companies will pay google. Typically a company will set a budget for their advertisement and see how many items of their product or service they sell during the advertising period. A major reason to use GoogleAds even if it is a pay per click, is that Google has optimized their advertising service to make their ads relevant. Their Ads also track where each ad sends the customer. When creating your Ad you are able to add keywords. If your product is relevant to someone that searches your keyword, there is a good chance they will at least view your web page for more information. More clicks equals greater opportunity to sell, and that is why many companies choose to use Google to advertise.

Here is the data from the Google Ad campaign I created in MBA 6101, sadly the campaign was cut short with a technical issue saying there were no payments made. Several students experienced the same issue. Hopefully, that will not be the case if an Ad campaign is created in this class.

Week 1 - MBA 6102 - Introduction

 

 Hello Everyone!

Welcome to my blog on social media marketing. My name is Cameron Hedge, I am currently a graduate student at Benedictine University working towards earning a masters in business administration. I graduated from Benedictine University at Mesa with an accounting degree in the spring of 2021. Prior to the Covid outbreak of 2019, I had never planned on pursuing any post graduate schooling. That being said, the opportunity to complete my athletic eligibility while beginning a masters degree arose and here I am.

 

I currently do not have a marketing related job, yet I do plan on one day running several of my own businesses. I have two major passions one being golf, the other cooking. I would love to teach golf in the future, a profession in which your possible wages are closely tied with your ability to market yourself. The more people know about your teachings, the more possible clients you have. Furthermore, you can charge more per hour. Once I have made enough money I would also like to open my own small restaurant which would require some marketing expertise as well. Rather than outsourcing the marketing for either of these I plan on being able to do my own marketing.

In order to learn more about marketing, I plan on reading Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords: A Guide For Absolute Beginners and Introduction to Social Media Marketing in my quest towards bettering my skills in social media marketing. Over the next eight weeks I will be posting regularly with information I have learned in these readings, as well as other course materials. I look forward to sharing with you all!