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

Week 5 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 Well, if you last week’s blog you might have learned that Facebook is still a thing. If Facebook is of no interest to you, it should be. Maybe your and everyone else’s parents will see your ads on their Facebook wall one day. If you hadn’t guessed yet, Chapter 4 of Introduction to Social Media Marketing focuses on Facebooks Ads. While Facebook Ads can be used for any ad you might want, many people choose to advertise their Facebook Pages through Facebook Ads. Makes sense, right? The reason this is a good idea would be to grow your social media presence especially as a small business this is important. The chapter, however, mentions a trend towards Facebook Ads taking clicks to external company websites more similar to the ads seen on other social media platforms. Thus, you have the ability for both social media marketing and traditional marketing. 

For my particular business, having both options are very useful. In this day in age, golf teachers are all trying to build their social media presence. The ability to display quick tips or short videos could interest potential clients. Social media is also becoming a place to name drop your successful clients through videos or tagging the client with their scores and so on. This just helps build your credibility and can set you apart from your competitors. A golf coach is an interesting profession in the fact that the only way to set you apart from the competition besides your rates, is your ability to make someone better at golf, thus a social media presence through something like Facebook is extremely important. The more likes you get on posts; the more people will know about your work and reach out to you. For a different company, such as a restaurant, it might make sense to use your Facebook ad in the traditional marketing form. Most people clicking on a restaurant ad would likely want to look at the menu or reservation times which would be found on the website.

Here is an example of my golf coach's Facebook page. For him, it would make more sense to have Facebook ads which take the click to his Facebook page. The reason for this being, you immediately can see videos of his coaching which he has posted on the page. This is some information I can pass along to him and maybe help with his business.

Week 4 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Social Media Marketing

 Chapter 3 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing is all about Facebook Pages. If you’re like me, Facebook is just a website your parents like to use. In reality, Facebook is very useful for businesses. “Most social media marketers consider a presence on Facebook a must-have” (Kelsey, 2017, pg.33). Essentially, the best part of Facebook is that once someone likes your page, your content will continue to pop up in their feed. In my own Google searching in the past, I have noticed for some small businesses, even if they do not have a professional high-quality website, you can almost always find a Facebook page. These pages are often made for causes and non-profit organizations as well. 

The downfall to Facebook Pages, similar to Google, is the fact that they want to make money and they will add plenty of other advertisement around your free Facebook page. Social media in general has heavily increased the amount of paid advertising the users will have to go through in their scrolling. That being said there are plenty of positives to using a Facebook page. One of which is the ability to see how many people have looked at your post. While only a portion of people might actually like the post, as long as people are seeing the post, it helps with company exposure. To gain exposure there is also the option to pay for boosting a post. While having a page is free, if you want your page to flourish it will cost money just like everything these days. The rest of Chapter 3 goes through a step-by-step process of building a Facebook page, which if you plan on doing so you should buy this book. I instead thought I would do a little looking in to some company Facebook pages.

I decided to look at a few small companies from small towns in central Illinois where I grew up. While each had a real website, the second page to pop up was their Facebook page. One example in the picture below is a small restaurant in the tiny town of Monticello, IL. Having a Facebook page allows the company to show where they are located, post photos of their food, and then make posts with news. In the picture you can see they were not offering delivery one day so they posted the news to their Facebook page. Updating a Facebook page is much easier than constantly updating your website anytime there is news. The restaurant also lists certain specials in their post section. In general, a Facebook page is helpful to a customer to find contact information and operating hours for a business which might take more searching on the real website.

Week 4 - MBA 6102 - Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords

 Chapter 3 of Introduction to Search Engine Marketing and Adwords covers the launching of your campaign. It is important when choosing your headline and brief description that will pop up on Google, you need to stand out. It might be wise to include whatever it is that sets your business apart from competitors in the description for more clicks. If your product or service is cheaper than the competition you might want to list that your company can be used on a budget or your company is low cost. 

 

When I search for flights out of the Phoenix Sky Harbor airport, there are immediately Ads for several companies who try to find the cheapest flights possible. The first Ad is from Priceline.com which is a very popular service. The second headline here is unique compared to the others, as it has an option for last minute flights. Anyone booking a last-minute flight will probably check here before the other listed companies. The next company listed is named justfly.com which is much less heard of. In their description they list their “impressive chap flights on 500+ airlines” and mention their “deeply discounted” options. Someone who would fly on any airline might like this advertisement as they might believe they could find a steal on a less popular airline. The third ad for cheapflights.com focuses instead on their reliability with customers in the description. Each company finds something unique to try and set themselves apart from the competition as you should in your ads. You are given a headline 1, headline 2, and description with a total of 140 characters, so it is important to make them
count. 

One interesting point brought up in the chapter is that when choosing keywords, it is important to “keep in mind that live humans aren’t the only ones doing this” (Kelsey, 2017, p.45). Google gives a quality score based on relevance of your website to the keywords customers are entering. The more relevant your ad is, the closer to the top of the page it will be and the more likely you are to earn clicks. This makes it important to not throw in a bunch of random keywords to somehow appeal to someone looking for something not even related to your product. Back to my google search for flights out of Sky Harbor airport, I was immediately given results for companies that offer the cheapest flights. Many people that are not looking for a deal would most likely go straight to the website of their preferred airline and search flights that way. If I had to guess, a company like Priceline most likely has keywords related to any sort of searching for flights, popular airport names, and cheap flights. Since I looked up flights out of Sky Harbor, I would assume these were both keywords for Priceline

The nice thing is based off your website Google will suggest some keywords, which would be wise to use as they might be high in relevance and quality score. As mentioned in the chapter however, you should also create your own keywords to appeal to people the generated keywords might miss. A very helpful part of Google ads is the ability to see how each individual keyword performs. Not only that, you can see where a key word would end up and what you would need to bid in order to move pages.

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!