Archive for the ‘Ad Tracking’ Category
Use A Simple Tracking Technique To Increase Profits
Jo Mark asked:
One of the most important activities required if you are marketing articles is tracking your results. It is extremely important to know which of your efforts are paying off and which ones are wasting your time and or money.
It is important to know which article submission sites are working for you. If you are not getting any results from a particular site, stop wasting your time and submit to someone else. Maybe the clientele from that site is not interested in your particular niche. If you are diligent in tracking your results, you will know this right away and can stop wasting time with them.
It is particularly important to know which of your ads are working. This is even more critical if you are using paid ads. If the profit an ad generates is less than the cost of the ad, you need to advertise elsewhere. This type of information is readily available if you are tracking your results. Too many people write up several ads and send them out along with a check week after week. Because they are happy with the total results, they never bother to check which individual ones are working. With diligent tracking, you can see if a particular ad is profitable.
Good tracking will also allow you to test how an ad performs. Keep good records on the results from each ad. Change just one thing on your worst performing ad and watch the results. Continue doing this with each ad and you will improve your profits by significant amounts.
I get a lot of questions on how to track an ad (or article). It is actually quite simple. At the end of your URL, enter a question mark and the name of the test, ad, or Ezine that you are tracking (for example-blahblahblah.com?ad1). Each time your website gets a hit from that source, your counter will log that information. By comparing hits from competing ads, or articles, you can determine which are the most successful. Before you commit to any substantial tracking campaign using this method, do a simple test to ensure that your website works properly with the question mark test. Some servers do not recognize it and will return a “site not found” notice. If this is the case, you cannot use this simple tracking method.
Of course, you also have to have a good counter for this to work. You can find many free counters on the Internet by doing a search.
When tracking your paid ads, eliminate the less profitable ones. Then, commit more money (for bigger ads) in those publications that are profitable. If you do not want to use larger ads, seek out other publications to replace those less profitable ads.
The same is true if you are using free ads. Replace non-performing ads with free ads in other publications. By doing this, you will continually upgrade your ad performance, and ultimately, your profitability.
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
One of the most important activities required if you are marketing articles is tracking your results. It is extremely important to know which of your efforts are paying off and which ones are wasting your time and or money.
It is important to know which article submission sites are working for you. If you are not getting any results from a particular site, stop wasting your time and submit to someone else. Maybe the clientele from that site is not interested in your particular niche. If you are diligent in tracking your results, you will know this right away and can stop wasting time with them.
It is particularly important to know which of your ads are working. This is even more critical if you are using paid ads. If the profit an ad generates is less than the cost of the ad, you need to advertise elsewhere. This type of information is readily available if you are tracking your results. Too many people write up several ads and send them out along with a check week after week. Because they are happy with the total results, they never bother to check which individual ones are working. With diligent tracking, you can see if a particular ad is profitable.
Good tracking will also allow you to test how an ad performs. Keep good records on the results from each ad. Change just one thing on your worst performing ad and watch the results. Continue doing this with each ad and you will improve your profits by significant amounts.
I get a lot of questions on how to track an ad (or article). It is actually quite simple. At the end of your URL, enter a question mark and the name of the test, ad, or Ezine that you are tracking (for example-blahblahblah.com?ad1). Each time your website gets a hit from that source, your counter will log that information. By comparing hits from competing ads, or articles, you can determine which are the most successful. Before you commit to any substantial tracking campaign using this method, do a simple test to ensure that your website works properly with the question mark test. Some servers do not recognize it and will return a “site not found” notice. If this is the case, you cannot use this simple tracking method.
Of course, you also have to have a good counter for this to work. You can find many free counters on the Internet by doing a search.
When tracking your paid ads, eliminate the less profitable ones. Then, commit more money (for bigger ads) in those publications that are profitable. If you do not want to use larger ads, seek out other publications to replace those less profitable ads.
The same is true if you are using free ads. Replace non-performing ads with free ads in other publications. By doing this, you will continually upgrade your ad performance, and ultimately, your profitability.
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
How to Setup PPC Conversion Tracking on Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN AdCenter
Alex Minnaar asked:
Conversion tracking is indispensable when it comes to constructing a thriving, profitable PPC campaign. Unfortunately, very few internet marketers really know how to set up conversion-tracking correctly. This article will explain to the reader how to successfully setup conversion tracking on the three major PPC ad networks – Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN adCenter.
Setting Up Conversion Tracking With Google AdWords
When conducting a PPC campaign in Google AdWords, conversion-tracking is a tool that can be found in the “Campaign Management” tab. First you must create a new action (such as a sale or purchase or newsletter sign up or lead generation) then copy the code that AdWords provides you with and paste that code onto the page in which the completed conversion takes place (for example a thank you page). Now AdWords can determine how many of the hits that your website gets from AdWords ads result in successful conversions. This allows AdWords to be able to calculate the cost-per-conversion of your PPC ads – a very valuable statistic.
Setting Up Conversion Tracking With Yahoo! Search Marketing
With Yahoo! Search Marketing, the user has two conversion-tracking options – “Conversion Only” and “Full Analytics.” “Conversion Only” shows the user only the cost-per-conversion statistic whereas “Full Analytics” shows the user much more information. To set up either of these options, the user must click the “Administration” tab, then click the desired conversion tracking option, then click the desired “Revenue Value Setting”, then click activate. Yahoo! Search Marketing then provides the user with the tracking code which the user applies the same way as with Adwords above.
Setting Up Conversion Tracking With MSN adCenter
In order to set up conversion-tracking with MSN adCenter, the user must join Gatineau, MSN’s PPC advertising analytics package. Like the previous two ad networks, MSN adCenter provides the user with a tracking code that the user puts on the page in which a successful conversion is completed. This allows the user to only view cost-per-conversion data, but if the user places adCenter code on every page of his or her website, more data would become available.
Website content
Conversion tracking is indispensable when it comes to constructing a thriving, profitable PPC campaign. Unfortunately, very few internet marketers really know how to set up conversion-tracking correctly. This article will explain to the reader how to successfully setup conversion tracking on the three major PPC ad networks – Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and MSN adCenter.
Setting Up Conversion Tracking With Google AdWords
When conducting a PPC campaign in Google AdWords, conversion-tracking is a tool that can be found in the “Campaign Management” tab. First you must create a new action (such as a sale or purchase or newsletter sign up or lead generation) then copy the code that AdWords provides you with and paste that code onto the page in which the completed conversion takes place (for example a thank you page). Now AdWords can determine how many of the hits that your website gets from AdWords ads result in successful conversions. This allows AdWords to be able to calculate the cost-per-conversion of your PPC ads – a very valuable statistic.
Setting Up Conversion Tracking With Yahoo! Search Marketing
With Yahoo! Search Marketing, the user has two conversion-tracking options – “Conversion Only” and “Full Analytics.” “Conversion Only” shows the user only the cost-per-conversion statistic whereas “Full Analytics” shows the user much more information. To set up either of these options, the user must click the “Administration” tab, then click the desired conversion tracking option, then click the desired “Revenue Value Setting”, then click activate. Yahoo! Search Marketing then provides the user with the tracking code which the user applies the same way as with Adwords above.
Setting Up Conversion Tracking With MSN adCenter
In order to set up conversion-tracking with MSN adCenter, the user must join Gatineau, MSN’s PPC advertising analytics package. Like the previous two ad networks, MSN adCenter provides the user with a tracking code that the user puts on the page in which a successful conversion is completed. This allows the user to only view cost-per-conversion data, but if the user places adCenter code on every page of his or her website, more data would become available.
Website content
Ezine Advertising – 10 Steps to Writing Powerful Ezine Ads to Grow Your List
Donna Gunter asked:
Classified ads have been around as long as I can remember. Whether you’re reading a newspaper or perusing the back of a magazine, you see classified ads. Before the advent of online marketing, placing classified ads in print publications was the method many people used to sell their products or services.
What has worked for years in traditional marketing is also quite effective in online marketing. Advertising in email newsletters with ads is one of the greatest adverting bargains available today. Moreover, it can be a very effective strategy to help you grow your mailing list and drive traffic to your website.
There are thousands of ezine publishers eagerly standing by to take your money for a classified ad in their publication. And, writing an ezine ad isn’t quite as easy as it looks. How do you know the ad will be effective, and how do you create an ad that will result in a desired action?
Here are 10 steps to help you write a profitable classified ad for an ezine:
1. Choose your publication. Finding the right publication that goes out to the right target market is the key first step in this process. Optimally, you want an active list of at least 10,000 double opt-in subscribers who are accustomed to receiving regular ezines from the publisher (publishes weekly). Unfortunately, not everyone opens every email that they receive, so ask the publisher about her “open rate,” which is the number of subscribers who actually open and read the ezine. A respectable and reasonable open rate is 30-40%. A great place to look for ezine publishers who sell ads in their email newsletters is Charlie Page’s Directory of Ezines, http://www.directoryofezines.com.
2. Be one of few, not one of many. Check out the publisher’s sample email newsletter, as well as back issues, before you decided to advertise. How many ads does the publisher run in one issue? For maximum effectiveness, choose one that runs 5 or less ads per issue. This gives you a much better chance of being seen when your ad is competing against a smaller number of ads.
3. Craft an attention-getting headline. Your headline is the part of your ad that must grab your reader’s attention immediately. Otherwise, the reader scans right past your ad to the next one. Use action words that emphasize a solution to a problem that your target market has. Or, ask a question that attracts the reader’s interest. In order for your ad to be read, your headline must effectively answer the reader’s most basic question, “What’s in it for me?”
4. Outline your benefits in the body. Don’t use the body of the ad to promote your products or service. You’ll get the best results when you offer readers something that they can get immediately at no cost, like an ebook, audio, special report, ecourse, etc. Readers never want to learn more for the sake of learning. They want to get to the benefits you promised, or what it will do for them, instead.
5. Create a call to action. Tell the reader what to do next — what action to take. Typically this means directing them via your URL to a web page to take this action. This step is even more effective if you create a sense of urgency — give them a reason to act immediately.
6. Keep it short. Most ezine ads vary between 25 and 50 words, including your URL. This means that you have limited space to create maximum impact.
7. Design your landing page. Make sure your landing page listed in your call to action speaks specifically to the readers of that ezine. Don’t send them to a generic page of your site and expect them to be able to figure out where to go on that page and what to do. Greet them by name, i.e. Welcome subscribers to ABC Marketing Ezine, and reiterate who you are, what you’re offering, and how they can receive your offer.
8. Track your results. Truly effective advertising is only effective if it creates your desired result. Be sure that you have a tracking mechanism in place, like ad tracker software, so that you can see exactly how many people took action on your ad and exactly where they came from. If your ad tracking system is integrated with your shopping cart, you’ll also be able to track how many sales resulted from your ad.
9. Test and change. You may actually come up with 10 or 20 variations as you design your. Don’t discard any of them, as you may find them useful in the future, especially as you test which versions of your ad are effective. Test different headlines or different calls to action over a period of time in the same publication and see which versions get the best results.
10. Run multiple times. A one-shot ad never works. Plan to advertise at least 4 consecutive times in an ezine to see how you do. The more the ad appears, the greater the likelihood that the ezine reader will notice it. Over time, you will begin to see which versions of your ad are more effective with what kinds of target markets.
Ezine advertising is a proven, low-cost strategy to help you market your online business, grow your lists, and increase your profits. Start writing your classified ad today!
Copyright (c) 2008 OnlineBizU.com
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
Classified ads have been around as long as I can remember. Whether you’re reading a newspaper or perusing the back of a magazine, you see classified ads. Before the advent of online marketing, placing classified ads in print publications was the method many people used to sell their products or services.
What has worked for years in traditional marketing is also quite effective in online marketing. Advertising in email newsletters with ads is one of the greatest adverting bargains available today. Moreover, it can be a very effective strategy to help you grow your mailing list and drive traffic to your website.
There are thousands of ezine publishers eagerly standing by to take your money for a classified ad in their publication. And, writing an ezine ad isn’t quite as easy as it looks. How do you know the ad will be effective, and how do you create an ad that will result in a desired action?
Here are 10 steps to help you write a profitable classified ad for an ezine:
1. Choose your publication. Finding the right publication that goes out to the right target market is the key first step in this process. Optimally, you want an active list of at least 10,000 double opt-in subscribers who are accustomed to receiving regular ezines from the publisher (publishes weekly). Unfortunately, not everyone opens every email that they receive, so ask the publisher about her “open rate,” which is the number of subscribers who actually open and read the ezine. A respectable and reasonable open rate is 30-40%. A great place to look for ezine publishers who sell ads in their email newsletters is Charlie Page’s Directory of Ezines, http://www.directoryofezines.com.
2. Be one of few, not one of many. Check out the publisher’s sample email newsletter, as well as back issues, before you decided to advertise. How many ads does the publisher run in one issue? For maximum effectiveness, choose one that runs 5 or less ads per issue. This gives you a much better chance of being seen when your ad is competing against a smaller number of ads.
3. Craft an attention-getting headline. Your headline is the part of your ad that must grab your reader’s attention immediately. Otherwise, the reader scans right past your ad to the next one. Use action words that emphasize a solution to a problem that your target market has. Or, ask a question that attracts the reader’s interest. In order for your ad to be read, your headline must effectively answer the reader’s most basic question, “What’s in it for me?”
4. Outline your benefits in the body. Don’t use the body of the ad to promote your products or service. You’ll get the best results when you offer readers something that they can get immediately at no cost, like an ebook, audio, special report, ecourse, etc. Readers never want to learn more for the sake of learning. They want to get to the benefits you promised, or what it will do for them, instead.
5. Create a call to action. Tell the reader what to do next — what action to take. Typically this means directing them via your URL to a web page to take this action. This step is even more effective if you create a sense of urgency — give them a reason to act immediately.
6. Keep it short. Most ezine ads vary between 25 and 50 words, including your URL. This means that you have limited space to create maximum impact.
7. Design your landing page. Make sure your landing page listed in your call to action speaks specifically to the readers of that ezine. Don’t send them to a generic page of your site and expect them to be able to figure out where to go on that page and what to do. Greet them by name, i.e. Welcome subscribers to ABC Marketing Ezine, and reiterate who you are, what you’re offering, and how they can receive your offer.
8. Track your results. Truly effective advertising is only effective if it creates your desired result. Be sure that you have a tracking mechanism in place, like ad tracker software, so that you can see exactly how many people took action on your ad and exactly where they came from. If your ad tracking system is integrated with your shopping cart, you’ll also be able to track how many sales resulted from your ad.
9. Test and change. You may actually come up with 10 or 20 variations as you design your. Don’t discard any of them, as you may find them useful in the future, especially as you test which versions of your ad are effective. Test different headlines or different calls to action over a period of time in the same publication and see which versions get the best results.
10. Run multiple times. A one-shot ad never works. Plan to advertise at least 4 consecutive times in an ezine to see how you do. The more the ad appears, the greater the likelihood that the ezine reader will notice it. Over time, you will begin to see which versions of your ad are more effective with what kinds of target markets.
Ezine advertising is a proven, low-cost strategy to help you market your online business, grow your lists, and increase your profits. Start writing your classified ad today!
Copyright (c) 2008 OnlineBizU.com
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Did You Know That Coupons Help Track Your Advertising Dollars?
Rhonda White asked:
It’s not just the cost of a product that is on the customer’s mind. Customers like to save money. They know that if they save a dollar, that’s another dollar still tucked away in their pocket or bank account. All though there is still a big percentage of shoppers who do not utilize coupons, it certainly brings attention to the customers eyes when they see the possibility of saving a buck or two. Many will even take time to clip out that coupon even if they never end up using it. Coupons help visualize this savings to the customer and it’s another way to brand your product or service.
Not only do coupons help bring attention to your business, but it helps track the productivity of your advertising dollars. Many businesses use “promotional codes” to help track their advertising dollars. If you are paying for advertising with various companies or websites, you should use a different promotional code with each advertiser so that you know which companies or websites are helping you produce the best results. This technique can also be used for web-based businesses by creating separate url’s for each ad or you can use ad tracking software. Many online shopping carts have the capability of creating unique discount codes, so this is another consideration for tracking your ad campaigns with online coupons. If you have a brick and mortar business, customers will bring in their coupons, and you should be able to identify the source through your promotional code or by creating a distinct difference among the coupons that you create. They can be different colors, different sizes or different coupon specials that you offer. Overall, your goal with coupons should be to get your name out there, brand your products or services, and track your ad campaigns easier.
Create a video blog
It’s not just the cost of a product that is on the customer’s mind. Customers like to save money. They know that if they save a dollar, that’s another dollar still tucked away in their pocket or bank account. All though there is still a big percentage of shoppers who do not utilize coupons, it certainly brings attention to the customers eyes when they see the possibility of saving a buck or two. Many will even take time to clip out that coupon even if they never end up using it. Coupons help visualize this savings to the customer and it’s another way to brand your product or service.
Not only do coupons help bring attention to your business, but it helps track the productivity of your advertising dollars. Many businesses use “promotional codes” to help track their advertising dollars. If you are paying for advertising with various companies or websites, you should use a different promotional code with each advertiser so that you know which companies or websites are helping you produce the best results. This technique can also be used for web-based businesses by creating separate url’s for each ad or you can use ad tracking software. Many online shopping carts have the capability of creating unique discount codes, so this is another consideration for tracking your ad campaigns with online coupons. If you have a brick and mortar business, customers will bring in their coupons, and you should be able to identify the source through your promotional code or by creating a distinct difference among the coupons that you create. They can be different colors, different sizes or different coupon specials that you offer. Overall, your goal with coupons should be to get your name out there, brand your products or services, and track your ad campaigns easier.
Create a video blog
Affiliate Radar – Effective PPC Keyword Tracking Tool?
Michael Ullman asked:
Affiliate Marketers spend a lot of time and money on Google Adwords, most of it for “GoogleCash” type direct-link affiliate marketing. The money is spent “buying” keywords, hoping that when someone searches on that keyword, they will see their ad, click on it, and purchase whatever is at the other end. Their cost is a direct result of how many keywords they have to buy in order to cover all the possible search terms someone might use when looking for whatever they happen to be selling. But as most PPC affiliate marketer learn, all keywords are not created equally. They tend to follow the “80-20 Rule”: 20% of the keywords account for 80% of the sales. If these advertisers could avoid paying for the low-performing 80%, and buy only the 20% that convert into sales, all of their ad campaigns would be successful. Recently I heard of a program called Affiliate Radar which claims to improve the ROI of pay-per-click advertising. Affiliate Radar is a new program designed to track each keyword individually, enabling the advertiser to see which one’s are ‘winners’, and which are ‘losers’.
In my blog, Improve Your Internet Marketing, I spend a lot of time going over the basics Internet marketing, as well as the tools that can help to achieve success. I stress the importance of keyword research, particularly for Affiliate Marketing. But even the best keyword research is blinded if you cannot track individual keywords. And while Google offers tracking within Adwords, it often requires code to be placed on the product sales page, which is a problem if you’re marketing someone else’s product through Clickbank, Commission Junction, ModernClick, or any of the other affiliate networks.
Affiliate Radar attempts to solve that problem by generating unique tracking codes for each keyword that are then passed to the affiliate network, and then returned to Affiliate Radar through their sales reports. This enables the application to “know” which keywords are responsible for each sale. The idea is, by seeing which keywords result in a sale and which do not, an Affiliate Marketer can trim their keyword list to avoid paying for keywords that lose money
There are a few other products on the market that can do some of the keyword tracking, such as Google Cash Automator, however Affiliate Radar appears to be the only one that provides transportability between the search engines. This lets a PPC advertiser duplicate a Google campaign on MSN Adcenter and Yahoo, and vice-versa. Most Affiliate Marketers make the costly mistake of limiting their ads to Google because it can be very time-consuming and tedious to manually copy campaigns. By providing an easy way to move campaigns between Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s Adcenter, they are more likely to move their successful campaigns onto each platform. This means that in theory, someone can take their ‘profitable’ campaign from Google, and duplicate it on the other search engines without having to manually set up each one, a task so tedious and time consuming that most Internet marketers willingly leave money on the table rather than go through the effort.
Affiliate Radar has another feature that I found very interesting, the Offer Vault. This is a searchable database of product offers from the major affiliate networks. This allows me to search across different affiliate networks by keyword, showing me all offers that match my search. This addresses another common Affiliate Marketers problem of finding affiliate offers for specific niches they are attempting to target.
Keyword tracking is essential for PPC success, and by itself can improve ROI tremendously. By further combining the keyword tracking capability of Affiliate Radar with a campaign-generating program such as SpeedPPC and an ad spying program such as ZamDoo, an enterprising marketer can piece now together an end-to-end affiliate marketing “system” that has the potential to increase their reach and effectiveness.
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress
Affiliate Marketers spend a lot of time and money on Google Adwords, most of it for “GoogleCash” type direct-link affiliate marketing. The money is spent “buying” keywords, hoping that when someone searches on that keyword, they will see their ad, click on it, and purchase whatever is at the other end. Their cost is a direct result of how many keywords they have to buy in order to cover all the possible search terms someone might use when looking for whatever they happen to be selling. But as most PPC affiliate marketer learn, all keywords are not created equally. They tend to follow the “80-20 Rule”: 20% of the keywords account for 80% of the sales. If these advertisers could avoid paying for the low-performing 80%, and buy only the 20% that convert into sales, all of their ad campaigns would be successful. Recently I heard of a program called Affiliate Radar which claims to improve the ROI of pay-per-click advertising. Affiliate Radar is a new program designed to track each keyword individually, enabling the advertiser to see which one’s are ‘winners’, and which are ‘losers’.
In my blog, Improve Your Internet Marketing, I spend a lot of time going over the basics Internet marketing, as well as the tools that can help to achieve success. I stress the importance of keyword research, particularly for Affiliate Marketing. But even the best keyword research is blinded if you cannot track individual keywords. And while Google offers tracking within Adwords, it often requires code to be placed on the product sales page, which is a problem if you’re marketing someone else’s product through Clickbank, Commission Junction, ModernClick, or any of the other affiliate networks.
Affiliate Radar attempts to solve that problem by generating unique tracking codes for each keyword that are then passed to the affiliate network, and then returned to Affiliate Radar through their sales reports. This enables the application to “know” which keywords are responsible for each sale. The idea is, by seeing which keywords result in a sale and which do not, an Affiliate Marketer can trim their keyword list to avoid paying for keywords that lose money
There are a few other products on the market that can do some of the keyword tracking, such as Google Cash Automator, however Affiliate Radar appears to be the only one that provides transportability between the search engines. This lets a PPC advertiser duplicate a Google campaign on MSN Adcenter and Yahoo, and vice-versa. Most Affiliate Marketers make the costly mistake of limiting their ads to Google because it can be very time-consuming and tedious to manually copy campaigns. By providing an easy way to move campaigns between Google, Yahoo, and MSN’s Adcenter, they are more likely to move their successful campaigns onto each platform. This means that in theory, someone can take their ‘profitable’ campaign from Google, and duplicate it on the other search engines without having to manually set up each one, a task so tedious and time consuming that most Internet marketers willingly leave money on the table rather than go through the effort.
Affiliate Radar has another feature that I found very interesting, the Offer Vault. This is a searchable database of product offers from the major affiliate networks. This allows me to search across different affiliate networks by keyword, showing me all offers that match my search. This addresses another common Affiliate Marketers problem of finding affiliate offers for specific niches they are attempting to target.
Keyword tracking is essential for PPC success, and by itself can improve ROI tremendously. By further combining the keyword tracking capability of Affiliate Radar with a campaign-generating program such as SpeedPPC and an ad spying program such as ZamDoo, an enterprising marketer can piece now together an end-to-end affiliate marketing “system” that has the potential to increase their reach and effectiveness.
Caffeinated Content – Members-Only Content for WordPress