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The Engagement Process
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Establishing trust - First, I need to earn your trust
and confidence. A lot of this comes from your understanding
my approach and unique value proposition. That usually
involves having a phone conversation, which could last
anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour, and may include me
reviewing your AdWords account as well as your website. If we are a good fit,
things usually move along quickly.
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Let’s get serious - If you are serious about hiring
a professional, then you should be willing to make an
investment of time and money. You must be willing to put
up $1,000 as a retainer for my services, even if you only
use a few hours. But remember, we have no contract and you
can stop whenever you like and the unused portion of the
retainer will be returned without question.
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Commitment - The formal process begins with me
sending you an email message. The message contains two
things; an invoice for $1,000 (usually PayPal) and a
request read my MOU (Memorandum of Understanding).
I ask that you read the MOU before
sending me any money. It is not a contract, just my
attempt to be as open and honest about this journey we are
about to take together.The PayPal invoice is in the
form of a link which brings you to PayPal and allows you
to log into your account and authorize the payment. If you
do not have a PayPal account, you will be given an
opportunity to pay by credit card. I will accept checks, but it will slow down the
process. Once the
payment has been verified and I have access to your AdWords
account, we are ready to begin.
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Coaching, Consulting and Campaign Management
While I have created several campaigns for people who have
had no previous experience with internet marketing, most of my
clients already have existing AdWords accounts and active
campaigns. The steps I describe below are typical, but not
without exception. How I define these processes:
Coaching - I create the work plan and demonstrate what needs
to be done and show you examples of how to do it, but you do
most of the work. I review your work and remain available if you
have questions or need help. This requires less of my time. Consulting -
I take you through the process so you understand what I'm doing,
how I'm doing it and why. This will take longer and will cost
more, but you will be in a much better position to take over
the on-going management of your account. Please understand, the
reason I am successful at this is because I have deep technical
knowledge, lots of experience and a proven process. If you want
me to do the best I can to improve your account performance,
then you need to use my process. Campaign
Management - I do most of the work and only communicate with
you when necessary, but it is still a collaborative process
because you have a much better understanding of your products,
your market and your competition. This takes less time than
coaching, but not as much of my time as consulting.
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Critical
juncture – Once I have made a preliminary review of
your account, I will make a recommendation as to whether
we:
- Pause your existing campaign because it isn’t a good
use of your money,
- Begin making enhancements to your existing
campaign's or
- Create a new campaign from scratch
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Web analytics & conversion tracking – Web analytics
are like an EKG machine for your website. It tells us
where the visitors are coming from, what search phrases
they used, which pages they visited and a whole lot more.
Having accurate and reliable conversion tracking in place
can be very helpful in managing and improving campaign
performance, but it must be set up and analyzed correctly. I
recommend that you install Google Analytics. It isn't the
most comprehensive analytics, but it's pretty good and it's free.
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Triage - Assuming your existing campaign has merit,
I will look for ways to stop the bleeding of your budget
on poor quality traffic. Most novice AdWords advertisers
make innocent mistakes with campaign settings, ad group
structure, keyword selection, matching options and
bidding. Once the triage is complete, we can step back and
take a broader look at the situation.
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Let’s talk business - It just makes sense. In order
to effectively market your business, there are certain
things I need to know. Here is the kind of information we
will want to discuss:
- Your geographic markets
- Competitors
- What differentiates you from your competition
- Products & Services offered
- Describe your ideal customer
- Is your website optimized for visitors from search
- And more...
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Landing pages – This topic is a precursor to the
next section, conversion optimization.
However, there is a lot that can be done before we are
ready to have that discussion. If you have not
implemented some basic principles of landing page
design, it will be very difficult to achieve even
mediocre results with your campaign. We begin the
discussion with Google AdWords best practices, but here
is a hint. Think of a landing page as your "elevator
pitch".
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In the early stages of the process, I usually deliver the most
value by making campaign adjustments that result in immediate
cost savings. When I know more about your business, your
products and your market, the focus turns to creating
incremental business. If you would like to have a better
understanding of how the process plays out, please see my
article on the
Campaign Lifecycle. This is where you will find a more
detailed explanation of the tasks I generally use when working
on a client's account.
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Conversion optimization
When it comes to marketing your business online, your website
has one objective, get the visitor to take action! A
conversion happens when a website visitor takes that action, but
not all actions can be easily measured. For example, tracking a
phone call to a specific keyword in your campaign is difficult,
although not impossible. Also, focusing on an action that is a
big leap for a first-time visitor will make it difficult to
collect enough statistically significant data to make an
informed decision about what to adjust. Having measurable
actions a visitor can take, such as signing up for a newsletter,
downloading a white paper or making a modest purchase, will allow you
to collect precise data that can be used to effect positive
change in your campaign. So when it comes to having actions your
visitor can take, you want the bar to be relatively low, but
still be relevant to your sales process. The conversation you
have with a visitor actually begins in their head, but really
gets important when they arrive at your landing page.
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Your overall website - Before we embark on an
aggressive plan to optimize your landing pages, it will
be prudent to first step back and assess the website in
total. Does it have the features, functions and level of
quality that is consistent with your online marketing
objectives. Your website is a reflection of your product
or service. It has a "feeling" that sets the stage for how
prospects respond to your offer. See my article titled
What is your problem.
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Landing page design - When a visitor from search
arrives at your landing page, you have 3-5 seconds to make
a connection. If you don't, they will bounce! While there are an
infinite number of excellent landing page designs, most
share a common architecture. I call it AIDA. AIDA is an acronym
for Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. Easy to say,
quite another thing to achieve. We will be reviewing all your landing
pages to see how well they adhere to this tactic.
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A/B split testing - To think that we could design
the optimal landing page design the first time would be
naive. The most basic form of landing page optimization is
A/B split-testing. This is done by having two versions of
the page and splitting the traffic equally to determine
which one converts best. Google's Website Optimizer is a
great tool and it's free!
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Multi-variate testing - If it is warranted, we have
the ability to test many different possible designs
simultaneously. It involves dividing the page into several
physical sections and then creating multiple variations
for each section. A sophisticated tool displays different
combinations of each variation and arrives at the one that
produces the best conversion rate.
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If you are still looking for some additional insights, please
read my articles on
How much will it
cost and Are we a
good fit.
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