by tyler on 07/29/2008
A common adjustment businesses make in a recession, (I’m not saying we are in a recession, although many indications point in that direction), is to cut their advertising budget.
That is often found to be the wrong reaction, as cutting your advertising budget wont lead to more sales. Since cutting the ad budget is still practiced by many, your competitors might join that crowd. Or, you can go crazy and expand your marketing spend during a down turn.
I have noticed a reduction in the number of AdWords advertisers. This decreases spend per click and reduces the options searchers have, which could lead to more sales for you. Even if the general populace is buying less, they still research products which could lead to sales down the road.
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by tyler on 07/27/2008
Google has begun the PageRank update. I have seen updates on multiple site that I work on.
Some of the potential changes per the Search Engine Roundtable blog:
- Internal links and external links on the same page may not be splitting the PageRank vote equally.
- Depending on the location of the link, PR may be weighted differently.
- Multiple links to the same url from the same page may not each get the same piece of the PR vote.
- “Run-of-site” external links, like Blogrolls, may now have diminished PR.
- Links between domains that Google sees as “related” may have their PR significantly damped down. Possibly the same goes for sites that link to subdomains.
Although many deem PageRank unimportant I still contend that it is one way to tell how relevant Google deems your site.
by tyler on 07/16/2008
With the launch of the new iPhone App Store, a new platform has been created to reach millions of tech savvy users. With new platforms, comes new marketing channels. While the cost of entry is higher to build an app for the iPhone, that also limits the number of competitors.
You have three options when building an iPhone app:
- Build an app that promotes your service (MLB has a paid app for scores and stats)
- Build an app that replicates your service (ebay, facebook, paypal and myspace all do this)
- Build an independent app (an app that is not tied to a current product or service)
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by tyler on 07/8/2008
Adobe Flash is a pain to the SEO community. Flash has never been indexed well by the search engines which reduces the amount of copy/images to work with. The best work around was to produce an HTML version of the Flash page so search engines could index all the awesome unique content that you produced. I work with a sketchbook site that uses Flash (against my wishes 
). As you can see there is very little on-page material for the search engines to work with.
The fight against the use of Flash is going to get a little harder. Adobe has announced that they are working with Google and Yahoo to make Flash and rich Internet application (RIA’s) files searchable. Google also announced that they have built a better “Flash indexing algorithm”. How well they index and exactly how much information can be pulled from Flash files is still to be seen.
On a side note, the Flash site I referenced above has released new, one-of-a-kind sketchbooks signed by the artist. If you know anyone that is into original art please forward the link.
Source: Adobe makes Flash Searchable – ReadWriteWeb
by tyler on 06/24/2008
Recently I have received many questions about the Adwords Quality Score. I have wanted to write an article that explains the most important aspects of the quality score and which segments you have the most control over so I can use it as a resource with startups I work with.
First, lets discuss the segments that you control when building an Adwords campaign.
- Keywords – Like keyword research in SEO, paid search keywords are vital to reaching the correct audience. Competition can also be tough for highly searched words, so a long-tail strategy can also be useful to keep cost down. Regardless if they are high volume keywords or long-tail, they need to be relevant to your offering.
- Ads – One of the most important tasks in paid search is ad copy. These ads are displayed in the search engine results pages (SERPS) and are the only source of information that searchers have when deciding where to click. As you will read below, Google uses click through rate has a major gauge in the quality of your ads.
- Landing Page – This is the page that searchers will land on when they click your ad. You (should) build and control this page. Google will look at this page to determine if it is relevant to your keyword and ad.
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by tyler on 06/18/2008
One of the most powerful marketing effects your startup could produce is the viral expansion loop. The theory is simple, the execution is not. A viral expansion loop is exponential growth produced by users and the system was engineered to produce the viral loop (some happen on accident).
Fast Company did an article on Ning (a site that allows anyone to start a social network) and the effects of the viral expansion loop called Ning’s Infinite Ambition. It is a must read for anyone starting or running a business, even if the tactic is not relevant to your current situation.
The best example to understand the viral expansion loop is given in the article. Take a penny and double it every day for 30 days. By the end of 2 weeks you will have $81.92, and by the end of the 30 days you will have a staggering $5.4 million.
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by tyler on 06/3/2008
And this is coming from a startup marketing manager. I have worked on quite a few startup products through the years and I keep witnessing the same trend. The startups that actually solve an issue or provide a unique service, don’t really need my help. I might give the initial push, but the product itself creates the snowball effect.
I’m not suggesting you get rid of your marketing guy completely. You will need someone to schedule all the interview appointments with the media.
The hardest part is getting your product to those few outlets that will start the avalanche.
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by tyler on 05/28/2008
One type of advertising startups often pass on (if not ever used) is apparel. Creating t-shirts and distributing them is not only a strain on resources and money (if your lucky to have some), there is a lack of truly knowing the effectiveness.
I have stumbled across a site that I wish I had thought of and is a good marketing tool for startups. Startup Schwag is a company that creates “Schwag bags”. The bags contain at least one t-shirt with the logo of a startup and stickers of many other startups sent each month to subscribers. It cost under $20 for US deliveries.
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