Archive for February, 2009

I took this great course in November called Adwords Seminar for Success Advanced 301. The course content was excellent and well prepared. But better than the content was the presenter, Brad Geddes. A bona fide paid search expert. I listened to him talk all day, the whole time saying to myself; this is the best 300 bucks I’ve spent in a long time.

I took some of the tips he gave and implemented them in my client campaigns and immediately realized as much as a 25% bump in clicks. His tips on the content network were unbelievable.

So I started reading his blog and connected with him on Linked In. I use his explanation of how quality score effects ad rank in every one of my new client presentations.

Brad wrote a post about businesses that provide Search Marketing services. His post talks about the “magic formula” of delivering marketing products to business. He is talking my language. This issue is the very thing I struggle with.

After all, I started my company because I saw this hole in the marketplace. I got tired of sitting across from YP sales reps that didn’t understand the Internet end of the business. But they still wanted me to agree to some long term ad spend.

The absolute coolest thing about SEM is the scalability, the fact that I can buy a little and see how it works before I buy a lot. That scalability is the exact issue that makes it hard to build a business plan around.

Brad talks about the use of the “triple play” or the combination of print yellow pages, Internet yellow pages, and paid search. For the record, I am against a big spend in print YP. A few issues come up. First, the previously mentioned scalability, print YP can’t offer any level of scale. Second, print YP represents a declining business. I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on print YP advertising and I agree that some presence is necessary. I always enjoyed talking to my YP reps (once a year), but they would be last people I’d buy paid search from.

There are no shortage of young companies like mine that sell paid search but most of them think that 50% of the ad spend should be their profit. As I move customers over from *****local campaigns and they realize just how much money *****local was making they go crazy.

Brad, the “magic formula” is complex to say the least. I do know this much, the formula needs to include value, vision, scalability, measurability, and accountability. I hope to talk more about this over time.