All has been quiet on the site for the last week or so. Life comes at you fast sometimes; last week was a rather zany vacation in Las Vegas and followed by a transition today out of Microsoft.  In-between my blog suffered.
So topic of the day similar to my “Cult of Personality Post”:

You are your business.
In Vegas as you can plainly see from above I had the opportunity to go and see the magic/comedy duo that is Penn & Teller. I absolutely loved the show and if anyone had asked me what act I’d seen in Vegas that they should go see it would have been there’s.
I’m not going to stop there though, with recommending when prompted. The first thing I did after getting a picture was post on Facebook how everyone should go see Penn & Teller, and now find myself devoting an entire post to them.

Push Further
You see Penn & Teller have gone past the boundaries I would associate with normal celebrities and other Vegas acts and established a close connection with their audience.

Beyond the audience participation bits of the show I was shocked to see an after-show free autograph and picture session. I saw lines gathering and expected to see a sign denoting what the charge for a single picture would be; instead I saw none and was almost perplexed.
Don’t Give Up On What Got You There
Pen n & Teller get it; the same deal that they used to climb the ranks will keep propelling their business forward.  You don’t stop doing the things that made you successful, that’s a lesson everyone should get.

Conclusion
Readership was way up because I was posting compelling articles daily, and I went 5 days between posts. Lesson learned Penn & Teller, be a better steward of my brand. With the recent career shift I’m reinvigorated by the opportunity the blog presents, to be heard, to influence, and to make for better products and services.
Looking forward to a renewed readership base.
Nick

Introduction

I would like to take this time to introduce myself. My name is Gustav and I will also be contributing to the content on the website. You can read more about my accomplishments in the about section of the website. I have been in the background performing much of the marketing for the website.

This article will be one of several in a series devoted to Entry Level Blog Marketing. Much it will be advice of how to market your own blog through my own experiences.

There are two strategies that I undertook as part of an effort to market our blog as a useful resource for branding, marketing, and product management: Google Adwords and Web 2.0 social networking websites.

My Experience

I taught myself Google Adwords while I was a GM at a small single-owner operated pizzeria. I was extremely successfully in marketing our product in an incredibly competitive market (there were over two dozen pizzerias in just a 4 mile radius). In just over 3 months, with a budget of just $150/month, I was able to obtain a return on investment of 9:1. I was able to convince the owner that internet marketing is not only inexpensive but also extremely profitable.

Strategy A: Google Adwords

I applied the same strategy to our blog except the budget was significantly less ($50/month) and our blog was competing for ad space on a continent basis (North America was the geographic range) instead of a local basis with the pizzeria. While I was concerned, I decided to move forward because regardless of the outcome it would provide useful knowledge as our blog moves forward and garners attention.

The first setback occurred when many of the keywords that were relevant to our content were highly competitive and expensive. Words such as ‘branding,’ ‘marketing,’ ‘product management,’ ‘product branding,’ etc. had CPC(Cost-per-click) well over $1.00. Such a high CPC was unfeasible with our budget and made little sense when we have no current revenue stream. It wasn’t worth spending over $1.00 when it is highly unlikely each click will result in a conversion (conversion in our case was defined as an active reader of articles)

The second setback occurred when the keywords that were affordable (around $0.10 to $0.20 CPC) didn’t generate enough impressions to expose us to a large enough audience. With around 20 to 30 keywords per Ad Group we were only generating around 300 impressions in 2 weeks. That comes out to just over 20 impressions per day. When you don’t generate enough impressions, your CTR (Click-through-rate) won’t go up and as a result your quality score for those cheaper keywords will start going down resulting in a higher bid price in order to stay on the front page of results. This led me to believe that Google Adwords is not a good place to start for demand gen on a blog.

Strategy B: Web 2.0 Social Networking

Next, I decided to try the Web 2.0 market or social networking blogs that were frequently used around the world. The social networking blogs on my list included Digg, Reddit, Delicious, Mixx, Slashdot, Stumbleupon, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Sphinn. While all of these social networking blogs differ in the content offering, feature set, and business model, they all have one thing in common: users of any of these social networking sites have an opportunity to submit their own content and have it viewed or rated by other users. This sounded like a great opportunity to get some exposure at no cost.

After about 2 weeks of posting to the above aforementioned websites, we had over a 500% increase in traffic to our blog. This was impressive. With just about 15 minutes of work posting to each of the social networking blogs per day and an additional 15 minutes or so participating in other content and articles, we were obtaining some serious ROI.

It should be noted, however, that social networking sites should not be exclusively used for your own personal gain. The whole purpose of them is to develop an active community of members that post content from a wide variety of sources. If you choose to market your blog through these sites, then make sure you return the chance at free advertising by actively contributing to other articles and posting links to other domains. Many of them also implement auto spambots that detect and flag users who use their service exclusively for personal gain so it would be wise to follow my advice. Also make sure the quality of your content is high. People won’t vote up what you submit or visit your blog if they believe there isn’t content there worth looking at. We at MGMT Now strongly believe the business content and analysis we provide will help others make insightful business decisions.

Conclusion

When deciding between Google Adwords and social networking websites for initial blog marketing the answer is simple: Go the no cost way of Web 2.0 social networking. However, once you have a revenue stream and can increase your monthly budget on Adwords to a competitive level, Adwords will prove to be very helpful. Adsense is a great way to generate advertising revenue, but I will leave that to another part of this series.

Being my first attempt at marketing a blog, it is very exciting to see the strategies that work and the strategies that don’t work from my own personal experiences. I take the time to write these articles because I want my readers to benefit much in the same way I have. I believe that everyone with an entrepreneurial spirit has a right to learn how to make a successful presence on the internet.

Full Disclosure
So this is a bit outside of normal for me. If you’ve taken the time to read the about section of the site you’ll know I’m a Product Manager at Microsoft in the CE group. Given that, I try and stay about as far away from Microsoft topics as I can in a sort of separation of church and state sort of concept. It’s just usually bad news to cross your personal blogging efforts with your company. 

That being said, I try and be somewhat relevant to what is going on in the world, and well Windows 7 on October 22nd 2009 will be one of the biggest stories of the day. So here’s my take which is not in any way representative or endorsed by Microsoft. This is only my own personal view as a user of the product, a consumer, and someone who loved the new advertisements.

A New Breed of Advertising

Windows 7 arrives amid a mix of the A-Team, a little girl, ponies, kittens, and awesomeness. Commercials dedicated to the fun, often random, whimsical desires of a diverse group of customers; who use their machines in any way but what is predictable. Finally the marketing for this product has caught up with the internet age; where people watch dogs on skateboards via YouTube or unfortunate pictures of failure at failblog and peopleofwalmart.

A Product That Fits
I’ve been using Windows 7 since it came out in beta and have loved every minute of it. One of my earliest memories of a Windows 7 “WOW!” moment came when I had a fellow Product Manager who wanted to get a second screen working with his Lenovo laptop so he could keep an eye on March Madness (NCAA Basketball) while he continued to work on his other screen.

Here’s how the scene played out (almost commercial like in its ability to pitch a product feature):

PM 1: He guys do you know anything about ATI drivers? I really need to figure out how to get this second monitor working, I’m missing the Michigan game.
PM2:Oh you actually don’t want to go to ATI’s website its more of a Lenovo issue you should head to their website, and look through the available drivers for that device.
Me:Or you could just click the Windows Update button, the Windows team understood how bad of an experience it could be to have to jump around all over the internet, and worked with their partners to get the drivers delivered via a Microsoft download.
PM2: Oh yeah…….
PM1: Let me try that.
<90 seconds pass> and PM 1 comes rushing back to my office.
PM1: It’s working and I can watch the game now. That was great.

The best thing I can say about the product is it works around your life. There are lots of features designed to make the places you were already going to that much easier to reach. That’s why I love the random and totally bizarre commercials with a little 5 year old rocking out on her PC, because that’s honestly how the product feels to me. 

Conclusion
As for the marketing, I love the little girl she humanizes this giant product, sells the right message (it really is that easy), and looks like she’s having a ton of fun doing it. Then you throw in some A-Team song and I’m all about it. Sure the ad is random but so are consumers, and that’s who needs to cuddle up with Windows 7.

Only concern I have with the advertising is I’d like to see more features outlined. That has been one of the showcases of the iPhone commercials which have been so successful. They show you how to use the product in a 30 second spot every time, and it’s something Microsoft should also be doing.

Update on Google AdWords Complaint
I failed to discuss quality score in my original post which has  led to some interesting comments on some Web 2.0 sites we’ve posted onto.

To set the record straight:
We ran the ads for a total of 3 days, we only received 3 impressions in that time, and our relevancy score was 6/10. While 6/10 isn’t the best relevancy score I feel that score plus the short period of time that I was given to run the ad was absurd. When most sites utilize CPM  (cost per million) the idea that 3 impressions (sorry I heard originally 100 but that was for a different key word) is enough data to double my costs in my mind is not appropriate.
Lets also not forget that there is absolutely no one else advertising on this word.

My Take on the Responses
I see a lot of experts who are all too comfortable with the realities of working with Google and that scares me a bit. I look at a company with so much power who can make a flippant decision and it is a concern as a businessman. The suggestion that the person with the dominating power is just right and there can be no complaints or concerns is asinine, especially when their impact on advertisers is so skewed.
This of course isn’t my forte, I’m not the internet marketer for this site I’m a brand and product manager specialist. We’ll have some more updates straight from Gustav on the coming campaign.

Original post:

So I’m pretty new to Google and AdWords I’ll admit that straight away. In just a few weeks time of using the product I’ve seen some rather abnormal behavior all of my keywords keep going up weekly in acquisition costs.
 

Devil’s Advocate
Other companies keep bidding up the words you are using.
This is just the cost of doing business
More competitors are coming into the market
Basic Supply and Demand

My Take
It’s highly irregular to think that every single last keyword has gone up in price consistently.
It feels like I’m bidding against myself
The words I was selecting were relatively low in priority previously so why would there be a sudden rush to that real-estate?

I am Bidding Against Myself
This one is the most glaring issue I’ve seen. I selected the keyword “Messaging and Positioning” a term that had zero people paying for advertising. A week later Google asked me to double my cost of acquisition even though still no one is using this keyword.

Looks like Wyoming so why am I paying NYC prices?

 This Feels Like Price-Fixing
You have the dominate share of the internet, you offer no transparency in the bidding process, and to top it off you raise the price on something 1 person is bidding on? That sounds a lot like utilizing your market power to price fix.

Filing an Anti-Trust Complaint
I decided to file a complaint to the federal government on this. If you’ve seen a similar issue feel free to leave a comment, and if you want to file a complaint here is the information.

E-mail   antitrust.complaints@usdoj.gov

Mail   Citizen Complaint Center
Antitrust Division
950 Pennsylvania Ave., NW
Room 3322
Washington, DC 20530
Phone   1-888-647-3258 (toll free in the U.S. and Canada) or 202-307-2040

My Complaint letter:

Complaint Against: Google
Complaint explanation:
 
Recently I’ve started using Google Ad-words. I felt this was really the only real option to drive traffic to my site as they wield about 70% of the search market share. Their process of selecting ads for placement is through an open bid auction. However, there is no visibility into this process, we’re expected to believe that Google will appropriately handle the auction and not inflate the prices.
 
After a couple of weeks I’ve seen every single ad word that we have selected has gone up in price like clockwork. Now this could just be the nature of the business, maybe more companies have become interested in a word etc. I can appreciate that argument. Except, that we put an ad in for the words “messaging and positioning” and that too has gone up in price.
 
The problem with the “messaging and positioning” is this:
1. No one else was advertising under these key words when we started.
2. Still no one is advertising under these key words as seen from the attached screen shot.
3. Google has asked us to increase our advertising price $.10 to $.20 doubling our cost
4. Google has not communicated any across the board increase in the cost of these services.
5. With no additional demand for the keyword I’m being asked to bid against myself essentially.
6. There is no transparency in how Google does business
7. To me this is an unfair business practice and should be investigated as a possible exertion of Google’s dominate market-share for the purpose of price fixing.

Google enabled graffiti is coming to the web. What does this mean for your web based business? Photo by Clav

What is sidewiki?

Sidewiki is a service offered by Google that is included in their Google Toolbar product. It’s positioned as a service that enables users to “contribute helpful information on any web page. How side wiki works is insert a layer on top of the website where users can drop in comments.

It’s not graffiti though is it?

Graffiti is typically defined as any images, lettering that is scratched, painted, or marked in any manner on property; with the implication that it is property that is owned by another party.

What Google is doing is enabling all of its users to create digital graffiti that changes the way everyone with this service enabled experience on the website. This really isn’t that much different than spray painting the side of a building except that users have to opt-in to see it.

photo provided by lorelei

Business Implications

I would expect most any site that doesn’t derive its revenue/traffic from user based activities to be a little nervous. This includes anyone who has an eCommerce portal, any corporate websites, and bloggers.

While there are a lot of positives to enabling your audience to play a bigger role in advocating your product, unfortunately we’ve all seen internet flame wars. The scary thing here is its Google not the site owner that determines the relevance of comments, as well as if a comment should be taken down.

Steps businesses can take

First off shore up your branding, make sure you’re speaking to your core audience and building trust, and a bond that will put them on your side. By doing this you can eliminate a majority of the exposure to negative public commentary.

Enable your own controlled feedback loop, be innovative. It could be adding a comments section, or creating a direct pipeline between the audience and a site admin/public relations person. Having a brand presence in the form of an evangelist or community activist goes a long way towards taking charge of the discussion and keeping it on point.

In addition to these steps you can also join the side wiki fray.  You can find steps to do this here.

Conclusion

As a site owner myself, I find what Google is doing to be very intrusive, it’s not unexpected though as we’ve seen things like YouTube and or Google News aggregator which directly attacked the value a content owner held. Google pushes the envelope on ownership of content because their business model makes money off of free information.

I really wonder how far side wiki will go. Can Google insert advertising into it? If so we may see a time where bloggers and other advertising based websites may run into significant pain with their current business model as it bumps up against Google’s.