Having been on Google+ for several days now, I question the conventional wisdom. How could tech bloggers judge a social network when their own only contained a couple dozen people at most? I’m an early adopter, as are many of my friends. At the moment my network is around 100 people and I find it to be robust, diverse, and importantly, fun. When I got my invitation to Google+ two days ago, I couldn’t wait to play with it. It was familiar, like Facebook, but obviously very different as well. Two days later, I am frantically trying to get as many people in my “circles” as possible, I am checking and rechecking my notifications to see if anyone’s said anything, I feel a funny sense of pride knowing I’m one of the few who are not only on Google+, but who even know what it is. I remember this feeling: it was exactly how I felt when I fled MySpace for Facebook and never looked back. This feeling of excitement and exclusivity is a marketer’s dream.

And there’s definitely excitement amongst a certain generation of people. My circle of friends is mostly older Millennials (born in the 1980s), tech nerds, and city dwellers. I announced publically on Facebook and Twitter that I would send out invites if people replied with a request–within 24 hours of that announcement, I’ve sent out 100 invites. Those people who’ve joined are actively using it, exploring it, commenting, curating their circles–so I do believe that Google+ will catch on slowly but surely, just like Facebook before it.

What does this mean for a small business trying to reach their market on the Internet? At the moment, there are no ads on Google+. But Google has some unannounced features for Google+ in the pipeline. Engadet has found code for Google+ Games, so it’s probably only a matter of time before we see Google’s text ads along the side as well.

New to Google+ and have questions? Check out my Google+ Explainer on my personal blog.

Questions, Give me a call — (646) 351-0659 or email me at info@iuvoonline.com

Janelle M. Jimenez : Social Media Strategist at Iuvo Online Media Consultants

The screen caps on Mashable show a small text ad that says simply:

nfl.com/verizon
Follow the #NFLDraft conversation

That’s it. Very simple. There’s no “Sponsored” as one sees on Facebook, nor Twitter’s own “Promoted Tweets.” It seems to me that these non-intrusive ads might simply be too subtle and easily ignored to make much of a marketing impact. I think in-line advertisements between tweets would have been a better way to ensure that ads are never ignored. For businesses looking expand their reach, it looks like sticking with Major Search Engine PPC like Google AdWords or even Facebook Ads will continue to be the best strategy for the time being.

Questions, Give me a call — (646) 351-0659 or email me at info@iuvoonline.com

Janelle M. Jimenez : Social Media Strategist at Iuvo Online Media Consultants

Frustrated with Adwords because you can’t keep track of the little changes you make or can’t drive down the keyword changes you made and their impact on your campaign as a whole?  Feel like Adwords is a cauldron that you are throwing ingredients into but not really sure of their affect on the brew?  Well then, Adwords Experiments might be what you need!

Adwords Experiments is an addon to the Adwords interface and is currently in Beta (like all cool Google products).

Experiements allows you to split test multiple variations with your campaigns, such as Adcopy, URLs, new keywords, max bid changes etc.  For this example I will explain an experiment I did with changing the max bid for a particular keyword.

The Experiment options are found at the bottom of the settings page for the campaign you would like to run the experiment for.  See below..

The experiment is a 50/50 split for one keyword.  The experiment will have a 25% increase in max bid while the control of course will stay the same.  Each time the keyword is eligible for an auction, 50% of the time it will run with the original bid and 50% of the time it will run with the 50% increased experiment bid.  This is how you can see the difference between the control and the experiment.  Once you have setup your experiment in the settings, you need make the changes to your guinea pigs.

For keywords, go to the keywords tab, find the keyword you want to experiment on and click on the “segment” drop down menu and click on experiment. (See below)

You now should see the keyword details expand and the split of the keyword bidding into control and experiment.  Now you need to alter the bid for your experiment.  Click on the experiment max cpc bid and you will see the below window pop up…

Make the changes as required to meet your experiment and save the changes.  Depending on the amount of traffic that keyword receives, i would recommend letting the experiment run for at least a week before making any changes.  When the experiment sees a significant change, positive or negative, it will present a graphical representation.  Here is an example of the keyword I experimented on..

This example shows that by increasing the bid by 50%, the keyword received an additional 53 clicks, 2150 impressions, increased it’s CTR by 0.96%, increased its average rank from 2.2 – 1.5 and received twice as many conversions.  These all seem like very positive results, and they are, but there are some less optimal results included in the mix.  The Average CPC went up from $1.10 to $2.35, the cost obviously increased greatly with the number of clicks, the conversion rate went from 20% to 6.25% and the cost per conversion $5.80 to $38.02.  It would be great if positive results carried over perfectly to the experiment but they don’t.  Having a 20% conversion rate is amazing so wanting that keyword to get more clicks is justified.  For this experiment I will keep it running for another 2 weeks and see what happens to the results, more data = better decisions.  The cost per conversion is still below the clients expectations so this in turn brought them more conversions within their goals.  Also, the increased CTR should also have a more postive impact on the QS and therefor CPC, and overtime could improve the results even more so.  Conclusion – I will keep this experiment running for longer and work from there.

I really enjoy using experiments as it helps me test assumptions and ideas while keep the results well documented and easy to access.

Have you tried using Adwords Experiments?  Need help with Google Adwords Experiments?

Give me a call — (646) 351-0659 or email me at hugh@iuvoonline.com

Hugh Prysten: Consultant & SEM Strategist at Iuvo Online Media Consultants

Recently, Google Adwords has extended their extensions tab to include Phone extensions and Product Extensions.  This bring the list to ..

• Location Extensions – Link your Google Places account of your business and show your address under Ad text
• Sitelink Extensions – Create sitelinks for certain pages of you site that appear below your ad text
• Product Extensions – Allows you to link your E-commerce products from Google Merchant Center to your Ads
• Phone Extensions – Allows you at attach a phone number to your ad copy

Today I would like to discuss Phone Extensions, but I will touch on the others at a later date.  First of all I would like to note that Phone Extensions does not replace website phone tracking for your website as it is more of an additional feature for phone tracking that can be used alone (limited) or with your current call tracking system.  Also, Extensions usually only benefit ads that rank in the top 3 spots above the organic results.  For example, the address line for Location Extensions should appear no matter what your rank is and will show your closest location to the searchers location. However, the Google Map expansion add-on will only appear if you are in the top 3 spots.  You can not expect your Extensions to appear with every search as Google has a number of benchmarks that determine whether or not your extensions are relevant to the user and either will or will not show for a particular search.

What does Phone Extensions do?

It lets you add a phone number to your Ad Copy that can be tracked and will show you the number of phone calls your campaign received.

As you can see in the above example (rank 1), the advertiser has put their phone number in the Ad copy (#646) and the Phone Extension phone number (#877) has also appeared to the right of the headline.  A good example to show you where the number appears in the ad space.  Now this advertiser probably doesn’t need to waste ad text space with his phone number.  However, he is a locksmith so the more places he has their number viewable, the better!

How do I setup Phone Extensions?

Navigate to the Ad Extensions Tab, you may need to click on the arrow button to the right of networds if it isn’t showing up for you.  Click on the “View:” drop down navigation menu and click on Phone Extensions. Fill in the details as shown below and choose whether or not your want the Call-Only Format (good for mobile only targeted campaigns) and Call Metrics.  Depending on where you live, you may be able to get a local area code tracking number.  If not, you will have to get a toll-free number.  Once you have completed filling in your information – click save.

Now, you should see the same as the below example (minus the stats).

Uses and Limitations of Phone Extensions?

Obviously, you can use Phone extensions as a gauge on how successful certain campaigns are and how engaging your ad copy and call to action is.  You can see the number of calls recieved, missed, total call durations and average call duration for each campaign that has phone extensions implemented on.   This is some really good campaign level information but…

there are limitations of Phone Extensions in its current state.  You can not drill down to the ad group, or keyword or even the ad copy that helped you generate those phone calls.  You are in the dark about which ad copy encouraged the searcher to call your business before even clicking on the ad.  That is a huge gap in this system and would be a very powerful addition for optimizing ad copy, not to mention keywords and ad groups as well!  Maybe by dynamically changing the phone number for each impression would make that possible but maybe that it too much bandwidth requirement on Google’s end. Also, the calls do not count as conversions, this as an option may be a later addition as well.  Remember to check your columns tab to make sure you have the right columns showing for your Phone Extension call tracking.

I believe these additions and more will come with future updates of the Google Adwords interface.  Also like Location Extensions, phone and the other extensions may become available in the Adwords Editor aswell.

Need help with Google Adwords Extensions?

Give me a call — (646) 351-0659 or email me at hugh@iuvoonline.com

Hugh Prysten: Consultant & SEM Strategist at Iuvo Online Media Consultants

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Call us today 845-549-8831 or email us at info@iuvoonline.com