So, thanks to Dave over at Lyris, we learned about a file converter offered by none other than Microsoft and are happy to provide the download link for you: Download the file extension file converter docx to doc.

You’ll interact directly with the firm principals and be accountable and responsible for providing:

• Paid Search Marketing support; including keyword research, competitive analysis, and campaign creation.
• Search Engine Optimization support; including content development, competitive analysis and research.
• Project management and creation of email marketing campaigns and reporting.
• XHTML/CSS updates to emails, client web sites and construction of landing pages.
• Assist with month-end reporting including spreadsheet updates.
• Ad hoc projects that are needed in conjunction with above duties and the operations of Liberty Interactive Marketing.
• Light administrative tasks like new client process, filing, and answering phones.

Desired Qualifications:

• Organized and resourceful.
• Detail-oriented, fairly analytical.
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills.
• 4-year degree from an accredited university.
• Experience and desire to research.
• Ability to write and enjoy it.
• Basic knowledge of HTML, XHTML/CSS.
• Proficiency with Microsoft Office (Excel, PowerPoint, Word, etc.)
• Basic familiarity with Photoshop.

If you are:

• Able to excel in a small company and an autonomous environment,
• An energetic, team player with a genuine interest in Internet Marketing,
• Have the ability to multitask and manage projects,
• Comfortable with voicing your opinion for the betterment of the group, task at hand and benefit of the client,
• Interested in creating, participating in and maintaining a culture of innovation and continuous improvement,

Then what are you waiting for? Apply now, send resumes to work@libertyinteractivemarketing.com

We are also seeking interns who are available 10-20 hours a week (this is a paid internship program).

Here’s the skinny:

• 87% of home buyers used the internet to search for a home purchased through a real estate agent,
• 72% of non-internet users were more likely to purchase in a private transaction directly from a builder or from an owner they already knew.

What information source did home buyers use:

• 87% Internet
• 85% Real-estate agents
• 62% Yard signs
• 48% Open houses
• 47% Print or newspaper ads
• Fewer buyers relied on home books or magazines, home builders, television, billboards and
  relocation companies.

When asked where home buyers first learned about the home they purchased:

• 34% said a real-estate agent;
• 32% cited the internet;
• 15% said yard signs;
• 7% said from a friend, neighbor or relative;
• 7% said home builders;
• 3% said from a print or newspaper ad;
• 2% learned directly from the seller;
• 1% from a home book or magazine.

Bottom line is that while the real estate industry has remained pretty traditional in method - using an agent, driving around looking at neighborhoods and finding open houses - online is and has been playing a significant role as an information resource to home buyers and you must be there to take advantage of it.  No online marketing company is going to tell you they will sell homes for you, and if they do, you shouldn’t believe them.  Hiring professionals to put together an online strategy that can be incorporated into your marketing plan will be the best bet.  The key is visibility, online presence, and lead generation.  Home buyers want to find the perfect home, and you might just have it, but you’ve got to be online so they can find you, thus providing a forum for them to reach out to you and visa versa.

Get the most up to date Real Estate stats regarding:
First Time Home-Buyers, Current Down Payments, Agent usage by Buyers and Sellers, Foreclosure Purchases, Features and Incentives,  and Additional Demographic Information by reading the full article at MarketingCharts.

About the study:
The 2008 National Association of Realtors Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers is the latest in a series of large national NAR surveys evaluating demographics, marketing, preferences and experiences of home buyers and sellers. NAR mailed an eight-page questionnaire in August 2008 to a national sample of 133,000 home buyers and sellers who purchased their homes between July 2007 and June 2008, according to county records. There were 10,053 usable responses and the adjusted response rate was 7.9%. All formation is characteristic of the 12-month period ending in June 2008 with the exception of income data, which are for 2007. Because of rounding and omissions for space, percentage distributions for some findings may not
add up to 100 percent.

Free stuff on Election Day:

1. Starbucks will give you a free 12-ounce coffee. Legally, abiding by election laws, Starbucks cannot offer free coffee to those who voted so they are giving coffee to anyone who asks for it.   Tara Darrow of Starbucks says, “To ensure we are in compliance with election law, we are extending our offer to all customers who request a tall brewed coffee. We’re pleased to honor our commitment to communities on this important Election Day. We hope there is a record turnout on Tuesday and look forward to celebrating with our customers over a great cup of coffee.”
2. Ben & Jerry’s free scoop of ice cream.  Between 5 p.m. and 8 p.m. in each time zone, ice cream shops  will hand out single-scoop ice cream cones. Get their early, lines will be longer than the voting lines.
3. Krispy Kreme, 85 of its 231 locations in the U.S. will hand out star-shaped, red-white-and-blue sprinkled doughnuts, of course while supplies last. The chain will give out about 200,000 doughnuts.
4. Chick-fil-A, 1,400 stores will hand out chicken sandwiches to adults who show proof that they voted, not sure this abides by election laws so I’m assuming it is also while supplies last.
5. Hipmamasplace.com, stay at home Moms can sign up and get free or discounted baby sitting services on Election Day. Read this article for details.

Cool stuff on Election Day:
1. A new comparative search tool allows you to compare and analyze anything on the Internet.  Appropriately, check out http://www.perspctv.com/ an election comparison between Obama and McCain, it consolidates data across various news, blogs, and social sites.

2. Google Maps - Find my voting location.  Google created an app that plugs write into their maps tool allowing visitors to enter their address and then find out where their designated voting location is. Pretty cool.

As a business owner, CMO or Marketing Director, the choice of a Search Marketing Firm will be one of your most important decisions.  In order to fully realize the benefits of Search Marketing, it is crucial to understand what role Search Marketing will play in your organization and choose a service provider that supports this role.

What is the focus of the Firm?

It is very important to understand what the prospective service provider specializes in.  Lately, it seems that everyone is getting into Search Marketing.  There are hosting companies, web design firms, web development shops and traditional agencies all trying to get a piece of the market.  It is often the case that no firm can do it all, or at least not do it all well.   It is best to choose a firm that specializes in Search Marketing.  There is no strong argument for using your web developer or your hosting company for your paid search management to keep it under one roof.  The worst combination is a traditional advertising agency that offers Search Marketing services.  That is like getting heart surgery from your pharmacist, they may have heard about it, maybe even read about it, and may be able to talk the talk, but they don’t do it day in and day out.   No matter what type of firm you are talking to, ask them who will be managing and performing the Search Marketing work.  Is it handled in-house or outsourced to another firm?

How do they view Search Marketing?

Do they believe that one aspect of Search Marketing is more important than the other?  Or do they believe that all initiatives work together and view search holistically?  As you interview service providers it is highly recommended to learn a little about the space.  You don’t have to become an expert, just have some basic knowledge.  Unfortunately there are a lot of charlatan’s and snake oil salesman out there.  By doing an hour or so of prep work on your own, you’ll find it is much easier to avoid many of these scammers.

What are their Search Engine Optimization tactics?

White Hat or Black Hat?  Learn this terminology, especially if your company’s reputation and long term success are important.  Basically White Hat SEO Firms play by the rules of the search engines and understand the uncertainty involved in playing by the rules.  Black Hat SEO Firms will tout quick and/or guaranteed results.  Never has it been more accurate that “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”  Black Hat SEO Firms stretch the rules and manipulate them often to the eventual detriment of their clients.  There is nothing wrong with preferring the Black Hat Route, it does work, usually, but not for long.  Getting banned from Google is real, and blaming it on an SEO firm will not get any sympathy or get you back in.  Make sure you know which side of the fence they are on.

What is their Paid Search Pitch?

Are they guaranteeing clicks, traffic or sales?  Ask how.  Beware of the “We have a relationship with Google”.  I get cold calls on my cell phone from firms claiming this all the time; some of the pitches are quite smooth.  If they had a relationship with Google they wouldn’t be talking to you or offering services, they would be using their relationship for their own benefit.  Saying they know a guy at Google is like knowing a guy at the Lottery Commission.  It is common for an agency to have a Rep at Google, we do too, but that does not in any way indicate an inside track or special arrangement.  Beware the Google Partners or Resellers claim; that means they make a cut off your Paid Search spend.

Do they stress bid management and special software as their competitive edge?  While this was the answer many years ago, times have changed.  Every major Paid Search venue uses some variation of a quality score and smart pricing.  This means that the entire campaign from keyword to landing page needs to be tested and managed, not just the bids.

If fact, the bids are pretty much the least important factor since they are derivative of the account performance as a whole.  Google made $16.4 billion last year from people clicking on ads.  They don’t care if you bid a million dollars a click; if your account has low relevancy to the search term your ad won’t show. If you have a significant spend budget in a highly competitive and fast moving niche there can be a benefit to bid management tools, but only as an enhancement to active management, not a replacement.

And another thing; taking Google or Yahoo! or MSNs advice on how to manage a campaign, or worse yet having them manage the campaign is like having the IRS do your taxes.  Enough said.

Their process goes something like this:
1. Searched “scottrade” in Google, they are running PPC for their branded term. Smart. Also, they show up #1 for their own company term. They’ve been awarded sitelinks from Google, those are the links below their listing in the organic - login, branch office locator, etc.

2. Login and open a new account are NOT hard to find! Thank you.

3. One criticism is when you hit “open an account” the form is a popup instead of just opening in a new window or taking you off the page.  Also, there are no question mark links (?) to help you select what type of account you want.  This is where I stopped, but the smart thing is that Scottrade asked for just some brief information about me prior to getting into the details of the account preferences and selection.  Why is this smart? Because this is a friction point. I stopped because I didn’t have the answer.  The next day I received a phone call from Joel, the Branch Manager hoping to help me out with completing my account setup.  I figured out the answer so I didn’t need to call him back.  Two days later I still hadn’t completed my account set up, but in the mail I received a PERSONALIZED booklet from Scottrade offering an offline way to complete my account setup! Wow, A) thanks for reminding me and B) thanks for helping me out if I didn’t feel comfortable completing it online.

4. The next week I finally completed my account setup online, what can I say I was busy.  The only portion I was unable to complete was linking my bank account.  Friction point.  Low and behold, I received another phone call from Joel, the Branch Manager (not a different person, the same person!!).  His voicemail offered to provide me with options for helping me set up my account for funding and  when I didn’t return his call, I received a paritally filled out form so help me along the process WITH A SELF-ADDRESSED POSTAGE APPLIED ENVELOPE! Thank you. It’s like my soccer coach always said “You can’t have control of the ball if you just stand around waiting for it to come to you, you must go to the ball to make things happen.”  Scottrade was bringing the proverbial “soccer ball” to them and it worked.

Why do I feel good about this persistence aka customer service? Because Scottrade found the right mix of online and offlline initiatives. They didn’t bug me until I was blue in the face and turned off from the process.  Their methodology and flow was more like reading my mind because they were aware of the friction points within their conversion process.

How you can get there?
1. Start with your Web site, ask friends, family, strangers to use your site and ask them to complete your desired goal for them, if you are serious about investing in your online customer experience, contact us or  Red Flag Consulting

2. Determine friction points throughout your conversion funnel/process, are they something that can be fixed online or do they require offline operations/interference to get customers to the end goal? Determine solutions, time and effort. Rethink your process if necessary, just because it isn’t broken doesn’t mean it can’t be improved! Raising conversions even .5% can have a serious impact on business.

3. Talk to your customers, listen to your customers, find out what went wrong, what worked, etc. Make changes and test!

4. Keep testing, if you find that your conversion process is half online and half offline find the right mix of phone calls, emails, direct mail.  You’re bound to tick some people off but at least you will learn if you are willing to listen.

4. Implement online marketing strategies, test landing pages and your process from all lead sources.

5. Listen, learn, test, repeat.

6. Feel comfortable with not being able to please everyone; please the majority, the right majority and you will remain on the right track.

Congrats to Scottrade for an excellent example of how to get customers through your conversion funnel, understanding that there were friction points along the way and knowing how to solve those to get customers to complete their desired task, as well as yours.

Basically, Rand finds that companies spend only a fraction of the amount on SEO as they do on PPC.  Specifically:

SEO: $1.3 billion (11%)
- Source: SEMPO data via Massimo Burgio, SMX Madrid 2008

Not surprisingly, search advertising should continue to be the largest category, growing from $9.1 billion in 2007 to $20.9 billion in 2013.
- Source: C|Net News, June 30, 2008

Now, there are a lot of good comments on this post talking about how the major reason companies spend this inordinate amount of money on PPC is because it is immediate, measurable, and controllable.  These are all things that HiPPOs like.  One of the inherent problems with SEO is that it requires companies to have patience in seeing the results.  All SEO projects take at least three months of commitment, with the majority requiring six months or longer.

While this is all well and good, I think one of the bigger issues with PPC vs SEO spending is the fact that they are targeting two different types of searchers.  I know that when I am in consumer mode, I will specifically look at the PPC ads, because I know they are offering me something I might want to buy.  More often than not, I consider organic listings to be information oriented, which isn’t a bad thing!  It just means that targeting PPC means you are targeting people who are in ‘buy mode’.  SEO is more of a presence oriented machine that will ultimately increase sales through credibility and relevance.  This is proven by a recent study that showed PPC converts 50% more than organic.

A major problem in the future, I think, will be that SEO will become the base standard of good operating companies and that their relevancy in the organic listings will force purely commercial companies out of the top rankings.  Instead of “God made man, but Samuel Colt made them equal”, you might say “Tim Berners-Lee made websites, but PPC made them equal”.

A new report by JupiterResearch (commissioned by Marin Software) found that:

• 85 percent of marketers surveyed by JupiterResearch complained that the complexity of paid search management is growing.
• Large scale companies are finding it difficult to resource talent and appropriate ROI tracking mechanisms to scale their campaigns for growth.

If you’re not a company spending $500k/month, you should still have your campaigns managed by a professional.  Here are a few reasons why it’s important to have the right PPC Search Engine Management company in place:

1. Search engine advertising rules change continuously
2. Campaigns must be monitored continuously to maximize performance
3. Testing of ads and landing pages must be done continuously or you are leaving money on the table
4. Competition enters the market daily and increases costs, most noteably unsophisticated competition increases costs
5. Ad writing is an art; creativity is limited
6. Budget needs to be managed wisely; every dollar needs to be tracked

Consider this - Google made $16.4 billion dollars in 2007 off their Adwords platform. If you’re setting up an account simply because it takes 5 minutes and a credit card and Google provides you with recommended keyterms - you should be worried.  This is the same reason why you should not have the IRS do your taxes - they aren’t looking out for your best interest and they aren’t looking for ways to save or make you money.  They get paid per click so if all components (keywords+as+landing pages) are not tracked, measured, optimized, and refined you might as well be throwing money out the window.

Here’s a more in depth article on this topic.

Contact us to dicuss PPC Advice and our capabilities for PPC Search Engine Management. Learn more about our Internet Marketing services.

I’m referring specifically to Pay-Per-Click campaigns.  How well are your PPC campaigns being managed? If your current PPC search engine management firm is simply sending you a list of keywords every month - this is not enough.  What are they doing to refine the campaign and optimize it to make sure you are maximizing on every dollar and cent spent?

Now more than ever, people are moving their dollars online and that means more competition. The old supply and demand rule.  If there are only a certain number of searches for what you are offering you’ve got to be there at the right time and say the right thing to convert that searcher into a lead or sale for you.

We’ve noticed in the past 60 days that ad impressions have significantly dropped, across all campaigns within various industries and markets,  which means there are less people searching for your product or service.

We have also noticed that clicks and leads have increased or remained steady across all campaigns, an indication of efficient campaign management. Additionally, it’s a huge indication that there are still highly qualified consumers out there ready to spend their money on your product or service.

So what does this mean to you? Because no click is created equal you must make sure every aspect of your campaign is highly targeted to your ideal customer. If you are simply writing a check to Google, Yahoo!, and the like each month without knowing what those dollars are returning then you should re-evaluate your current PPC management.

Call us today at 602.275.3935 - ask for Liberty or Mike, we’ll be happy to audit and evaluate your existing PPC campaigns.

1. Before researching any ecommerce software vendors, take a look at your business online.  Outline key objectives and goals in the areas of operations, accounting, shipping, etc.
2. Think about your audience and what information, features, etc. they will need in order to make informed decisions before purchasing.
3. Go as far as to outline the process and flow from customer facing front-end to back-end needs.
4. Make a list of technology requirements and ask about their technology in regards to platform, search marketing, lifecycle email marketing and customer database management.
5. Do your research and understand your needs.
6. While you may be overwhelmed with choices and savvy reps trying to sell you on how great their product is, understand that you can start small with the right product and ask your vendor if it can scale to your big dreams.