YOUTILITY

Why Smart Marketing Is About Help, Not Hype

The difference between helping and selling is just two letters. But those two letters are critically important to your company’s success.

You’re not competing for attention only against other, similar products. You’re competing for attention against everything. To win in this hyper-competitive environment, you must ask “How can we help?”

If you sell something, you make a customer today, but if you genuinely help someone, you create a customer for life. This is Youtility.

Includes interviews with dozens of companies practicing Youtility, and provides 6 blueprints for building Youtility in your company.

Available for pre-order soon (get up to 7 exclusive bonuses) at http://YoutilityBook.com
Search Marketing Advice 12  |  Add Yours

The Truth About Publicis Buying Performics

In a sign that major advertising agencies are continuing to recognize the long-term profitability of search marketing, Publicis Groupe bought Performics from Google today. One of the largest search marketing agencies, Performics will join Digitas and other Publicis entities as part of VivaKi Nerve Center (no, I am not making this up) the new strategic [...]

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Agency Promotion 10  |  Add Yours

Agency Advantage Tools #1 – Website Grader

Welcome to Agency Advantage Tools, a regular blog series at Convince & Convert that spotlights inexpensive or free digital marketing tools. There are literally thousands of different Web sites, applications, plug-ins, widgets and more devoted to helping digital marketers do their jobs better or faster. Most advertising agencies and PR firms are too busy doing [...]

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Campaign Testing and Optimization 5  |  Add Yours

Agencies Need to be Testing Landing Pages

Average length of stay on a Web site is approximately 2 minutes and 30 seconds overall. Approximate length of stay by visitors coming from search is about 10 seconds. Why the difference? Search users are less likely to know your company and its attributes in advance, and they know there are several other options available [...]

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Agency Promotion 7  |  Add Yours

UPDATE: GoDaddy and the .Me Domain Disaster

UPDATE: Well, the .me registration was a complete and utter fiasco. Speaking from personal experience, and reporting from Mashable (soon to be joined by a lot of other reporting, I predict) – this was one of the worst examples of customer experience in my 15 years online.  It took one full hour to check out. [...]

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Campaign Testing and Optimization 10  |  Add Yours

Google to Show Search Volume – Another Blow to Agencies

In a LOOOOONG overdue move that provides some much-needed transparency to the PPC business, Google has added search volume data to their keyword research tool.  This means that when you use Google to research potential search terms for your clients’ pay-per-click campaign, Google will actually give you an idea of how many people actually search [...]

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Agency Promotion 1  |  Add Yours

91% of Top Digital Agencies Not Buying Their Own Brands on PPC

In a shocking (and embarassing) revelation today, AdWeek uncovered that of the 56 world-class digital marketing agencies featured in their Annual Report Card, just 5 are purchasing their own brand names in PPC. In fairness to the firms, most of them appear at or near the top of organic search results for their own brand [...]

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Campaign Testing and Optimization 1  |  Add Yours

Google’s Popularity is Costing You Money

Paid search management vendor Covario said today that PPC spending was up 52% in Q1 2008 versus 2007. 52% is a big leap for an already red-hot digital marketing tactic. But perhaps more interesting was the finding that Google took in 85% of the paid search spend in the first quarter. (No wonder Yahoo! rushed [...]

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Internet Advertising 4  |  Add Yours

How to calculate your PPC budget and success

Q. I’m interested in pay per click search engine advertising, but I don’t know how much it will cost. Help! A. Projecting costs for pay per click can be as mysterious as Britney Spears’ career plan. Like success in Iraq, multiple factors determine your PPC budget and success level, and they are inter-related. The single [...]

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Search Marketing Advice 1  |  Add Yours

Search Results Go Boom: Does the Google Bomb Work?

Q. A disgruntled employee built a Web page that’s very negative about my company. Now when you search for my company’s name, his page comes up before mine. I think this is hurting my business. Is there a way I can push his page down so fewer people see it? A. Dealing with publicity from [...]

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Campaign Testing and Optimization 1  |  Add Yours

Just What They’re Looking For: Using Landing Pages to Improve Paid Search Marketing

As I write this, hundreds of thousands of businesses are competing to convince people that their Web site is online nirvana – the beatitude, not the band. But, given all the other marketing tactics available, why has pay per click search marketing gone from nowhere to a $3 billion dollar industry this year, and $5.5 [...]

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