When we talk about how to build your online sales engine here at Pure Visibility, it’s common for us to use Google in our examples. That generates two common questions:

1. Does Pure Visibility work with other search engines?
2. How much share of the search market does Google really have?

Yes, we do work with all of the major search engines (Google, Yahoo! and MSN) as well as secondary players. It just so happens that Google holds the largest share of search, as well as the most comprehensive screening for agency participants, so you hear us talk about Google more often for both reasons. (It’s no secret we’re proud to be the only agency in the Midwest that holds combined certifications as a Google AdWords Company, Analytics Partner and Urchin Reseller!)

As far as market share goes, a recent USA Today article quotes a comScore study that finds Google is clearly the leader with “nearly 64% of the more than 14 billion US searches. Runner-up Yahoo had just a 20.5% share.”

And now you know the rest of the story.

I would like to point you to a favorite article on the topic of Facebook vs. LinkedIn, but after browsing a couple pages of Google results I’m here writing because there was a disappointing amount of industry-centric commentary. We’ve got A-List bloggers scorning one or both systems (hardly a “use case” or fair comparison for the average business person); pundits debating which network will succeed, and scenarios describing the use of these systems in getting (and unintentionally losing) jobs, etc.

While all of that analysis has its place, what do Facebook and LinkedIn offer to the average business person? Here’s my “elevator pitch” answer…

LinkedIn
If you’ve got a business card or a resume, you need to be on LinkedIn. It’s a tool for sharing professional recommendations, which means you belong here if you’re working on growing your business or your professional network. Period.

Facebook
If you want to get back in touch with your buddies from college and high school, join FaceBook. That’s what it was designed for, and what it still does best.

For a little more detail on both LinkedIn and Facebook, read on: Read More

What exactly IS the difference between Urchin and Google Analytics? From a technical perspective the list is pretty long, but the major differences are described here in this chart:

As a preliminary start, we hope this helps give you some sense of the differences in the two tools. If you want more information, just drop me a line and I can help go into greater detail with you!

As is often the case, when I fall in love with a product I’m not shy about recommending it! Lately, TweetDeck and Hootsuite are in my bag of commonly recommended tools, much to the puzzlement of Twitter friends who are curious about the advantage of using both. Mystery solved! Here’s why TweetDeck and Hootsuite are better together:

TweetDeck manages my Tweeps
Hootsuite manages my Tweeting

Read More

A happy little note just arrived in my email box announcing the AdWords Urchin* fix. As described in the Google announcement:

This release is primarily aimed at addressing the problem of downloading very large CPC data files (up to 256 mb) from long-term or high-volume AdWords campaigns. It also fixes the 64-bit visitor-ID overflow problem, some proxy issues, and augments the uconf-manager.

It’s great to see our favorite tools playing well together! And when it comes to combined expertise with these tools, it’s worth noting that we’re the only dual certified Urchin and AdWords company in the Midwest. (In the map illustrating the locations of Urchin resellers below, you’ll see one other dot in Illinois for Stratigent, which specializes in web analytics.)

We love paid search, we love analytics, and we’d love to help figure out any tough question that you can throw at us!

* Urchin is an alternative version of Google Analytics, used by companies with specific requirements not met by the free Google Analytics service. Urchin costs $2,995 per server (more for hosting companies). Key features include: tracking of sites behind a firewall, the ability to keep your analytics data on local servers, and the ability to process log files on an ad-hoc basis.

As I was in the middle of a sentence explaining that it was hard to do something new like social media “wrong”, I had to stop and back-track as I remembered the “Twitter Motrin Scandal of ’08″. It turns out to be a pretty good example of how NOT to do social media. The story got big enough the New York Times covered it, so you can get all of the Motrin Moms backstory on their Motherlode blog.

Beyond the questionable content of the ad that sparked the controversy in the first place, the faux pas that got Motrin into further deep water was a lack of social media monitoring. They simply had no idea the blogosphere – and in particular, Twitter – was going crazy about their ad. In the end, Motrin had no choice but to pull the ad.

Read More

If you’ve been listening to us preach the AdWords gospel, by now you know that you should be using conversion tracking and Google Analytics to learn more about works and what doesn’t on your web site. But what if you’re just getting started and none of your AdWords are doing the trick? What then? Where to start?

First, take off your shoes. (Not literally!) But it is time to start thinking like your customers and walking in their shoes. One word of caution: This may be doubly tricky if you’re a downtown retailer, because it may take time to get used to thinking about the difference between your online customers and the ones that stroll in the store.

How are your online and walk-in customers different? Lets put on the shoes of a window shopper for a moment to find out. Lets pretend you’re hanging out with some friends for a long lunch and checking out a few shops downtown. You run across a darling hand-bag that’ll go perfectly with half your wardrobe. Do you run around the rest of downtown to see if you’ve got the best price? (Remember, you’re on a long lunch…) Or, when your friend elbows you and gives you the nudge, do you just grab it on the spur of the moment? And indulge in a bit of retail therapy?

How is this story different if you’re shopping for a purse online? Might you search first for a favorite brand? If the brand is even moderately popular, chances are there are lots of ads to choose from. How would you decide?

Scanning the ads, which look interesting? Free shipping might catch your eye; those ads are pretty popular. Did you search for a particular color? Chances are some of the ads will be “broad match”, and won’t reflect that you mentioned a color. Chances are you’ll skip over these to an ad that is clearly a closer match for what you’re looking for.

So now you’ve clicked on an ad, and get to the website. But wait – you’re on the home page? What happened to the red bag? Back to the search results… Now you want to see an interior shot of the bag so you’ll know if it has the right kind of pockets, or if the fabric texture is exactly what you were looking for. No close-up shot? Time to move on. Are the shipping costs disclosed? You might not want to bother signing up and putting it in your cart to find out. Next…

By now, you get the idea. Online shoppers are comparatively ruthless. If you’ve got a lot of competition online, running a pay per click ad simply isn’t enough. You must have a good price and competitive shipping. You need to write a compelling ad, target it well, and send it to the right page. You need to have good photography (and multiple pics), a shopping cart that’s not problematic, and a few other things… and then you might actually wind up with the sale.

Whew! There must be an easier way, right? Well, sort of. Most of that stuff you’re going to need to do regardless, but you can improve your odds by going where there is less competition. And frankly, that’s the place to start if you’re struggling to get AdWords off the ground. We’ll call this “guerrilla AdWords marketing”, and here are a few tips to get started.

• Find the products that aren’t already competitive and market those. Though I realize changing your inventory is easier said than done – understanding that your online competition is different is key. Some products that do really well in your store may simply not be candidates for AdWords because of this different competitive landscape. In other words, it may not be practical to change your inventory, but understand that it’s quite possible not everything you sell belongs online.
• Find words and phrases that describe what you’re selling that others aren’t using. Sometimes when you start poking around, you’ll discover your competitors bid on all the obvious terms and ONLY the obvious terms. That’s a happy day, because that means you have “everything else”, known in the biz as “the long tail”. The long tail is a term that describes the WIDE variety of lower frequency searches for any given item. If you’re a small retail businesses, you probably moved onto the web to expand the reach of your business. Chances are, you don’t need to sell huge volumes of any particular item, you just need to keep inventory moving. It’s quite possible the long-tail could do a very nice job of that for you – by creating low volume sales on a wide variety of items.

And now for the million dollar question – how do you find the stuff that’s not obvious? As Apple would say “think different”. Yes, that’s a bit of a trick, and a great topic for Guerilla Google AdWords Marketing, Part 2. Stay tuned!

I am frequently asked by early stage entrepreneurs what software we use, so here’s a quick list of the five online applications I can’t live without.

1. Salesforce.com. I started using salesforce back in the demo days when you could get a 3 user license that did everything for $50/month. Ah, those were the days… These days, it’s amazing we don’t scare off new employees with the mantra “it’s in salesforce” as the answer to seemingly every question. Seriously though, salesforce is where I spend my day. Every person who fills out a contact form on this website winds up in there automagically, and every person I’m supposed to call or have ever called is in there. (It’s a founders job to sell, after all.) Essentially, Salesforce.com functions as a much needed extension of my brain as our sales pipeline grows, and it’s pretty darn handy for sharing customer contact info within the company.




2. Basecamp. Yes, salesforce has project management stuff you can tack on, but lets just say it wasn’t a huge hit when we tried it. Not that basecamp is absolutely perfect either, but you know they’re doing something right when you turn it on and people start adding data without any arm twisting. Basecamp also shares something in common with one of my favorite things about salesforce: the “wish for it and it will come” feature. I suppose it helps that we aren’t shy about sharing what features we need , but we’ve happily seen things appear over time such as cross-project search and posting via email that make our lives SO much simpler.




3. Socialtext. I wasn’t exactly sure we needed a wiki as yet-another-place-to-store-data. But once again, it’s hard to argue with a technology that is easily adopted by the organization and has taken on a life of its own. In a way, it’s like a giant shared filing cabinet for everything about anything internal. (Whereas basecamp shares project-specific data, and salesforce captures the sales process. So it’s not as complicated to have 3 systems as it might sound.)




4. blist. I’m adding this to the list a bit early, as it’s still got a ways to go to get through all the bugs. However, I would will it out of beta, if I could. It’s not uncommon to need to compare a list of stuff and figure out which entries match criteria a, b, and c. Blist does this with “lenses” over an online spreadsheet with simple and/or choices; no programming lingo (ie SQL) required. I honestly haven’t seen anything similar, but let me know if you have!




5. twitter. I have been known to say we’re in the business of creating serendipity, and I think that’s what I love most about Twitter. This micro-blogging tool encourages you to share what you’re experiencing or thinking in 140 character bursts. And because people can follow either your persona OR create feeds on any word of interest, you wind up serendipitously meeting people with similar interests. People who often become instant friends, pitching in and answering questions or cheerleading when you have a breakthrough moment at 2 am. Twitter is a truly social network that I’m grateful for as an entrepreneur.

   So that’s my top five web applications – what are yours?

I’m catching up on Brandweek from a couple weeks ago (May 5th edition, page S6) and curiously, a tip in one of the ads jumped out at me. Largely because it’s not uncommon for us to hear from people in the real estate industry looking for a way to gain visibility online now that sales aren’t as quick and easy as they used to be.

Of course, when lots of people in any industry start moving online, sales there won’t be quick and easy either. Online is even more challenging in some ways. For example, a picture of your house isn’t going to show up in the paid search ads as it does in many newspaper ads. You’ve only got words to set your property apart, so choose them carefully! Otherwise your ad will sound just like the next one, you’ll have terrible conversion rates, and you’ll be complaining about how real estate won’t sell online before you can say “recession”.

I’m bullish about real estate online because, frankly, I don’t see much imaginative advertising going on there. The Brandweek ad caught my eye because it was imaginative, listing ideas to help make properties distinctive. Here’s a quick excerpt:

Amid the rubble of the housing downturn, advertising executive Bob Posner sees a golden opportunity. Home builders and real estate agents have taken a mass-market approach, but they should be increasingly segmenting their efforts toward women, he says.

‘Women are buying properties and making the buying decisions, but we’re not seeing messages or products catering to women,’ says Posner, principal of Posner Advertising.

Developers could offer on-site hair and nail salon, catering kitchens and meal delivery services. A townhouse complex or rental community could offer a staffed daycare center next to the fitness room, or baby-sitting services. Most important, developers should geotarget on women’s Web sites and in magazines.

‘Ninety percent of the industry is run by men, and they’re not familiar with women’s media habits,’ Posener says. ‘If they went on Allure.com, they wouldn’t find a real estate ad. But when they start seeing that women are responding because the feel they are being catered to, those builders are going to have a competitive advantage.’

Certainly, building with certain niches in mind offers competitive advantage. But what can you do if your condo development doesn’t already have a nail spa built in? Turn your online advertising into a competitive advantage. There’s a lot of room out there for some creative thinking!

A huge percentage of what we do is helping people focus in on their key differentiating factors and in turn, surfacing those differentiators online. It’s simple, really:

• We’ll challenge you to think about what makes what you sell unique
• We’ll help you make it really, really obvious
• Then we’ll help you make it really, really easy for that person you just got interested to get through to you in a meaningful way

Of course, that’s not all quite so simple. You’ll have to stop and think to identify what makes you world-class about what you do. You’ll have to generate content that fits that picture. You’ll have to invest in your website to make the changes to surface that content, etc. Surprisingly few companies in ANY industry do all that. Those who do win the competitive advantage, hands down.

Got any other good real estate marketing tidbits? We’d love to hear your experiences selling homes online!

In a conversation with an out-of-stater earlier this week, I was asked what’s going on in the Michigan technology community, and what were the groups to connect with?

I rattled off a few, and started Googling for a list, figuring this had to be documented already. But I didn’t spot anything immediately. So here’s my first stab at a list of technology organizations in Michigan (particularly southeast Michigan), and please add comments with additional resources. I look forward to hearing about your favorite technology networking groups!

Networking “Groups” for Technology Entrepreneurs

• Digital Edge – Connecting Michigan’s Digital Entrepreneurs With a World of Resources (with some emphasis on those seeking capital)
• Michigan Innovators – A video blog of Michigan companies in the Global Innovation Economy, with real-world events in the making
• SPARK – Promotes the economic development of innovation-based businesses in the Ann Arbor region by offering programs, great resources, and more
• MSBTDC – Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center – Although not limited to technology, they have been a huge resource for us, so this list wouldn’t be complete without them!
• New Enterprise Forum – Also not exclusively focused on technology, but a place where you’ll find technology companies making their pitch for investment

Networking “Groups” for Technologists (and friends)

• A2B3 – Possibly THE networking event for job seekers and posters in technology in Ann Arbor, even though (or perhaps because) it’s one of the most informal
• Open Coffee Networking Group a group organized by SPARK for entrepreneurs to network in an informal environment (over coffee once a month in a morning), again not limited to technology, but given Ann Arbor’s environment, it includes several technology types

Niche Technology-ish Groups You Might Find PV’ers and Friends at:

• Southeast Michigan Ruby Users Group – a gathering of local Ruby enthusiasts
• Ann Arbor Drupal Users Group – a monthly meeting for the proficient and just curious about Drupal, an open source content management system
• Web Analytics Wednesday (looks like there’s not a current event scheduled, but should be soon)
• Michigan Usability Professionals Association chapter meetings – a group of user experience design, usability, and information architecture folks, meets almost monthly. Current officers include PV’s very own User Experiologist Mike Beasley and our Director of Happiness, Dunrie Greiling
• Agile Groupies – an informal networking group for those practicing and those interested in agile methods
• Refresh-Detroit – monthly forum for web professionals promoting standards, usability, and accessibility in the Ann Arbor/SE Michigan area

Annual Technology-ish Events

• Annual Collaboration for Entrepreneurship – an annual event celebrating and promoting innovative technology commercialization and development opportunities in Michigan
• Internet User Experience – an annual conference highlighting methods to improve website user experience, 5th annual event will occur winter 2009
• Startup Weekend – coming to Ann Arbor in June, 2008
• ArbCamp – an unconference social media event (our writeup of the last one) – next time and location TBD
• Agile Coach Camp an unconference on agile development, May 30-June 1, 2008