In addition to generating brand awareness and website visitors, PPC can serve several other important business functions. You can assess the competition quickly, comparing several players on a single search results page. You can test new messages, learn about prospect demographics, and psychographics,...Read More
Marketing & Sales
When people find out I’m the author of Google AdWords for Dummies, the second most common reaction, after “What’s AdWords?”, is “Oh, I tried AdWords. It didn’t work for me.” I’m biased, certainly, and I understand that AdWords isn’t an appropriate advertising medium...Read More
My wife and I are just waking up in a small bed and breakfast in Chimney Rock, North Carolina, which is about four hours away from picking up our 14-year-old son from summer camp. We hope he’s had a great time, but since we haven’t received a letter since his second day, we really have no...Read More
PPC has long been the cheapest, quickest, easiest way to test-market products and services, offers and pricing, positioning and copywriting. But in order to use PPC to ask and answer questions about what the market thinks of your offers, you have to already have a product or service ready to go. Whatever...Read More
Fifteen years ago, I got a beautiful bound journal. I remember the month and year because the first entry in that journal is dated September 21, 1999. My intention was to journal every day – I’ve heard from many successful people that the journaling habit is a crucial part of their success formula. My...Read More
Despite everything we know about diet, exercise and health, most of us don’t eat or work out the way we think we should. An entire industry of wellness programs and lifestyle medicine have arisen to help us turn our bad habits into good ones. A startup client of mine jumped into the nutrition and...Read More
by Howard Jacobson. In 2011, my family and I spent a year in a remote region of South Africa. My children homeschooled and I was nervous about being their math teacher, until we discovered KhanAcademy.org. Through our experience with their site, I learned valuable gamification tips marketers can use...Read More
by Howard Jacobson. Every couple of months I get the urge to meditate. Like, to free myself once and for all from the illusion of separation and fully realize my oneness with all creation. Or maybe just to feel virtuous and spiritual. Or to help me avoid distractions so I can focus on important tasks,...Read More
Howard Jacobson (co-author of Google AdWords For Dummies, 3rd Edition) addresses important key points for anyone using AdWords or thinking about using AdWords for their business. What is the biggest AdWords challenge? Importance of market discovery. Writing target ads for your prospect. Finding the...Read More
Conversion Optimization, Landing Page Strategy, Marketing & Sales, Measuring Ideas, Strategy, Website Optimization
by Howard Jacobson. Despite having a comprehensive website, chock-filled with valuable information, one law firm found itself suffering from an opt-in rate for a free case evaluation of just 1.1 percent. The figure was so low that Google AdWords was an ROI-negative advertising medium. One of my colleague...Read More
by Howard Jacobson. Pay-per-click search marketing may have been invented in the second Clinton administration, but it’s a modern iteration of a hundred-year-old tradition of direct marketing: Find people who have a problem, get their attention with a small, inexpensive ad, and then offer them...Read More