While every online marketer is very well aware of what  Google AdWords and generally PPC (pay per click) advertisement is, the general “Internet public” might still  needs little of explanation. In fact I recently learned that even some business owners with a lot of business experience do not know of what AdWords of Google is. So this material can easily be skipped by those who have at least one AdWords account and is targeted to business owners who are looking for ways to attract more customers for their business.

This article should specifically be interesting in the light of Google trying again to simplify their services for local businesses by introducing Google Express service.

But before we go deeply in what Google Express is, let us look at what the standard Google AdWords program is and the basics of how it works. To understand this the easiest way would be for us to look at some pictures of Google search interface.

In order to make sure I see AdWords ads I entered one of the most competitive search terms “weight loss” and despite I am in Ukraine right now my Google search is set up as though I am in Illinois, US and therefor I also see local results near Barrington, IL.

On the above picture we will see AdWords ads on the right side under the map.  So those ads are paid search results and they are managed by Google’s AdWords program. Basically what happens is when the searcher is entering the search term i.e. words corresponding to the need or the interest of that person, AdWords algorithm will find ads within their database where people who provide different services created their ad campaignes and will match words and display ads.

Besides displaying ads on search interface where people search for particular subjects Google will also display AdWords ads on billions of other sites whereas the owners of those sites agreed to display Google ads on their pages.

For site owners Google program is called AdSense and it allows site owners to get revenue from displaying Google ads on their sites.  On the picture below there is an example of Google ads being displayed on the web page.

Google algorithms automatically decide which ads to show on which page and to whom. You will see on this example picture I was shown one ad in my language just because of my location. Theoretically the ads displayed on the page should correspond to the theme of the web page, but as you can see sometimes Google have different opinion

The algorithm of displaying Google ads on both search and content networks is quite complex but at the same time very flexible and has a lot of advanced settings and adjustment possibilities.

With standard AdWords interface is practically impossible to set your campaign correctly without having some previous practical experience so Google decided to invent easier solution for local businesses by introducing Google Adwords Express. Here is how Google present it:

According to Google their AdWords Express program is the  easiest way to advertise, it is managed automatically and requires  no time to manage it.

But the only way to get good results with Google Adwords nowdays is to correcly manage your campaign, it is really risky to trust the machine to decide what your customer wants and thinks. When you bid on keywords with standard Google AdWords interface you control your spendings and you are able optimize for better conversions.

In Google Express you let Google decide everything, your ad will appear based on what your business doeas. This way it is very easy to spend your budget without knowing what was working and what was not.

So I would highly recommend any business owner to consult AdWords professional ( we offer 30 min free phone consultation) before going with Google AdWords Express.

I was really shocked this morning when one of my US business partners said she had stopped her advertisement campaign in Facebook because Facebook was going to be shut down on March 15th.
The “news” was spread by “Weekly World News,” a website which also includes a story insisting “Alien spaceships to attack Earth in 2011″ and another titled “Mike Tyson Pigeon Fetish.”

According to their Facebook “story,” the super popular social media    website would be shut down in March because Mark Zuckerberg was getting too stressed out.

They literately published the following information:

“Facebook has gotten out of control,” said Zuckerberg in a press conference outside his Palo Alto office, “and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”

Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th of next year, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.  That gives users (and Facebook addicts) a year to adjust to life without Facebook.

“After March 15th, 2012 the whole website shuts down,” said Avrat Humarthi, Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook. “So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back after Facebook goes out of business.”

There were even more “quotes”  as though they were from Mark  Zuckerberg about the end of Facebok.

But the most surprising fact is how easily people believed the rumor .  “The number of Facebook users believing it will shutdown proves how badly it needs to be shutdown,” Twitter user Ramezm quipped.

On Facebook itself, groups like “Against shutting down Facebook on 15th of March” popped up with the slogan “No Facebook, No Party”. On Twitter, users fretted about what would happen to their pictures – not to mention social lives.

“If Facebook shutdown Im not going to remember nobody birthday (sic),” one Twitter user wrote.

Others started making alternate plans, saying they would move their information to MySpace, Twitter or a new service, like the one Google is rumored to be working on.

On Sunday night, Facebook aimed to put a rest to the rumors and tweeted, “We didn’t get the memo about shutting down, so we’ll keep working away. We aren’t going anywhere; we’re just getting started.”

But the rapidly spreading rumor had many others ridiculing people’s addiction to the social networking site that is used for everything from posting pictures, party invites and showing off how many friends that people have (even if they’re just on the ‘Book).

“The number of Facebook users believing it will shutdown proves how badly it needs to be shutdown,” Twitter user Ramezm quipped.

No matter the parody report, Facebook is set to most likely release its public finances to possibly become a public company later this year. A few weeks ago, a team at Goldman Sachs valued the Harvard tech-startup at around $50 billion.

So if your business is still not on Facebook with your business page now is the time build that page and start to build relations with your customers.

The title could be bold, but according to statistics many business seriously suffer  with their profit results after participating in promotional actions organized in cooperation with Groupon.

It is important to understand that is not Groupon to be blamed for the poor financial results of those businesses. What Groupon and other promotional coupon based companies are specializing is attraction of new customers based on very attractive promotional offers. And those promotion work wonderfully in terms of getting flood of new customers and orders.

What the business owners should take full responsibilities for is what they actually do with those new orders and customers. It is absolutely critical to understand the concept of front and back end sales  in order to have positive financial result out of promotions with coupon type companies.

If after the promotional product or service is sold at attractive discount price there will not be any upsells with higher profit it will not be possible for the business to survive. Every customer who came with promotion should be somehow registered to receive further offers.

Every business owner should be thinking about his/her own coupon promotional campaign in order to not only attract but also follow up the customers. In this case there will never be an issue with the profitability of the business.

I offer my customers Facebook and Mobile marketing coupon systems so that the business owner can always arrange his own mini-groupon campaign any time he or she feels like doing it.

My customers often ask me, “Why should we consider investing in Social Media rather than traditional forms of advertising?” We call Social Media also social platforms and here is why they are so important!

“According to the Cone Business in Social Media Study, 93% of Americans expect companies they do business with to have a social media presence.”

“And 85% believe a company should not only be present, but also interact with its customers via social media.”

Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, YouTube, WikiPedia, forums, etc.) is a new field of technology that provides a new way to work with customers. Social Media allows you to create relationships, generate and share information, and communicate with people who care.

Is Social Media a Fad? Or is it the biggest shift since the industrial revolution?

• In 2010, Gen “Y“outnumbered Baby Boomers. 96% of them have joined a social network.
• 1 out of 8 couples married in the US last year met via social media.
• Facebook added 200 million users in less than 1 year.
• If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s 3rd largest

.

• The fastest growing segment on Facebook is 55-65 year-old females.
• More than 1.5 million pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photos, etc.) are shared on Facebook DAILY.

We no longer search for the news; the news finds us…

Social Media isn’t a fad. It’s a fundamental shift in the way we communicate.

The traditional model of media and communication is fading away.

In today’s age of new technologies, people can consume and share news faster than they ever could before. People are increasingly turning to social networks like Twitter and Facebook to get their news and information instead of newspapers or network television.

Only 18% of traditional TV campaigns generate a positive Return on Investment (ROI). 90% of people use TiVo (PVR) or Netflix to skip TV advertisements.
24 of the 25 Largest Newspapers in North America are experiencing record declines in Circulation.
Generation Y and Z even consider e-mail passé, preferring to communicate via texting, Twitter or Facebook.
70% of 18- to 34-year-olds have watched TV on the web… only 33% have ever viewed a show on PVR/TiVo.
25% of Americans in the past month said they watched a short video…. On their phone…
Even education is seeing a shift: 1 in 6 higher education students are enrolled in online curriculum.

Even though the way people get news may be changing, the need to be informed and connected will never fade away.

“Word of Mouth” has become “World of Mouth”.

25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user-generated content.
78% of consumers trust peer recommendations [which is what is most often shared on social media avenues like Facebook and Twitter], while only 14% of consumers trust advertisements.
80% of Twitter usage is on mobile devices, and the percentage for mobile Facebook use will soon equal that.
GeoLocation programs such as Google Places, FourSquare, and Yelp are making an online ‘game’ of visiting local places. Users are rewarded for “checking in” at those places and leaving reviews or tips that they share across multiple social networks.
People update anywhere, anytime, everywhere, all the time. Imagine what that means for bad customer experiences…

Successful companies that are engaging in social media act more like party planners, aggregators, and content providers than traditional advertisers. These companies:

are active, with conversation and information sharing, on at least Facebook and Twitter, if not multiple social media outlets,
(many of them) have reward systems set up for FourSquare (GeoLocation) users, and
creatively use online contests and interactions between their customers to create relationships and attract more interactions.

Is your business engaging on Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, LinkedIn and YouTube? THOSE places are where your potential customers are engaging one another, as well as other businesses/brands.
The truth is, not everyone is going to interact and connect with your business through social media. But if you’re not using social media you will definitely NOT interact and connect with people who are actively engaged in those outlets.

It’s clear from the figures presented here that very significant portion of your potential customer base is using social media to gather and share information, interacting with each other and with businesses about everything they come across.

The question is no longer “should we get involved with social media?”; the question has become “HOW should we get involved with social media, and how do we do it well?” (paraphrased from Erik Qualman)

Most of the above statistics were taken from the Social Media Revolution (Refresh) version currently unavailable for viewing in Canada. An older video is included below for reference. More detailed and current info is available at http://www.socialnomics.net

Your business needs to be on Facebook because there are  700 millions of registered users and the average user spends over 30 minutes on Facebook dayly. More then 200 000 Facebook users are active on this site dayly.

I recently did small research regarding percentage of Facebook users in US by states. In most states the percentage of all adult population with registered Facebook accounts is over 50%.  Two main conclusions:

1. Half of adult population is on Facebook

2. There is still big potential for the growth of the audience.

Facebook is marketing venue and any business should learn how to market on Facebook most effectively, because simply transferring your campaign from Google or Bing  will not produce desired results.

As Facebook is social platform where people do socialize the method of marketing should be adopted to the behavior of people. And what do people do on Facebook? They normally get in touch with their friends, update their statuses? check news from people they know or follow and they also “kill boredom” buy playing games and using many playful Facebook applications.

People usually do not look for products and services while they are on Facebook.  So we need to remember this when marketing our products or solutions.

In order to have effective campaigns on Facebook we need to find a way how to attract the attention of our prospects and also how to engage them, as Facebook provides such possibilities.

Facebook pages

Facebook Pages first appeared in 2006 as an advertising platform. Before its launch, advertise were buying ads and sending prospects to external sites. It can be done even today but the conversion of such traffic is very poor. People do not like to leave their cozy social company to go check for your product or service.

It is a different story with pages. With pages you do not take your prospects out the environment they like. The great thing about Facebook Pages is that they are designed to encourage brand loyalty. Once you have a satisfied customers, they will be able to visit repeatedly and become fans of your business. In fact, people can even write what they think of your products or services on your page’s “wall”.

You will now be able to build a presence on Facebook for your business rather than just merely creating or posting a short advertisement. Facebook Pages encourages people to visit and spread the word to encourage other people to do the same.

The person who owns the business will also be able to encourage interaction to other members by posting photos, videos and even participating in group discussions. You can also send updates to your “fans” about the new things that you are offering. You can also add different kinds of applications, which will further encourage repeated visits and encourage more people to join your group or become a fan of your page.

Basically, Facebook encourages word of mouth advertising.

The great thing about Facebook is that you can do all these things for free. From adding applications to syndicating blogs through RSS, you will see that you will be able to advertise for free.

Besides, Facebook will let you interact with other people. You can make new friends as well as encourage them to advertise for you. With its highly interactive features, you will see that advertising will be a lot easier in Facebook.

These are certain things that you should remember about Facebook. Because it also lets you interact with other people rather than just let you advertise you can be sure that you will be able to get more targeted traffic to your website. And with more targeted traffic, the more potential your business will have in making more money.

These are the things that you need to remember about Facebook marketing. As you can see, it presents a new and unique way of marketing online. Through Facebook, you will be able to get more people to buy from you.

Always remember that you have to create a great profile page in Facebook in order for you to attract a lot of viewers. Also, you need to add people as your friends in order to extend your network and get more people to visit your Facebook page.

If your business still does not have a Facebook page you need to change that immediately. Millions of businesses are creating already their Facebook pages, do not be left behind! Order your page today!

You have probably seen those bar codes many times recently. They are used to tell mobile devices all sorts of information. QR codes are extensively used in Japan, but also start to gain popularity in states.
Here are some ideas on how you can use those codes.

Rich Brooks of http://fastcompany.com shares the following ideas on how to use those strange boxes: