BUS572- Blog #2

                                                  Web Analytics and Conversion Optimization

Concept #1 - Log-File Analysis and Page Tagging

Log-file analysis is a very important concept that I took away from chapter 15 because it can provide my team with a lot of in-depth information that will be useful in our Google Marketing Campaign. Log-file analysis is basically an analysis of log records. This information can be used to show how often a potential consumer visits a certain site and it records all clicks that take place on the server. This software can also record where visitors are coming from geographically as well. When log-file analysis is used with internet cookies this software can provide even more in-deph information. Page tagging is the process of tagging web pages with embedded Javascript files. Page tagging will send this information to a third-party server where the statistics can be analyzed.

There are many pros and cons with both of these technologies as well. For example, page tagging can be less accurate than log files because log files record every click, but on the other hand if a browser doesn't support Javascript then no information will be recorded using page tagging. Log files are also in a standard format and can be easily switched between different vendors to analyze historical data, but if you were to use page tagging you might lose valuable information when switching to a different vendor. Log files also record search engine spiders which is extremely useful for search engine optimization and log files also record failed requests, while page tagging only shows successful requests. However, page tagging also has some advantages, such as, the software recording Flash movie interactions whereas log-files cannot. Page tagging can also be utilized by companies that may not operate their own websites. Finally, page tagging providers offer a higher level of support because of third party services. I'm not quite sure which method I would prefer more. At first, I like the idea of log-file analysis because it seems to be a lot more accurate when collecting and utilizing information, but page tagging seems to offer some great services that you cannot get with log-file analysis. However, page tagging can be so complex that it could take weeks or even months to complete and I severely question whether it would be worth it or not to use this type of service. What if you had a deadline to complete a project, like our GOMC project, would you prefer Page Tagging?

Concept #2 - A/B Split Testing 

source:http://www.emailloop.net/images/how_ab_works_diagram_695.jpg

A/B testing measures one variable at a time to determine its effect on an outcome while all of the other elements of the advertisement stay the same. You can create different versions of the variable and test them accordingly. For example, the phrase "buy now" on an advertisment can be moved around to see if there is an increase in sales or not. You can always test more than one version of the variable,  but it will take longer to find results from multiple versions. Next, traffic is then randomly distributed through the new versions and the outcomes are measured for each variable. Once you apply statistics to see which one is the most significant then you will know which advertisement works best and it can then be used in the future. This can be extremely important for digital marketing because you would be able to easily manipulate each part of your campaign or adverisment to see which placements work best. You will also be able to create more conversion rate lifts results. One disadvantage would be that you would have to plan carefully if you were to investigate interaction effects between two islolated elements. I really like the idea of A/B split testing because you are only testing one variable at a time, but would it be more efficient to use Multivariate testing to manipulate many variables at one time? I feel like Multivariate testing would be much more difficult to preform. It seems like you need a large sample of data to have any significant findings, but what if you were only working with a small sample of data? Here is a website that compares and contrasts the two different methods.

Skill- Organization of the AdWords Account

I believe that one of the biggest skill sets I've learned this week is the organization of the AdWords Account. In our first class, we discussed a lot about keywords , but I wasn't quite sure what to do with those keywords once I came up with them. After Sarah's presentation, I had a much clearer vision of how an Adwords campaign is set up and how the campaign functions. I realized that we had only one campaign we needed to run for our client, but I didn't realize that you can have many different Ad Groups. Under these Ad Groups, you can have hundreds of different keywords and the Ad Groups just allows you to organize your thoughts better and put certain keywords under the correct Ad Group. I'm wondering how many Ad Groups should our team have to maximize our return on investment? Should we narrow it down to only three or four Ad Groups or should we expand and make multiple Ad Groups?  This has also really helped with our second team assignment because we were all a little confused on how everything should be organized, but Sarah definitely painted a clear picture that we can all use in moving forward with our client's campaign.

Personal Journey Reflection:

This project is still very new to me, but with the help of Sarah's presentation I believe I have a much better grasp on our mission. I am still struggling with all of the different Google tools, but once I start physically messing around with AdWords I'll be just fine. It has been a struggle to really brainstorm ideas about this project, but I am confident that we will be able to do so soon. I'm really looking forward to the actual running of our campaign and to really see how it will affect our clients business.

Sources:
Stokes, R. (2011). emarketing: The essential guide to digital marketing. (V 1.0 ed.). Quirk Education. Retrieved from http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/19

BUS572 - Blog #1

                         Search Engine Marketing, Pay-Per-Click Advertising, and eMarketing Strategy.

Source: http://dgtizer.com/pay-per-click-advertising/

Concept #1- Pay-Per-Click Advertising 

      One very crucial concept that will be utilized in our Google Online Marketing Challenge is Pay-Per-Click advertising (PPC). This type of advertising system is where advertisers pay only for each click on their advertisements. This type of advertising is keyword based meaning that it is based on a specific search term or phrase that an internet user enters in a search engine, such as, Google or Yahoo. This type of advertising is extremely crucial because it allows advertisers to present their product/offerings to customers who are most likely already in the buying cycle. When selecting key words, the advertisers can use a number of platforms to find key words. For example, if an advertiser wanted to use Google they would use a program called AdWords and could find the following match types: Broad match, Phrase match, Exact match, or Negative match. With this type of advertising, one will need to monitor conversion rates as well as click-through-rates. I believe that this type of advertising is extremely important because every marketing plan is trying to achieve the highest return on investment that they possibly can. This advertising system will allow one to easily monitor and track their results as well as make any changes necessary throughout their marketing period.
       However, there can be many threats to this type of system if not monitored carefully. Click fraud is an example because competitors realize that you must pay for each click so they will deliberately keep clicking on your Pay-Per-Click ad. This article explains how to prevent Click fraud. What do you think is the best way to handle Click Fraud? Bidding wars is another example because high-traffic keywords are expensive and one could quickly burn through their advertising budget. Finally, this type of advertising takes a lot of time to monitor and the larger your campaign gets, the more time one will have to spend monitoring its activity.

Concept #2- The Four P's of Marketing

      The internet is changing our world and how advertisers market to their target population. The four P's developed by McCarthy are now being challenged because new theorists believe that they are outdated. The original four P's stood for products and services, price, placement, and promotion. New smart marketers such as Godin and Mootee believe that Customer-centric marketing is the new way to market to individuals because this type of marketing suggests that we must understand the needs of the customer first and only when we do that will business outcomes be achieved. Seth Godin suggests that there are five elements which should be followed. First, "Data", because the internet makes it much easier for advertisers to mine and gather information. Second, "Stories", everything a customer does and says. Third, "Products", which is the physical manifestation of the story. Forth, "Interactions",  any tactics that allows the marketer to reach out and touch the consumer. Finally, "Connection", this is very important concept because creating a relationship with the customer will allow for repeated use of the good/service in the future. Mootee stated that there are four new P's of Marketing. These are personalization, participation, peer-to-peer communities, and predictive modeling. These new developments are a result of the trend towards the use of the internet, but it is also important to remember that marketers also need an offline strategy as well. Although eMarketing is becoming essential in this technology crazed world, one must have an offline strategy as well so that they can complement each other and allow the organization to take on a holistic view of all objects. What do you think are some best ways to market your business online as well as offline? Should one put more emphasis into an online strategy in today's society?

 Skill- Keywords 

      After our first class, the readings, and speaking with the client, I believe that the most important skill set I've learned about is the use of keywords. A keyword is a word or group of words used by a searcher on a search engine. For example, a keyword could be  "textbooks", "textbook rentals", or "cheap textbooks". A person enters these keywords in a search engine, such as, Google or Yahoo and the search engine will begin to crawl the web looking to find matches to the information that you have just typed in. I believe that this will be crucial for our client because creating unique keywords will not only make internet users more aware of their business, but hopefully, in turn, this will create more traffic to their website, which will ultimately result in more business for our client. However, I find keywords to be incredibly useful, but I also think it will be a challenge to create the correct keywords for our client because their could potentially be thousands of other keywords that we will be competing with in our marketing campaign. I'm still a little confused about negative keywords though. Are you supposed to include them into your Ad Groups or exclude them? I am looking forward to the strategies one uses when creating specific keywords and phrases.

Personal Journey Reflection:
      
      So far we have only had one class and it has been extremely overwhelming with all the assignments we have to do on a weekly basis for this class plus handling all of my other school work as well. I think that we are beginning to clear some issues that we have struggled with thus far. I am also still confused about this GOMC project because we were't given any examples of past projects. Our first class was also overwhelming because of all the different things we had to set up for Google and I don't believe we had enough time to go over everything in class because of all the guest speakers. I am hoping that in tonight's class that we will gain a better understanding of the project and be shown how to use AdWords so that we can get a better idea of the programs that we will be working with.


Stokes, R. (2011). emarketing: The essential guide to digital marketing. (V 1.0 ed.). Quirk Education. Retrieved from http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/19