Author: Nancy McCord

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Facebook Business Pages Demystified for Business Owners

I have just published earlier this week my most recent white paper. This one is called Facebook Business Pages Demystified for Business Owners. You can download or read this white paper online from our website.

This interesting white paper will help you to get started reaching new business prospects on Facebook fast and understand why Facebook is the new place for businesses to be. With Facebook being more popular than Google.com and the place where 50% of registered users login every day, Facebook is the place to be for your business too.

Here are some fun facts from Facebook:

  1. Facebook has more than 500 million active users.
  2. 50% of the active users login once a day.
  3. The average user has 130 friends.
  4. People spend over 700 billion minutes a month on Facebook.
  5. The average user creates 90 pieces of content each month.
  6. More than one million websites have integrated with the Facebook Platform.
  7. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook.
  8. There are more than 150 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.
  9. Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events.
  10. More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

That is 10 super reasons your business should be on Facebook. 

I have another white paper, a longer and more detailed one that spells out how to use Welcome pages and FBML which is Facebook’s simple code. You can download it, “Facebook Business Page How-To Guide”, now. To get the PDF you will need to subscribe to our monthly e-newsletter.

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Google Boost for Google Places, A New Advertising Model Being Tested

Here’s what Google says about Google Boost:

Google Boost is a new online ad program that lets business owners build search ads from their Google Places account. The goal is to make the ads contextually relevant.

Google is really putting some muscle behind moving to strongly monetize Google Places or as it used to be known Google Maps. Google Boost is currently being tested only in Chicago, Houston, and San Francisco. The new program will allow business owners to create AdWords-like ads but from inside the Google Places platform. The client will be able to set a budget and Google Boost will do the rest creating a keyword list and serving the ad when relevant. The price model is pay per click, in other words you only pay when someone clicks into your Google Places page.

Google expanded the Google Places tag recently out of selected markets and is now offering the mini yellow icon for $25 per month to Google Places businesses who want their map marker in the local list to stand out. I consider the Google Place tag a grab for cash by Google, but I am testing to see if the little yellow marker does generate extra activity and will let you know at the end of my testing period.

In the meantime, with new management moving into Google Places, Google Boost testing being done now, and Google emphasizing local search placement above Google.com organic listings and in some cases even above existing AdWords ads I expect to see even more efforts to further monetize this important listing for local serving businesses.

If you aren’t even on Google Places now, make sure to check out our Google Places set up and placement services.

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Inflating Your Daily Budget to Force Clicks on AdWords Can Get You In Trouble

You may say this never happens, but as I review all AdWords accounts that are running when a new prospect comes to me looking for a new account manager, this happens fairly frequently. Personally, I do not recommend this action.

What I am speaking of is when an AdWords account is in trouble and an account manager cannot get clicks for the client. The account manager sometimes gets desperate and tries to force clicks. Here is the common scenario. The actual client wants to spend $1,000 in clicks a month. They typically will be in a business that has a high click cost auction. The acting account manager has decided not to set the cost per click in the account to a level that Google will consider the account in the AdWords auction and so as a result AdWords serves the ads infrequently. The client may be then spending only $200 or so of a $1,000 click budget.

The account manager panics as the client is pressing for click performance and so the account manager sets the 30 day budget to $7,800 or $260 per day instead of $33.33 per day. The account manager is banking on the fact that the client’ cost per click is really too low to be in the auction and that AdWords won’t deliver the $7,800 in clicks in a 30 day period.

This is an actual scenario that I have seen just last week and not infrequently. I consider it is a very dangerous one. Google could, if something changed in the auction, actually deliver the $7,800 for the month in clicks and legitimately bill the client’s credit card for this activity. The client would have absolutely no recourse in regards to getting a refund.

Scary, isn’t that scenario? But, I have seen it twice in the last three weeks and many times over the last eight years I have been managing AdWords accounts. I do not believe in putting any of my clients in this type of possible jeopardy.

A better scenario is to bid to be in the auction or drop some of the ad groups and just run ad groups that have the possibility of performing within the client’s “true” budget. In each case that I have seen this scary set up used, the actual client had no idea of what the acting account manager was doing with their account and that they had taken this tactic. I personally will never manage an account in this fashion.

How can you see if your AdWords account manager is playing this dangerous game with your money and credit card? Go into your account and review on the campaign summary page your daily budget. It will be just below the campaign names. If the number there times 30 does not match the dollar figure you told your account manager you have authorized them to spend on your behalf with AdWords, you need to make a quick phone call to them to challenge their tactics. Remember, if Google could deliver the clicks to this inflated budget – and there may be a possibility they could – you would be billed and you would have to pay.

If you are looking for a honest and savvy Google AdWords account manager, I invite you to check out our AdWords services. My firm, McCord Web Services, is a Google AdWords Certified Partner and I am personally also a Google AdWords Certified Individual.

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Improve Your Cash Flow With Policies

I have found that by creating policies that we state in our standard letter of agreement for every customer that we do business with, that we have improved our cash flow and nearly stopped bad debts. With a bit of forethought you can create scenarios where you are not required to provide services for clients that receive credit card declines or routinely do not pay on time.

Although these recommendations will not work for every business, these have worked for mine.

  1. All clients pay in advance for the month for blogging and Google AdWords services. We have found that once AdWords services have been provided or blogs installed that the client, in some cases, does not feel compelled to pay if they have run into money problems. The services that we provide are not tangible (hold in your hand products) and so our payment in a financial dry period may be deferred. While not to our liking, this is the reality of the situation and why we now request payment up front.
  2. When a client has received a credit card decline for services, we immediately stop services. We have found by continuing services hoping the situation will be resolved we have sometimes allowed the client to dig a deeper debt hole. By stopping immediately we lessen our potential debt damage and push the client to resolve the issue quickly.
  3. Once a client has had a credit card declined but then paid, we move them from paying on the 10th of the month, if they are an auto-billing client, to payment or at least credit card authorization on the 27th of the month prior to us starting services on the 1st. If their credit card is not declined for three months, we move them back to paying on the 10th.
  4. Self pay clients who consistently pay late are requested to move to auto-billing services. If the problem continues, we will stop providing services as it is too time consuming to chase a payment from one client. Sometimes a phone call and discussion on helping us to keep our prices low is in order or sensitivity to a personal situation and adjustment in writing frequency is in order, but we do not write without payment regardless of the circumstance.

These policies have been crafted over years of experience working with blogging and AdWords clients. Although our model may not work for you, we have seen our slow payers really drop off, our bad debts move to almost zero, and our monthly cash flow become more dependable.