Category: News & Trends

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Google Voice Are You Ready For It?

I just received my invitation to join Google Voice and now my big decision is do I want to do so. Google Voice is a revolutionary way to tie all your phones together. You can read the Google Voice details here.  You should take a moment and watch the video.

In a nutshell a Google Voice number is a portable number that you then decide where the call is forwarded to. You can send a call to your home, number, to your office phone, to your home phone, or directly to voice mail. What is really great about the service is that you can assign which callers go where. With a Google Voice number even if your phone numbers change your Google Voice number doesn’t. You just update your profile with a new phone number for work, home or cell – which ever has changed.

Additionally you can use any of your phones to bridge to Google Voice and then call for free in the US and Canada making any of your phones tied to Google Voice now a toll free phone. You just call into your Google Voice account press 2 and then enter the number your want to phone and Google Voice connects the phone you are calling from to the phone number you want to talk to at no charge. Google Voice even helps you to select a phone number in your local area so calls in to use their free long distance service are really free.

For messages sent to your Google Voice voice mail account, Google Voice will even transcribe a message and send it to your computer if you desire. I have not tested out all the features yet, but it sure sounds like it could be a very interesting new platform for Google. I have no idea how they will monetize it, but certainly that will come. 

If you are currently using Google Voice drop me a note I’d be very interested in know what you think about this new program. If you want to try out Google Voice yourself,  just visit this link to get a Google Voice invitation.

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Google AdWords Trends From August 2009

There are several marked trends that we have seen across many business sectors in Google AdWords this past month. One has been an increase in advertising start up and the other has been a marked increase in conversion activity. Both trends bode well for a change in our economy and for increased business for the fourth quarter of 2009.

First, many clients who have moved out of AdWords due to budget restraints and the economy are moving back into AdWords this past month. We’ve had several new account set up and several paused clients re-start programs. What is interesting to me is that with this flow back into AdWords, typically we see a rise in the cost per click as more competition drives the click cost up on AdWords, but we have not seen this activity yet. Possibly we will this next month, but not so far.

Second, we’ve seen a real jump in conversions across nearly every market sector. Conversion activity has been particularly strong in August with many clients having their best month ever or for the best month in the past six months. Now not all conversions are sales in “AdWords language”. For some accounts a conversion does mean a true online purchase, but for other clients a conversion actually means a lead. A conversion lead really should called a micro-conversion, but AdWords calls it a conversion in their tracking and control panel. Whatever you call it, increased leads and increased sales is good news for our economy and our own personal clients.

So based on these trends should you be moving back into AdWords or should you wait out the economy a bit longer? The decision may be in part based on what you sell. Most of the activity we are seeing is still for products under $1,000 or so and not the big ticket purchases of $2,000 and more, but based on the activity we are seeing, the prospects for a strong economy for the fall are looking pretty good.

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PayPal Seriously Screws With AdWords Conversions

If you use PayPal to process credit card transactions and you are using Google AdWords to push sales on these products, a recent change PayPal has made will be seriously screwing with your ability to record conversions in Google AdWords.

I’ve just spent over one hour on this and was very discouraged about the change. Here is my letter to PayPal that I am posting on my blog as well detailing the problem.

*****

Sent to PayPal using their online Feedback interface

PayPal has recently made a change in the order confirmation page. It used to be at the end of the transaction the buyer (if the PayPal account owner had set this up) was automatically sent to the desired thank you page on the selling website.

Now PayPal has globally, for all customers, defeated this. Instead of being automatically returned to the selling site, a new screen is shown within PayPal with an order confirmation number and an orange button that says return to merchant name’s site.

In my case (I manage many AdWords clients) this means that if and only if the client clicks the orange return to website button will a Google AdWords conversion will be recorded.

If the buyer chooses to just close that tab and surf elsewhere, no Google AdWords conversion is recorded.  This is a very big problem for any client who is using PayPal and then marketing these services on Google AdWords.

As a Professional Account Google AdWords Account Manager I will not be recommending that clients use PayPal if they are promoting their items on AdWords. The recording of conversions is one of our biggest tools to understand if spending on AdWords is an investment or an expense.

I will hope that PayPal will reverse this action. You can contact me, Nancy McCord at 301-705-7303 or nancy@mccordweb.com

Please pass my comments up the chain as PayPal may not have considered this when they have made this very important change.

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New Social Networking Program

We’ve rolled out a new program on our website this past week. You can review our program and pricing online.

Due to the interest in social networking and the number of clients we have who are interested in growing their presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Naymz, Tagged, and others, we have created services that help you get started fast.

With our Social Networking Made Easy program, we’ll set up eight platforms for you for $190. We particularly like: Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed, Twitter, Plaxo, Naymz, Tagged, and Xing. All you have to do is to send us your resume and photo and we’ll do the rest. If you don’t have an up to date resume, you can arrange for us to interview you by phone for $40 to make it even easier.

Many clients will be ready to take over from that point, but some clients need more help. For this special type of client we offer social networking mentoring by the hour and our Executive Social Networking program. In this special program we will actively work your two selected networks (sorry not Twitter we have a separate program for Twitter), to help to grow your following and to provide value to readers.

Now’s the time if you have thought maybe you want to do social networking to take charge and hit the ground running with our ala carte social networking set up and update services.