Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Google, Pay per click | 0 Comments

How qualified is a quality score?

For those in the PPC world a good quality score is something to be cherished and loved.  A quality score, for those not in the know, is applied by Google to every key word or phrase you bid on, with the score relating back to the page the advert links through to.  In the words of Google almighty “A keyword’s Quality Score for ad position is based on its clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the ad and keyword to the search query, historical keyword performance, and other relevancy factors.”

Why do we love quality scores?  Simple really.  The higher the quality score, the less we have to pay for a click though; and the higher a position we gain in the paid for results.  The holy grail of quality score is obtained when it’s high enough to catapult your advert into the above organic (as opposed to side, and as of this week, below organic) search results.  Normally this only happens when you’re deep linking the advert into a specific key term geared page, or on brand name bidding.  In short.  Quality score x bid price = position.  And if you’re quality score is low, there’s just no way you’re going to be hitting the top spots on your paid for listings.

But just the other day this all came crashing down for me!

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Personal, Social Networking | 0 Comments

Pipped at the post

You know how sometimes you come up with a really great idea?  One that you’re sure will make you “a millionaire by this time next year”?  Well that happened to me a few weeks back.

Hang on, I thought to myself whilst writing my econsultancy presentation on content targeting.  Wouldn’t it be great if on pulling out my final slide, instead of having a long and unwieldy list of all my social profiles for viewers to note down, I could just have a single page url where everything was amalgamated?  It could be a really simple page.  Content managed and aesthetically pleasing, it would be a doddle to add new social feeds as and when you signed up to them.  This is it, I thought.  This is the big one.

Then along came about bloody me.  About.me does everything I was planning, and to be fair, they’ve probably done a far better job that I ever could have.  Swines.  So, in the spirit of fair play here’s a plug for their tool.  It really is a great bit of kit.  So good in face that I’ve even signed up myself at about.me/webconsultancy.

Now, who’s in the market for this great new collaboration tool I’ve just invented?  I’m going to call it an ‘Internet’.

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Marketing speak, Tech Talk | 0 Comments

2011 Hypecycle Gartner > Smart Insights Digital Marketing

2011 Hypecycle Gartner > Smart Insights Digital Marketing.

Having just been reading about Gartner’s hype cycle in Dave Chaffeys’ excellent but now slightly outdated ‘Internet Marketing’, it’s good to see a more recent version that is now available.  This version is less focused on specific technologies, and more keyed into life cycle stages, and all the more useful because of it.

***Update*** Spoke too soon.  Check out technology/channel version here

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Social Networking, User experience | 0 Comments

Quit complaining, peanut.

There’s been a lot of moral indignation recently about the changes Facebook’s been making to their GUI (Graphic User Interface to the uninitiated).  Functionality keeps being added, removed, tweaked and moved around on the screen and Facebook users are out on mass having a good grumble about how it’s not like it used to be in the good old days (last month?).  Now. Ignoring the fact that these same users voice these same concerns everytime Facebook make a change.  I feel I have to point out a rather unpalatable fact to my Facebook chums.  Sorry guys. Get over it. We’re peanuts.

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Marketing speak, Personal, Tech Talk | 2 Comments

Can big agencies ‘do’ digital?

I was sitting in a cafe in Greenwich Park last Sunday having a chat with a very good friend of mine about the effectiveness of  large agencies when dealing with digital, and in particular, social marketing (I know, I know, I really do need a hobby).  She’s in a good position to understand any issues, working as she does for one of the big five agencies, and I was surprised to hear that she shared my concerns.  Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I have a bias against the larger agencies. I’ve had lots of bad experiences and have been charged quite a large amount for the privilege.  But maybe I’m just unlucky, or really bad at briefing, so I opened up the debate to a few marketing colleagues and their responses seem to have confirmed that the problem appears endemic.  So, what are the issues?

Posted by Andrew Nicholson in Brand, Google | 3 Comments

If you love your brand, set it free

Clicking on today’s Google doodle has just brought a huge smile to my face.  Today would have been Freddie Mercury’s 65 birthday (hard to believe, isn’t it?) and Google have celebrated this milestone in their own irrepressible fashion by creating an over the top, tiger roaring, space man shooting extravaganza of an animation, set to the tune of ‘Don’t stop me now’.