I recently came across a seminar titled "How to Promote Your Online Store In A Cost-Effective Manner" and thought it was an extremely misleading headline. Whenever business owners ask me about cost effective online advertising, they usually mean "least expensive" rather than asking me how to achieve the best ROI with their online ads.
I've also found that many business owners believe that online marketing is simple, and that anyone can do it. Preying upon this belief, there are ad a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
For several years and through a lot of tough competition, Facebook has managed to maintain its status as the most popular social media network, although there seems to be an evolutionary shift of people away from Facebook and on to other networks like Instagram and Snapchat. Some organizations, groups, and communities are using Facebook's Group feature to create a community messaging board, while other organizations have migrated to networks like Telegram. For the moment, Facebook is still the network to use, but Instagram is growing quick... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Because the online paid advertising playing field changes monthly, my clients constantly ask for my current recommendation for where to spend their limited marketing budget. Although there are many online advertising possibilities, I prefer that businesses use Google AdWords and Facebook Advertising because the ads can be changed frequently to highlight current offers.
One of the marketing testing methods I use is to put myself out in the real world, away from my desk, to observe what an ad will look like when encountered out in the wild. Although I do test my digital marketing ads on different devices and browsers when sitting at my desk, it's difficult to get into the same headspace that a consumer would be in then viewing an ad or a website. This is my own interpretation of the proverbial "walk a mile in their shoes."
This is why I like writing my website reviews when I'm trave... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Social media is required for business--all businesses. It ties all your other advertising together: every ad you place in your local community, whether it's on TV, radio, on billboards, in all of your direct mail, for newspaper ads, or everything else you do on other social networks. Social media ties all your marketing together in such a way to support your customer life cycle.
Customer Life Cycle
There are specific steps that every customer must travel throug... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Since the beginning of Google time, their search results page has been formatted as a two column layout. The wider left column showed the organic results and the thinner right column had the paid AdWords ads. Eventually, Google started including paid ads above and below the right column organic results.
Entrepreneurs face many challenges when they first open their business. Frequently, business owners don't even know how to get started with registering their business on a local, county, state, or federal level. During my time as a business mentor with SCORE, I've been surprised by the number of aspiring entrepreneurs who come in asking for legal and accounting advice to help them get through their initial start-up peri... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Tracking the most active social media content might seem silly, but there's real value to this activity. When you first start blogging or otherwise buildi... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of #ThrowbackThursday, I'm jumping way back to September 2010 to the topic of landing page planning, although I didn't specifically call it landing page planning back then.
Planning your landing page long before you need to use it is an important part of a successful online marketing strategy, but before I get in too deep of how to help with the success, let me just briefly explain what a landing page is.
This is the last Daily Golden Nugget where I'll dive deeply into specific keyword phrases I collected during the 2015 Holiday Season. I've presented a lot of information over the last 30 days and I could spend another month sifting through it, but this stuff does get boring after a while when there's no specific goal in mind. That's an important thing to remember; it's best to perform your keyword research when you have a specific goal in mind. Every time I grind through keyword data, I seem to lose an... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the #FridayFlopFix edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. Each week, I look for a random retail jewelry store website that is using the wrong approach on their website, and I make suggestions for improvements. This week when I searched Google for "jewelers st. petersburg fl," I was given these results:
Now that we closed the book on the 2015 Holiday Season, it's time to review the results. Over the course of the holiday season, I captured more than 47,000 different keyword queries related to retail jeweler websites. I'm sifting through all that information to find something actionable for retail jewelers. I've been looking for things like a list of good keywords, or popular designer brands to carry, or even where to focus your energy over the next few month... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The year 2015 is about to come to a close, but before it does, I'm venturing out on a limb to give you my forecast insights for 2016. This year, I'm referring to these as "insights" and not necessarily as "predictions" because these things are what I already see happening in a small way, and steadily growing. They are in no particular order...
Social Media Change with the Young Generation
The current teenage generation is struggling to hide from their parents online. Many of them want nothing to do with Facebook because the grown-... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I've previously estimated and explained that the customer cost of acquisition for a retail jeweler is somewhere around $75. You can calculate this number by summing up your advertising expense for a campaign and dividing that by the number of new customers you've acquired during that period.
One month ago today, I introduced the 2015 Holiday Run-Up with the premise that this year you could create several specialized marketing campaigns, or micro-campaigns, focused on singles products or groupings of products. Implementing the micro campaigns would require lots of product photography, correctly targeting your customers, writing lots of product content, sharing that product content to social media, coordinating... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
It's #ThrowbackThursday, and it's also the 19th installment of my special 2015 Holiday Run-Up series. Over the last 30 days, I've written out holiday marketing steps for Pinterest, Google+, VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday website review edition of the Daily Golden Nugget. I'm starting my Google search this week with the phrase "jamestown ny jewelers" to find the review candidate for today. That search yielded these results:
Another summer has come to a close and the holiday season is almost here. No matter what the financial forecasts say, I want to give you some current ideas to improve your marketing methods, and hopefully your sales, through the end of this year.
Create a Uniform Branding With Your Ads
I'd like to start with a suggestion for you to review the ads you are already planning for this season. Instead of running standalone ads this year, you can use all the potential advertising methods... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The holiday season is quickly approaching and you need to consider how you will be spending your advertising dollars. Will you hold an event promoted with post cards and phone calls? Will you have a Black Friday sale promoted in the local newspaper? What medium will you use for your weekly ads for the holiday season?
There are a lot more choices now than just newspapers, post cards, billboards, TV, and radio. VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today's Daily Golden Nugget comes from a question I received last week to explain the difference between ad targeting on Facebook and Google AdWords. In simple terms, the AdWords targeting can use a really sophisticated way to target what people are searching for. On the other hand, Facebook uses a really sophisticated way to target the demographics of the people themselves.
Once again, the Daily Golden Nuggets have reached another milestone: 1300!
It was 1,300 weekdays ago that I wrote the first Nugget about Google Maps. In honor of my first topic, I now write about Google Maps and its subsequent incarnations ever since, and save them for these milestones.
The original Maps service has transformed several times through the years and had names like Local, Places, Local Business, and Google+ Local. Ever since Google started using Google+ to tie all its services together, the p... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Facebook is becoming well known for their ability to provide to the surface, very detailed demographic and the personal interest data about your customers. They've been able to give more details than the data Google has provided for several years. In light of Facebook's advancements, Google has improved their own demographic and interest data and made it available through Google Analytics and AdWords.
Before you can access to the demographic data from Google, you need t... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
After last week's Nuggets about marketing funnels and determining a funnel cost, I received an email from a reader wanting to know my current recommendations for a marketing funnel.
Here are my recommendations for monthly online marketing, in this o... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget, I explained how to analyze the cost of your marketing funnel. Today, I'll follow up with some specific funnel ideas to help you formulate your own plan.
Understanding Previous Marketing
Here's a tricky question to think about... Do you measure ad success by the number of people it brought... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The truth of the matter is that your business will never survive without some type of marketing. Word of mouth marketing is not enough anymore to support your business. Simple posts to social media and meager ads in community newspapers won't support your overhead, or even put food on your table.
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, you should VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'm in favor of the entrepreneur that tries to build a business around a perceived need. What make entrepreneurship in the U.S. so exciting is that you potentially make a healthy living off an idea you dream up yourself.
The internet makes those dreams possible.
A few weeks ago, one of my clients brought my attention to the following message that was posted on their Facebook wall.
I'll be the first to admit the website content creation difficultly level is pretty high. Content includes infographics, photos, podcasts, PDFs, videos, testimonials, and, of course, the written word. It takes hours to prepare each of those types of content but the return on that time investment come in the form of several years of attracting customers throu... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Jewelers are in the business of helping couples get to the moment when they profess their love and vow "til death do us part."
Few relationships are intended to last forever, or even a lifetime, but when you get into bed with a business partner, you are rarely thinking about the day when you will break up. When you're in business for yourself, you should be making forward steps to improve your business, but also prepare yourself to different possible future outcomes.
It's the Thanksgiving Holiday in the United States. For many years, this day marked the official point on the calendar as the start of the holiday season in the US. Not too long ago, you wouldn't see a single Christmas Tree or holiday decorations in a store until the Friday morning after Thanksgiving. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade would march down the streets of New York and not a word about Christmas was mentioned until Santa Claus went by on that last float, giving us the go-ahea... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm going to review the latest AdWords Express functionality that you'll find within your Google My Business account. This is slightly different than the last time I explained it in this previous Nugget.
Today's Nugget is part of my ongoing series explaining the new features within the Google My Business dashboard that allows you to control all of your Google related business... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Winds of change are coming for agencies that manage Google AdWords. The changes will be a big eye opener for business owners.
From my point of view, there are a lot of agencies that prey upon small businesses who don't know how Google AdWords works. Companies like DrivenLocal, ReachLocal, and even YellowPages all sell a good story but offer a limited paid advertising service.
Over the years, retail jewelers have called me after receiving an in-store visit from their local YellowP... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the Friday Jewelry Website review where I randomly find a retail jeweler's website from a random city to dissect and review. When I start this journey every week, I never know if I'm going to find a great looking website, a poorly functioning website, or something that's embarrassing to even look at.
Every review has a chance to touch upon topics of SEO, SEM, aesthetics, and usability. These reviews are usually not too in-depth, but just a cursory review that usually only reveals the most obvious issues.
This is the third part of my Daily Golden Nugget series outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. The first part explained how to select the items to promote during the holidays. The second part detailed how to set up your newspa... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'm outlining a potential marketing plan for the upcoming holiday season. My example will focus on specific items which we will build content around and share socially.
What I've written out in this guide will be good for anyone looking for a different approach to marketing for this upcoming holiday season. There's a lot of detail for the setup, implementation, and then the post-analysis of the entire campaign. You'll do the setup... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google AdWords Remarketing is an online marketing method that allows you to show ads to people who have already visited your website. You and Google control who sees the ads by secretly tagging every visitor to your website, then choosing what ad to show to them around the internet.
I always like to refer to AdWord Remarketing as a separate type of online marketing, but... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google changes the way AdWords works all the time. I'm continually reviewing all their changes just to keep up with the latest features. It's not easy.
Regardless of the new features Google AdWords has, the first thing you need to decide when setting up your new AdWords campaign is the list of keywords to target.
What keywords are best? That's a real tough question to answer since Google hides them from you in your Analytics reports.
Over the last two days, I've briefly explained how to set up a single ad using AdWords Express and then how keyword targeting works within the full version of Google AdWords. In this edition of the Daily Golden Nugget, I'll introduce you to the concept of ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In yesterday's Nugget I explained how to set up a single ad using AdWords Express, the simple ad platform within Google Places for Business. During the Express demo setup, I presented yesterday I chose these keywords:
In this Daily Golden Nugget, I'll show you step-by-step setup of Google AdWords Express.
AdWords is Google's online advertising platform that shows paid ads in search results and millions of random websites on the internet. Google makes most of its money through this advertising service, and many businesses experience good jumps in business when using AdWords.
Unfortunately for most businesses though, Google AdWords is really difficult to set up. A few years ago, Google realized the difficulty s... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In September 2013, shortly after Google announced their new Hummingbird algorithm, I decided to set up a special website test to see exactly how organic traffic and paid traffic would differ on a unique landing page.
On one of the website I manage I set up a landing page with 1469 words of content, 16 photos, and 37 links to other pages on the website. Indeed, this was a very complicated page that fully explained the business, all the services they provide, and the products they sold.<... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google has been a busy little bee with all their recent changes. They've made major changes to Google+, Google Search, Google Analytics, and Google AdWords in the last 30 - 40 days. Personally I been walloped by the changes because I work with each of these systems every day. I should feel like a kid in a candy store with all the exciting shiny new features, but instead I feel like a kid trying to understand that 2+2=4.
I'm only mentioning this so you understand that there are times when even the professionals need to re-learn what they take for granted.
Back in 2008, I was teaching a course on Google AdWords, but today most of the things I taught in that course became eventually useless. The class I once taught was to show jewelers how they could create and manage their own AdWords campaigns. I take it all back now; un... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
The US economy is coupon and discount crazy and it seems like no one is willing to buy from major retailers unless there are sales to shop or coupons to redeem. JCPenney's business almost collapsed when it instituted Fair and Square pricing in 2012 and which led to its withdrawl in early... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Over the last 2 days I've given you some ideas on how to accomplish your keyword research and write blog posts to specifically target people interested in Le Vian jewelry. The steps I explained can be applied to any jewelry designer when you want to use content marketing to attract customers.
"Content marketing" is the process of adding lots of information to you website in hopes that search engines will rank you highly for specific keyword phrases. But sometimes content marketing isn't enough because you are left to th... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Getting started with any new advertising method always carries a little bit of trepidations. Your advertising budget could be exhausted easily if you made the wrong choice. Common questions that might cross your mind might be: Will it work? Will it not work? Will I reach my target audience? Will the audience I reach spend any money?
With offline advertising you have to rely on demographics and circulation statistics for each medium. With online advertising you can't rely on previously know statistics because it's all up to you to figu... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Yesterday I detailed the differences between online advertising in 2008, 2010, and then my suggestions for this year. Here's my unified advertising suggestion list again in case you missed it:
1. Offline advertising 2. Website landing pages 3. Email advertising 4. Google AdWords Remarketing 5. Advertising with Facebook sponsored posts 6. Google+ Page posts 7. Google +Local 8. Blogging using Google Authorship 9. Mobile Website 10. YouTube 11. Twitter
Google AdWords is probably one of the most predictable methods of online marketing to increase website traffic. Google has made it very easy to set up a campaign, insert phrases to target, create generic advertisements, and launch the campaign. With a little knowledge you can pay them a lot of money and increase your website traffic by 909%.
Yep, 909% is a real number that I've seen a few times. I've also seen the real advertising cost involved with that number and the minimal sales. Just because you increase your website traffic doesn't mean you will actually have sales.
I've written several Daily Golden Nuggets about Google AdWords, each one explaining a few details about AdWords and the needed setup. After reading them you might think that AdWords is expensive and difficult to manage. A few years ago that was 100% true, but now there's an easy way to set it up, as long as you are willing to give up a lot of control and pay a little more per click.
AdWords is Google's main source of income, but it's a complex system that most people don't understand or don't have time to learn, so Google created a less complex "AdWords Express."
Google AdWords Express was designed for small business owners who are both too busy running their business but yet want to target their local market online somehow. Before I get into the details you need to know that if you already have an AdWords account you sho... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
My own measurements show that approximately 25% of visitors to jewelry related websites are using a mobile device of some type. This includes smartphones and tablets. People use their mobile devices differently than their desktops, and your marketing needs to be designed to account for these differences.
Google AdWords has the ability to create campaigns that target mobile devices. You can include mobile device targeting in a general ad, but it's better to create a specific campaign to target only mobile devices.
If you are the adventurous type, and you don't have the budget to hire an AdWords professional, then jump over to the Google AdWords Help website for full setup directions. Here's a shortened link for you:http://bit.ly/PJGUWE
For jewelry stores, the idea of running an AdWords Mobile campaign is pretty adv... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
In yesterday's Daily Golden Nugget I explained how Google AdWords Remarketing could be used to tag your customers so your ads would follow them around the internet. Here's the link if you missed it: http://ow.ly/diFTj
I'm continuing the discussion of Google AdWords Remarketing today with a little more in depth explanation of how versatile Remarketing can be.
To make Remarketing work on your website you have to add a small piece of JavaScript code to the programming code of your site. This usually requires the help of your programmer since most websites don't have the ability to insert code like this on the fly. When it comes to adding Google JavaScripts most programmers know that you usually just insert the same code globally to the footer of all pages.
The simplest version of Remarketing is implemented with a glob... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google AdWords has several different uses depending if your website is e-commerce or not. With an e-commerce website, it makes a lot of sense to pay for online ads that drive traffic and hopefully result in sales. Remember that driving traffic does not result in sales unless people like your website and it's easy to use.
Normally when people think of AdWords, they think it will cost a lot of money for per click, and that the monthly cost will drown you. Honestly it's no different than the money a jewelry store pays for a billboard or a radio ad, and the results are at least trackable. There's no way to track the number of people who read your billboard and take action, and there's only guessing when it comes to tracking radio ad results. So switch your billboard and radio budget to AdWords and don't worry about being drowned.<... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
How's the holiday 2012 marketing planning coming along?
In this Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to give you some exact strategies to build up holiday marketing strategy using Google AdWords Remarketing. With these ideas you can build your audience starting today but they will not see your ads until you activate them in November.
To accomplish this you will already need a Google AdWords account and to create an audience remarketing tag. I usually recommend multiple remarketing tags to better segment your audience, but in today's Nugget I'm only going to refer to a single tracking tag; let's call it the "Holiday Tag."
Google AdWords Remarketing uses a web browser cookie to track users. The cookie is activated by a small JavaScript, called a "tag." Since JavaScript runs almost everywhere, you have the ability to cooki... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Here's a boiled down cheat-sheet of what it takes for a jewelry store to get started with Google AdWords Remarketing.
I recommend hiring a marketing company that has experience with Google AdWords. They will help save the aggravation of getting this to work for yourself. A good company would work through these steps with you.
1. Look at your Google Analytics account for the usual Exit Pages where people leave your site. Try to figure out why people leave after looking at those pages. Determine if you can create a marketing campaign around those reasons.
2. In Google Analytics, look at the page path people go through on your website. This is in the Audience > Visitor Flow area of GA. Identify a few combinations of pages that people visit that you would consider potential quality customers.
In this installment of the Daily Golden Nugget I'm going to explain how you can use Google AdWords Remarketing to target market to people who have visited your website.
Over the last two days I've given you some brief introductions to Google AdWords--not so you would feel pressured to learn to do it yourself, but so that you would know what to ask for when hiring an internet professional to manage AdWords for you. There are a lot of people out there that know how to manage AdWords; some are certified by Google, and others aren't.
Just because someone is certified doesn't mean they know what they are doing; a sad reality I learned a long time ago when hiring employees for my own company. Use what I tell you here as part of the interview process before hiring someone to work on your AdWords.
Today is the 2nd anniversary of the Daily Golden Nuggets. As I begin the 3rd year of writing about jewelry website SEO and online marketing tips I want to remind everyone that you can submit a questions or comment for a future Nugget. Just reply to a daily email or submit a question through the contact form on the jwag.biz website.
Last Monday I attended a special training session for Google AdWords to learn the latest stuff about Remarketing. AdWords Remarketing is a special form of AdWords that only shows ads to people who are part of an interest group, or those who have already been to you website.
Even though Google announced Remarketing in March 2010 very few people have heard of it or use it. Any AdWords adverti... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
I'd like to turn my attention to Google and tell you about AdWords. This is one of the topics I usually stay away from because it's difficult to explain it in a Nugget without having your eyes glaze over. But I'd like to offer a brief overview anyway because something here should pique your interest...
Google's search results pages and millions of other websites across the internet are littered with ads, AdWords ads. They appear as text ads throughout most of the Google owned websites, but many other websites have banner ads, Flash Ads, and text ads that are served through the AdWords system.
Companies large and small, and many people just like you and I can sign up with Google and run ads for our business. Although Google says they charge you every time someone clicks an ad, the truth is that you need to prepay for you... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
If you attempt to set up an e-commerce jewelry website without a dedicated monthly budget you will set yourself up for disappointment. Not failure, but very slow progress and low sales.
That's a bit blunt, but e-commerce does need to be treated like a separate business entity with its own expenses and even employees, or at least an employee that spends a lot of time in front of the computer managing it.
The big players in our industry have established a strong foothold in e-commerce selling. Kay, BlueNile, JamesAllan, Zales, Tiffany, and a few others have the deepest of pockets of advertising dollars to beat out all the local retail jewelers.
If you want to have a jewelry e-commerce site you need to navigate your way through the variables of setup, monthly maintenance, and monthly marketing. Some of the variables ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
As mentioned a few days ago, American Express is trying to popularize Saturday, November 26, 2011 as the day when people should go out and buy local, not online, and not from big brand stores. This is the 2nd year in a row they are promoting it and they call it "Small Business Saturday."
Those looking to support their local community will visit the stores they already know about. Other shoppers might make an extra effort to read their local newspaper or direct mail circulars and ValPak, Money Mailer, or similar ad mailers.
Smartphones are everywhere and we are already inside the mobile age. Mobile websites are a thing of "today" not "tomorrow." However, if you don't have one yet there are still many things you can do to beef up the chances of being found on Small Business Saturday.
There's a tactic we commonly use when creating AdWords campaigns that allows us to target online ads to appear to people who have already visited your website. The idea is that if someone took the time to browse through your website, they were probably interested in your jewelry, but weren't interested enough to purchase at that moment; so we keep showing them ads to make them remember the jewelry store.
This is a very successful strategy that Google AdWords has enhanced greatly in the last 12 months or so. Google explains the effectiveness in the fact that people are targeted with specific offers. These offers were not, and will never be, visible on the regular website, making the person feel like they found a special deal or even say to themselves "wow, thankfully I didn't buy that a day ago."
Over the last 6 months we've monitored an average 97.52% increase of mobile visitors to jewelry websites across our network. The actual number of mobile visitors to a single website is pretty small each month, as in about 60 visitors, but that number has nowhere to go but up.
Did you know that you can create mobile AdWords ads? According to Google, 1 in 3 mobile searches have local intent.
According to what we mentioned yesterday, 87% of people walking are using their cell phone. Of those surveyed, it was found that people use mobile search 77% of the time spent on their phone. Finally, 33% of that 77% are searching for something locally.
What does that mean with real numbers? 100 people walk by, 87 of them are using their cell phone. Of 87 people, 77% or 67 of them are using a search engine. Of those 67... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We have two last topics to cover today that will complete our week long of Holiday Run-Up Google AdWords directions.
The first topic is fine tuning your AdWords landing pages for those gift givers. As we previously explained, the gift giver has a predetermined budget, and they will spend that budget even if the gift recipient would never have spent that much on themselves. You should fine tune your website to help those gift givers.
First, let's add a bunch of new links inside your product catalog. You need specific links that say: "Gifts for Under $100" "Gifts for Under $200" "Gifts for Under $300" "Gifts for Under $500"
These links don't have to be real pages; in fact they could be fancy URLs that lead the user into a special search page for your website. You're going to need your web programmer's he... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
As we navigate through the murky and expensive waters of Google AdWords during the holiday season, there are a few other things that could help close that sale.
Have you ever seen those holiday gift baskets at your favorite big box store? Here in New Jersey we have several Costco and BJ's stores. Right now, in the middle of October, they already have shrink wrapped holiday gift baskets for sale. There's a basket bundle of video games, another for movies, and of course a basket of edible goodies.
These baskets present the gift buyer with a perceived greater value. Among those bundled items is probably one quality item and then the rest are lower cost to produce or perhaps even closeout items from the manufacturer.
The movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" had its ups and downs in the ratings a... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Over the last 2 days we've given you ideas for targeting Pandora jewelry in your AdWords ads. Since the price point on Pandora is so low, the product lends itself nicely for gift givers on a limited budget. We're going to continue talking about Pandora today but before we give you specific ad ideas, we need to offer you some advice on Google AdWords trademark policies.
The procedure explained below will work for any vendor, not only Pandora.
Google AdWords monitors ads and will automatically disqualify and disable them when found to violate a trademark. It doesn't matter if you are a Pandora "Gold Store" or a "Silver Store," you are still not allowed to use the name "Pandora" in your AdWords ads without some type of permission.
Permission is easy to achieve if, and only if, you have a written contract with Pandora.... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Speaking of budgets, let's talk about your holiday AdWords budget. From January through October you should be spending your advertising budget on targeting keyword phrases that return the highest ROI. Perhaps these are long tail phrases like "pandora rose bead," but certainly not simply "pandora bead." The long tail phrases (those 3 words or more) are usually much less expensive than the 1 or 2 word phrases.
Here's the cost as of today's measurements:
"pandora bead" Extremely high search volume and competition Top ad position costs $3.29 per click
"pandora rose bead" Extremely low search volume and medium competition Top ad position for less than $1.50 per click
During December you should expect to see the AdWords click prices to spike up to $35 for most generic jewelry phrases. Last year we mea... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
You can spend 10 months trying to fine tune your Google AdWords campaign, really learning the ins and outs of how to attract your target customers to your jewelry store, but nothing you learn is going to prepare you for the affect that the Holiday Season has on AdWords.
The Holiday Season is about gift giving, and the holiday gift giving mentality is different than the rest of the year.
As you are most defiantly aware, jewelry is the gift to give throughout the year when someone is celebrating a birthday or job promotion, to say thank you, or to cheer someone up. Jewelry is given during economic hard times as a way of saying better times will come and during economic good times to celebrate what you have.
However, even though the Holiday Season has religious celebrations at its core, gift giving can greatly overshado... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Today's ACTION ITEM is to find out what keywords people are using to find your website, and then to make sure the content on your website is suitable. Not only that, but we'll show you how to find important keywords that other jewelry stores are not competing for.
This is Google's public location for their AdWords Keyword Research tool. If you have an AdWords account, you should log into that instead and go to your Reporting and Tools tab, then the Keyword Tool option.
Once you get to the Keyword Tool, you will find a form at the top where you can type in a "Word or phrase" or a "Website." To start this exercise let's type "www.jamesallen.com" into the website ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There's an idea among first time website owners that it's best to slap up a website with perfect jewelry photos, prices, and a Buy Now button and they can sell online. At the other end of the scale there's another camp of first time website owners that feel it's best to slap up a website with basic information about the jewelry store and they will attract new customers into the store.
Both of these ideas are completely erroneous. There is no way to slap a website together and become a success. What's worse is that we know, and our staff has attended, many seminars at jewelry trade shows where both of these myths are perpetuated.
You might be familiar with the phrases "Business card Websites" and "E-commerce sites from vendors." The business card site is a basic 1, 2, or 3 page website that puts your name online. The e-c... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We recently had a customer request to have the brand Phillip Gabriel put on their website. We did so, and they said we misspelled the vendor's name. We realized that Phillip Gabriel uses the name Phillip Gavriel in their logo, but seem to switch back and forth between Gavriel and Gabriel on official documentation, such as their footers on the phillipgabriel.com website.
This brand, from Royal Chain, has made a curious choice for their jeweler customers--do they market their brand as Phillip Gabriel or Phillip Gavriel?
Our jeweler, for example, saw it as an error that we used the spelling "Gavriel" instead of "Gabriel," and we wanted to dig a little deeper into this. Could Royal Chain be hurting themselves, and the retail jewelers trying to sell this brand?
Not unlike BVLGARI/Bulgari, which you'll see uses both, too... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
This is the last Nugget in our series explaining the different types of online product catalogs that retail jewelers could have.
Many newcomers in e-commerce (jewelry or otherwise) think they will set up websites overnight and start taking orders tomorrow. Certainly, this is possible if you have a Type 1 catalog we described a few days ago, but the reality is most run forward blindfolded with a poor execution strategy and lofty expectations. They end up with very bitter feelings of the entire experience and blame their web programmer for dysfunctional websites when in fact the jeweler should have researched the process.
Let's try to shed some light on the most difficult type of product catalog you could ever set up. We're trying to include all the details your hired website company doesn't tell you. After all, they just ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Design is one of the foremost concerns for your website. Trying to figure out the aesthetics that best please your customer is very difficult. Ultimately, it doesn't matter what you personally like, because the customer will like something completely different.
You need to program your website so it best functions for your users.
Typical design concerns are: * Width of the website. Do you want to be full screen or static width? * Colors. * What web browsers do you want it to work in? IE, Firefox and Safari are the big players. * Do you want the website to work on a mobile device? * Do you want to use a lot of images as part of the design? * Do you want Flash? Remember Flash does not work in IE 64-bit, the standard browser for Windows 7. * Do you want your website readable by users with visual impair... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Google has been making a lot of advancements in its paid search features recently. Honestly, they roll out new improvements every week, which becomes frustrating for us since we always need to replace the screen shots we have in our AdWords training courses.
In the past few months we've seen the following changes to AdWords: * Keyword Research Tool * Negative Keyword Matching for Campaigns * Keyword Opportunity Suggestions * Limitations of the number of URLs used in Ad Groups * +1 Recommendations by your friends was launched earlier this week
The latest new feature will completely change the way the SERP page 1 functions because Google will now offer paid inclusion in the organic listings to qualified advertisers. The trick is that Google won't identify a "paid inclusion" like it clearly identifies the "Ads"... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Trying to figure out the best keywords for your online marketing campaign can be pretty tricky, especially if you have a brand new jewelry website.
We know that all jewelry stores want to advertise "bridal" or "engagement rings" but those phrases are so tough to conquer. You're better off permutating those phrases into "local" versions by simply including your town name.
For example: "engagement rings in springfield" or "springfield engagement rings"
As you write content on your website, as long as you add your town name right next to your money phrase, you will be able to tackle the local market.
While we're on the topic of "bridal" we 'd like to give you some valuable advice. Don't try to target the keyword phrase "bridal jewelry." This is a worthless phrase for jewelry stores because it triggers SERP mat... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
We're not going to talk about anything new today. Instead, we wanted to share industry statistics and our own findings for this 2010 holiday season. Everything reported is for online sales or statistics.
These statistics were reported from comScore.com Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 25) $407M, up 28% Black Friday (Nov. 26) $648M, up 9% Cyber Monday (Nov. 29) $1,028M (that's a Billion!) 16% Green Monday (Dec. 13) $954, up 12% Free Shipping Day (Dec. 17) $942M, up 61%
The week of December 17 (Free Shipping Day) saw 52.7% of online transactions with free shipping. comScore also reported that there was a greater trend for online buyers to wait until Free Shipping Day before making the final sale. This is a clear indication that free shipping is a deal winner when selling online.VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Ever wonder why your marketing strategy fails, or doesn't return any real investment? You spend thousands on a billboard just to have friends say "I saw your billboard." You spend thousands on a radio ad just to have the FedEx guy say "I heard your ad on the radio today."
Each and every time you spend money on an ad, it should return enough sales to at least cover the cost of the ad. If not, well, then you did it wrong.
Wrong demographic target, or wrong placement, or wrong words, or maybe simply no one cares about what you are trying to sell. Of course, there's always the possibility that your ad slogan has some other urban slang definition and everyone's laughing at you.
Now in the second week of online marketing attempts, we are seeing random and sloppy ads from many jewelry stores.
Today is Cyber Monday in the USA. It's said that after a 3 day weekend of holiday gift shopping in local stores, Americans will secretly spend several hours of their work day today shopping on the internet for the things they could not find over the weekend.
This is the day that the e-commerce websites have waited for; this is the day that e-commerce sites find out if their website is attractive, or if the navigation works, or if they have the right prices, or if their AdWords campaigns are on target.
Perhaps it's not a make-or-break day for e-commerce sites, but it sure is a good barometer early enough in the season to review analytics and make changes.
On the other hand, the brick and mortar stores are either reveling or reeling from the last 3 days of sales.
Competition is good; well, at least that's what some businessmen will say. Competition keeps companies honest because it prevents monopolies, and it also spurs innovation.
In June 2009, Microsoft re-branded its MSN search engine into the Bing search engine. This engine has some very nice features, but according to our tracking of jewelry websites, only 7.63% of search traffic comes from Bing, so we don't pay attention to it much.
Although, Facebook is inching closer to becoming a full-fledged search engine using Bing, so that minuscule 7.63 might increase. Again, we'll let you know if it does.
Bing has one really good SEO feature for reverse engineering your competition's website, and that's the IP Address lookup. You can put the IP address of any website into the Bing engine and find out all the other websites ho... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Last week we mentioned keyword research again, and currently during our Holiday 2010 Run-Up (http://www.jwag.biz/runup) we are posting a full list of the standard keywords you should be using. It took 2 years of research data for us to easily make up that list.
If you don't have our handy dandy list, you'd have to wait a few months to watch organic traffic to your site to generate the same list.
To speed up your keyword research, and also take all the guess work out of the way, then you need to have paid online advertising through some PPC system.
With Google AdWords, you could create several dozen ads to quickly test specific keywords. You can easily identify useless keyword phrases before you spend time and money on SEO keywords that are nothing more than epic failures. <... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
Every software program has bugs because it's simply impossible to find them all without thousands of people testing it.
Microsoft was criticized in 1997 for delivering Windows 98 with so many bugs it wouldn't work on most computers. It wasn't until Windows 98 Service Pack 1 (Win98 SE1) that people started to adopt the system.
Today, it's a common strategy of software developers to cut costs by just sending software out into the market without heavy testing. The "market" is, of course, the world. They then sit back and wait for customers to report bugs (or complain) and software patches are offered daily.
How many times a day do you get an update pop-up from Microsoft or Adobe or Java? Ironically, just as this sentence was typed this computer popped up the message "Java Update Available." The computer is mocking ... VIEW FULL GOLD NUGGET
There's a lot of hype when it comes to Google AdWords and Facebook Ads. Many leading internet marketers will say Facebook is the far superior system.
The truth is we just don't know yet. The Facebook advertising system is still young. If you sign up for ads on there today you will see a lot of features that indicate "beta" and even a few disclaimers that say things like "this data may be inaccurate."
Google has years of experience with advertising and it's their primary income, so they have to get it right. Facebook approached the advertising concept completely differently than Google, and they made it much easier.
But with ease comes sacrifice. Facebook's ad system also only allows you to target people that are related or not related to your specific fan pages.
"...articles are easy to follow and seem to have information one can use right away." -Ann, Gallery 4, Hamden CT
"...serious kudos to you. We love your straight talk, pertinent information and plain language. I don't know how many industries have something of jWAG's caliber available, but I learn from the emails every day. Really, really nice work, and very appreciated." -Cheryl Herrick, Global Pathways Jewelry
For several years and through a lot of tough competition, Facebook has managed to maintain its status as the most popular social media network, although there seems to be an evolutionary shift of people away from Facebook and on to other networks like Instagram and Snapchat. Some organizations, groups, and communities are using Facebook's Group feature to create a community messaging board, while other organizations have migrated to networks like Telegram. For the moment, Facebook is still the network to use, but Instagram is growing quick...
In September 2013, shortly after Google announced their new Hummingbird algorithm, I decided to set up a special website test to see exactly how organic traffic and paid traffic would differ on a unique landing page.
The US economy is coupon and discount crazy and it seems like no one is willing to buy from major retailers unless there are sales to shop or coupons to redeem. JCPenney's business almost collapsed when it instituted 
Over the previous three days I explained how to 
Over the last 2 days I've given you some ideas on how to accomplish your keyword research and write blog posts to specifically target people interested in Le Vian jewelry. The steps I explained can be applied to any jewelry designer when you want to use content marketing to attract customers. 
Getting started with any new advertising method always carries a little bit of trepidations. Your advertising budget could be exhausted easily if you made the wrong choice. Common questions that might cross your mind might be: Will it work? Will it not work? Will I reach my target audience? Will the audience I reach spend any money?
Yesterday I detailed the differences between online advertising in 2008, 2010, and then my suggestions for this year. Here's my unified advertising suggestion list again in case you missed it:
Google AdWords is probably one of the most predictable methods of online marketing to increase website traffic. Google has made it very easy to set up a campaign, insert phrases to target, create generic advertisements, and launch the campaign. With a little knowledge you can pay them a lot of money and increase your website traffic by 909%. 
