feed hat blog

My name is dk, CEO of Purpose Inc. John has very graciously allowed me to share my Facebook Advertising Presentation from Affiliate Summit with his readers.

When I speak, people repeatedly ask for actual case studies. The week before Affiliate Summit, in four days, I did the following test. I spent about 4 hours on it, and one of my programmers put in probably about the same amount of time making landing pages.

I first started 10 years ago in local internet marketing for my La Jolla Chiropractic Office. I got into Facebook advertising, after reading Shoemoney’s first write up on local facebook advertising, which is now part of the Shoemoney System

6X Brazilian Jiu Jitsu World Champion Robert Drysdale

I have been helping my friend Robert Drysdale with his new site where you can learn to do Jiu Jitsu online. Here is some info about Robert on my first slide.

Facebook Advertising Campaign Goals

I spoke in detail with Sean Rigo, Robert’s business partner on the site. We discussed expectations on the site, and agreed that if we could get quality people to visit the site, who were interested in learning jiu jitsu online, for $10 each we could probably make it work. The site is not live yet, so this is only a guess.

Whenever I do a campaign for any product, the first thing I do is put myself in the position of the user. Why would they buy the product? Who would buy the product? What do I know about them? The key question was…

PPC Advertising Landing Pages

Initially just put up landing pages, whose templates had worked before, but with new text and images.

Facebook Ad Demographics

The initial goal here was to find an image, title and ad text that would lead to at least some clicks as a starting point. We then tried many different ads with different demographics to see what we could discover. This would lead to the starting ad and demographics.

Then I came up with more ads with different demographics that we tested.

Click Through Rate

The CTR is the percentage of people who saw the ad, that clicked on it. We used that as a first indication of an ad that made people interested. The final ad that says De-Knot your stomach got almost no clicks, and Facebook stopped showing it. One of my staff thought the guy looked hot, so I imediately killed that ad!

The winner of the first round of testing was, “Afraid to Go to School” At $0.29 per click, it was in the ball park for traffic we might be able to work with. This had a grammar error in it, Bully’­s instead of Bullys. It worked with the grammar error, so we left it.

Testing Color Variations

Now it was time to test for better landing pages. Without the site live, I preferred to get the traffic as inexpensively as possible, and verify the users were actually interested enough to at least give up some of their personal data. So we kept going with the testing.

We had made the following landing page when we first made the Bullys ad. No special thought had been used to make the page, but instead was made based on successful templates we had used in the past. The ads were written from the mindset of a kid who is afraid of going to school. When I was a kid, I went to Sun Valley Junior High in Los Angeles where there were gangs, drugs and bullies. This meant that I have firsthand knowledge of being a bit scared of going to school!

We started with the ad that was already working and decided to test color changes. We could have tested any variable on the ad.

We used the same landing page for each of the following ads. We then changed blotches of color, and the color of the shirt of the bully. At this point we switched over to measuring the tests by the cost per lead generated.

The costs per lead generated varied from $3 to $9. We used tests of 50 clicks or more.

Cost Per Lead

It is possible the $3 and $4 ads really had the same result, and it was just random chance. Going onward using the green shirt $3 lead was a safe bet.

ADL – Ad, Demographic, Landing page

The Ad (including title, image, and ad copy), the demographics, and landing page together make up what I call the ADL (Ad, Demographic, Landing page). Remember you read A.D.L. here first on John Chow’s blog!

Now that we had a decent ADL, (Ad, Demographic and Landing page) we wanted to see if we could lower the cost per lead by improving on the landing page. At this point I turned the landing pages on as I sat down to watch Avatar. This means the ads were going to run at night, which often yields a different result than during the day.

Testing Landing Page Variations

We started with the landing page we had used in the initial test. We then did variations of that.

I gave this part to Mihai my Romanian programmer. Vampires often choose red as the first color to test : )= (that is a vampire smiling which you also saw first here on John Chow’s blog!)

Here Mihai made the title totally red. The orange submit button comes from Shoemoney’s research that orange submit buttons often work best.

You never know what works, so you try whatever sounds interesting.

The downside of course of having a non native English speaker choose the text of the ads can have results like the one below.

The winning landing page gave us leads at $3.20 per lead. This was more expensive than earlier ads, which I think was because these ads were run at night, and had a lower fill in rate.

Ad Title Testing

Now we had a decent ADL, (Ad, Demographic and Landing page). We then tested new ad headlines to see what changes this would yield. There is no correct order to test in. You can go on and on like this, forever, or start completely over with a new concept. Remember this was all based on the thought that people learn to fight to prevent getting their butts kicked. We could have just as easily started with doing Jiu Jitsu to get stronger, improve balance, enhance self defense, get ready to get into the UFC, or a million other ideas. Another important thing we can test is what my co-speaker Mark Colacioppo CEO of Globalizer said, that you can test running the ads just during certain times of the day, and see when they perform the best.

We then tested 15 different titles on the ads, while keeping the rest of the ADL (Ad, Demographic and Landing page the same.) I honestly came up with these different titles in about 3 minutes, asking my staff who happened to be standing around me for any ideas they had.

The Winning Combination

The winner was, much to my surprise:

We now had an ADL, (Ad, Demographic, and Landing page) that got us leads at $1.43 per lead. So, no more fear for me! I had a success to present!

When the site goes live, we will be able to test these leads, and see if this is profitable. Whether it is or not, we will be back testing, testing and more testing to find the lowest possible cost per quality lead, and ultimately the greatest return on investment.

If you have facebook questions, just send an e-mail to me, dk or hit me up on twitter.

Those of us who get to read John’s blog are very lucky. If you read between the lines, you will see a story of a guy who comes from very humble beginnings, who worked very, very hard, studied hard, and pulled himself up to the top. John’s life is a fantastic and inspirational story that never says, why me?, but instead just pushes forward hard to success. It is a story that cuts across generations, cultures and languages. It is a story that is still being written!

John, thank you very much for letting me post this on your blog. I am very honored.

Much Love,

dk

Here is the original:
Facebook Advertising for Lead Acquisition Case Study

Regular readers of John Chow dot Com will know that there is more to the dot com lifestyle than making money online. That certainly plays a major role, but it’s also important to have a supportive significant other and a loving family. You should also pay a little more attention to your health.

Over the course of this review, we’ll learn a thing or two from a blog called Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free. You can probably guess the main focus of that site.

Fabulous Healthy Food?

The blogger behind Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free is Amy Green. Almost six years ago, she decided to remove all refined sugars and glutens from her diet. The net result is a 60+ pound weight loss that she has managed to maintain to this day.

It is far too easy to indulge in fast food, oversized portions, and unhealthy ingredients. By reading along at Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free, you may find a way to prepare healthier food at home that is both nutritious and delicious.

The Healthy Recipe for Success

With a new post going up just about every day, Amy Green has managed to maintain quite the healthy publishing schedule. There, you’ll find a wide range of healthy recipes that you can try at home. These are free of refined sugars and gluten.

One of the more recent recipes is perfect for these colder months. Roasted winter vegetables are both hearty and healthy. In the post, you get a picture of the final product, a brief discussion from Amy’s point of view, and the complete recipe itself.

The recipe is adapted from Everyday Food, but Amy has made it her own. She describes the ingredients you need, how to prepare them, and what you need to do if you want ot make them ahead of time. You’re also granted quick access to a print friendly version of the recipe.

More Food for You to Enjoy

At the end of each recipe, you are also offered three related recipes. In this instance, we look at how to peel a butternut squash, how to oven roast a squash, and how to make an apple and walnut stuffed acorn squash.

You could say that this is the same as the “related posts” plug-in that many bloggers use, but the LinkWithin feature adds in a thumbnail preview too. I am personally not a fan of its use within the main index; I’d prefer if the “related posts” were only shown within the individual articles.

It’s very unlikely that you’ll find a recipe for a foie gras burger on Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free, but there is no shortage of nice treats. Sip on some chocolate coffee martinis, munch on some fresh cookies, and even feed Fido with pumpkin dog biscuits. The variety is certainly impressive.

Regarding the Site Design

The soft pastel color scheme used by Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free is pleasing to the eye, but it clearly has a more feminine slant to it. This is understandable, given that the main blogger is female and the primary audience is likely female as well.

The three-column template seems to work quite well too. I like the placement of the icons in the top right, giving readers fast access to the Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and email subscription features offered by the blog.

It’s good to see the brief “About Amy” blurb near the top too, but there are at least two things that I would like to see changed. First, it may be useful to have a link to the main about page beneath the brief bio. Second, it is a little confusing to see a second about page for the site. Rewording the first “about” to be a “bio” instead may make more sense.

Third, Amy currently lists her Gmail account as her point of contact on the site. It is much better to use an email address that uses her own domain. Better still, she should institute a simple contact form so that her email address can be better protected.

A Delicious Treat for Health-Conscious Foodies

Overall, I’d say that Amy had done a good job with Simply Sugar and Gluten Free. The domain is certainly longer than I would have liked, but the content is reasonably powerful and the range of recipes will certainly be useful to people who want to eat this kind of food. If you want some good eats while staying healthy, Simply Sugar & Gluten-Free is worth adding to your reading list.

CLICK HERE TO READ SIMPLY SUGAR & GLUTEN-FREE

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Read the original post:
Cut Refined Sugar and Gluten from Your Diet

Someone clever has set the stage for the black hat/white panel with some smooth jazz tunes over the speakers. I expect the panel will tackle this potentially controversial topic like the cool cats they are. Our moderator is Dave Evans, VP, Digital Voodoo. Our speakers are:

• Beth Harte, Community Manager , MarketingProfs
• Lee Odden, SES Advisory Board & CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
• Dave Snyder, Co-Founder, Search & Social
• Chris Bennett, President & Founder, 97th Floor

For clarity’s sake, when I say “Dave” I’m talking about panelist Dave Snyder. I’ll refer to our moderator by his full name.

On SEM Synergy last week, the hosts asked what’s considered black hat in the social media space. Prepare to find out.

Dave Evans welcomes the audience and gives us some background. This session is part of the ClickZ/Online Marketing Summit track and as such it goes beyond search. He hopes to enter the larger conversation of how social media plays into search and into business as a whole. Social media is becoming a huge factor in decision making. People are looking for ratings and reviews and it’s affecting the purchase process.

Plus, user generated content plays a role in search as well. So let’s look at how these things are used. He’s going to start with spam. There’s a notion of a war in the digital technology realm. Outrageous spam like the green card lottery in April 1994 is unfairly coloring the conversation. The real questions are focused on how to please the customer. Anything disingenuous or which deteriorates trust will work against your efforts.

There’s a new marketing cycle that’s based on the ideas of what a consumer says a bout a product has a greater affect than it did 15 years ago. There’s also an issue of trust. Basic trust with regard to marketing itself is at risk. Let’s look at some examples.

Paid reviews and the following apology is just dumb. Look at the case of the College Prowler. Profiles were set up under the guise of being a student. The brand was damaged when it was found out it wasn’t true.

If you look at Dell, who’s using Twitter as a pure commercial outreach channel, compare it to other channels like TV or email. In TV or email, ads are given to you as an interruption. But on Twitter, it’s purely opt in. Someone can just unfollow Dell and their experience is back to ideal. The full disclosure, transparency and opt-out measure makes for a great marketing channel.

Wal-Mart made a faux pas when they wrote an RV blog and pretended it was an independent writer. But now they’re smarter. They’re using Twitter the right way.

The questions:

What defines black hat?
What defines white hat?
It’s all about results right?
Who’s making the rules?
How’s the conversation impacted?
How does disclosure factor into this?
What about social media and SEO relationship?

Lee says that the intention of being black hate is to get better results faster. But the consequence is having to manage risk. He sees white hat as a silly distinction — it’s marketing and there are rules (again, who’s making the rules?) and that has to be factored in as you decide what tactics to use.

Dave says there’s no white hat/black hat. Black hat was a term used in SEO to define spamming. Unlike search where there’s a guideline set in front of you, the community guides the social ethics. Wal-Marting across America is not black hat, it’s stupid. It’s really important to understand how to utilize each platform. Each community has its own guidelines. There’s spam, then there’s automation, then there’s conversation. It’s different shades of gray. Look at how the community for each platform reacts to different marketing tactics.

Beth says the community isn’t just customers. It’s stakeholders, analysts, etc. Again, it’s not what’s right or wrong, but it’s what works for everyone involved. Chris says there’s a TOS for every platform. And like Dave said, you have to identify the communities’ preferences.

Dave Evans asks Dave Snyder to expand on the social ethics comment. Dave says that the biggest cross-over between search and social is link building. You’ll find a lot of poor content being submitted by some companies. You’ll all see really great content being submitted by companies. Polluting the platform means the effort won’t succeed. If it’s no good, there’s no way around the fact the community will reject it. Chris says social media isn’t the ends, it’s the means to traffic, community building and followers. It helps get your brand out there and get links. And people that just submit articles and press releases to Digg aren’t going to see any positive results.

Lee is interested in seeing how the tactics have changed in the last year. There were some short term gains early on, but it was hard to sustain. The sustainable model revolves around quality content. And he sees the difference between white hat/ black hat as stupid/smart.

Beth has an issue with ghost blogging and ghost tweeting. They don’t know enough about your company. Some products and services are very complex, and an agency will never know enough about the product to produce content that’s compelling to the community. And if you approach it as just putting in the buzzwords, the community will sense the BS.

Chris asks if that mean no agency can work for SMO? He understands the point, but he says he knows how to take a company and give it the social media twist so that it will resonate with the community. So who writes the piece? Beth says the company should. Chris says, “Then why hire an agency?” Dave Evans says he gets the concern of a client that they don’t have the time for social media marketing. How willing is the brand to give up to control not only to customers, but also to an agency on their behalf.

Beth says that when an agency takes on content creation for social media, the tactical effort is going to suffer. Agencies can fall into a trap if they write as someone else. If that someone else is ever asked about what they meant in that piece, the fact they didn’t actually write it becomes obvious.

Dave says that Twitter has to be very transparent. He looks at his relationship with clients as a bullhorn, allowing them to communicate appropriately. He sees his role as teaching people how to use the platforms to communicate. Also remember that social media isn’t only about communication. It’s also about information sharing. It’s not 100% conversation. If you took comments away from YouTube, it would still be there because it offers information sharing. Of course, each platform is different and you can’t leverage it unless you know it.

Dave Evans says that there’s new work and new opportunities for organizations. And somehow, someone has to talk on behalf of the brand with real technical knowledge.

We have four agencies represented on the panel, with an agency approach to social media marketing. That’s clouding the conversation about black vs. white. It’s quick for you to dismiss stuff that doesn’t work as not best practice. But there’s really a lot of stuff out there polluting the platform.

Dave says there’s definitely spam on social media. He has a lot of outrage over the actual platform because they provide all the tools to spam. As a social media user you get mad at the guy who sends you DMs about making $1 million dollars. But we don’t get mad at Twitter for their API that makes it easy for this spam to occur.

Lee asks, are you going to get mad at the telephone for interrupting your dinner? Dave says he does. He says the platform is as accountable as the user.

Dave Evans asks about the Burger King Facebook app that had people de-friend people. The app was shut down quickly because apps can’t let people know when they’re being de-friended. It doesn’t help the development of the community. Is that an issue?

Dave says you’ll get a reaction from the platform when you take away they’re ability to make money.

Beth and Chris seem to be at odds on the agency role in PR 2.0. How does a company help foster and create a PR rep for their brand?

Beth says the biggest problem is not knowing what different employees’ strengths are. Don’t put employees out there who aren’t social and don’t have a personality. If you don’t have a brand that someone wants to engage with, don’t get involved in social media.

Lee has a brick-and-mortar client who’s got a blog. People applying for jobs are actually tested on their writing ability. They’ve gotten tons of great content on the employees who contribute to the blog.

Chris says that he doesn’t disagree with Beth’s point about ghost writing for a client. But he would review it and make sure it communicates in the right way to the community.

What about automation with social media? I’ve been using automation on my personal Twitter account for a year and haven’t had any problems. I think my followers and I have an engaging relationship.

Dave says if you’re doing that with clients you better be aware it could cause your account to be banned. Sure you’re doing it on your personal account, but you’d never do it on your company account. It comes back to risk management.

When are we going to get rid of black hat, white hat terminology?

Chris says SEO doesn’t own the term. It came from programmers. Lee asks if there are any communities that are good at policing itself. Craigslist, Wikipedia and Reddit are mentioned as platforms with communities that organically police themselves. Lee thought years ago that communities would police themselves but today he’s not seeing that as much as he thought they would.

Should large media and news companies be submitting their own work to bookmarking sites?

Dave says it’s a good way to get banned. Chris says that even if it’s Digg worthy, it’s better that the company focus on ways to create great content. Focus on spending time figuring out ways to make stuff the community likes. Dave Evans says that publishers voting for their own stuff looks funny. Chris suggests that if your company model relies on it, find someone in your company who is truly involved in the social media site and has real relationships in the community.

What if you have employees are directly engaging with your customer through social media?

Dave says a company needs to consider what they’ll do if that employee leaves. He doesn’t have an answer and is waiting to see how it plays out. Lee says that there’s a lot of equity and brand that leaves when the employee leaves.

Name a brand that was damaged by a social media faux pas. It’s never happened. Nobody cares.

Lee says it’s less about customers than it is about industry analysts. Beth says you can just push messages, but it comes down to how effective it is. Dave says it comes down to building effective campaigns that get results for clients. Chris says if you want to catch a terrorist you hire Jack Bauer. If you want a successful online marketing campaign, it might get messy, but Jack Bauer’s going to get the job done.

The rest is here:
Social Media: White Hat vs. Black Hat

Here’s my roundup of the best search/marketing posts I found and read during June. If you’re new to this blog, this is a monthly feature that began way back in 2007. You can find earlier “Best Of”s for each month in the archives: 2008 Best Posts and 2007 Best Posts. I never include my own posts in these end-of-month recaps.

Small Business

• Don Campbell/Expand2Web: Google Voice – An Opportunity for Small Business Owners
• Janet Meiners Thaeler/Small Biz Trends: Practices of Top SEO Companies for Small Businesses
• David Mihm/SEL: Do-It-Yourself SEO Advice For SMBs

Local Search

• Ash Nallawalla & Fabienne Rabbiosi/Mihmorandum: The Guide to Australian Citations for Local Search
• David Mihm: The Guide to UK Citations for Local Search
• David Mihm: The Guide to Canadian Citations for Local Search
• Miriam Ellis/SEO Igloo: The Great Wall Of Google – A Short Essay On Communication
• Eric Enge/SEL: Clean Up Your Local Data!
• David Mihm: Requests for New & Improved Google Maps Features

SEO

• Russ Jones/Google Cache: The Triviality of On-Page HTML Tag Optimization
• Aaron Wall/SEOBook: SEM Training: Do You Make These 14 Common SEM Errors?

PPC

• Andrew Goodman/SEL: The Long Tail of Paid Search Account Effort
• Brad Geddes/SEL: Beginners Guide To Creating Mobile AdWords Campaigns

Links & Link Building

• Ann Smarty/SEJ: Link Building Worksheets – Organize Your Campaign

Social Media

• Lisa Barone/Small Biz Trends: 8 Ways To Find Relevant Followers On Twitter
• Brian Carter/Search Engine People: The 6 Spheres of Social Media Marketing
• Callan Green/Mashable: Killer Facebook Fan Pages: 5 Inspiring Case Studies

Blogs & Blogging

• Steve Sherron/Blogger Lens: How To Make It Easier For Google To Find Your Hyperlocal Blog
• Darren Rowse/Problogger: 13 Tips for Marketing Your Business With Your Blog
• Jim Cronin/Real Estate Tomato: The Easiest Way To Write 30 Real Estate Blog Articles Every 30 days

Rants

• Lisa Barone/Outspoken Media: Google Openly Profiles SEOs As Criminals
• Michael Gray/Wolf-Howl: How Google Profiles SEO’s

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This is a post from Matt McGee’s blog, Small Business Search Marketing.

June ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts

Related posts:

1. May ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts
2. January ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts
3. February ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts

Read more here: 
June ‘09: Best Search/Marketing Posts