PPC-Advice.com

I’m a daily commuter to Toronto, traveling from the outskirts of the big city to the downtown core each and every day, weather permitting.  My routine is usually pretty uninspiring, but every once in a while something catches my eye and truly surprises me.  This is a story about a simple wheeled hand cart, and how it changed my outlook on an old-school grocery store’s seemingly unchanging corporate protocol with marketing ingenuity. Read more…

That time of year is upon us once again, financial reporting time.  With technology giants showing optimistic news recently, and industry heavyweights due to weigh in soon, we’re hoping to hear more good news about economic recovery.

With that in mind, let’s look at the most important finance people examine when scrutinizing earnings news, and what marketing strategy has to do with those numbers. Read more…

At first, I thought it was curious that my paid search campaigns would show relatively consistent patterns on a monthly and yearly basis.  Trends that I blogged about before some 2 years ago, still hold true today while others have become even more obvious.  Needless to say, knowing about these trends gives you a significant leg up on the competition, and verifying which patterns exist for your industry is as easy as tuning your campaign reporting to historical dates in the past. Read more…

In the best of scenarios, collectively, the IT department within an organization is an extremely busy place, with the hustle and bustle of scoping, engineering, implementing, and testing every phase of an online web property. Priorities on projects originating from product development, marketing, sales, and support have to be weighed accordingly.  However, with the ever-changing world of online marketing, companies have to be increasingly more agile, and aware of changes across the enterprise. Read more…

Having gone down the rabbit hole last night as well, I wasn’t surprised the first session was a bit of a snoozer in terms of attendance. Even with a promising session title: “Igniting Viral Campaigns: From Links to Generated Content”, the absenteeism was sharply felt, just like the fricking cold air cutting through the entire venue. Good thing I picked up an “I’m with Stupid” Shirt from StupidSEO.com to keep from slipping into hypothermia. Read more…

Given the recent economic downturn and attendance numbers in a downward spiral over the past year or so, turnout for SES San Jose, the granddaddy of all online marketing shows, was surprisingly optimistic.  Not only are all major search engines, agencies, and tool providers on hand for the festivities, experts from all walks of marketing disciplines are presenting on their specialties.  It’s the perfect storm, in the perfect weather, at the perfect time for optimizing online marketing. Read more…

The first reaction I’m probably going to get for writing such a hot-button topic is, “Garry, why’d you talk about my company”.  Don’t you worry, it’s not your company, or my company, or any company, it’s most companies.  Face it, if you knew the questions to ask, skills to look for, business processes to change, you’d be retiring at forty in the Caribbean or embarking on your fourth start-up.  Finding and keeping top online marketing talent is tough, mainly because of the things you can’t change. Read more…

With all the talk lately about new and emerging technologies, social spheres, and potential easy wins in online marketing, it’s hard to decipher the signal from the noise.  A shaky economy doesn’t help matters, because many companies are moving to either increase short-term gains or foster long-term strategy and right the boat.  Fragmented advice is easy to come by, so I present to you one cohesive strategy of online marketing with a few tactical real-world examples of how you might implement change. Read more…

Am I the only one that isn’t too excited about Google Wave?  What’s promised as the next big thing in social media and online collaboration definitely sounds interesting, but it’s definitely still a pipedream.  Will it be a flashy new Google Docs-type platform, or will it fall flat, like Google Knol?

One thing is for certain, the technology is pretty cool.  Think of all the internet was promised to be, and think of what it is today.  Now think about the possibilites of actually working from home, across business units, and from across the world.  Now you’re getting closer to Wave…

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Whoa, didn’t see this one coming.  In a surprising move yesterday, Google announced that advertisers would be allowed to use trademarked terms in their search ads, making for quite the conversation piece admidst legal uncertainty surrounding rights-holders.  The older rule allowed advertisers to request Google remove trademark and brand names from ad text, thereby providing some protection for owners.  Is this good or bad?  Depends which side of the fence you’re sitting on. Read more…