After rates dipped tremendously over the summer, advertisers are once again rushing to advertise on television networks according to an article in today's Denver Post - "Television Advertising Shows Signs of a Turnaround". Television networks had cut back advertising rates 5 to 8 percent over the summer, but rates are often times 10-35 percent higher than they were from these summertime lows. I encourage you to click on the link to get the full details from the article.

How is Online Marketing Affected?

Not at all - Online ad spend continues to increase. The economy is still struggling, and it is likely that many companies are engaging in more television advertising to move excess inventory. An example would be the auto industry. Now that "Cash for Clunkers" is over, it is likely that there is a lot of excess inventory that needs to be moved. While television advertising isn't the most efficient method of marketing products or services, it still has a tremendous reach.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

For your Denver small business, you should use any marketing vehicle available to you that provides you a decent ROI. This could include running television ads that run locally in the Denver metro area.

When to Use Television Ads

Television advertising is most effective at promoting a brand and raising awareness of your product or service in the minds of your potential customers. Television advertising is "interruption based marketing" - meaning that you're interrupting someone who wasn't actively searching for products or services that you offer. They're trying to watch their television show - and you're getting in the way. If you can afford to run television ads consistently over a long period of time to raise customer awareness about your offerings, you may wish to consider television advertising.

When to Skip Television Ads

You're usually not going to get an instant call to action effect from a television ad where someone picks up the phone and makes contact. If you're looking for instant results, I would suggest trying online marketing first before experimenting with broadcast advertising like radio and television.

Denver Small Business Television Advertising Resources

For almost all Denver Small Businesses, I would strongly recommend starting with online marketing prior to moving on to television advertising. And if you do decide to participate in television advertising, I'd encourage you to measure the effectiveness as closely as you can to make sure you're getting your money's worth.

If you are interested in advertising your Denver small business on television, there are ways that you can get your message out for probably a lot less money than you'd expect. In some cases, the services will let you target a specific channel - say ESPN - for a specific time on a certain day. This would allow you to highly target a given demographic.

CAVEAT: I haven't used the latter two mentioned below, and am not endorsing any of these services. You'll have to do your own research.

Google TV Ads - Features an interface very familiar to Google AdWords users. They provide highly targeted viewer options. If you need help with creating a television ad, Google's Ad Creation Marketplace can put you in touch with professionals that will put together your advertisement based on your requirements.

Spotzer - Offers Pre-Produced - semi-customized commercials along with media buy targeting for your commercials.

Spot Runner - Spot Runner was one of the first - if not the first - to offer local TV advertising. Unfortunately, they've run into financial and legal troubles as of late and their future is uncertain.

Happy Thanksgiving! Could you please pass me your AdWords account information?
The Weasels are everywhere...

Today, I received an email appearing to be from Google letting me know that there is irregular activity on my Google AdWords account. Although this is the day before Thanksgiving, I wasn't feeling quite generous enough to click on this bogus link. The tip-offs that something was rotten with this e-mail were:

• A clickable link in an email - " We detected irregular activity on your Google AdWords Account. Please use the link below to verify your account immediately:"
  
  Google AdWords will never have a link in an email which will lead you to enter your password or other sensitive information. This also goes for any other reputable websites where you need to log in. Don't trust an email asking you to click a link to verify or validate an account, no matter how official it may look.


• Misspelling - I'm pretty sure Google would have correctly spelled "Sincerely". Assuming that they use the GMail client which autodetects spelling errors.


• The Big Bright Red Warning Message - I use GMail for my domain based email account, and as you can see in the screenshot, GMail is warning me in a bright red box that this appears to be a phishing attempt. The lesson here is to have a reliable e-mail client that can detect phishing attempts.


• Subject Line - "Security Measure" - Kind of a vague subject line that doesn't at all fit in with what I would receive in a typical AdWords Email.


• Sender "AdWords@Google.com" - This one isn't as big a deal - but most of the messages I receive from the Google AdWords team are from adwords-noreply@google.com. So that seemed off - but please note, even if it was from that address, it could have been spoofed. E-mail spoofing is making an email appear like it was sent by someone - when in fact it wasn't. It is incredibly easy for a scammer to make an email appear like it is from adwords-noreply@google.com - so don't just assume that if the sender looks alright, that the email is alright.

AdWords Account Phishing

If you think you have received a phishing e-mail attempt regarding your AdWords account, Google has an extensive section on phishing in their help area. I reported this e-mail to Google to their phishing email addresses as detailed in the above link. The AdWords phishing page provides a ton of information on how to identify phishing attempts and how to prevent falling victim.

If you have accidentally already submitted your information via an AdWords phishing attempt, be sure to contact Google immediately. Google AdWords has an entire section about starting the process to get your AdWords account back.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

Well, it helps to know that there are weasels out there actively trying to compromise your AdWords account through methods such as phishing. Hopefully this email has provided good resources for you to learn how to avoid becoming a victim, and what to do if someone has hacked into your Google AdWords account. Once weasels get into your AdWords account, they can rack up some serious AdWords charges. Your credit card information should remain safe, but they can create new campaigns and charge a lot of unwanted clicks to your credit card.

Anyone could have a bad day and accidentally click on an email like this and inadvertently enter their password information. Especially if you're distracted or not thinking things through clearly. The more that you hear about AdWords phishing attempts like this, the more likely you are to question any e-mail that comes into your inbox asking you to click on a link to provide sensitive information.

Using GoDaddy's GeoDomainMap Tool

Recently, GoDaddy launched a pretty impressive tool: The Geo Domain Map that can help you find a great domain name for your Denver small business. I provide a video walkthrough of this tool in a future blog post, but first let me give you the general overview of why it can be such a helpful tool for Denver small businesses looking for the perfect domain name.

What is an Exact Match Domain Name?

An exact match domain name would be a domain name that perfectly matches whatever someone types into a search engine search box. Studies have shown that exact match domain names get a little boost in the search engine results when compared to non-exact match domain names.

Denver Small Businesses and Exact Match Domains

For local search in the Denver area, it might be helpful to have your location (e.g. Denver, Aurora, Lakewood, Littleton, Highlands Ranch...) as part of your domain name. Your domain name could be your location combined with services or products that you provide. It can actually help you bring in more traffic (and more Denver metro clients) to your website.

A Geographic Exact Match Domain Name Example:

Getting A Good Denver Domain Name Isn't Everything

Keep in mind, even if you do get a great Denver metro domain name that defines your location and your services, you still have work to do. This is a good first step, but to rank well with the search engines, you still need to remember a couple of very important things:

• You still must have original quality content on your site to rank well. The domain name is just one part of what will factor into your overall search engine ranking for search phrases.
• An exact match domain name isn't worth anything unless people are actually searching for the terms in your domain name. Use a keyword tool to make sure that you pick popular Denver area search phrases.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

The GoDaddy GeoDomainMap search is a pretty useful tool. Not only is it fun to play with, but you can explore certain domain names that could serve as your primary domain name - or domains that could be used in PPC campaigns to bring traffic to your business. It is a tool that is worth your time to check out.

Comscore released their October 2009 search engine rankings this week. The results were a roughly similar increase in searches for both Microsoft's Bing search engine, and Google's search engine - all at the expense of Yahoo. According to Comscore, Google still leads in percentage share of searches with 65.4%, followed by Yahoo at 18%, then Bing at 9.9%. This is relatively good news for Bing which is up from 9.4%.

The percentage jump for Microsoft was rather impressive, but to really make headway in the long run, Microsoft needs to start to cut into Google's share - and most experts just don't think that Bing is a "Google-Killer". It is a nice search engine, and you should definitely try Bing out if you haven't already. It provides results comparable to Google - solid, reliable search engine results.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

You really need to know where to focus your time and effort, and statistics like these will help you with your strategy. If you truly are advertising locally in the Denver metro area, you'll want to start with Google AdWords and focus most of your time and effort there - since the lion's share of the searches do occur on Google.

Should I even be concerned placing ads for my Denver business on Yahoo and Microsoft?

Probably.

Once you have your Google strategy down, then move on to the other search engine advertising platforms over at Yahoo and Microsoft. A great reason for eventually trying out Yahoo and Microsoft is that many people find that the cost per click is much less, and their conversion rate is often times higher. But for sheer volume, you really need to be advertising in Denver metro using Google AdWords.

According to a recent post over at SearchEngineLand.com, Google is getting ready to permanently ban certain advertisers from the AdWords advertising network . Author Barry Schwartz believes that the bans are due to an increased number of advertisers running fraud and scam websites. This may be Google's attempt to weed out those "skunk" advertisers.

As a Denver online advertiser,
do I have anything to worry about?

The answer is almost certainly no. That said, take a good look at Google's editorial guidelines before you participate in AdWords. Google actually provides a list of reaons why an account may become banned. If your website participates in the following, you're a candidate to get banned:

• Data collection sites that offer free items, etc., in order to collect private information
• Arbitrage sites without relevant and original content that are designed for the purpose of showing ads
• Affiliate sites without relevant and original content that are designed to drive traffic to another site with a different domain
• "Get-rich quick" sites
• Malware sites that install software on a visitor's computer
• Poor comparison shopping or travel sites whose primary purpose is to send users to other shopping/travel comparison sites, rather than to provide useful content or additional search functionality

To summarize: If you're up to no good, just want to show ads, or are an affiliate website that provides no original content or value - then you're a candidate to get banned. If you're a legitimate Denver small business, you have nothing to worry about.

How Does this Help Me Market My Denver Small Business?

Well - while most Denver advertisers won't be impacted at all - there is the possibility that some Denver advertisers will be paying a bit less for clicks than they had in the past.

Example of How Some Might Benefit From Lower Bid Prices: Let's say you're a Denver metro travel agent competing on travel to the Galapagos islands. Unfortunately for you, your ads are competing against a bunch of these soon-to-be banned thin affiliate websites. These competing sites offer little value to the end user and in most cases encourage a quick redirect to another website. Now, these sites will be banned, and you won't be in an auction competing against them anymore. This could effectively lower your cost per click for the same ad position in AdWords.