Online Adwords Campaign vs. Offline Marketing

Elliot Silver
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16

I am still a novice when it comes to Google Adwords advertising, but I have been learning for various projects. One such project is DogWalker.com, and I have been actively spending money on keyword buys. I got some solid traffic as a result, although the cost was relatively high – somewhere between $.31 – $1.00 per visitor.Overall, the cost per click I am paying is $0.39.

This morning, I tried a more traditional approach, using offline marketing. I posted an advertisement on Craigslist asking for someone to hand out magnets in Central Park for an hour, from 8am – 9am, as dog owners can have their dogs off leash until 9am.   I know people keep this type of magnet, as I have very few things on my refrigerator, but there’s a 24/7 veterinarian magnet on it. She wished the dog owners a good morning and said something to the affect of “if you ever need a dog walker, please visit DogWalker.com.”

During this hour, the person I hired handed out around 100 magnets or so. The total cost was $15, which was probably generous, since I had about 30 responses. I think I got what I paid for though because her personality was more than I expected. Anyhow, the total cost per interaction was $0.15 – over 50% less than the cost per click on Adwords.

The big differences are:

  • Adwords targets people when they need a dog walker
  • My Adwords campaign has not simply targeted cities where there are listings, although they should.
  • Magnets have more of a lifetime when they’re put on a fridge, and the interaction lets the person know about the site.

What this means to me is that I am going to be doing more magnet hand outs in parks across the city, and I may lower my rate to $10/hour. I am also going to change my targeting on Adwords and focus on dog owners in cities where I have listings. I will also target people looking to find dog walking jobs/work in a separate campaign.

As much as we spend a lot of time online, we can’t forget traditional marketing tactics.

On a separate note, Bruce Marler had a good post about drinking and driving today… be safe this holiday season.

Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey Launches Company Named Square on SquareUp.com

Elliot Silver
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16

square logoTechCrunch reported today that Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, has launched a mobile payment service called Square. While the actual product/service looks pretty cool, I am surprised that someone with the capital resources such as Dorsey would launch a new brand on a domain name that is different from the actual brand.

The big problem for Square is that they are using the domain name SquareUp.com for their website. This really defies logic to me for a couple of big reasons.

First and most obviously because it’s a mobile payment platform, and people will want to visit the website to learn about the company that will have access to credit card and payment info, and the web address is not intuitive. Many people will visit Square.com to learn about Square, Inc., and they won’t find the information they desire.

Secondly, Square.com is owned by a Japanese company, and the domain name doesn’t resolve. It’s one thing if it resolves to another company’s website, where the visitor can figure out that he needs to look elsewhere. It’s another thing if the domain doesn’t resolve and looks like the company has technical problems. There is nothing on Square.com that would tell a visitor anything but the website isn’t working.

The standalone name “Square” really has no meaning as a mobile payment service. It’s not like the brand actually means something to the product/service, where by sacrificing the brand name, part of the company’s identity would be lost. For example, the Paypal brand has everything to do with a payment service – they’re the “pay pal.”   Square does not have this identity. “Square Up” could be a better brand identity, since people use the term “square up” or “square away” when they need to settle a tab.

This doesn’t seem like a smart branding move for a mobile company – especially one with a $40,000,000 valuation.

Monitoring Whois Searches

Elliot Silver
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5

Network Solutions Email Header

A domain investor friend of mine forwarded me an email he received from Network Solutions today, with the following message:

Subject: The Domain You Searched For Is Still Available: On Sale Now!

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx.net      Buy Now for ONLY $19 >>
Available as of 11/09/2009

Domain names are how people find you online, how you express yourself through email or your website, and it’s what customers think of when trying to find you. Register yours today while it’s still available!

nsWebAddressâ„¢ packages include your domain name registration plus:”
….etc

I always assumed that domain registrars and companies used Whois lookup data for internal purposes, but I didn’t think a company would use it for marketing purposes. My friend doesn’t believe he did the look up from within an account at Network Solutions, so he was even more surprised that his search was emailed to him.

I know that companies monitor searches and other research, and I’ve warned people to be cautious when doing research, but it just seems a bit over the top when a company sends an email like this. It’s almost like, “don’t mind us looking over your shoulder, but you can buy that name you looked up the other day just in case you didn’t realize.“

Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think this is right. I would really like to know how they got the person’s email address, but I can only assume they tracked his IP address to an account there. Personally, I use DomainTools for Whois lookups.

Ultimate Bet Poker Rebrands as UB.com

Elliot Silver
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5

Ultimate Bet PokerUltimate Bet Poker is a poker website frequented by hundreds of thousands of poker players each month. The company just announced a rebranding effort, and the website will now be known as UB Poker. Site users had long referred to the company as “UB,” so it made sense to rebrand.

Along with the newly minted brand, the company has also begun using its recently acquired domain name, UB.com. Up until the end of July, the domain name was owned by a private domain investment company.

Users can still log in via UltimateBet.com, which surprisingly (surprising to me) doesn’t forward to the new url, although the new logo reflects the acquisition and rebranding effort. When you search Google and Yahoo for “Ultimate Bet,” the domain name that has been in use for years is the number one result rather than UB.com.

The acquisition price for UB.com was not made public by the company, but knowing the domain owner, it was not cheap!

Update: An unconfirmed rumor has it the name sold for around half a million dollars.

Google & Yahoo Appeal for More Online Drug Advertising

Elliot Silver
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1

Executives from Google, Yahoo, and dozens of pharmaceutical companies are in Washington DC today appealing to the Food and Drug Administration to expand online drug advertising. Although drug companies spend huge sums of money on marketing and advertising in media outlets such as television and print, they hardly spend money online.

According to a Yahoo Finance article where this news was reported, pharmaceutical companies “spent more than $4.3 billion on patient-targeted advertisements last year, though online marketing represented about 3 percent of that amount.”

If their budgets for online marketing grew to the same percentage as most other advertisers, this would be a boon to web publishers who would be able to display drug-related advertisements with their Adsense accounts, and parked domain names could have more competitive PPC bids.

Don’t get your hopes up yet though. According to experts, the FDA isn’t expected to make policy changes until 2011.

Elephant Traffic Unveils Interface for Advertisers to Capture Direct Nav Traffic

Elliot Silver
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3

One of the few new companies I learned about at Traffic New York was Elephant Traffic, and I just saw the press release below announcing the launch of their platform. The company has a large presence at Ad:Tech New York this week, and I think it’s good to see domain portfolio holding company reaching out at a mainstream event. The company is officially launching this week, and they’re holding a launch party tonight in the City.

Here’s the press release:

Elephant Traffic announced today the official U.S. launch of its new web-based interface to drive targeted search traffic to users’ domains. The service is designed to help advertisers optimize online spend by offering a steady traffic stream that is 50% more likely to convert and 40% cheaper than that of pay-per-click ads. Elephant Traffic provides real-time reporting and unprecedented transparency.

Elephant Traffic and its partners have a vast portfolio of domains with high traffic that results from direct navigation searches, which entails searching by URL such as laptops.com or mexicovacations.com as opposed to using search terms in a search engine. That traffic, which can be grouped by vertical and geography, can be directed to the buyer’s site of preference using the Elephant Traffic’s web-based interface found at http://Elephant-Traffic.com. Advertisers select streams of traffic from available domains and redirects can be set-up with a few clicks of the mouse with real-time monitoring. Elephant Traffic is the only provider of transparent direct navigation traffic, which allows you to choose the exact domains from which you would like to receive traffic.

Wei-Hai Chu, Elephant Traffic’s CEO, explains, “Not many people are aware direct navigation search amounts to 14% of all online searches and that only 11.5% of this traffic is being captured by traditional online advertising. Elephant Traffic gives advertisers the ability to capture this highly targeted yet untapped traffic quickly and easily using a streamlined interface.”

Discussing the direct benefits for advertisers, Commercial Director Daniel Goris says, “We’re able to give advertisers direct access to consumers who are twice as likely to complete an online purchase. Direct navigation search traffic has been neglected till now but our research has shown that it delivers up to 50% higher conversions rates than standard PPC advertising. What we’ve put together offers advertisers a great tool to diversify their online budgets and boost conversion rates.”

Elephant Traffic is pleased to launch in the U.S. at ad:tech New York and will host an official launch party on Nov. 4th at 1OAK on W. 17th St. between 9th and 10th Avenue from 7-11pm. The event is by invitation only but to register for more information, please visit http://Elephant-Traffic.com/adtech.

Elephant Traffic specializes in providing advertisers with high-quality targeted redirects originating from direct navigation search traffic. Elephant Traffic is part of Elephant Orchestra, a Prague-based company dedicated to innovation within the world of domains and traffic monetization. For more information please contact Jeremy Lopez at +420 725 060 188 or email jlopez@elephant-traffic.com or visit http://www.elephant-traffic.com.

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