by Howard Jacobson.
Pay-per-click search marketing may have been invented in the second Clinton administration, but it’s a modern iteration of a hundred-year-old tradition of direct marketing: Find people who have a problem, get their attention with a small, inexpensive ad, and then offer them some thing of value related to their problem in exchange for the ability and permission to follow up.
If...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Search Engine Watch.
An old joke that I first heard from my friend and colleague Ann Convery:
An elderly gentleman is rocking on the porch in the evening, next to his dog, who’s lying down beside him and howling miserably. His neighbor finally can’t stand it, so he walks over and asks, “Fred, what’s with Gideon?”
Fred...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Search Engine Watch.
AdWords doesn’t have to be hard, complex, or time consuming.
You can still set up campaigns and ad groups without a lot of knowledge or skill. Just follow the prompts, choose a couple of obvious keywords, and accept all the default settings.
But don’t expect to make money. Because your savvier competition will have such...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Search Engine Watch.
When Yoda encourages Luke Skywalker to persist in his attempt to lift his ship out of the swamp in “The Empire Strikes Back”, Luke shrugs his reluctant acquiescence: “All right, I’ll give it a try.”
Prompting Yoda to famously pronounce, “No! Try not! Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
Great...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Search Engine Watch.
When using AdWords or any advertising medium, you always create ads with the prospect in mind. But unlike most other media that will run your ad as long as your checks clear and you don’t violate editorial policy, Google cares very much that your ad is relevant and appealing to its users.
Google began with a couple of guys...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Fast Company.
Sometimes getting more productive isn’t about fixing your own dysfunction–it’s about figuring out how to subvert it.
The following is a transcript of an actual conversation that went on in my head at 6:15 p.m. on January 1, 2013:
Vicious Inner Critic (VIC): Why aren’t we writing more articles for Fast Company?...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Fast Company.
A bed of carrots can teach you a lot about standing out from your competitors.
As winter trudges along and the days begin to lengthen, my mind turns to the summer garden. Out come the seed catalogs and seedling trays, and I get a bit more liberal with the canned produce we put by last fall.
And I grit my teeth and think of all...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Fast Company.
The true reason smart, creative, and motivated people spend time on low-value busywork at the expense of the big-picture stuff.
My client Felix (not his real name) was complaining to me about wasting huge amounts of time during his work week. An energetic, goal-oriented entrepreneur, he found himself doing technical and administrative...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Search Engine Watch.
One of the most important elements of any search-based lead generation campaign is the offer – what does your prospect get as a result of giving you their contact information?
Ideally, this offer acts like a magnet, attracting qualified prospects and having no effect on non-prospects (in this metaphor qualified prospects...
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This article by Howie Jacobson was originally posted on Search Engine Watch.
Search marketing is often more like courtship than a shotgun wedding. While some searches lead to online purchases within minutes (usually for inexpensive commodities that people are familiar with), many searches do not.
If you don’t set up your website to capture your visitors’ contact information and follow up with...
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