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March 30, 2006 Introduction by Andrew Goodman Think back to March, 2002. Canada had just won their first hockey gold medal in decades. Google was still a private company. Burned by the dot-com “bubble,” many thought online advertising “didn’t work.” But Google had just released their new, pay-per-click version of Google AdWords. The whole world had suddenly changed for hundreds of thousands of businesses. I can’t believe it’s been nearly four years since my original Google AdWords Handbook came out! Back then, all the talk in the paid search category was about the category leader, Overture. It’s now called Yahoo Search Marketing. Call it what you like, but it’s definitely no longer the hot new thing. People are even talking more about MSN’s new AdCenter (for some reason). Google’s new system was the little engine that could (sexy! complicated!), and it was baffling the heck out of people. I’ve made a living “unbaffling” folks, especially our valued clients, ever since. Here’s a secret to growth and profit: it’s not “cool.” The way you get better is to pay attention to details - the right details. Too many of you are losing money on your Yahoo campaigns, or neglecting to run Yahoo campaigns at all! This neglect is a classic example of how you can let competitors get ahead of you -- by chasing fads and forgetting to take care of core business. Yahoo! Search Marketing didn’t exactly disappear. In fact, it’s still a solid #2. So it’s core business if you’re selling anything online. As Google AdWords grew, many advertisers lost touch with the subtleties of Yahoo! Search Marketing (Y!SM). Increasingly, they’ve been leaving big piles of money on the table, or wasting big piles of it, through outdated assumptions and inefficient campaign management methods. I’m pleased to announce that Page Zero Media has just released another groundbreaking report, Mona Elesseily’s Yahoo! Search Marketing Handbook. You know we don’t produce or endorse all sorts of gizmos and gimmicks. It’s got to be useful, and special. In fact, for the past three years, I’ve been constantly asked about when we’re publishing an Overture Handbook. Even our friends at Overture would ask that -- with a mixture of hope and trepidation. ;) Let it suffice to say that I never thought we had enough new or interesting to say, or I would have rushed one to market to capitalize on the hot demand. In the meantime, though, we at Page Zero were trying to unravel the increasingly troublesome Y!SM puzzle for our growing client list. Heading up that effort was Mona Elesseily, an Internet marketing strategist we hired in 2003. She brought SEO and PPC experience to the table. And we introduced her to a number of new ideas, especially about AdWords performance. And then we did something rotten. We asked her to tackle the hardest jobs. For awhile, nearly all of those jobs involved building, fixing, reorganizing, rescuing, analyzing, and adjusting Overture (Yahoo! Search Marketing) campaigns. Mona Is an Overture Guru After about the fifteenth successful campaign, it struck me that we now had a bona fide Overture guru on our hands. “And thank goodness it’s not me,” I thought. If you’ve ever tried to fix a failing Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s a pain in the butt. It can trick you, like a hall of mirrors. You may forget your own name. You definitely won’t be saying Yahoo! So the next thing I needed to do was to convince Mona that it would be great fun to begin writing a book on everything she knows. Mona needed convincing. So naturally, I used reverse psychology. I was working on a new AdWords book, a hefty volume under the guidance of my editors at McGraw-Hill (published in Fall 2005, it’s now gracing store shelves). I’d tell Mona that there was nothing more tragic than working for years straight trying to run a business, and getting two weeks off in the summer, and then blowing that whole vacation writing a chapter, and then getting back to work until you forgot your family’s names and what green grass and blue sky look like. I talked about my new destructive habits, like paying people to slap my face to keep me awake. This reverse psychology, of course, worked like a charm. Mona, suspecting I was exaggerating the hardships of authorship, merrily set to work on the Y!SM Handbook. It went through several drafts, because the world keeps changing and (in Yahoo’s case), the “story” changes more often than we’d like. I tried to warn her about this, but Mona took this as a challenge to press on. It was time well spent. There were a lot of provisional conclusions that Mona drew that couldn’t become definitive conclusions until they were checked, re-checked, and re-thought, based on client experiences and discussions with industry insiders. Great news. The finished product is now out. It’s chock full of surprising tips, lessons, cases, industry commentary, step-by-step advice. Best of all, it offers an overall methodology that is proven to take floundering Overture campaigns and make them perform better. The Y!SM Handbook Contains:
Here’s a sad (and true) story. It’s particularly sad if you’re a shareholder in a company. A major electronics retailer spends $50,000 per month on AdWords (still too little in my opinion), and only $12,000 on Overture. While their AdWords ROI rose in December holiday season based on a constant spend level, the Overture campaign ROI dropped off sharply on the same spend. Now, this company’s wondering if they should slash the Overture budget to $5,000 per month. We are talking about one of the best known brands in electronics! It’s sad, because what they really need to do is get a handle on what’s wrong with the campaign. Google AdWords is great, but it’s not 10X better than Y!SM. What this retailer needs to do is to fix their campaign, not give up. Even if you’re only spending a few hundred dollars a month on Y!SM, this still matters to you. What if you could be acquiring 3X as many customers through this channel? You’re leaving money on the table, and letting your competitors gain market share. Get Free Updates to the Y!SM Handbook in 2006 All buyers of this Y!SM Handbook will receive any interim reports we may release in 2006, absolutely free. As a buyer of this report, you’re eligible for free updates for the balance of 2006, and 50% off the cover price should a 2007 edition be released. If stuff changes, we’ve got you covered. Anyone who buys this Handbook also gets free access to our premium Page Zero Advisor newsletter, if you’re not already a subscriber. By buying this Handbook, you get access to all the occasional articles and bonus tips that all members get… at no extra charge. Forget fads! Get your copy of Mona Elesseily’s hot new 2006 Yahoo Search Marketing Handbook today, and start fixing what’s broken. If you’re spending any significant amount on paid search, this information will pay for itself many times over.
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Affiliate Program
Want to make money selling the acclaimed Yahoo Search Marketing handbook? Page Zero Media now offers an affiliate program. To learn all the details, please visit our Affiliate Information page.
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