At our company’s informal book club, we recently had a nice discussion of David Hand’s The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day. Belief in causation where there is only correlation, faulty assumptions about how “randomness” works and similar errors are shockingly common, even among the educated. Superstition can be a nightmare for the marketing practitioner, who can be praised or blamed for factors that fall outside of her control. Better measurement helps, of course — but...
SEM Blog
Page Zero News / 24.11.2015
Independent Research Firm Clutch names Page Zero Media a PPC Industry Leader
Toronto-based Page Zero Media has been recognized as an industry leader in a recent consolidated US and Canadian market research study. The study, conducted by Clutch, an independent research firm, ranked Page Zero Media third out of more than 30 US and Canadian PPC agencies, and featured Page Zero on their 2015 PPC Agencies Leaders Matrix. Page Zero was in tight competition with two other American PPC-only agencies. It was the company’s exceptionally high scores for...
Paid Search Marketing / 05.11.2015
Targeting on Google’s Display Network (GDN): The Lowdown on Layering
Historically, the Google Display Network (GDN) had limited features, and it was impossible to fine-tune and narrowly target segments/users/customers. Today, there are more ways advertisers can target people/users interested in buying products or services. Furthermore, we’re better able to layer products so they work in tandem. In this article, I’ll discuss some of the targeting options available and discuss some of the ways I like to layer them into campaigns. The inspiration for this article came from a...
SEO / 05.10.2015
Reactive SEO vs. Proactive SEO
I, for one, love and respect our spam-fighting, quality-content-loving overlords. Perhaps because I'm mainly associated with the PPC side of our company, I and my paid-media contemporaries can get a little cantankerous about the details of paid search products, as addicted to them as we and our clients may be. That can tend to overshadow the awe and wonder we should feel about search technology as a whole. Through relentless effort via algorithm updates (primarily Panda), Google has...
[This post is a companion to a panel session at SMX East in New York, Sep. 30, 2015: The Great PPC Account Structure Debate - #smx #23B] It's no secret that I'm no fan of needless busywork in PPC account management. Just as SEO firms used to bill clients for what Jill Whalen famously reduced to "boondoggles" -- filling potholes that don't exist, if you will -- I've generally been wary of long to-do lists in...
I recently learned some neuroscience tips at a seminar called The Human Mind & Usability, which was hosted by well-known usability experts the Nielsen Norman Group. In this article, I’ll discuss easy and effective ways to incorporate the discipline of neuroscience into landing pages. The same principles can obviously be used for other website pages too. Why is this important? Cognitive Load Reduces Our Effectiveness Our brains get overwhelmed (and, as a result, don’t work effectively) if they’re too...
If you’re a seasoned online marketer, you’ve probably been exposed to user experience gurus, conversion rate improvement experts and their ilk. Even without knowing the high-level principles, many designers and performance marketers have developed a bias in favor of simplicity. Concepts such as the use of white space and decluttering a page have been bandied around for years in the normal course of creating better experiences for users. Lurking behind much of the advice are higher-order principles of...