Author Archives: Carrie Winsett

Carrie Winsett

Bing Becoming More of a Search Contender with New Keyword Tool

Posted on by in Internet Marketing, SEO

At SMX West last week, Bing announced a whole set of new features now available in Bing Webmaster Tools, including one that I’m admittedly excited about, Bing Keyword Research Tool.

While its functionality will differ slightly from Google’s Keyword Tool, Bing’s will focus heavily on organic search volume with six months’ worth of historical data, rather than one. This is the first web interface tool of its kind for Microsoft, and it should hopefully provide a reliable alternative to Google, which we’ve come to rely upon probably too heavily.

This keyword research resource is still in beta, but so far, here are some of the features that are outshining Google’s comparable tool:

  • As previously mentioned, six months’ of data or a custom date range filter!
  • Search query volumes based on organic queries.
  • Both a language and a country filter unlike Google’s ‘Local’ versus ‘Global’ data segments.
  • Raw search volume numbers without rounding or averaging.

One aspect of the feature that’s less intuitive is the ability to perform research in ‘Strict’ mode. This option will show you search volumes for what we have come to know as “exact match.” Whereas, when the strict mode field is left unchecked, you will receive data for phrase match terms.

Another great feature is the ability to roll over the results to see advertising data. It reveals how much the average bid and resulting CPC must be in order to advertise in the MainLine (above organic results) and the SideBar (to the right of organic results). This is definitely more advertising insight than Google is currently offering.

Undoubtedly, Bing still has some glitches to work out. For instance, only being able to search on one key phrase at any given time and the inability to search multiple countries simultaneously. Both of which hinder a researcher’s pace substantially. Bing is also offering a very arbitrary graph showing query trends for the selected period. However, it’s refreshing to have another data tool that’s independent of Google and offers a unique perspective on the data as well.

Carrie Winsett

Valentine’s Day Marketing Ideas: Make Customers your Sweetheart this Year

Posted on by in Internet Marketing

As we all know (because retailers started promoting it before our Christmas trees were even brown) Valentine’s Day is upon us again.  This is typically seen as our annual reminder to parade our loved ones with affection, romance, and surely some sappy gifts, but it is also a much-overlooked opportunity for businesses to do the same and show they are smitten with customers. Here are some marketing ideas on how to say, “I love you,” and cultivate customer loyalty this Valentine’s Day.

Contests and giveaways. If staying in theme, hold a 14-day contest for a product or service giveaway via your website and social media. People love free stuff and are even willing to work for it. If in need of some feedback, ask that customers complete a brief survey to be entered into a drawing. There’s a strong likelihood that your contest will result in positive karma for your company in the form of some always welcome (and free) exposure from bloggers promoting the giveaway to their readers and customers sharing it with their network.

Develop a frequent shopper program. If you have a brick and mortar store, you can create a check-in program through Foursquare or Gowalla to offer a free or discounted product after a specified number of visits. For online retailers, you can offer a coupon code in your receipt or post-purchase email. Even lead gen operations can offer an incentive for referral love.

Coordinate a daily deal special. Hook up with Groupon, LivingSocial, Google Offers, or any number of these daily deal companies to offer a discount on product offerings. This can be especially lucrative if your product happens to be couples oriented, like a massage or water bike ride. This opportunity allows you to cozy up with both new and existing customers.

Promote a coupon or discount through email and social media. Even your most traditional ’20% off with coupon code FREE’ can go a long way, especially when offering this incentive to current customers. Shoppers have become all too accustomed to seeing such promotions only offered to new customers.

Send sweet nothings and other messages of affection. Utilizing social media or an email newsletter, send out regular customer care oriented notes, letting customers know just how much they are appreciated.

Get festive. You can share Valentine’s cheer through in-store decorations or online by sweetening up your website or blog. A great example of this was Gilt Groupe, a discount designer website, which integrated hearts into their product detail pages for those items that could be delivered by the big day. Another impressive marketing move on Gilt’s part was the use of love letters hidden throughout the website. If you found all three, you were automatically entered into a drawing.

Create a themed application. Develop a complimentary app, game, or tool that customers can utilize for their own Valentine’s (or otherwise) pleasure. This may be a card template that users can customize and send out to the apple of their eye. It may also be a custom Facebook app that fans can share or play depending upon the functionality. This option would probably be the most time, labor, and cost intensive but may also have the greatest payoff and allow for high levels of creativity.

Keep in mind that there’s no reason to wait until Valentine’s Day to express love for all of your customers. This should be a year-round initiative.

Let me take this opportunity to say thanks to all of our Leverage Marketing clients and partners. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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Carrie Winsett

Mood Marketing?

Posted on by in PPC News

Ad targeting is the key to getting your product or service in front of your core demographic and successfully driving qualified traffic to your website. It’s also a factor that makes online advertising more attractive than print and other advertising mediums. Currently, we have many targeting methods, including demographic, geographic, behavioral, and contextual, and many of these targeting strategies are now being used together, like geographic and behavioral, to send the right message at the right time to the right consumer base. What if marketers could also target users based on their current mood? Given status updates on Facebook, Twitter, and Google, it won’t be long before these updates are crawled to determine emotional states and tone inflections. Continue reading →

Carrie Winsett

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Neighborhood?

Posted on by in Internet Marketing

A social network for neighbors? At face value that may not sound all too interesting but think about it from a homeowner’s perspective: your dog is lost and you want to post some signage, you are planning a garage sale and want to get the word out, or you want to find out if the neighborhood hoodlums are connected to the recent trend in car break-ins. For these reasons, and many more, you can understand why YaTown could be really useful for those in need of a neighborhood forum or network. Continue reading →

Carrie Winsett

Coding Series: Part 5 – Event Tracking

Posted on by in Internet Marketing, PPC Practices

This is the fifth and final post of our coding series. I’ve enjoyed being your resident geek and informing you about the array of Google codes that will make your online advertising life a breeze. Coding Series: Part 5 is all about micro-conversions–those small but still significant steps that contribute to the main conversion process. Micro-conversions can be tracked in Google Analytics with the Event Tracking tool.

Benefits: Event Tracking

Event Tracking is an object or data-oriented model that allows you to understand how users interact with certain web page objects, such as file downloads, Flash videos, page gadgets, buttons, the Google +1 button, links, and the like. All interaction with these web page objects can be tracked, including load times, downloads, and clicks, meaning the names you assign to user actions or behaviors is highly important and must be unique for reporting purposes. Event Tracking is useful for tracking user activities that don’t require visiting a new page of your website.

How It Works: Event Tracking

Event Tracking is another layer of data wherein you attach a method call to a particular website element in the Analytics JavaScript code. Then the UI (user interface) information can be tracked and recorded in the Events section of Google Analytics. In order to set up Event Tracking, you must have the ga.js tracking code installed on the pages where the event to be tracked is located.

How about a real-world example? Let’s say Walmart.com wants to track when people click the “Find a Store” button after entering a zip code in the store search box. Clicking this button runs a query and opens a popup window rather than changing the page URL. This action cannot easily be tracked with traditional Google Analytics script, making it a perfect candidate for event tracking.

Here’s the code for the “Find a Store” button:

<div style=”margin-top:10px”><input src=”http://i2.walmartimages.com/i/if/spacer.gif” class=”mainSpriteBTN FindBtn” type=”image” alt=”Find a Store” onclick=”WALMART['widget'].G0041s3DropDown.clickSafeOn()”></div>

Let’s define some Event Tracking parameters:

Category: Form

Action: Submit

Label: Store Search

Using these parameters, the Event Tracking code would be:

onClick=”_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Form', 'Submit', 'Store Search']);”

And the revised submit button code is:

<div style=”margin-top:10px”><input src=”http://i2.walmartimages.com/i/if/spacer.gif” class=”mainSpriteBTN FindBtn” type=”image” alt=”Find a Store” onClick=”_gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Form', 'Submit', 'Store Search']);” onclick=”WALMART['widget'].G0041s3DropDown.clickSafeOn()”></div>

Where you place the Event Tracking code isn’t crucial as long as it’s within the list of parameters for a given object.

Code Implementation: Event Tracking

Follow these steps to set up Event Tracking on your website:

  1. Confirm you have tracking of Google Analytics installed on your site. If not, refer to Coding: Series Part 1.
  2. Then, call the _trackEvent() method in the source code of a page, video, or widget.
    • Category (required) – The name assigned to the group of objects being tracked.
    • Action (required) – A uniquely paired string that’s used to define the user interaction.
    • Label (optional) – A string used for additional dimensions of the event.
    • Value (optional) – A number used to assign numerical data to the event.
  3. Once Event Tracking has been set up and running for a day, view Event Tracking reports in the Content section of Google Analytics.

Event Tracking goes beyond what other tracking tools provide, giving you insight at a more granular level into how users are interacting with your website and what steps are being taken before the ultimate conversion is made. To find out more visit:

Event Tracker Overview.

If you have any other questions about Event Tracking or how to set up links in the Google Analytics code snippet, Leverage Marketing’s Google certified team is ready to help!