There are a number of mistakes commonly made in PPC marketing campaigns; despite being easily avoidable, these mistakes continue to be made on a regular basis, according to Elise Gabbert, writing for Business 2 Community.

She states that these avoidable mistakes can have a damaging effect on campaigns – affecting CTR (click-through rates) Quality Score levels and more importantly ROI (return on investment).

Gabbert has highlighted some of these mistakes; here are just a couple of them in a summarised form:

Mistake 1 – Not writing unique ad text – You’ll often see many PPC adverts that don’t have any of the words featured in a search query; Gabbert states that this is a “big no-no!” It is important not to use the same advert across multiple groups; instead the ads should be tailored towards small more specific groups.

In the example provided, a PPC advert for “Whole Brisket Online” is displayed when the query “mail order ribs” is made. Gabbert states if the company behind the ad sell ribs, the word should be included either in headline or the main ad copy; if they don’t, “ribs” should be defined as a negative keyword.

Mistake 2 – Not using extensions – Adding an extension to a PPC advert is extremely easy; extensions work very well for products – providing people with an image of what they’re searching for.

Gabbert states that a picture goes a long way towards verifying that the particular ad is related to your search query – without having to spend time reading the text that accompanies it.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.

Cadbury’s has announced the launch of a new social media marketing campaign to coincide with the launch of a new Wispa product, according to an article published by the Drum.

Fans of Wispa’s official Facebook page will be able to enter a Daily Lottery competition to win two bags of the new product, entitled Bitsa Wispa.

To enter the competition, which opens at 10am and closes at 4pm every weekday, fans are simply required to state who they would share their Bitsa Wispa prize with if they won.

The competition is the second launched by Wispa in as many weeks, with the previous one – lasting 24 hours – culminating with Kate Mead being crowned Wispa’s ultimate fan – receiving the first bag of Bitsa Wispa in the process.

Facebook fans have played an integral role in getting the chocolate bar back on shelves, following its discontinuation in 2003 , with a successful campaign carried out on the social networking site.

Bitsa Wispa is set to go on sale nationwide on April 2.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.

Research in Motion (RIM), the company behind the BlackBerry, has become the latest big name to experience what happens when a social media marketing campaign on Twitter goes awry, according to an article published by ZDNet.

Having launched the BeBold campaign at the beginning of year, RIM asked users to tweet their resolutions for the New Year – using the hashtag #BeBold.

The campaign got a good response until RIM unveiled four cartoon characters designed to reflect the main themes featured in the resolutions – Achievers, Adventurers, Advocates and Authentics.

Tweeters lined-up to express their criticism of the characters, with one Tweeter writing: “The BlackBerry new #BeBold campaign is really, really cringeworthy. Dated characters and painfully bad copy. They should just die gracefully.”

RIM has responded with a post published on the BlackBerry blog.

It read: “We’ve noticed The BeBold Team has received a lot of attention over the last couple of days, and wanted to clarify – this infographic is just intended to be a bit of fun. On New Year’s Eve, we asked BlackBerry Twitter followers and their friends to submit their resolutions on how they plan to be bold in 2012.

“More than 35,000 resolutions streamed across Twitter, Facebook, and giant billboards in Times Square. As we looked at the resolutions and the data, majority patterns and categories emerged. We decided to organise the data and share it in a fun way, and the result is the infographic. This is not a new ad campaign,” the statement added.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.

It is well-known that huge amounts of effort put into SEO can bring significant rewards. However, it should also be noted that there are a number of quick tasks that you can carry out to keep your overall SEO effort ticking over.

Writing for Search Engine Watch, Josh McCoy, has highlighted a number of these tasks – which can be done in under 15 minutes.

Here are just a few of those tasks in a summarised form:

- Review your Robots.txt file; assess your Meta Robots tagging – This can be done by checking /robots.txt. In the process of doing this you may find that images, folders and pages on your site are being withheld from search engines – preventing traffic from being driven to your site.

McCoy also recommends running “a site scan with a tool such as Screaming Frog to assess if there are any pages on your site you are excluding via a meta robots tag.”

- Review your site for duplicate title elements – Checks for duplicate title elements can be carried in Google Webmaster Tools.

McCoy adds: “Checking this Google property feature can quickly show you these issues and give insight into whether you need to spend the next 15 minutes writing unique title elements, creating redirects, or thinking about which of the multiple pages should include a certain keyword term.”

News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.

Unsurprisingly, a recent study has found that Facebook remains the most popular platform amongst advertisers and businesses looking to conduct social media marketing campaigns, according to an article published by ZDNet.

Conducted by Strata during the fourth quarter of 2011, the study displayed that 89 per cent of agencies said that they planned to utilise Facebook for their clients in the near future. Around 39 per cent responded by stating that they planned to use Twitter with 36 per cent opting for YouTube.

The majority (81 per cent) of agencies expect their approach to marketing to remain the same – representing an increase of 14 per cent compared to the same study carried out during the third quarter of 2011.

Commenting on the results of the study, Strata CEO and president, John Shelton, said: “The key word for advertisers in 2012 is growth.

“The STRATA Survey shows that many advertisers are confident that their business and the economy will return to a strong period by midyear. That sentiment, coupled with strong numbers from the political race provides an overall positive barometer for advertising in 2012.”

News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.

Popular amongst social media marketing professionals, Facebook is set to capitalise on the growth in Internet usage on mobile devices (such as smartphones and tablets) by launching mobile adverts, according to an article published by New Media Age.

Although Facebook has significantly expanded its presence on mobile devices in the past year, it has yet to take advantage of mobile adverts.

Reported in the Financial Times, it has been rumoured that mobile adverts could be unveiled and rolled-out in the next couple of weeks; Facebook are also thought to be in discussions with ad agencies to integrate Sponsored Stories into the news feeds displayed on mobile devices too.

Sponsored Stories were previously launched earlier this year with the name Featured Stories; these ads appear in a Facebook user’s news feed – displaying their friends interactions with various brands.

These latest rumours follow Facebook’s decision to file an IPO (initial public offering) last week to raise an estimated $5 billion.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.

Now that we’re into the second month of the new year, new PPC marketing campaigns are beginning to take shape. Writing for Search Engine Watch, Kevin Gibbons has created a number of tips that could ensure that your PPC campaigns stand out amongst the crowd.

Here are just a few of the aforementioned tips provided by Gibbons, in a summarised form:

- Know your product – Although it may sound completely obvious, it is vital to know your product and know it well; having a good level of knowledge on what you’re going to be trying to sell will make it much easier to do so in “just a handful of words.”

Unique selling points still have an important role to play in your campaign; Gibbons recommends that focus is placed on the most compelling points.

- Learn to Tweet – Learning to Tweet may seem a little off-topic, but in PPC campaigns you’re going to be working with a limited amount of characters. Gibbons explains: “Learning to appreciate the restrictions imposed by short-form text will help you to understand what can – and what can’t – be said in a PPC ad.

- Be timely – Many adverts on TV relate to a time-sensitive discount – a new formulation, a buy-one-get-one-free offer or competition.

It is possible to impose an element of time sensitivity to your PPC campaign; as Gibbons states: “By imposing some kind of time limit on the ad, you put in your potential customer’s mind the feeling that they have to buy now.”

However you need to be more subtle than simply saying, for example, “you have won a smartphone – claim it in the next 60 seconds” – as most pop-up ads do.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.

Unofficial Google+ statistician, Paul Allen, has forecast that Google’s first foray in the world of social networking sites will reach 100 million users at some point this week, according to an article published by ITWeb.

Allen’s prediction follows an official announcement made by Google’s CEO Larry Page in mid-January; Page revealed that Google+ had 90 million users at that point.

The ancestry.com founder has also forecast that Google+, which is expected to become a popular platform for social media marketing initiatives, will have a user base of 400 million people – almost half the size of rival, Facebook – by the end of 2012.

He said: “If that rate holds steady, Google+ will end the year with 345 million users. But as I have said before, Google has many dials and levers to use this year to increase sign-ups and usage, including its Android 4.0 roll-out. I stand by my prediction of at least 400 million users by the end of 2012.”

According to unofficial statistics, Google+ is currently growing at a rate of 750,000 new users per day.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.

A recent study has revealed that not only is Facebook the most popular social networking site in general, but it’s also the social network of choice for marketing and advertising executives, according to an article published by BtoB Magazine.

Conducted by California-based firm, the Creative Group, the study asked: “If you had to limit yourself to only one social media platform, which of the following would it be?”

Just over half (56 per cent) of the 500 marketing and advertising professionals interviewed for the study chose Facebook; while LinkedIn came in second with 12 per cent; Google+ rounded out the top three with 4 per cent stating that they would limit themselves to the search engine giant’s first social media offering.

The participants were also asked what they thought was the most common mistake made by creative professionals when using social media sites.

Responses ranged from not updating their profile enough (29 per cent) to providing inappropriate information (24 per cent).

The release of the study results follow Facebook’s – a platform popular amongst social media marketing professionals – decision to file an IPO (initial public offering) application.

News brought to you by ClickThrough – specialists in Search Engine Optimisation and Internet Marketing.

The resulting photos after a shoot are stitched together using panoramic technology to create a 360 image which allows zoom, pan, tilt etc and hence permits website visitors to get a great experience of how it will be to visit your business. This is not only suitable for retail outlets, museums, gyms and salons, but also for restaurants, cafes, hotels, B and Bs – infact, nearly every business could benefit from this.

The photos are stitched together – you can do this yourself with apps such as Photosynth – and can then be used on your own website, as well as on Google properties such as Google Places etc. You can also upload your own 360 photos to Google Places etc if you wish, and embed these photos elsewhere with a small HTML snippet.

There would seem to be a likelihood that Google is looking to add an extra dimension to Streetview by allowing users of SV to virtually enter businesses with these photos, which would be an interesting development, and make a useful marketing addition to SV for businesses.

AdWords Express vouchers are being offered to the first who take up this offer, but the vouchers expire on 31st March 2012 so you need to act fast.