Why Socially Adept and Knowledgable Introverts Might Have the Best Traits for Modern Sales/PPC Managers

Extroverts are traditionally the ones to be considered to be the best marketers - they are capable of having conversations with others, and so, were able to go in, schmooze the manager up to the owner, then make the sale. They could bully a person into adding that extra option on their new car. They could call a business and convince them to use your product... Then search engines had to come along and flip the entire marketing industry on it's head.

Thanks to the internet and how it's changed economies and societies in such a short time, I believe that the best salesmen of the near future will be Introverts rather than Extroverts, but only the ones who can understand/empathize with their target end user.

Just to clear the air, I'm going to go ahead and say that most of the people claiming to be introverts might just be lying to themselves, because you know, being extroverted is so passe. I actually cringed writing the end of that last sentence.

Fictional Example Time:
(Just bear with me for the following - there are points being made, I swear.)

You're a business owner in the late 80's hiring someone to drive sales of your Doohickey (Trademarked) over the phone and in person to distributors and retailers. You put up a listing in the local Penny-Saver -

"SALESMAN WANTED WITHIN THE WEEK! 

Needs the Gift of Gab and the Drive of a Bull!"

Only two people show up three days later, partially because there was an accident with the Penny-Saver van (Why do they let the town drunk drive the delivery van?!), and the issue that you bought advertising space in only got delivered to the less popular grocery stores in town that week. Good Lord! Only if there was a paperless delivery system that could be magically accessed whenever for this sort of thing. But enough with the crazy talk, let's get to the candidates.

Larry shows up in a button down and jeans, seems polite enough and answers all of your questions in a thoughtful manner with good questions of his own, but stutters a little bit through his interview.

Then Joe shows up dressed in a Brooks Brothers suit, gives you a knuckle-popping handshake and a big grin, and answers all of your questions enthusiastically, but keeps talking about himself and why he's the best darn salesman to have ever walked this earth and never asks a single question.

"Well," you think, "Larry seems like a nice kid, but he couldn't go in and close a sale to save his life. Joe can push a conversation towards a sale, or at least he tells me he can. Too bad he has the personality of a cheese grater."

You go out to the waiting room and give Joe the sales position but you at least take Larry out for a beer because you feel he would be pleasant to have a conversation with.

While sipping your beer, you muse about what a ridiculous situation this was and a small voice in the back of your head wonders why you didn't just try to wait at least a couple days for more realistic candidates before making the decision like a sane person. But as it turns out, Larry is a huge fan of those new-fangled "microbrews" that started getting popular, just like you! So you start talking and buy a couple more rounds, then have too many beers with Larry, feel bad for him, and give him a temp job making your print ads because he at least has a background in art from high school.

This is the story of many introverts looking for a job in marketing even now.

Real fast, a review:
Introverts: Need time alone after social interaction
Extroverts: Need social interaction after time alone

Notice that being awkward and socially inept isn't in the introvert description? Because it isn't. You can be a socially adept introvert, or a socially inept extrovert. It's just that the inverse set is a bit more common noticed.

Socially Adept Introvert means that they aren't completely ignorant of social norms and human emotion - this is important because one still needs to understand the psyche of the end user and the stage of the buying cycle they are in as well as the things they value in the product they are searching for to pique interest and close the sale.

The key to this argument is in the previous sentence: "they are searching for."

THEY are SEARCHING for.
they SEARCHing.
SEARCH.

When Joe the Fictional 80's Salesman goes into a business and asks for a minute of time to tell the manager or owner about the Doohickeys, Joe is trying to get them to listen. Joe is trying to aggressively push in and get his pitch in, stir up interest, and make the sale before they have a chance to say no or a competitor catches their eye and robs him of the opportunity.

With the internet, Modern Joe is still be useful in sales, but mainly be there to close the sale on someone who was directed to him via a web search result, ready to hear about the Doohickey he has to offer, the path to the sale all planned out by Modern Larry.

With Search PPC advertising like Adwords, you're aiming to get the attention of someone who might be ready to hear your message because the person asked the almighty knowledge machine Google about something related to what you're selling. They search, the Adwords algorithm takes into account your campaign info, weighs it against your competitors, and hopefully, you catch their attention and close the sale, possibly without a second of human interaction needed.

Take in/Predict the energy of the customer who is reaching out to you, and redirect the force into your planned sales funnels.

This is marketing Judo. (Aikido, if you dislike contact sports)

To do this, the person aiming to make the sale must have some level of these three characteristics:

Patience - The ability to wait for the consumer to come to them
Empathy - The ability to anticipate why the consumer would come to them
Creativity - The ability to impress the consumer who has come to them

From personal experience, I have found these particular traits most common in those I label Social Adept Introverts, and if you combine this with a want to study and learn, then you have the best characteristics for the modern marketer/PPC manager.


Disagree? Comment below.

Q: How Does Social Media Affect Local Small Business Search Rankings?

A: From Reddit/r/SEO - A thread in the comment section sums up how a local business should look to approach social media for SEO purposes.

The Original Question:

So I have a website for a local computer repair website. And I keep reading how import having social media is to the business. I have a facebook account, a google+ account, and a twitter and youtube. What should I be posting? Should I be posting a service I offer with a link back to my site on every one of those social platforms everyday. 

Should I be posting deals with a link to my site? I am very confused - a basic strategy would be amazing from any of you. 

My services
Computer repair, apple repair, point of sale repair, laptop repair, Thins along that nature

User Ozymandia5 replies:

No, to be blunt, posting services and links is a terrible way to attract attention. Do you use social media at all? If so, you probably have a relativly good idea of what kind of content gets shared/passed around regularly, particularly in terms of blog posts/articles etc. 

Use your facebook/google+/twitter account to post links about relevant blog posts or infographics to your followers, try to engage people by asking questions that relate to your business or products, and maybe consider running a competition or two The idea, primarily, is to build yourself a decent base of 1-2000 engaged followers, and then have them organically share your content with other users to 

• attract traffic to your site  
• show Google that your site is popular and relevant to its niche.

Reply 

Hello,
When linking to a blog article going to another site. How does Google see that I am engaged as a company sending a link to someone elses site and not mine. 

So I basically do not have to keep linking back to my site just find good articles somewhere post it on my facebook like check out this cool new hard drive or something and link to the blog post or article. 

How often should I do this... should I do this everyday for every social media account? 

I still don't see though how this will rank my site better if nothing points back to my site and is going all over the internet how does google now that my site is social media presence. Cause I keep seeing everywhere that google is looking for your presence all over social media. Thanks again for all your answers as well.

Final Reply from Ozymandia5

Generally, the idea is to leverage social marketing in order to build an engaged client base that will post links to your content elsewhere - which WILL improve your rankings. The initial stages of this do, admitedly, involve posting links that wont reap you any immediate rewards. Such is life. 

You have to think of it as more of a long term investment. That said, your social media accounts should all be linked to, and pointing towards your main website (you input your website when setting up company profiles on most media platforms) and engagement there will contribute to your 'social proof' which may have some small effect on your rankings in the short term. 

In terms of frequency? Experiment. A/B test. post once a day for two weeks, then post every other day for two: has your engagement dropped or improved? Post in the mornings for a month, then switch to afternoons. Any change? 

I'm sure you get the idea. The thing to remember is that nobody will find you engaging if you recklessly promote yourself, and nobody will engage with you if you take a purely narcissistic approach to social media. 

If this all sounds like a giant waste of time, then it might wll be: From personal experience, social media is something that only really works for a small niche of businesses. Of course a presence is always good, but I've never seen facebook or google+ as a particularly integral part of most people's SEO efforts, despite what Moz and co. will tell you. 

The only thing I will say is that I've personally noticed that Google+ has been having more of an impact on local rankings, but only time will really tell. 

How to Market Your Way to a Top 25 Paid Mobile App Game

A Case Study of Piston Game's iOS Success on the Apple Store

Here is a post from Reddit User and Piston Games member brainsolid explaining their success of their iOS game Gemibears. It is an excellent list of marketing advice that distills months and years of experience into a bite-sized piece and the thoughts applied here can be extended to any App, not limited to games.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We here in Piston Games just launched Gemibears for iOS and after few days break through to top paid 25 overall in US.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gemibears/id471855200?mt=8

This was really hard and interesting, so I would like to share with you our experience. There are 10 steps to get top paid 25 overall in US:

1) Make a great game and prepare great marketing

You need to spend on marketing as many time as you spend on development. Bad app can be pulled to top by great marketing, but when your campaign will end — app will be dramatically dropped down. This is what you see every day in top free charts with lot of farms that makes rocket jump because of great marketing and falling to nowhere another day. So you must make great game.

2) Test your gameplay

But game must be great not just for you — because what you make is already great, otherwise you wouldn't do it, right? Every developer just love his game because it's like a child and sometimes you just not strict enough to your child. So test your game a lot — give it to your friends or even strangers. And don't ask anything — just look at their reactions and make conclusions about mistakes and advances.

3) Catch all bugs

 Test game on different devices and firmwares. The worst thing you can have is a great game with bad review, because of some bug. Don't release unfinished product. And have some support page, like getsatisfaction, so people will tell your about bugs not by App Store reviews, but on your support page.

And if you miss some bug — use expedited review. You can use it once a year, but it really helpful — about one day and update with fixes will be on App Store.

4) Don't make lite version

It's boring and player will have to pass through same levels in full version if he buy it. But you need free version for players who would like to try your game! So make something special — we call it Gemibears Mini. It's free prequel for Gemibears, it have completely different planets, levels and additional game mode — all these features are original and don't appear in paid version. Same way was made Trainyard Express and Hambo Begins. Different content for free is a best way to show your game and have positive response from players, because you don't cut anything from the game — you add something new to it.

Remember that your paid and free (not light!) versions — are separate products. Free will help you with promotion of paid, but you need to promote free somehow. So plan your marketing for both free and paid versions.

5) Cross promo and ad

Make cross promo with other cool games. Gemibears have promo screens, buttons and so on in different games from our friends. This is not about money, more about your connections. Send email with cross-promo proposition to games you like, or even travel to another city for meeting with their developers. Because support from other great games will give you lot of downloads.

Connect all your previous games by some cross-promo module. You can make in house solution or use something like chartboost — but 3rd party solutions are not flexible at all.
Use paid ad — but use it carefully. Buy iOS ad ONLY. No web, no magazines, videos or anything else outside device. You can buy installs for free app in chartboost or buy ad spot directly in Backflip, EA or Zynga games using Burstly, but be careful planning your budget.

6) Make something that will generate new users from inside of your game

We have twitter community in Gemibears and Facebook connect in Gemibears Mini. Both give an option to attract new players, because community is always great idea and attract new people, and by connecting your friends to the game you can gain additional content.

7) Make all marketing efforts in one day

Don't spread it for month or even week. We release Gemibears few days before all marketing and have no downloads at all. But after using all marketing that we prepare in just 3 days — top 25 occupied!

8) Icon, screenshots and trailer

You need a genius icon. Most of people make decision about buying or not your game just by looking at it icon. We make about 26 different variants of Gemibears icon before we considered it good enough. Great, to be honest.
Other really important part — App Store screenshots. Actually, they aren't just screenshots — they are banners. Most of people don't read description, so take each screen and tell about key game features on it. Be brief and persuasive. Not "unique gameplay", but "match-2" — this is truly unique!
Official trailer. If you don't make it — some youtube teen will record video from shaking hands and all people will see the game as it looks at this video.

9) After release buzz

Don't underestimate any additional free buzz that you can make. Register your game in Facebook App Center if you have any fb functionality. Submit your icon (it's must be great, do you remember?) to iOS icon gallery sites. Make TouchArcade forum post — in upcoming section before release, in discussions right after or even make some contest!

Don't expect Apple feature on App Store. You can't control featuring process, so concentrate on making great game and marketing.

Don't expect Press will admire your game for first time, even if you have a great game. Press and blogger like success stories, so you will have press after success, not before it.

But you have to write to everyone. Make not just text letter, but some custom html template or at least image banner for header of the letter. This way we have TUAW game of the week for our previous The Screetch game. They ignore our text letter with promocode, so we make nice-looking picture, send a latter again and — it works!

10) Write useful post on Reddit!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The thing I find the most interesting is that they spend a large chunk on advertising in one big go in a highly targeted way - bid to spend as much as fast as possible in a short period of time dedicated to users on Apple iOS mobile devices - a PPC approach that embraces the fleeting popularity of mobile games. Brilliant.

How to see keywords users typed, not keywords you bid on, in Analytics or Adwords

Adwords Tips: How do you see keywords users typed, not keywords you bid on, in Analytics or Adwords Campaign Manager?

As far as most new users can tell, Google only shows them how many people search for a keyword you have bid on, it doesn't show them exactly what the user searched for. If the advertiser goes to the Keywords > Details > All list in Adwords, it doesn't show all of the searches.

For example, if they search for "where can I drink Imperial Honey Stout", and they click on an ad triggered by the broad term "Imperial Honey Stout", the advertiser can easily see "Imperial Honey Stout" triggered an ad, but is there any way to see that the user searched for "where can I drink Imperial Honey Stout"?

This is just a matter of digging slightly deeper into either Adwords or Analytics

Matched Keyword Query in Adwords

In Google AdWords,

Go to the Keyword tab
Click the gray "Details" button
Under Search Terms choose "All"- This shows the exact phrases people searched for which triggered your ads, including searches that did not generate any clicks.

Matched Keyword Query in Analytics

In Google Analytics

Acquisition > Adwords > Matched Search Queries
Change Secondary Dimension to Keywords - This shows the term searched for against the keyword that triggered the ad.

e.g.
Matched Search Query = where can I drink Imperial Honey Stout
Keyword = Imperial Honey Stout

Adwords and Analytics will need to be linked.

How to Set Up Phone Ad Extensions & Protect Yourself From Robo-Dialers

How to Set Up Phone Number Ad Extensions on Adwords & Benefits for Businesses

Pictured: Not how robocalls work.

First, why people use call extensions and Google's sales pitch:

Why you'd use it

• Make it easy for mobile users to call you when they're on the go.
• Easily add your phone number to ads across an ad group or an entire campaign.
• Schedule call extensions to show when your business is ready to take calls.
• Understand the effectiveness of your ads by counting the calls that lead to conversions. Learn more about call conversions.
• Get a higher clickthrough rate. AdWords advertisers have typically seen a 6-8% average increase in clickthrough rate after adding call extensions.

Watch this video from Google on how to set one up:



Now, these extensions are wonderful for many businesses to get highly relevant hits. A very specific example: a restaurant sets up a phone extension on a ad targeted by the following

1. Within a 5 mile radius of their location
2. Mobile devices 
3. Scheduled between 10AM to 2PM & 5PM to 9PM

Now, all people in a walking distance looking for that style of restaurant on a whim during lunch and dinner hours are given a heads up by Adwords that this business might be the right pick for them, and they can just tap the number shown on the ad to set up a reservation with ease. A highly targeted campaign that will only use up the advertising budget to a likely potential customer, so you can see the obvious advantages to using these extensions.

Whether you are a restaurant or a lawyer's office, having the local business information and phone number listed adds both transparency and something to act upon, so an extension might be a good way to supplement your existing Adwords PPC strategy.

How to Protect your Adwords budget from Robodialers 

Unfortunately, there are plenty of unscrupulous uses of search engines, and one of them is to have a computer program scrape search results for phone numbers and dial them. If your ad is showing for a particular keyword the program is targeting, the robodialer may click through and call your number to send marketing information or check who is on the other end. This action will count as a click in Adwords, and may start draining your advertising budget.

These two tips are not foolproof nor are they effortless, but may be necessary to protect your advertising investment from worthless clickthroughs from annoying telemarketers.

1. Record & Report to Google
   
   If you are recording the calls (many of my clients do through a call tracking software), provide the recordings as evidence and report the invalid clicks.
   Explanation of Invalid Clicks
   Google's protection against invalid clicks
   
2. Get on the Do Not Call Registry and Private Do Not Call Lists
   
   This step will just make it less likely that a worthless click will go through:
   
   The National DNC list: https://www.donotcall.gov/‎
   
   The National Do Not Call list prevents companies that do not have a business relationship with you from calling you. This isn't foolproof, so when a company calls you, you should get into their company's do not call list as well.

Some additional details about the Do Not Call Registry and the TCPA:


If you are on the National DNC list You can still get telemarketing calls! If you have a business-client relationship (say a Bank of X checking account) Bank of X can call you about products and services. You can also still receive political and non-profit calls.

So when you get a telemarketing call on behalf of a company and asked to be put on their do-no-call list (a method that only works for respectible call centers), you'll be put on that client's do-not-call list. This means that you won't get any calls on any offers from that client. However, since most call centers have anywhere from 5-20 different clients at once, you're most likely still in the system for at least one of those other lists.

A better way to deal with that is to speak to a supervisor, ask them what call center they're calling from, and request to be put on the call center's do not call list. This disables the call center from calling you.

According to TCPA (telephone consumer protection act.), telemarketers cannot:

Call before 8am or after 9pm
Call your cell phone
Hide who they are or who they're calling on behalf of
Call you if you're on the national do not call list call with a pre-recorded message (unless within the first 4 seconds of a call, the rep must reveal who they are, where they're calling from, and who they're calling on behalf of.)

If a telemarketer breaks any of these rules, you can sue them then add the $500 fine to your Adwords budget :)

I hope this article helps, and despite the one potential drawback of encouraging robodialing, phone ad extensions are still incredibly useful to a complete PPC strategy, and as shown above, the issue can be dealt with.

Encrypted Search Makes Adwords PPC a Priority in Online Marketing Strategy

How Encrypted (HTTPS) Search Makes PPC and Content Marketing a Priority in Online Marketing Strategy

What the Google Analytics page of most small business owners looks like right now.

Google recently switched over all searches to HTTPS/Encrypted search, making most keyword Analytics data invisible... and online marketers and small business owners around the globe gasped in unison. Thankfully, it was not the end of the world, because keywords and SEO are not the end all be all of a real search marketing strategy.

However, the disappearance of the majority of the keyword data was still pretty hard on small business owners trying to run their own SEO for their business, because it was not just about figuring out which keywords they should focus on. It was about figuring how people are actually finding them.

So in the past, we could say to a client "look, you got x of hits from 'keyword1' and y of hits from 'keyword2,' so we should do this and this and that..." A lot of clients got used to hearing it that way. So the change doesn't affect the job that SEOs do nearly as much as it effects how they report that job to the client. Now, it's just (not provided).

In combination with all of the updates and news in the past, Google's search endgame has always been the same - provide users with the best search results and balance it with their Adwords PPC platform.

4 Major Points in Recent Google SEO History:

1. Adwords started giving advertisers a bid discount for having a high quality landing page with good content.
2. Panda targeted and penalized bad and scraped content. 
3. Penguin hit people who "over optimized" using shady but widespread anchor text link buying techniques.
4. Google moves to encrypted search.

So, with the search being encrypted, the advantage of Adwords PPC becomes apparent: keyword data is open to analyze, and the data can be combined with the data still provided by Analytics to create a non-"over optimized" content strategy and base a creatively organized Adwords campaign around this natural strategy to supplement.

Given these these factors, the next stage of SEO and SEM is what it was always trying to reach - original and organic content, and actively optimized Pay-Per-Click campaigns.

Stay tuned for more on the subject. In the mean time, if you would like us to consult you on your company's PPC and content strategy, contact Rabbit today!

Remember: SEO, SEM, and SMM are 3 Different Things

This article is here to make you a better client for any Web Marketing firm or freelancer.

Too often do I see people assuming SEO is everything about the website's marketing efforts, and are confused that there are different costs associated with it. To be fair, nobody outside SEO experts cares about the difference between SEO and SMM, but as a client, knows the difference, you will likely prevent frustrating the person managing your website's marketing efforts.

SEO: Search Engine Optimization
Proper page structure, header tags, meta and alt tags, backlinks - all things to allow search engines to better browse your site and determine the quality of your page

SMM: Social Media Marketing
Using Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social platforms to build trust and as a PR interface

SEM: Search Engine Marketing
Some view this as the same as SEO, but I place Adwords Pay-Per-Click advertising and the like under this label


Just for the record, those three things are tied together which is why so many service companies offer them all. Don't be stupid and deny they aren't directly related, as in doing one is doing another as well.

Web design and SEO go hand-in-hand. They're not the same thing but there's a ton of overlap.

I can't tell you how many times I was approached to get a site into the search engines that had image menus, javascript links, dynamic content, a complete lack of h1, h2, etc, and even just things like overly complex page structure, or too much on one page. In terms of actually differentiating, it's arguable that you can differentiate those simply by pointing out the type of contract involved:

• Web site design is a fixed-task type contract. "Build a website and stop."
• SEO is a long-term ongoing engagement.

The part that pains me: accept that fact that going forward, if you want to improve at SEO, you're going to have to learn how to excel at SMM. And the market is going to reward those that do. It pains me because on a personal level, I think Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and the rest are stupid, and the development of these things as marketing and social platforms help no one but marketing companies.

Finally, I always advise moving on to SEM/PPC advertising AFTER getting the SEO and SMM down. The reasoning is simple: Adwords takes your Page Quality into account when determining what your bid and subsequent ranking will be. Without the SEO and SMM, you would have to pay more for the same keywords.

Hope that helps, and best of luck to you and your website!