Let´s challenge the Status Quo

The only constant is change. The older ideas get, the harder it is to get rid of them. Things around us change way faster than our perceptions about them. It´s tough to keep up, especially if the Status Quo stands right in the way.

Most of us probably don´t realize how conditioned we are by our social or work environments. Stuff around us shape the way we behave, interact, think and express ourselves. There are informal rules, norms and values to be followed whose goals are to keep tight control of the collective. The Status Quo.

It is a good thing to have them. They help us build and maintain organizational structures. Nevertheless, they also drive us into boxes, limiting our smoothness to grow, develop and expand.

Fear of being different shouldn´t be there. Fear of doing things your own way is a waste too, and so is the fear of questioning something that´s old (but widely known and respected).

Even if you look stupid, so what?

Let´s wake up and keep challenging the status quo. Only then will ideas be allowed to flow naturally.

Pirate Bay´s Response to their Trial

Atrapalo Launches in Chile!

Atrapalo is proud to announce its first launching in Latin America: www.atrapalo.cl is live in running!

The brand new website is hoping to reach thousands of Chilean users in its first months of life, and provide them with the very best of travel and leisure.

This successful launch follows www.atrapalo.it as the company´s  first step towards its internalization plans. The Italian site is  steadily growing and getting a taste of the Italian market.

Regarding our online marketing efforts, both projects will be extremely challenging. Our team is gearing up  and ready to rock´n´roll!

Social Media Hysteria

Social media is a buzz. Everyone is talking (screaming!) about it. It´s supposed to be the “next big thing”. I haven´t seen any remarkable results yet.

A while ago I posted about Facebook questioning its effectiveness as an advertising medium.

Nowadays everyone is on about Facebook in particular, not to mention all the other “hot” platforms like twitter.

Yesterday I come across a blog post by Seomoz´s Randfish in which he asks himself pretty much the same question: “What´s the buzz all about?”

“Social media has emerged as a “next big thing,” but in fact, it’s been around since the dawn of the Internet. Forums are social media. EBay is social media…” he goes on, “I worry that businesses and marketers are going crazy over social right now simply because it’s hot.”

There is a fundamental difference between search and social media. With search the audience is on the buying mood, with social media they are not.

When you offer your product or brand to a potential customer (potential enthousiast!), you gotta be carefull not to interrupt her with your unwanted ads, specially if you have not gained permission to do so. With search you have that permission.

I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago in Barcelona and there too everyone was buzzing about how great social media was. But if you looked closer, they were basically consultants and agency people bragging about their social media case studies and how much of experts they were. Well, as  Seth Godin writes in his book “all advertisers are liers”.

Social media is for sure a great tool for building a community around your brand, reaching new potencial customers or to help you spread your ideavirus. But it´s by far not as efficient as Search (both SEO and PPC) in responding to your customer´s most direct needs and therefore generating conversions to your website.

Go on a Keyword Diet

If you might be wondering why your PPC account is far from reaching positive ROI figures, you might consider to have your campaigns go on a keyword diet.

Less for more and the long tail fanatics

A large amount of keywords in your Adwords or Yahoo! account might be very risky and could cause your costs to go way up, pushing you overall account ROI to Siberian proportions.

Many advertisers believe that stuffing adgroups with new keywords lead to an increase in traffic and therefore, in conversion.

Long tail enthusiasts tell you all the time, you need to enlarge your tail for reasons I need not to explain. They forget to mention that all those keywords alone cost little, but that all together a fortune. If they all converted, well that´s a different story, but most of the times they don´t.

What´s more, controlling the kind of traffic you buy is a management skill on itself.  For instance, the more keywords you have on “Broad”, the more likely you are to bring unqualified traffic.

Google reps (account maximizers) are also very keen on telling you your account needs more keywords (otherwise you loose market share); or that with your new account settings you will be able to manage up to 10 thousand keywords (wow!). Guess why.

Focus on the head

Whether you are dealing with “head” or “tail” keywords, focus on the HEAD of both. (I consider you have an account whose structure strives for relevancy at all times and is organized as such that its adgroups contain same kind of keyword phrases, but just with different combination). When you carry out a keyword analysis of a given adgroup, you realize that only 5 or maybe 10 (max!) keyphrases drive all the traffic -that convert-. Focus on those.

More for less

If your aim is to make money with Adwords and keep a healthy ROI positive account, then be tight on your keywords. If you are a large advertiser, spending 3 figures on a monthly basis you need to watch out.

Having tons of keywords might bring you tons of traffic, but increase the likelyhood that the costs of non-converting keywords canibalize the ROI of the converting ones.

Besides, there are plenty of things you can do with the budget you save up: robusting the bid of converting keywords, creating a new, targeted keyword category, experiment on a new channel, or just take a holiday.

I am not the only one who loves my Mac