El Jardin de las Delicias

I think I mentioned a while back that one of my missions, if I were to accept it, while in Spain was to figure out what was the Boch painting called. Long story short, the Spanish title is "El Jardin de las Delicias" which does translates into "the garden of delights". However, on the official catalog of Prado Museum, English version, it is noted as "the garden of earthly delight." I can only assume something has happened for the scholarship of that painting between the book I read and today. What it is, I do not know.

So at least you are at the same page of ignorance as I am now...

**
So, the office pool idea turned out to be a bad omen. The guy only showed up once in two weeks. And, the latest is that we have reached an amicable agreement to separate with this person.

I don't get it though. I am not aware of any compelling reason why he would not be able to come. And, if he was negotiating with another employer, this is a rather poor tactic in his part. My only real complaint is that I now have to revoke the various accounts that I have created for him.

The newsletter was sent went out okay. As expected, I got a few unsubscribe requests - my way of cleaning up the database. But, I also got a few takers to requested more information. To the extent that the infrastructure is in place, read sunk costs, this is a pretty high ROI exercise.

FindWP continues to disappoint. So, I fired up an email to my account manager and demand that he solve my performance problem. He gave me several ideas which I am kind of skeptical about since they run contrary to my experiences with Google. But, goodness knows that I am usually wrong about this kind of things. So, I am implementing two strategies that he has proposed. First one is to have an alternate landing page which is very sparse - asking only for name, email, title, etc. instead of the current landing page which provides some company and product descriptions on the landing page. I have set up two identical ad's for the campaign rotating at 50-50 ratio. We will find out which landing page works better. The second strategic change is to narrow the number of categories that a campaign targets. Originally, I run a campaign targeting up to 40 categories. Partly, it is a function of my product being a platform product with proven application in different verticals. Partly, I reasoned that the click-through should be self-selecting and if I serve an ad in an inappropriate category, I would not get any click anyway.

So, these changes are in place and the waiting game begins.

**
Sorry dudes, I am tired today - went to bed at 12:30 last night and got up at 6:30am. This will be a short one. I promise to be more verbose next time... :-p!

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Doing an office pool

It is kind of freaky. We seems to have problem signing up salespeople. Now, I am not seeing a "problem" in the sense that we are on the verge of splattering onto the ground in a speculator fireball. If anything, our quarter to quarter performance is nothing but up - doubling or more revenue and customer base, albeit from a smallish base. And, since I am generating loads of leads that our able sales people have not enough time to digest, I do not see any immediate downside to coming on-board.

Okay, just to show that I am not talking right after drinking the company Kool-Aid, I would readily admit that being a small startup, there are certain standard concerns that people ought to know and think about.

Anyway, long story short, we are having a darnest time adding a third California based sales person. Then, I was told that somebody signed up last week. Being the cynic that I am, I thought to myself that I won't believe it until I see it. The funny thing is that I have not seen the new employee in physical form. From what I can gather, he is a bit under the weather and I certainly sympathize. But, this kind of got me thinking, maybe I should start an office pool...

**
Google is a funny business. I signed up with the Google Groups to get daily updates a while back because I want to be in the loop in terms of the latest and best practices. Then, a while back, I posted a note saying that I am terminating a particular type of campaign because the performance has been very unsatisfactory. Then, I think the follow day, I no longer get the daily update.

At first I was not terribly concerned. IT disruption happens. But, it dragged on and I started to wondering for the worst. Maybe the Google gods take wrath with my ungrateful comments and how one of their products sucked? Anyway, I still have no idea what happened. But I got the first batch of daily update today in a while and, with a bit of luck, things will be back to normal.

Just to show that I am not easily reformed, I doubt if I will ever refrain from being a demanding customer/user. But, I have a few side stratagem to keep the information flowing. We'll see if my primary bitching account is being blocked. (Don't you just love a good conspiracy theory!)

Oh, I also started a new Google campaign based on the library of case studies and whitepapers I have. It is a tricky business because the keyword selection is not obvious - too broad, the ad's gets lost and the budget wasted, too narrow, the ad does not get seen and there is no return on the investment. I do wondering if there is anyone crazy like me who have tried to serve whitepapers and case studies on Google AdWords.

Speaking of pay-per-click programs, I finally got all the new landing pages ready to go for the FindWP program. Loaded them yesterday so today is the first day of the new landing pages for FindWP. More importantly, these new landing pages allows me to know exactly where it came from. So far, the result has not been encouraging. The overall rate of case study and whitepaper requests have been dropping. And, the only one that I can confirm come from the FindWP program was a junk lead. This is all a bit discouraging. My theory for why this is happening goes something like this: 1. the spike of enquiries from last two weeks came mostly from a recent article in a major IT publication. Then, since the same FindWP program has been running for a while, the novelty is gone and anyone who might be interested in the program has indicated as much. Maybe I will try a new set of whitepapers and case studies to see if there is more uptick. Wouldn't hurt.

Speaking of FindWP. Another vendor with whom I worked with on a similar campaign early in the year came knocking. He asserted that FindWP sucks and he can do better. Is it just me or he (the vendor) is a bit too transparent? Anyway, I told him to back off because FindWP is a cheaper way to run experiments. After all, if FindWP does not cut it at the end of the day, I am sure this vendor would be glad to take my marketing money.

PR schedule is a delicate art. There are just so many different variables outside of my control. On top of it, the competing strategies and direction of a startup forces one to be super flexible and willing to put aside works that do not meet the immediate needs. My weekly session with the PR firm is like a weekly negotiation. Whoever thinks Marketing is all fluff has never done it.

Going off on a complete tangent. I have been the CPO, chief production officer, lately. As we sign up vendors and partners, there are official propaganda to be shared. And, since it costs more than $1,000 to get 50 sets of 10 double side color prints from Kinko, this task has firmly remained in-house. And, this also means that I have to nurse the color printer. This part really sucks. I do not mind the work because it provides a disruption of everyday. On the other hand, since the color printer seems to break down more often than it use to, it seems like I am spending more time staring at it these day than what is healthy. Anyway, I will try to get a hourly help to do this work. It is not hard, but time consuming.

Oh, I am penning the new newsletter. The originally plan is to do it monthly and it got started in August. However, since I was busy spending money in Spain in September, this will be the second one for the newsletter. It is not too bad. I enjoy writing short spurs of thoughts. I even made reference to a popular film in the 80's. I figure that it is a pretty well known reference and surely my readers will appreciate it. We'll see!

Right. So, how much do you think the office pool should start with. $5 per block? More importantly, just so that you know, the bookie, yours truly, gets to keep 3% pf the pot for all the trouble.

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Being dynamic - keywords and otherwise

Looking at my schedule, it would not be obvious that I am that busy. But, man, this week has been a real bitch. I suppose it is a good thing and all the going-ons foretell good things to come. (Fingers firmly crossed.)

The most exciting thing is the fact that our lead flow is increasing a great deal. The question that I cannot answer is why. Two major suspects. One is that we got a nice write up on eWeek, a major IT trade journal. And, we definitely received inquiries noting that they saw the article. The other is that I have subscribed to the Findwhitepapers service which is basically like Google but they serve whitepapers and case studies. To tell you the truth, my original thought about Findwhitepapers is that it should have a nice impact on our lead flow. However, I am seeing a definite shift in percentage terms from Google originated inquiries to Findwhitepapers originated inquiries. The trouble is that I have set up all the tracking mechanism to see exactly where and how Google inquiries come from. But, I cannot do the same for the whitepapers and case study yet. So, I am happy with
the result but, the fact that I do not know the break down is killing me. For all I know, all these white paper and case study inquiries are natural searches and I am not actually getting much traffic for my money.

Of course, I am not just sitting here lamenting the lack of data. I am working on a series of replacement landing pages for whitepapers and case studies so that I can track them with some degree of precision. Time. I need more time. Fortunately, our engineers are first rate and easy to work with. I suppose the fact that I am buddy-buddy with the VP engineering does not hurt...

Oh, did a briefing with an analyst earlier in the week. This is the first time that I was going solo and I thought it went well. Sometimes I would work with the VP of Biz Dev as a team. But, this time he was not able to come. Fortunately, since it is the same story, I was pretty good at toting the company line and directing the analyst's attention to the particular area of mutual interests.

On the PR front, I have a fully loaded schedule. I am counting a minimum of four press releases in the various stages of readiness. There are two case studies in the offing, and one whitepaper waiting for final approval. My hope is to pump everything out at least a week before Thanksgiving so that we can catch the wave of year-end purchasing.

It is quite a bit of headache in coordinate all these PR activities. Need to talk nice to the customers so they can approve the work. Need to work closely with the PR agency to ensure that the deadlines and messages are met. Then, internally, the work never comes out quick enough...

Oh, I am also being chased by a bunch of on-line marketing vendors. they all offer some variation on the Google marketing theme. I am in talk with one and expect to pluck down a few grands for that program. Basically, it provides customized content with the idea that it will boost the natural ranking on the search. There are quite a few headache keywords that I am struggling to get good natural ranking placement. So, that is a particularly attractive offer. I do still need to get my arms around the financial numbers because it is presented as a licensing arrangement. But, if the content works, it would be more sensible to buy it outright.

Two other vendors that I am looking into basically offers similar solutions as Findwhiteppaers. The key difference, from my perspective, is that these vendors have a more business focus instead of technical. So, in addition to being placed on IT trade journals, I would get exposures on places like Forbes and WSJ (Wall Street Journal).

Oh, our engineers have implemented a solution where the on-line inquiries automatically get inserted into our CRM. A vital but mundane task that used to fall under my sphere of influence. Automation is a lovely thing. I now just need to inspect the entry and make some adjustments. Did I say that our engineers rock!

This is a long week and I am ready to take a break...

Oh, the Google program is going better. The good news is that the CTR and conversion rate is better than before now that I implemented a keyword focused ad format for all the campaigns. I also killed my Content network campaigns because the yield is simply too poor. So, the financial numbers are looking better. However, if I look at the Google campaigns specifically (my standard analyses lumps all on-line activities together), the performance number has been dropping. This is disturbing. I do not know what to make of this new observation just yet.

On a related front, Google AdWords has a few undocumented features. In the Silicon Valley parlance, "undocumented features" is usually a synonym to bugs. But, in this case, this is actually a feature that I would use had I read/known about it. I have heard some rumor about this feature a few weeks ago and decided to go to the source and ask how to do it. And, below you can find the the official response.

Oh, yes, I am referring to the ability to create dynamic keyword insertion into ad's. The reason this is important is because if you have hundreds or even thousands of keywords for a campaign, it is a real pain to create targeted ad's. With dynamic keywords, this helps a great deal. Of course, the drawback is that you now have to deal with key words that may not make sense with one ad format. But, first thing first.

** Google AdWord's undocumented feature - dynamic keywords **

You can use our keyword insertion tool to automatically populate a search term from your keyword list into your ad text. This tool automates the ad text creation process and minimizes the manual edits required to create unique ad text for accounts with large amounts of keywords.

Please use keyword insertion with the requirements detailed below. If your ad(s) and/or keyword(s) are not in compliance with all requirements, they will be disapproved.

KEYWORD INSERTION

Place {squiggly brackets} around one of the following, as shown, into your ad text:

{Keyword:Default Ad Text Here}
{KeyWord:Default Ad Text Here}
{keyword:Default Ad Text Here}

SPECIFICATIONS

- Default Ad Text: You must include default ad text in case your keyword exceeds ad text character limits. If you do not include default ad text, and your keyword exceeds character limits, your ad(s) and/or keyword(s) will be disapproved. The default ad text you choose must be 25 characters or less for the title and 35 characters or less for the description line (including spaces).

- Editorial Guidelines: Ad text using this tool is still subject to our Editorial Guidelines (http://adwords.google.com/select/guidelines.html). Therefore, if your inserted keywords are not in compliance, your ad(s) and/or keyword(s) will be disapproved.
- Character Limits: If an inserted keyword makes your ad text exceed the character limit and you have not included default ad text, your ad(s) and/or keyword(s) will be disapproved. Please be sure that the final ad text (including inserted keywords) does not exceed the character limits for each line (1st line = 25; 2nd line = 35; 3rd line = 35).

If you create text ads using non-Latin characters, please be aware that the character limit may vary. Ads in languages with double-byte characters, such as Arabic, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, can contain the following number of characters, including spaces: 12 characters in the title, 17 characters in each line of ad text, and 35 characters in the display URL.

EXAMPLE

Ad text created:

{KeyWord: See the Amazon} <- 'Keyword' shown with initial capitalization Gorgeous vacations for the entire family; try us out!
theamazonjungle.com

Ad text seen on keyword: amazon jungle

Amazon Jungle <- Keyword shown with initial capitalization Gorgeous vacations for the entire family; try us out!
amazonjungle.com

Ad text seen on keyword: travel to the amazon jungle (27 characters)

See the Amazon <- Keyword too long, default ad text shown Gorgeous vacations for the entire family; try us out!
theamazonjungle.com

** Google AdWord's undocumented feature - end **

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