For paid search, Google AdWords provides a vast amount of data that can easily get you lost if you don’t know what to look for. While it’s important to take into consideration campaign goals, whether it be brand awareness or conversions, here are a few metrics that we look at on a daily basis to determine how a campaign is performing:

Average Position:

This metric quickly helps you evaluate your bid strategy. In general, we try to bid up to a top 3 position, but that’s not always realistic. Sometimes, it might be too expensive to pay for a high position. In other cases, you might find that you can still meet your campaign objectives without paying the higher cost-per-click (CPC).

Impression Share/Share of Voice:

This metric simply tells you how often your ad is displayed for the keywords you’ve chosen. While a 100% share of voice is not always attainable due to budget restrictions, this metric’s percentage does hint at potential changes you could make to the campaign settings. Is our budget, bid, and/or average position too low? Should we tighten up the geographic targeting? Should we choose specific day-parts to ensure visibility at key times of the day?

Quality Score:

This metric is the measure of relevance of specific keywords to searchers, as well as your ad’s expected performance. This is valued through a somewhat secret formula that Google constantly changes to ensure the most relevant and positive experience for search users. Some of the attributes involved include expected click-through-rate (CTR), past performance, quality of the landing page for your ad, and the relevance of your ad and landing page to both the keyword in your ad group and actual query entered by the searcher.

Click-Through-Rate:

This is a percentage based on the amount of people who have seen your ad (impressions) and the number of people who clicked on your ad after seeing it. Sometimes this metric gets overlooked since you’re only paying for clicks, but this is an easy way to figure out how relevant your ad may be and if your offer or call-to-action is resonating well with your audience. And, as discussed above, it helps improve your quality scores.

Cost-Per-Action (CPA):

Prior to the campaign, we always make sure to identify one or multiple key performance indicators (KPIs). These actions could include a number of things, including:

• Sale
• Lead
• Subscription/Sign-Up
• View of Key Page
• Download

This is easily calculated by dividing the total spend by the number of completed actions. In cases where your campaigns are promoting and driving an offline action, such as an in-store purchase, this gets a little tricky. In this case, we might track something that shows purchase intent, like using a “Find A Store” tool.  While this isn’t a true conversion and shouldn’t be the sole indicator of success, it at least gives you something to use for optimization purposes.

While these metrics are extremely helpful when you’re evaluating your paid search campaign, don’t forget to check out your Web analytics before making optimization decisions.  They might tell a slightly different story than the Google AdWords reports.  The key to success is looking at all key data points collectively, determining the right optimizations to test.

PAETEC, a former Fortune 1000 business communications company that was acquired by Windstream in August 2011, went the route of a paid email marketing campaign with eMedia. This program consisted of the company using white papers, written by our PR team at Martino Flynn, that focused on issues that were viewed as being important topics among its IT and telecom customers: HIPAA and electronic health records, protecting a network against malware, and additional security solutions beyond the use of only a firewall.

But no project is complete without a few challenges popping up along the way. eMedia selects the recipients of the newsletter, so it was up to us and PAETEC to properly identify and describe the type of individual they were interested in courting, given the content of the white papers. Also, the white papers were originally drafted in 2010, but were never published until 2011. Before the eMedia campaign, edits and tweaks needed to be made to ensure that the content matched the most current trends, remaining relevant in an ever-changing tech world. A third challenge that occurred was understanding the language of the IT/telecom industry. The topics for each white paper were highly technical, so multiple interviews were conducted to fully understand the topic and solution. We also relied on extensive secondary research that would complement the material collected from the subject-matter experts.

During the interviews with PAETEC’s subject-matter experts, we sought to learn why the issues are important, the actions that businesses need to take to address the trends, and what the solutions are that PAETEC offers to companies to meet these needs. We then worked with eMedia to set up the campaign that would send these white papers to appropriate targets working in either the healthcare IT industry or the mainstream IT industry. The results from the campaign were very positive, especially when compared to PAETEC’s previous online marketing efforts. PAETEC ended up receiving 806 new qualified leads from the eMedia campaign, at a fraction of the price PAETEC had paid for leads in the past.

Based on this success, Martino Flynn is currently in the midst of a new six-month campaign for another client, proving that with the right content, the right leads can be captured. In addition, in June 2012, the PAETEC eMedia campaign earned a PRism Award in the “Other Writing Projects” category from the PRSA Rochester Chapter.

1. What is Sphinx search?
2. How to install and configure
3. Configuring data sources and indexes
4. Configuring the searchd daemon
5. Indexer and searchd commands
6. Web scraping options
7. Scheduled tasks

What is Sphinx search?
Sphinx is an open source, full-text search server, designed with performance, search quality, and simplicity in mind. Some key features included in Sphinx that I enjoy but are not limited to:

• Non-SQL storage indexing.
• Advanced full-text searching syntax.
• Rich database-like querying features.
• Better relevance ranking.
• Flexible text processing.
• Easy application integration.

Sphinx is licensed under the GPLv2 license that allows for commercial and non-commercial usage. Sphinx has outstanding searching performance and scales well, which is important for the growth of any Web application or website.

How to install and configure?
There was a time when I used the SphinxSE engine for MySQL, but I no longer think it is necessary, at least for my current needs. This is the install script I use for compiling and installing Sphinx.


wget http://sphinxsearch.com/files/sphinx-2.0.5-release.tar.gz
tar xvf sphinx-2.0.5-release.tar.gz
cd sphinx-2.0.5-release
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/sphinx --with-libstemmer --without-mysql --with-xmlpipe2
make
make install


After the installation process has finished, you will want to create an unprivileged user for Sphinx to run in.
For CentOS:

useradd -r sphinx

You may need to specify the full path to the command for this to work. On Debian, you can delete the password after creating the user, like this:

passwd --delete sphinx


After you have created this user, you can change the permissions of the binary files under /usr/local/sphinx to the Sphinx user. You will also want to adjust your log directories and socket file permissions. I usually create a Sphinx folder in both /var/log and /var/run.

Configuring data sources and indexes
You will need to edit your sphinx.conf file under /usr/local/sphinx/etc/sphinx.conf.

The first step is to create your source. In this case, we will depend on an XMLPipe2 source. The syntax for creating this data source can be located here. Once you have generated the xml file, you can reference it in your sphinx.conf file.

source srcwebsitename
{
type = xmlpipe2
xmlpipe_command = /bin/cat /path/to/websitename.xml
}


Next, you will need to configure indexing options for this data source as follows:

index websitename
{
source = srcwebsitename
path = /path/to/indexes
morphology = stem_en
charset_type = utf-8
min_prefix_len = 3
enable_star = 1
}


Make sure that the path to your indexes is owned by the Sphinx user. You may also want to look up the options here or add your own by referencing the Sphinx documentation.

Configuring the searchd daemon
Lastly, you will need to set up the configuration for the searchd daemon. Add the following to the end of your sphinx.conf file:


searchd
{
port = 9312
log = /var/log/sphinx/searchd.log
query_log = /var/log/sphinx/query.log
read_timeout = 5
max_children = 30
pid_file = /var/run/sphinx/searchd.pid
max_matches = 1000
seamless_rotate = 1
compat_sphinxql_magics = 0
preopen_indexes = 1
}


Again, reference the Sphinx documentation as needed based on your configuration needs.

Indexer and searchd commands
You must run these commands under the Sphinx user account.

su sphinx
indexer --rotate --all


You should see output similar to this. The rotate option will happen if the index already exists and simply needs to be updated.

total 79 docs, 34354 bytes
total 0.025 sec, 1340591 bytes/sec, 3082.80 docs/sec
total 6 reads, 0.000 sec, 31.5 kb/call avg, 0.0 msec/call avg
total 18 writes, 0.002 sec, 22.1 kb/call avg, 0.1 msec/call avg
rotating indices: succesfully sent SIGHUP to searchd (pid=8724).


Now you start the search daemon (searchd).

searchd
exit


Exit simply logs you out of the Sphinx user account. Data sources will vary here, but you should be able to search your index by using a command similar to this:

search --index (INDEXNAME) -a (SEARCH TERM)

(Ignore the parentheses)
You can simply type “search” and hit enter to view all options for this command and search through your indexes.

Web scraping options

Currently, we use a cool program called Scrapy at Martino Flynn to generate a JSON data source based on a website crawl. We then write a program that parses the JSON into the Sphinx XML format and writes this file for Sphinx to use. In addition, this program will add records to the search results table, which is based on the document IDs returned by the search results. This way we ensure we are pulling the correct results when generating the search page. There are many other Web scraping tools out there such as BeautifulSoup. I am sure there are more and would love to hear what everyone is using out there.

Scheduled tasks
Cron jobs are set up that run Web crawls at night and update the XML files and search results table in the database. An email is then sent to me if the crawl were to fail or be interrupted; otherwise a success email is sent. These cron jobs simply target the program mentioned under “Web scraping options” above.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this technology, especially other ways of configuring this excellent product. In my next post I plan to discuss relevance algorithms to improve the search results even further in Sphinx search. Search is an important tool and needs to perform well. Sphinx search is an excellent product that we plan to continue to use at Martino Flynn to help our clients.

Founder of Video Traffic Academy and Reel Marketing Insider, James shares his insights and strategies on video, YouTube, and other effective online marketing strategies that help marketers grow their business.

I’d like to share his insight to some basic video marketing principles that every marketer should know.

Principle #1: There is No Such Thing as Video Marketing
Stop thinking of “video marketing” as this separate entity that is optional for your business. Video is an effective form of communication that needs to be integrated into each and every aspect of your existing marketing efforts.

Principle #2: Stop Focusing on the WHAT
If you want to actually see results from your videos, don’t let the details of which camera equipment, software, and export features to use. Those are the last thing you need to be concerned with. Focus on your video strategy and proceed to principle #3.

Principle #3: Let Go and Outsource
You most likely can’t, and shouldn’t, do this yourself. It’s the cold, harsh truth: don’t be fooled to think that you or someone in your marketing department can produce the same quality video that the professionals can. Even when producing the simplest talking head, framing, lighting, and quality audio seem basic but often get neglected in the homegrown videos. Hire a pro.

Principle #4: Your Content is ALWAYS #1
Focus on the most important aspect of your videos: the CONTENT! What is your message? It is clear and concise? What value does it provide? Your message will ALWAYS trump everything else!

Principle #5: Video is the Window to Your Brand
Video is the most transparent medium for communication of you, your message and, your brand. Since 80% of communication is non-verbal, video becomes an effective way for getting your audience to effortlessly get to know, like, and trust you.

Principle #6: Consistency Breeds Momentum
Stop with the “one-and-done” mentality. Just like anything else in life, results with video marketing can take time. Make sure there is consistency in your efforts. Focus on the long-term, big picture strategy and you will see momentum.

Principle #7: Every Video Must Have an Intention
No one hands out Girl Scout badges for “video-making.” There is no bank that will let you cash in your views for money. Each and every one of your videos needs to have a specific intention. Are you selling something? Are you getting people to opt-in? Do you have a call-to-action?! If you don’t have a strategy first, there’s no reason to make a single video!

As a quick recap, if you’re a marketer who uses video as a communication platform, you should:

• Use video as an easy way to share your brand and build a brand relationship with customers
• Have a strategic plan for key messaging so that the video content always has an intention
• Consult and use a professional— you won’t regret it!

The creator of the world’s first energy drink—Jolt Cola—was embarking on a new venture to create the world’s healthiest beverage with a new local start-up company, Karma Culture, LLC. The principle of karma is based on cause and effect. If you do something positive, you’ll get something positive in return. At Martino Flynn, we set out to spread good karma as far as we could reach.

Since Karma Culture was starting from scratch and needed help with everything—from messaging to brand positioning and creative design to public relations—we had a long road ahead of us, but one that we’d traveled before. This was a relatively new category in the beverage industry and Karma was the first of its kind to be introduced on the East Coast so the opportunities seemed endless, as well as challenging.

The driving force behind Karma is the fact that water-soluble vitamins lose their potency while sitting in water. Additionally, those vitamins suffer degradation when they are subjected to UV rays, oxygen, or heat—causing premixed vitamin drinks to lose their potency over time. After becoming experts in the land of vitamins, the agency was tasked with building the Karma story for consumers, and with countless hours of careful craftsmanship and consideration, they landed on the tag line, “Vitamins. Fresh Squeezed.”

With a clear message and vision, the plan was to launch the beverage in Rochester—where it was created with the help of more than 20 local companies—and roll it out regionally, and then nationally over the next 12 months. In the months leading up to the local launch, Martino Flynn launched a complete integrated campaign—including print, web/video, social media, and public relations. The launch was successful, and several elements of the campaign were recognized at the 2012 PRSA Rochester PRism Awards, including:

- PRism Award – External Video Campaign, corporate category: “Meet Karma Wellness Water”
- PRism Award – News Release, corporate category: “Karma Wellness Water Trade News Release”
- PRism Award – Press Kit, corporate category: “Karma Press Kit”
- Award of Excellence – Photography, corporate category: “Karma Wellness Water Plume Photography”
- Award of Excellence – Social Media, corporate category: “Transform Social Media into Wellness”
- Award of Excellence – Special Event/Observance, corporate category: “Vitamins, Fresh Squeezed”
- Award of Excellence – Website, corporate category: “Discovering Wellness on the Web with Karma”

The success of Karma Wellness Water to date is a result of our truly integrated team working together to create a solid campaign. Stay tuned for additional Blip! posts about Karma. We’ll dive deeper into the specific elements of the campaign—and the hard work that made them possible.

I recently had the opportunity to attend the SES Conference in Toronto.  For those not familiar, SES is, in my opinion, the best digital marketing conference in the industry.  I try to make sure I hit it at least once every year to get the latest in search engine, mobile, and social media marketing.

After three action-packed days that included countless presentations from industry experts and a full day of in-depth training from the ClickZ Academy, I wanted to share the common mistakes that many digital marketers are making in 2012.

Here we go:

1)  Focusing on the wrong metrics when determining the success or failure of a website or landing page.

In his keynote address, Avinash Kaushik, digital marketing evangelist for Google, complained that, even in 2012, many marketers are still focusing on volume-based metrics such as visits and page views.  Instead, you should focus on behavior- and loyalty-based metrics to evaluate your website.  Also, remember to look at all metrics collectively.

For example, bounce rate is a great indicator of the quality of traffic that is being brought to your site and if you’re delivering content that is relevant to them.  So, if a page has an above-average bounce rate, should you assume that the page or traffic source is performing poorly?  Is a bounce always a bad thing?  What if the page they landed on delivered the piece of information they were looking for, like a phone number? Or, maybe they were just looking for product information or pricing, but aren’t ready to buy yet.

The point is, one metric will never tell the entire story.  By creating a custom report that allows you to view all key metrics simultaneously, you’ll get greater insight into whether or not your website or landing page is performing well.

2)  Using only direct conversion data to optimize a digital campaign.

Ultimately, the goal of every marketing campaign is to generate business.  But many times, marketers only focus on the final conversion and the direct source of that conversion.  By only focusing on the “last click,” you could potentially eliminate a tactic that is influencing a user throughout the purchase cycle.

As marketers, we must recognize that it takes multiple touch-points across many channels to influence a purchase decision.  The key is to determine the right mix that pushes your prospects towards a desired action.

Also, keep in mind that 9 out of 10 purchases still happen offline and many people are just using the web to do research for a future purchase.  Ask yourself what other micro-conversions you should be monitoring that have impact on your business (e.g., email sign-ups, “liking” your company or sharing a product on Facebook, etc.).

3)  Focusing your SEO efforts on generating inbound links.

Google puts a great deal of stock into the quantity and quality of sites that are linking to your website.  But often times, digital markets spend too much time focusing on discovering, contacting, and acquiring links.

Instead, your main focus should be on developing compelling, original content.  While we’ve been pushing this strategy for awhile now, it is even more important to take this approach given Google’s recent changes to their algorithm.

By creating something that’s interesting, informative, and worth sharing, you will organically start to see an increase in inbound links and social shares, and Google will ultimately reward your site with higher rankings.  And, by following Google’s guidelines and focusing on content, you avoid any risk of being penalized for over-optimization.

4)  Not owning and optimizing your online business listings.

Over the past few years, the search engines have focused on creating more personalized results by recognizing your location and pushing listings for nearby businesses up higher on search engine results pages.

Since every business with a brick-and-mortar location is automatically listed for free on Google, Yahoo, and Bing, it’s extremely important that you take ownership of these listings and control all of the content that is provided there.

Besides ensuring the accuracy of the information out there, this gives you an opportunity to add much more content that would be relevant to your customers.  This includes pictures, video, hours of operation, and specific categories for your products/services.  And with Google merging their business listing into Google Plus, your listings will now include customer reviews and allow you to post regular updates about your business.

5)  Not having a mobile strategy for your website.

Do you know what percentage of your website visitors are on a mobile device?  Are you regularly checking your site to see how it functions on a smartphone or tablet?  Are your site visitors able to perform all the tasks with ease?

These are all important questions that every digital marketer should be asking themselves to determine if it’s time for their website to “go mobile.”  But, don’t just stop with a mobile site.  Google reports that 25% of their paid clicks are coming on mobile devices, and this continues to grow.  And smartphones are becoming the preferred method for many other online activities, including checking email or logging on to Facebook.

Make sure that you’re also addressing paid search, display, social, and any other digital tactics as you develop your mobile strategy.

6)  Only using a positive tone-of-voice when writing your article or blog headlines.

Admit it, the negative headline is the reason you read this post.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Have you ever wondered how to get your product in the hands of a completely new audience? Go where you’ve never gone before. In this video, you’ll learn how Martino Flynn helped The Mentholatum Company take Rohto Eye Drops to PAX East to introduce the product to thousands of gamers.

Blippar – Although augmented reality has yet to come into its own, Blippar is a major breakthrough. This U.K.-based image recognition app has found a way to be both cool and useful at the same time. Whether you want to make your company logo or product packaging come to life, or turn your business card into an interactive video game or contest, this app has some serious potential. Grab it in the app store and go to its Facebook pictures to try it. Companies such as Heinz, Mercedes, and Cadbury are already taking advantage of the technology; and I think it’s only just begun. Blippar hasn’t launched any campaigns in the U.S. yet, but it’s worth checking out and keeping on your radar.

Using the Blippar app to “Blipp” a Heinz ketchup bottle will reveal a cool recipe book that you can read while also giving you the opportunity to tap on the tomato for a chance to win a Heinz cookery pack. I don’t know what that is, but it sounds fancy and I want one.

Wrapp – Swedish startup Wrapp will soon be making a ripple in the $100 billion U.S. gift card market. This social gifting service lets you give free and paid gift cards to friends and family by using your computer or smartphone. This is a nifty way for big retailers to get on your Facebook wall. Here’s how it works: you open the app and it shows you all of your Facebook friends’ birthdays. Depending on whom you choose to give a gift to, different retailers will appear to match your friend’s demographic. Once you post a free gift card (usually valued at $5) on your friend’s Facebook wall, others can add money to it. Your friend gets free money, you get an easy way to do more than just post “Happy B-day” on your wall, and retailers reach their target audience and increase foot traffic. Win-win-win.

When I log into the Wrapp app, it shows me all of my Facebook friends with an upcoming birthday. Depending on whom I select (demographically), different retailers will pop up and I can give that friend a free gift card, usually valued at $5. Then, once posted to Facebook, others can add money to the gift card. Coming to the U.S. soon.

Square – Even though this new service targets small businesses, its features may come in handy for any size organization. It’s pretty simple to get started; just attach the card-reading device to an Android or iPhone, download the app, and start adding dough to your bank account with next-day deposits. Convenient, transparently priced, mobile point-of-sale systems can help you (or your client) in a number of ways. Your sales team can now accept payment on the spot. So for B2B crews, it could serve as a way to lock in a new account with a down payment. For retailers, it could be a way for your staff to close a deal right on the sales floor. For restaurateurs, get those people cashed out faster to fill the table back up with new customers. You get the idea. At 2.75%, the fee is reasonable for the convenience and the card reader and app are free with unlimited use. That fee may become even lower with the recent launch of competitor PayPal Here.

The Square card-reading device makes it quick and easy to accept credit cards.

At Martino Flynn, we love hearing about new gadgets and startups that might make their way into our lives. What ones are you waiting for? Please leave your thoughts in the comments field.

1. Off-the-shelf content management systems are not always the simplest option.
Sometimes it is difficult to design and implement the user experience for the content management system using an off-the- shelf solution. Usually they come with a user experience that is difficult to modify. Frameworks like Django, Ruby on Rails, Node.js, ASP.NET MVC, and FuelPHP make creating custom content management systems and code much easier. This allows the user experience to be catered to who will be managing the content. This is not to say an off-the-shelf solution is not always best. Word Press,for instance, offers lots of flexibility and is excellent for smaller sites.

2. Who will be managing the content?
This cannot be overlooked. The content management system should be designed based on who will be using it. Once those responsible for managing the content have been identified,it is a good idea to get some answers to some questions.

• What is their level of technical experience?
  Can they use photoshop? Do they know a little HTML?
• Is there an approval process before content is posted?
  The content management system could potentially make the approval process easier by doing things like sending alerts. It is best to find out about this so these sorts of things can be implemented.

3. How often do you really need to update?
A good way to identify this is to build the consumer-facing site using a good web framework such as FuelPHP, Django, Rails, or ASP.NET MVC. Don’t build the CMS simultaneously. Leave the content management system until last in order to identify areas that need to be updated often, such as news and products. Sometimes during the course of building the web site requirements can change, requiring modifications to both the CMS and public site. No matter how many wireframes and ERD diagrams are created to prevent this, changes always seem to creep up. Sometimes this is easy to address, but often times it isn’t always that easy to make changes. Save money by separating the build phase of your web site project into two phases:

• Build consumer facing web site
• Build necessary content management.

4. Requiring full content management
I hear this request way too often. Usually what ends up happening is some of the content management (examples: news and perhaps product updates) are used quite often. The rest of the content management system is rarely used– if at all– during the course of a year. I am a firm believer in identifying areas of a web site over time that need updates often and then building content management around these areas. In the long run this ends up saving a lot of money. This money can then be used to improve the consumer facing site or push the envelope further.

5. Being too hung up on the technology behind the web site.

• What technology do you use for any other web sites you may own?
  Unless the technology is really out of date it is best to keep things consistent under most circumstances.
• Popularity and the development community.
  It is best to pick a technology that has a strong community such as Word Press, Django, Rails, PHP, or ASP.NET.
• What systems do you need to integrate with?
  Perhaps you have an in-house system with which you need to integrate. Sometimes a web site can be developed at a lower cost using one web framework over another.

To sum up, these five things are not gospel but 90 per cent of the time are very important when looking at content management systems.

Digging into the backstories of TV characters such as Rob Petrie, Don Draper, Mary Richards, Nurse Jackie, Archie Bunker, Andy Sipowitz, Murphy Brown and George Costanza have consumed hundreds of hours of my life and I wouldn’t trade a second of it. For me, it’s always been about who are these characters, where did they come from and, why do they act like that and say the things they do? Flawed, heroic, charming or strange. Give me a good backstory and I’ll watch it play out.

If you want to watch a great four-part series on the TV characters we’ve come to love (and hate) over the years, go to http://www.pbs.org/america-in-primetime.

When I’m responsible for producing and directing a TV spot for a client, I will always meet with the actors and try to develop some sort of backstory for their character. I think it’s important. We’re trying to convey a message in 30 seconds or less, so I find that it helps me and the actors to get on the same page. They have something to draw from for their performance and it helps give me a frame of reference and consistency while directing them. More importantly, it gives our audience something more believable to watch. Let’s face it; actors want to act, not just deliver lines, so I want to give them something to act out.

Most of the time the backstories we create for a TV spot are simple and subtle. For example, we produced a spot for Absorbine, a topical pain relief ointment. Our character was a horse farmer. His backstory was that he doesn’t use Absorbine simply because he had a hard day. He was using it because he’s had a hard day, every day for the past 40 years! It helped our actor with his on-camera performance and he had fun playing that character.

We produced a TV spot for E.P.T. (Early Pregnancy Test). We had three characters anxiously waiting for their test results. The copy said, “get the accuracy you want.” So, we never reveal to the audience who’s pregnant and who’s not. One actress asked me, “So, am I pregnant?” I asked her, “Would you be happy if you were at this point in your life?” She gave me her answer and I said, “let’s go with that.” Simple, but effective, and it’s clear through all of our characters’ expressions and body language what their results are because we gave them a backstory.

Developing a character’s backstory. It’s fun and it works.