Twitter Becomes A Search Engine

Twitter’s updated front page now shows a giant search box with trending topics under it. Is this where Twitter’s cannonball into the pool last summer really starts to create a giant splash?

Now people can search results taken from content updated within the past 1 second. Twitter’s search algorithm is expected to evolve quickly (currently all results are served in chronological order). Advertisers are chomping at the bit to see what type of self-serve platform Twitter may be constructing.

The new look and feel should engage a few folks still sitting on the sidelines who never enjoyed or understood blogging, much less microblogging or nanoblogging)

Facebook Ad Approval Times Improve

I’ve been glued to our FaceBook advertising accounts for the past several months.   BlitzLocal has been setting up targetted Facebook ads for most small business clients over the past several weeks.   Working with Facebook  has been one of my favorite, yet most frustrating experiences since I started working with online advertising in the late 90s.  Being able to accurately target ads to so many millions of people on a single site was unthinkable a few years ago.

Over the past month Facebook has made huge improvements with ad approval times.   Typical ad approvals during March- May occurred once in the morning, once in the early afternoon, once in the evening, and generally there was one final round of approvals around 10pm EST.   The exciting part is during June we saw ad approval times range between 15-30 minutes from 9am to 2am EST.

I am excited about being able to test and revise ads in a fraction of the time required a few months ago.  This should help everyone figure out the best ads in each campaign and maximize their profits quickly.  At the same time I wonder how much this new ease of use benefit will increase the average prices we must pay for to have our ads show up.   I am noticing ads requiring higher bids over the past few weeks.    Time will tell.

Call Tracking: Cost Per Call Analysis

Being able to output your business’s monthly price per call is one of the most important things you can do before you can measure advertising efforts effectively. Calculate your cost per call by taking the sum of your marketing expenses and dividing it by the number of phone calls you get each month. Now take this number and think of every possible way you could lower it. Analyze each new marketing opportunity based on where it’s price per call metric will likely fall.

Tracking your phone calls requires discipline in the absence of an automated call tracking system. Get in the habit of reporting your calls and start witnessing the pay off. Do analysis! Break your marketing efforts and expenses down into service or product categories, then track which categories are generating the most calls, and from where. You can begin optimizing your marketing immediately.

Lowering your price per call without lowering the quality of the lead is your key objective. Generating more sales without increasing your marketing budget is mine. Clients such as Colorado Roofing, Roofing Contractor Marketing, and Colorado Skin Care hire BlitzLocal to lower their website’s cost per visitor. This translates directly to a lower price per call ratio.