Friday, June 5, 2009

The ultimate list to get customers on and off line : 96 tools !

Find new prospects is a leitmotif of companies. In fact, the natural erosion of its customer base requires constantly find new customers to replace those that disappear.

Some studies estimate that companies lose annually about 10% of their customers (choosing a new supplier, closure, change in consumption habits ...), so that after 5 years if we do nothing half its customers disappear ...

To find new customers, many tools are available to companies, so here is a list of the main tools to use to recruit new customers. Note that these tools are not ranked by importance.
Part 1: The traditional marketing tools to find a client.

Tool 1: The flyers and leaflets. They can be distributed on the street or be left behind (in the enterprise or with partners). The format can be exotic or classic (A5), the important thing is to propose a simple and clear messages, with a call for immediate action and a very visual impact.

Tool 2: The display advertising outside the store, be it buses, urban displays, taxis, elevators, escalators, building facades ... The goal is to offer products and services in places of transition from its customers.

Tool 3: The man sandwich, whether by men (or disguise simple panel) and even animals that can be dressed in advertising.


Tool 4: The window panels and displays in the store. These are traditionally the major elements to attract customers in a shop. The window must be changed regularly (avoid posters bleached by the sun which give a bad image of your company). You can follow the example of those bakeries and pharmacies.

Tool 5: Vehicles such as cars, scooters, trucks of supplies ... which are media of communication that are near your customers, and can be parked in areas of high transition to generate awareness.

Tool 6: The answering machine and message waiting, often neglected these are tools that can generate additional sales during a waiting call. Your documents (letterhead, invoices, quotations ...) can also accommodate commercial messages (promotions ...).

Tool 7: The uniform employees is a key to create a differentiation in the minds of its prospects. So we just do not buy a product or service, but an atmosphere and image. The uniform can be "classic" as in Fast Food, or give a "high end" as in bakeries Paul.

Tool 8: networking evenings and work network (via email, regular calls ...), it is often overlooked sales tool by the new contractor, or is one of the best ways to generate recurring business via word of mouth and recommendations. However this requires a lot of time and this can only work several months after the first steps ...

Tool 9: Sponsorship, whether by its employees or customers, is an excellent tool to generate lower cost of sales. Indeed they are your customers who are transformed into business for you, putting forward their credibility because they use the solution and their impartiality because they often earn a symbolic gift. It is also a tool that you do not pay to performance, ie when a sale is made.

Tool 10: Loyalty cards are used to return a client "zapper" more regular in-store or to avoid part to competition, allowing the final generate more turnovers.

Tool 11: The sign and advertising signs in the store are used to generate additional sales, the fitted range of impulse buying ... by making known to its prospective customers and the extent of its range. The exterior must immediately inform the supply store and how it is different to encourage customers to return, signs in stores (as is the flat screen TV or the classic ... PLV) to finalize the sale.

Tool 12: The advertising has several objectives, either remain in the memory of the client after a visit, a show ... or thank a client for a large order, or be delivered by a distributor to its prospects. The Tshirt is an extension of advertising because it allows its clients to transform men into sandwiches.

Tool 13: The lounges for business and individuals are intended to come into contact with hot prospects. 1 or 2 days together in one place for people interested in your products, make them a quick and try to sell your product (or obtaining information for an appointment later).

Tool 14: Exchange of visibility, whether in the media, newsletters, in boxes of product on the POS, on packaging ... aims to make a complementary product. Since this is an inexpensive marketing tool it is beneficial to both parties, who may make gifts in kind.

Tool 15: Business cards are essential tools for all businesses to leave the details of their business to prospects. This card can be named or generic (mini flyer) if a customer is not followed by a commercial.

Tool 16: The sample and the trial offer is a key to convince reluctant prospects. This can be done to taste their products, or allow 30 days of testing of the solution.

Tool 17: The mailing is the traditional tool of direct marketing, it can send a tangible medium and high value-added to 100% of its customers (everyone in an address). The disadvantage is its cost (about € 1.5 to 2) and time of transmission.

Tool 18: SMSing and MMSing use mobile phones as a tool of transmission. As recent media still reading rates are still very high (80%). It is a medium for the immediacy and the call to action. Its cost is relatively high (between 0.08 and 0.15 € / message).

Tool 19: The faxing is a tool that provides immediacy and a physical medium, it is excellent to start a special promotion. It is against unattractive when there is a complex message to convey.

Tool 20: press designed to achieve a reputation in the media, whether through the dissemination of press releases, press kits, or press conferences (to the attention of bloggers and journalists). But remember that the media relay the information interesting and value-added, they are not there to make your free advertising.

Tool 21: The radio, whether local or national, is a media which aims to generate a strong reputation in a short time and allows for short messages and promotional materials.

Tool 22: TV ad on national television, local, or DTT / Cable, and reaches thousands of people with a strong value message with a very strong image creation. The concepts of current TV Low Cost enable SMEs to large to use the media previously inaccessible.

Tool 23: The film is a marketing tool that affects the young and AB +, with a high degree of attention from the target. But the cost of producing a film advertising is still very high compared to the number of contacts affected.

Tool 24: Advertising on unusual places such as benches, toilet bars, barriers during the concerts, parks and public places ... are interesting to use when large events or to receive an urban population that is somewhat blasé by traditional advertising (provided you have the rights to this promotion).

Tool 25: Create an association or interest group brings together professional actors of a sector (or even competitors) to both disseminate good practice (barometer, award prizes, ranking ...) but also to pool costs and organize events strongly generating images (eg associations, night markets ...).

Tool 26: The sponsorship allows the company to involve in a sport (or team) to provide visibility of it. This can also be used to infuse a spirit of sportsmanship in the company.

Tool 27: The Datasheet is a cornerstone of the sale, because it allows more customers and distributors on product features. This paper or electronic form must detail the characteristics of the products, answer any questions before selling the leads and to indicate in which order.

Tool 28: Demonstrations, whether through live demonstrations in stores, or via demonstration videos on a website or a CD-ROM or a DVD with a movie. The aim is to visually demonstrate the benefits of the product in order to convince the prospect to buy. The demonstration can also be a TV + video store.

Tool 29: Make a quiz is an excellent way to generate traffic but not very focused. It is essential to a relay on and off line because the lots in themselves not enough to generate interest. We must therefore devote a significant portion of its budget to its communication (basic purchase, advertising, channel distribution ...).

Tool 30: The bands and the billboards are essential components to announce events (store openings, sales, promotions ...), many public locations are available at reasonable prices.

Tool 31: The bags used to gain visibility in the place of sale with customers who use them. First, the client carries just after his races and possibly later if any re-serves. But it is also a good way to gain visibility on a lounge where visitors seeking larger bag to store their documents throughout their visit.

Tool 32: The survey and market research used to identify a project for setting up, but they also identify hot prospects in its research phase. It is therefore interesting to keep the details of those interested. After starting a business, market research and survey to identify its customers and prospects of persons likely to order a product, and even to define the profile of best customers.

Tool 33: The recorded voice messages via the phone on the answering of phones and laptops also have a very high reading. It is a great way to ensure the dissemination of a short message and impact.

Tool 34: The professional directories or general paper like The Yellow Pages, Kompass ... still one of the most used tools to search for a supplier. It is therefore important to be present.

Tool 35: The smell can be a tool to attract prospects, that through artificial scent diffuser (eg smell of coffee) or natural (eg a bakery), but it can also be used to provide an atmosphere store to make it unique in the eyes of the client (eg: Sephora ...)

Tool 36: The vendor and company staff are essential to business success. A good commercial will convince the prospect by his arguments. But all the staff is also there to promote the company and give a positive image of the company, the standard delivery driver.

Tool 37: The sponsorship creates a positive image of the company in the eyes of the public, but also to get free press coverage. Sponsorship can be artistic (purchases, gifts of works of art) or with charitable donations to associations (eg Telethon).

Tool 38: The Phoning and telesales, whether by employees or through a sales force for action suppletive punch, can very quickly generate sales and appointments from a file qualified is available.

Tool 39: The purchase of lists of hot leads (prospects = hot), will retrieve qualified prospects and thus to obtain full details and an initial needs analysis in order not to waste time exploring "in the hard. " The drawback is a high cost (minimum 20 €) and often low volume.

Tool 40: Newspapers and local and national magazines are excellent tools to reach a population is large or targeted, and to allow a very good quality reproduction. The drawback is the lack of statistics and a cost of dissemination sometimes expensive for a small company that wants to advertise in glossy magazines.

Tool 41: The spread of sound is also a communication tool often overlooked, but which is important. This may be the dissemination of music in the store to give a specific identity in the store, via the distribution of music on the outside to attract customers. It is also possible to announce the opening of a store or promotion using speakerphone or music.

Tool 42: VRP, the hosts of sales (mainly supermarkets) or selling the home (by individuals or professionals) are also marketing tools to promote products and attract customers.

Tool 43: The open door (in business or in a rented) are an excellent way to create an event and give a "pretext" to attract prospects. The open day should always be relayed by a communication device important to attract as many people, but also to ensure their participation.

Tool 44: The introductory course in schools or even in the company are excellent ways to introduce prospects to a product or a trade. This helps to identify those interested in a product, and to attract anything other than the hard sell. It is also a way to generate additional revenue for a company.

Tool 45: The museum and the collections are designed to educate prior to convince, but to create a reputation and image for a company. It is not necessary to have a lot of content as the development is important (explain ...).

Tool 46: The shop (ie the site itself), is a key to the success of a business, and therefore it is essential to consider it as a communication tool in its own right. This shop can be clean for the enterprise (unique design, control of prices and services ...) or hosted on sites like sales mutualised PriceMinister.com, ebay.fr ... who are responsible for advertising and generate traffic .

Tool 47: The catalog and brochure are essential when selling goods and services, they aim to present the product range of the company so that customers do not leave the competition.

Tool 48: RFID and 2D bar codes are new communication tools to play on interactivity with the customer, whether through coupons (on the website, in magazines, on flyers ...) or on interaction with the customer through the RFID chip included in a loyalty card or mobile phone.

Tool 49: The WiFi and Bluetooth to communicate with computers, PDAs and mobile phones are increasingly used. It is thus possible to move or send messages in physical contact.

Tool 50: The asilage and Mailing bus (with or without partner) can offer its products in the middle of other promotions in order to share costs.

Tool 51: Prescribers are also a very important source of revenue. To do this we must ensure that they really affect the sales process and they have an incentive to prescribe the solution. You can encourage them to push your products rather than others through training, incentives ...

Tool 52: Communication event is to use your product unique situation, whether by placing the product in an unprecedented situation, either by creating an event around the product and its use.

Tool 53: Furniture advertising (in the shop or at your doctors) are used to highlight your brand and create a unique and differentiated. The furniture store may also help with the purchase, with such touch screens that guide the buyer to the best product. Going further, the vending machine is also an additional sales channel to offer your products or tools at times larger openings.

Tool 54: Postcards (to mail or free distribution) tools are inexpensive and interesting as they can be used in many contexts.

Tool 55: The sticker has the advantage to bring a "fun" to your products, and at a fair or an event you are sure to see the participants paste everywhere.

Tool 56: Promotions, whether of satisfaction or your money back, the test free samples, eat as much as you want, the price of call on a product ... are also a tool to publicize its offer . It should be noted that all products need not be cheap, just have a product priced memorable (eg the iPhone ®, Ricard ® ...).

Tool 57: Making an animation, such as a spectacle, a free caricature, a magician, a singer ... provides a magical dimension to an event.

Tool 58: Your attitude and his staff during that during the sale or the follow-up (during the delivery ...) and even in a non-commercial (eg in traffic jams be polite, learn and help people intend to buy your products ...). Brand your company affect medium and long term about your business.



Part 2 - Tools to find clients via internet

Internet has become indispensable in our daily lives, and it influences many decisions in purchasing or information retrieval. Therefore, a company must include in its reflection internet, even if it is a traditional trade.

Tool 1: The site is the base plate of the presence on the internet. The site must present the offer of the company and its USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and help to contact the company via a form. The site may also host a demonstration, testimonials, contact information ...

Tool 2: emailing and newsletter are the tools that are used by eCommerce, they can send to its customers and prospects targeted messages. It is also possible to rent (from 0.05 to 0.5 € / address) or buy targeted email files.

Tool 3: The purchase of keywords and phrases (listings) in Google Adwords / Adsense and other regulated (Yahoo, Microsoft ...) are one of the most profitable customers to recruit, because advertising is exactly what people are looking for.

Tool 4: Facebook is the leading global social network that allows for networking, dissemination of advertising and serve as a communication relay. This network, which mainly affects individuals is also a great tool for reaching professionals.

Tool 5: Referencing allows natural to appear in the commercial results of Google (90% market share in France). The key work is the domain name, trade links, the optimization of tags, the keywords on the page, HTML tags ...

Tool 6: The sites of coupons and bargains to be used before your special promotions and to attract bargain hunters.

Tool 7: Membership and store white label used to enhance your visibility by not paying your affiliates on the outcome.

Tool 8: The price comparison have the interest to generate extremely targeted traffic and thus provide visibility on hot prospects (software ...). You pay only click, which can pay to performance, but for now it is often necessary to have a new product or better price. Sites Cash-Back (partial reimbursement of purchases from buyers) are a good complement to the price comparison (eg Ebuyclub.com ...)

Tool 9: The market places, sites of intermediation (which bring together sellers and buyers) and download sites allow for the supply and demand in advanced sectors (construction, public works ... ).

Tool 10: Video of buzz is the tool that is often dream entrepreneurs, but it is very rare to get there. Dissemination may be through specialized channels on Youtube, Dailymotion ... or via its own hosting on your site. The ideal is to broadcast a maximum information on the web. The distribution of videos over the long term can be done via a Web TV that is used to create the image and educate about your products and services, or receptacle for your programs (eg Mozinor on Dailymotion).

Tool 11: Blog or Personal Pro can quickly and easily distribute content on the Internet (news, buzz ...) with the big advantage to be very well indexed by search engines. It is a tool to generate the long-term reputation and image, but requires work (2 to 4 hours / week).

Tool 12: Signature of email is one of the most simple, but often the most neglected. Yet it helps to disseminate information at a cost of 0 € to their contacts.

Tool 13: Communities and Wikis allow users to unite around a given theme. So we built a relationship over the long term and it enjoys the support of its members.

Tool 14: Forums and comments on the blogs used to publicize a company and its services while providing a service to users. It's a win / win relationship, to the extent that the company should not be used to advertise so outrageous ... and the forums should provide comments primarily on the value added.

Tool 15: Coregistration is a great way to capture prospect contact information via an additional site, not competitor offers as an option to receive information from your company. Of course you do the same with your own prospects.

Tool 16: advergames can get advertisements in a video game. Thus viralité the game allows you to be distributed freely by users.

Tool 17: The online advertising (banner ads, skyscrapers ...) allows you to relay your promotions on sites with large audience.

Tool 18: The banner exchange is private, or through networks of exchange allows for visibility without spending a budget too high. Using Google Ad Planner allows us to compile statistics of visits between the two sites.

Tool 19: Free ebook and other white papers are excellent tools to generate forms with contact information of prospects. It is clear that a content with high added value and to attract target users.

Tool 20: Digg Likes to share links to interesting sites among a community of users. It is a sounding board for a buzz or video content to add value.

Tool 21: Mapping the Internet (Google Maps ...) and nearby sites (Dismoiou.fr) are used to make his company's local search.

Tool 22: The eCommerce site is an extension of the plaque site, because it can sell directly to users.

Tool 23: Quiz and test online can also generate contact with prospects interested in a given subject.

Tool 24: eGoodies and freebies (wallpapers, API, blog design ...) will attract a prospect to recover contact information for selling your products with higher added value.

Tool 25: Writing articles and forums in content sites (eg journaldunet.fr, lepost.fr) or blogs can get the expert status and visibility to a targeted audience .

Tool 26: Sponsorship of the newsletter and purchase tickets to sponsorisés bloggers on your topic can very quickly gain notoriety on a large number of Internet users.

Tool 27: Twitter is a communication tool in full bloom, for the time being the preserve of technology enthusiasts, but it is a new channel of communication.

Tool 28: Viadeo & Linkedin and all social networks allow professionals to reach a target of professionals, whether made by direct contact, messages in groups, to relay information from your news ... Social networks for teenagers as Myspace, Beboo ... are quite interesting to be known for the hundreds of thousands of registrants.

Tool 29: The mini-sites and landing pages allowing you to offer pages specifically optimized to convince the customer to buy your products. These pages should be used in conjunction with Google Adwords and banner advertisements.

Tool 30: Sites of jobs and classifieds sites can also serve as the visibility of your business, but the impact is much lower because these sites offer little visibility or at a significant cost.

Tool 31: Powerpoint presentation with pictures and funny videos allow for viral dissemination as they are relayed by emailing and hosting sites jokes and humor.

Tool 32: The generic directory (Pagesjaunes.fr ...) or business sites, government and local authorities (town halls ...) provide a communication space sometimes free to run your communications.

Tool 33: The RSS feeds are now required to disseminate information to a population faithful (promotions, news ...). Nevertheless, the newsletter should be preferred classical as it will retrieve the details of your visitors.

Tool 34: Co-creation and Guerrilla Marketing 2.0 enable the brand to use the Internet as a generator of content. For example, the creation of advertisements by Internet via blogbang.com, selling photos on fotolia.fr ...

Tool 35: Virtual worlds (Second Life ...) and virtual exhibitions are still in their infancy, but progress towards a 3D Web is moving ... This new way of using the Internet to allow more interactions with customers and prospects but also to establish new sales channels.

Tool 36: Widgets and APIs (eg iPhone) allow customers and prospects to have always at hand to your order.

Tool 37: The presence Marketing allows you to converse with your customers and reduce barriers to the purchase and sales cycle. Chat, avatars, agents conversational automatic ... offer a new interaction with the user.

Tool 38: The purchase of keywords via the "Ad Links" allows you to get visibility on content sites and provide a communication tool alternative to Google Adsense.

With this list you have the full arsenal to find your first clients ... remain to keep and retain chains via loyalty, empathy and responsiveness ...

Sunday, January 4, 2009

How to write a good mailing ?

There are 11 steps to write a good mailing.

Of course, not all are essential ... but this way you will not forget a single step, the identification phase of the problem, the presentation of the solution, and the proposal price.

1 - Attracting the attention of the customer with a hook on a striking unmet need, problem, statistics, a figure ...

This is the teaser that will push your reader to go further. It must be either intriguing or frightening or funny ...

One of the best recipes is to take information from a study. For example: "Did you retain that costs 5 times less expensive than hiring a new client?"

2 - Identify and highlight a client's problems.

Better to put forward a problem of providing a benefit ... All marketing studies have shown that "human being is more sensitive to what it loses to a hypothetical gain ...

Donc n’ayez pas peur: appuyez là où ça fait mal: vous devez refaire penser votre prospect à une situation vécue où il a pu être dans l’embarras.

Make sure your customers know when you write this paragraph, because if you type next to the target, you immediately lose all credibility!

Example message focusing on a problem already experienced: "A customer recently purchased a product with one of your competitors rather than through your home? If yes, then you have not yet established an effective political loyalty ..... "

3 - Present the solution that you offer.

The goal is to show how, with your product or service, his problem will be solved: no more trouble, money thrown through the windows, the time lost ...

eg "Yet with Act! a few minutes would suffice to establish precise monitoring of your customers and business ... ".

4 - Give recommendations, generic figures on the use of your product ... to prove he is the best.

You must provide credible information, such as years of existence of your business, hundreds of customers who you trust, your position ...

ex: "Act! is the software contacts number 1 in the world to SMEs ... 4 million businesses use every day. "

5 - Show the benefits of the product.

You must now enter into detailed and practical: this is how my product works, and this is how it will solve your problems!

Ex: In a few minutes you integrate your existing contacts (Excel file, software ...) and you are ready to launch your actions loyalty ...

6 - Integrate testimony.

There is nothing more effective than the "success stories" so that your prospects are put in position ...

If possible these are 'real' customers, otherwise you merely testimonies generic (genus Before / After, without specifying a name).

7 - Indicate what your offer is (still outstanding).

We must work up the offer as it will the success of the mailing. If the offer is void, the mailing will not have a good rate of return (nb: usually return rates are between 0.5 and 1%, maximum 3% for conventional mailings).

Ex: "For only 239 € HT, or only 20 € / month ...."

8 - Reassure your customer.

For your client, the act of buying may be involved, you must reassure him. This may go through a trial offer a money-back ...

Note:
- If you do mail order, your customer is always 7 days of reflection, so do not deprive the recall in your mailings!
- The rate of return because of dissatisfaction are generally very low, sometimes a good solution if the charges are too high.

ex: "You get a satisfaction or your money back 15 days ...".

9 - Enter for a maximum advantage of this offer.

It must give a deadline to provide an initial incentive to buy. We need your mailing incites to action immediately and not be placed on the stack of cases to be handled later ...

ex: "Attention, this offer is only valid until XX/XX/07, then made quickly, and contact us at 01 XX XX XX XX.."

10 - Add a brief comment to indicate the urgency to buy.

It's the bite back to remind you of the problem customer, and what it loses by buying not immediately your product or service.

Ex: "Do no case escape, order now ...."

11 - Put a Post Scriptum ...

Studies have shown that the title of the mailing and post scriptum were the most read mailings. You must treat a maxmimum this last sentence with an offer that will trigger additional cost on the purchase. This can be a bonus or a gift for the purchaser.

PS: "If you order by 1/06/06, you will receive a free Mont Blanc pen with a value of 50 €.."

And now, your mailing is ready!

Advices for you Google Adwords Campaigns...

Create a Google Adwords campaign only takes a few minutes and it can quickly bring many visitors. As against when we start talking about profitability and qualified visitors, it is more difficult to know exactly what the performance of its campaigns and especially if its current campaign is well designed or is shaky ...

That is why we offer you this file in 2 parts, detailing how to create and optimize a Google AdWords campaign.

We will take a "real" example with a campaign already done to publicize a site for vacation rentals in Brittany www.bretagnelocations.net. This example is especially interesting, which is part of a current situation with a campaign carried out "amateur", which will highlight what is currently the most novices on Adwords.

However this example will be some constraints: it will not attract as many people, but to observe a maximum budget per day. Indeed, the site offers www.bretagnelocations.net only 3 vacation rentals in Brittany, the supply is relatively low. In addition, apartments are subject to strong seasonality (see Google Trends and Google especially Insight), and we must take into account the rate of filling of rentals resulting from the campaign (eg should be used keywords to avoid negative research on periods already booked, promoting rents with 9 people when those 4 will be full ...).

On the other hand we have other constraints as not to redo the site (though it deserves!). We are going to spend a budget of more than 2 to 4 € / day between May and August (for a subscription to a "classic" ad vacation rentals), and only in the second part of this File that we optimize a specific landing page for ads Google Adwords. In the meantime we will send prospects or on the home page (generic ad) or on different locations depending on the targeted keyword (house 4 people, 9 people ...), although it should not do if we really want to optimize their ads (you must always a home page specifically designed for Google Adwords).
Why use Google Adwords?

Prior to launch, here are some figures about the importance of a campaign keyword:
- 30% of visits a website listed on Google from the listings.
- 70% comes from natural search, but among them 10% to 15% mistakenly landing site page.

We must therefore accept that campaigns sponsored keywords are complementary to natural search, and should therefore use these tools.
As against, unlike the natural search, Google Adwords is an advertising medium where you have full control of text to be displayed, the page where readers are landing ...

In this case we will only discuss setting up Google Adwords ads on the pages of search engine results from Google, not the ads in the affiliated sites that display Google ads "Adsense".

Indeed optimizing Adsense ads are specific (you must make bids on keywords generic and sometimes a little distant from its products, and build on a strategy of volume). Moreover it is generally much less profitable to publish ads on Adsense because there is a click fraud much more important.
How does Google Adwords?

It's very simple:
- Google on tape in a key word
- We get a list of results, with 8 on the right links.

If there are more than 8 people positioned on these keywords, a link "More links" is displayed. Of course if you're one of those ads displayed on the first page, your breakdown of page views is not taken into account. The ads that appear at the top of the search window "natural" links called "Premium" (1 to 3 links), they are generally much more click than other ads.

Here are the general principle for the creation of a Google ad:

1 - You set the keywords for which you want to show your ad.
2 - You write the ad text, with the title, two description lines, the address of the page that appears to users and page where they will land.
3 - You set your maximum budget to spend per day and the price you agree to pay for each click a link on your (NB: If this amount is not large enough to show Google will warn you).
4 - Your ad appears on Google within a few hours, with a ranking which will depend on several factors:
- The amount you pay per click: the more you pay, the more you're high.
- The rate of clicks on your ad: more users click on your ad, the more you're high.
- The domain name, keywords on the homepage, the number of inactive keywords in your Ad Group (nb: since August 21 keywords are no longer marked as inactive, they are always " viewable "but with very few clicks ...), the loading time of your landing page ... They are appointed by the Google" Quality Score ", ie the adequacy of your advertising report Indicators Google.
- The history of your Google Adwords: If you're an older customer and good customer, you will be promoted in relation to a person who has just opened an account.

To access the top spots so you must juggle several factors: pay more per click, optimize the landing page, offer a message seller that will trigger a higher CTR ...

Warning! At the launch of your campaign that you have taken on two factors: the quality of your ad (home page, domain name ...) and the amount of your bid. Only after the campaign that CTR will really very important. As discussed below, it will be essential to manage these two elements from the start of the announcement.

Here is the method we will follow to implement our campaign Google Adwords

1 - Defining the overall structure of Google Adwords campaigns (the main themes).
2 - Choose keywords and phrases.
3 - Creating Ads.
4 - Establishment of the campaign live for 30 seconds to see the positioning of keywords, quality keywords, the minimum bet.
5 - Consolidate more finely keywords and campaigns by groups of keywords (keywords stars ...).
6 - Optimization ads and landing pages according to the new groups.
7 - Monitoring and optimizing campaigns.

But first you must create a Google Adwords, it only takes a few seconds ... Once that is done, you can go its optimization ...

Get Google Adwords Editor.

It is essential to use Google Adwords Editor, even if you do not have thousands of keywords to manage or several hundred dollars budget campaign. Indeed Google Adwords Editor is free and will allow you to save time in managing your campaign.

The advantages of using Google Adwords Editor are many:
- Able to manage your campaigns without logging on Google.fr.
- To drag and drop and copy and paste keywords, text ads ...
- To research automated duplicate keywords
- To import a few seconds dozens of keywords
- To obtain a list of deficiencies of your campaigns (duplicate keywords where you are your own competition ...).
- Make changes by lots of keywords additions, deletions ... with the possibility of canceling mishandling.
- Amend the CPC on the fly for keywords in the sorting according to various criteria (CPC to pay, total clicks ...).
- To consolidate similar keywords into campaigns.
- To increase as a percentage of all ads ...
- To add comments to campaigns
- Easily add multiple ads for a campaign
- To export its keywords easily to other solutions sponsored keywords (Microsoft Ad Center, Yahoo ...).
- ...

Google Adwords Editor also provides tools for optimizing campaign practices, such as find all keywords with a click rate of very low or nonexistent:

google adwords-editor -

Then increase / automatically reduce the amount bet on a percentage or an amount to make them active:

auction-adword

Indeed, if you only use Google Adwords on-line, it quickly becomes tedious to manually change the price of each keyword, optimize campaigns ...

Google Adwords Tip: note the changes you made during your tests in comments ... In fact a small change leads sometimes very important (ex: putting caps, change the ad title ...). But when 2 days after you see that the campaign is improving (or worse), you do not remember sometimes the changes you've made.

Google Adwords Tip: If you are provider, and you want to send a report on your Google Adwords campaigns to a customer, use the HTML export Google Adwords Editor (Put yourself in a campaign, then right-click and choose "Export to HTML). If against you ask a customer change his own campaign, choose the File menu> Export for Sharing "so that he can access himself to his campaign.
What price to pay for a keyword?

The same question comes up often ... Nevertheless, although it is difficult to give precise figures, we can estimate that to be in the top positions for keywords that are not competitive must have at least € 0.10 / click, knowing that to be generally well placed to pay between 0.15 and 0.25 € / click. For keywords rather competitive (vacation, scholarship, SEO version of events ....) Pay 1 to 2 € is common, and the ultra-competitive keywords (to Robien Law, ...) the cost can reach between 4 and 8 €!

In our example rental site of holiday rentals in Brittany, the cost per click (CPC) is between € 0.04 and € 0.8, with a strong majority to 0.15 €. Thus figures for a conventional Adwords campaign.

However it should be noted that generally the budget you set out to be very different from what you after a few weeks / months ...

Indeed you will be the effect of "miracle" Google Adwords and you invest more money to generate more and more CA, or your ad will not attract the crowds and you spend a small part your budget or your ad will attract few people and you will have to increase your bids.

Moreover, even if your campaign generates traffic that does not mean it works well, in fact it is possible that you overpay the cost per click ...
Define the objective of your campaign and your break-even

Before embarking on the creation of the campaign, we must define what are the objectives of the campaign: attracting only hot prospects, recruit heavily prospects, sell stocks at any price promo ... taking into account seasonality of your (sales, periods to overactivity and under activity ...).

So by thinking about what you want to do with Google Adwords and tools you currently have to attract customers (exclusive product, price special free guide ...).

Your strategy may be:
- Get details of prospects and then recalled to the sale.
- Make a sale process in 2 phases: draw with free (buying guide, White ...) and then to sell.
- Selling its products directly to hot prospects.
- Bringing up people on its site, even if targeting is not perfect.
- Attracting that people who want to buy your product at your price and let the price discount to your competitors.
- Making a product that will appeal to price to sell then a more expensive product
- ....

Then you must know how far we are willing to pay for 1 in calculating its customer acquisition cost (and profitability). This step will set limits for its auctions, as we shall see later, initially it will agree to invest money (and sometimes lost) and then win over the medium term.

The cost of customer acquisition = (sum of expenditure marketing / nb new customers acquired)

Example:
Advertising & marketing expenses (magazine advertising, PR ...) = 20 000 €
Number of clients acquired: 10 000
Current acquisition cost: 20 000 / 10 000 = 20 €

Average profitability on a customer's life = (CA through a client within 3 years) x margin means.
To calculate the average HA 3 years, calculate the average CA customers the 1st year, see CA on average 2nd year of these customers and 3 years ...
nb: 3 years is already a good life for a client, you can take 1, 2, 4 or 5 years if you want to project in the longer term.

Example:
CA client:
- Year 1: 120 €
- 2 year loss of 15% of customers and CA identical: 120 x 0.85
- Year 3 CA identical loss and still 15% of clients acquired: (120 x 0.72)
With a 30% margin = TOTAL IC 3 years 308.4 x 0.30 = € 92.52 € for 1 margin client throughout his life.

Attention we are talking about gross margin, but we must not forget that your line will also pay all fixed costs (electricity, taxes, wages, social security ...).

It must also take into account that all prospects do not control: if eg 1 prospect in 10 buys a product on your website will require 10 times more leads than customers. So 1 client will cost you 10 clicks on Google Adwords.

Note: you can possibly take into account the orders of people who are already customers who pass through, therefore google and you re-cost more money ...

Once that is done you will know how you relate a customer, and what you can invest money to recruit a prospect. You can go to the definition of keywords.

Important: With Google Adwords, the interest is that the price per click is very affordable. So you can very well you pass this step of calculating profitability, and focus directly few dozen euros in test and then draw the consequences on the rate of processing, CA generated ... and refine your real-time strategy Google Adwords.
Set the main themes of your campaigns

For a good quality score of your ads you need to create campaigns and ad groups highly structured:

Example:

Campaign Theme 1
Group 1A keywords
Group 1B keywords
...
Campaign Theme 2
Group 2A keywords
Group keywords 2B
...

For example in the campaign's initial www.bretagnelocations.net, there were only 2 campaign:
- 1 for the houses of 4.
- 1 for homes 8 people.
With each of these campaigns dozens of keywords, including some duplicates (do not do, otherwise you are going to compete your own ads), some inactive (or misplaced), a cost per click almost identical to each ads ...

In this example, we need to change that and create as many groups as there are themes:
Location depending on the number of people
- Rental 3 people
- Rental 4 people
- Location 5 people
- Rental 6 people
- Rental 7 people
- Rent 8 people
- ...
Location as places
- Rental Britain
- Rental Finistère
- Rental southern Finistère
- Rental Fouesnant
- Rental Beg-Meil
- ...

Vacation rentals at Sea
- Vacation rentals
- Rental Wednesday
- Rental beach
- ...

We will see then that these core categories should be optimized (and it will create much more) but these main themes will guide you to create your categories of keywords.
Set your list of keywords

Depending on the purpose of your campaign (recruit a maximum of hot prospects, get a maximum of contacts ...), your list of keywords and phrases may be between 300 (targeting strategy) or more from 3000 (recruitment strategy).

When you search for keywords you must use all options to choose appearance of keywords. Here's the basic syntax used when you choose your keywords for a term

* = Keyword your ad will appear when those keywords are displayed, regardless of the order, the number ...
* [Keyword] = your ad will appear only when those keywords are typed in the exact order, and if nothing else has been typed by the user.
* "Keyword" = if your ad will appear in the keywords typed by the user there are words in the same order (or not in combination with other keywords).
* = Key-word searches excluded that keyword (nb: you can combine with [] and "").

Google Adwords Tip: contrary to what one may think, the accents are included in Google Adwords. The term "rental house in August" and "rental house in August" will display different ads. As against the punctuation (the " '", "" ...) and capitalization are not taken into account.

Here is how to generate your keyword list:

Step 1: Create your catalog with the primary keywords most common.

This step (which may be long) is essential for the success of your campaign must therefore prepare:
- List the names, adjectives, properties, profits, problems solved ... for your products.
- Make a brainstorming with your commercial, the hot line, the technical service ... to hear the words used by customers to describe your products and they meet the needs and problems they solve.
- Take a tour in forums dedicated to list the keywords used by your target (we see later that Google Adwords can crawl sites to retrieve the keywords used).
- List the keywords used by your competitors on their website: view the source of their HTML page (View> Source in Firefox) and look at the Title tags, keywords ...
- Make a mining words typed into a search engine to your website (if any) or in your statistics Google Analytics. It is even possible to export results to CSV format for inclusion in your Google Adwords campaigns and thus avoid tedious copying and pasting. Just show all the keywords, then choose Export (nb: Google Analytics exports what you display on the screen, so be sure not to display 500 keywords, and if necessary to repeat this operation on each ... statistics page).

- Ask your customers and prospects how they call your products, what they have typed into a search engine to find your products ...
- List synonyms of your products and the benefits (see our article on the creation of brand names).
- List the name of your product (your brand), composition (if specific), their nicknames, generic terms, the names of the company ...
- ...

For example, in the case of www.bretagnelocations.net keyword searching primary had been limited to a mere brainstorming, without searching for keywords from the sites of competitors vacation rentals, or synonymous terms as "rental" ( eg there was no word on key "cottage" while it is a word that was used by tenants and websites) ...

Google Adwords Tip: If you do not have Google Analytics and you want to know the keywords your visitors use Google to land on your website just install the search engine Google on your site ( Google Adsense).

Note: Regarding trademarks, check with your suppliers if you have the right to use them. In fact more and more manufacturers prohibit the use of their brands with some distributors who make their competition ... If your side you have a competitor uses your trademark as a keyword, you must first send an email warning to the company fraudulently using your brand (and no reply a letter). If this does not, you can simply send an email to Google Adwords with proof of filing your brand and if you've found (keyword issue, the announcement, the URL of the fraudster ...) and limiting the right to use the mark (all users or grant a limited number of distributors). For more information see our article on fraudulent use of the word emailing.

Google Adwords Tip: It is very interesting to have domain names with major keywords (even. Eu,. ... Net). Indeed, this will increase the quality score of his announcement, and in addition it can display in the announcement of additional keywords in bold. For example, to www.bretagnelocations.net we also bought the keyword "www.VacancesFinistere.com" to target those ads.
Ideally we need to complement the natural search on the keywords most wanted, creating content pages on these specific keywords in your website and / or optimize your existing pages.

To see which keywords are most important, you can use Google Search for Insight. In a few tens of minutes you are able to identify the keywords most important and require the purchase of domain name or be grouped in a particular campaign.

For example, in the case of www.bretagnelocations.net, we can see which keywords with volumes of research highlights:

google-insights

One can see that the keyword "rentals Brittany is a cyclical keyword (peak demand from May to July), and that your most important keyword is" location Brittany, while the keyword "locations Brittany and "Brittany vacation rentals" are very few keywords searched.

At the regional level, we can see that it is Britain that the keyword is the most requested, then Normandy and the Loire Valley. Thus neighboring regions that are the most requested locations.

As against, we must be careful to analyze these figures in relation to your market. For example, under the site of vacation rentals, it is in fact very few customers come from Britain. The majority of clients are from other regions. It will therefore take into account these regions in the negative keywords and targeting (we shall see in the last stage).

Moreover Insight for Google search suggests additional keywords for your campaign. Of course you can now include in your list because they are keywords with a lot of research, but we will see later that there is a more powerful tool to increase your keyword list.

To end the use of google insight, the number of research per month is information that can be interesting to assess the potential clicks certain keywords relative to each other: if an expression is highly sought (thousands / months), you may need to expect many clicks (and therefore a big budget) or make filters for displays that focused on expressions (see below).

Google Adwords Tip: To quickly see if a keyword is very competitive simply typing in the search engine Google to see how it yad'annonces sponsored links ... If less than 5 ads on the 1st page c 'Keyword is a little competitive, where 2 pages of ads is a keyword difficult ... and more than 20 Adwords advertising you can be sure that we will have to pay dearly departing ...

Step 2: Increase the number of your keywords with Google Keyword Tool.

Once you have your initial list (at least a hundred words and phrases), you must use generators keywords such as Google Keyword Tool to detect keywords derived from your main list.

Since November, a second tool "Google Base Search Keyword Tool" which is totally independent and more practice, is available.

Here are some other tools suggestions for additional keywords:
- Http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/search.html
- Http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/
- Http://tools.seobook.com/keyword-tools/seobook/
- Http://adlab.microsoft.com/searchfunnel/ (irrelevant for French words)
- ...

No. Do not forget to check the synonyms in generating keywords.

The interest is that these tools give you the estimated volumes of research for each keyword (unless it is research that is almost never typed) and a long list of suggested keywords (you can add in a few seconds).

In all cases, these tools will save you a lot of work and so you'll be sure not to pass through the main keywords in the market. We must identify all the keywords "stars" (those who are in high demand) for the deal from the outset part of the other via a dedicated group of ads (in our case it is "location Brittany).

For the potential of each keyword, you can use to forecast traffic of Google. This allows you to estimate the budget you have to pay to a minimum.

In this example, one can see that for those 3 keywords "vacation rentals Britain", [vacation rentals Britain] and vacation rentals Britain, it comes at a cost per click of 0.15 € to be in the top positions ... This information is interesting, but we will see later how to decide the amount payable during the initial setup of the campaign.

The tool also allows the automatic generation of additional keywords to add to his campaigns.
To do this, simply take its first list of keywords, extract the main keywords to generate additional keywords related.

What is interesting is to have the approximate volume of searches for those keywords, and so what are the keywords of interest. For keywords with a large volume of research, it is essential to create groups of ads in order to manage them separately.

In our example, create a group for "Rent Britain" which include the keywords "location Britain" and "locations Britain" because it is the strategic keywords: these are the keywords most searched while being targeted . Other keywords are being too few in terms of research, is too generic.

This tool also gives you a good idea of what you will eventually pay (if you have a budget of 200 € / month, you can see what might be the amount payable to spend this budget).

The tool also allows you to see competition on keywords, identifying those with less competition, allowing you to have better positioning for a lower cost (eg "apartment rental Britain" is a word key with more research that "villa rentals Britain" and with a level of competition low).

What is interesting is to add a few seconds keyword phrase or exact terms (see below), and to add 1 click to your Google Adwords campaigns.

Google Adwords Tip: it is essential to remember that these are the keywords that generate most wanted the most complaints. It is therefore essential to be visible to those keywords with high volume, under penalty of getting too few clicks per day (unless you find a traffic hyperciblé). However your targeted keywords are still very interesting because they target hot prospects. Therefore these two strategies mixer (volume and value).

Google Adwords Tip: If you have hundreds (or thousands) of keywords at the establishment of a campaign, you may be overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task ... it is advisable in this case launch as groups of keywords to manage more finely and especially to detect the keywords most important.

Step 3: Add expressions targeted.

During the first two steps you've generated a list of keywords rich, but often poorly targeted.

So you must enrich it with combinations of keywords and phrases that you can more precisely target prospects to attract only hot prospects.

For example if you sell software, you "software management", "software", "purchasing software", "research management software" ...

In our example vacation rentals in Brittany, take derivatives of the term "vacation rentals" by adding:
- The geography: "Fouesnant rental house", "Cape rental house coz" ...
- Criteria temporal: "rental home septembre", "rental house in August", "rental house in August ...
- Criteria behavioral "house rent holidays", "rent house Fouesnant" ...
- Mix all of these "vacation home rentals Britain in September" ...
- Sentences complete research location holiday in Brittany "

Google Adwords Tip: With the No. 1 step you have themes for your expressions. We need them in sheets of an MS Excel ®. It is very useful to take the keywords and expression in a column, and add automatically via copy and paste additional elements.

For example, you can copy and paste directly behind your keyword phrases "9 people":
Rental Brittany 9 people
Vacation rentals 9 people
Location was 9 people
....

Of course, the more you add keywords in an expression, more specifically targeting the needs leads, and you will pay dearly click ... But this can be very profitable: in fact there are 3 or 4 years Internet tended to type 1 to 2 words in the search engines to find information, or the last few years more and more research is done on 3, 4 or 5 words. It is therefore not hesitate to add your keywords in basic expressions of several keywords.

It is very important to integrate words and action verbs associated with the act of buying or seeking information about your product. For example if you sell products add the words "buy, buy," "find", "research" ... your keywords. Indeed these terms allow you to appear on keywords searched by hot prospects.

Finally, using expressions of 4 or 5 words you will focus on expressions less competition than generic terms. Indeed there are hundreds of companies that build the word "car insurance", but only a few dozen for "car insurance 207", and a handful insurance 207 car Nantes.

In our example vacation rentals, you use the principle of creating cascading keywords:

Vacation rentals
Rent Britain
Brittany vacation home rentals
Vacation house rentals Britain 4 people
Vacation house rentals Brittany September 4 people
...

Google Adwords Tips: Use typos (paste the words, reverse letters), spelling errors ... but only on your main keywords (as it is a waste of time!).
In our example is add keywords: "location bretagen" "location bertagne" ...
The words "mistakes" must be managed in a campaign, because they will generate very little research.

Tip Google Adwords Editor: It is easy to add hundreds of keywords. Just go in the Keywords tab / make some changes, and copy / paste your keywords. To save time, it is interesting to specify before in the columns of the CPC Excel file, the type of request. We need to import preferably as a keyword "Correct." Once that is done we need to sort keywords valid, exotic ...


Google Adwords Tip: Use the principle of the cluster bomb for competitive keywords. Indeed it is very difficult to fight against large companies on certain keywords. So as cluster bombs, dropping many small bombs to be sure of reaching the goal. To do this you must choose keywords strongly related to keyword principal, but more focused.
Ex: entrepreneur, creator company to the individual creator betting company, creator service company, guide for business creation, business creation easy ...
Ex: costume: costume marriage, burial suit, cheap suit, tie costume ...

Step No. 4: Use negative keywords to improve your CTR

As we have seen in the introduction positioning depends on the price bet, the landing page, but click rate (CTR). It must show only that the contacts.

For this you need to define keywords and sites negative, it means that your ads will not appear when those keywords are typed into search engines.

The most typical is the word "free": if you sell a service, you can choose not to display search on your keywords and the word free.

Another typical example is "student": Internet being used heavily by students seeking information for their records a good number of requests very targeted are nevertheless totally useless because they n'attireront that people have not afford (or desire!) to buy your services ...

In our case we had seen that many searches for "rental Britain" came from Brittany. It is clear that a large part of those seeking philosophy was to find locations for the year (not holiday). It must remove displays research from the UK via regional targeting.

We must also remove all displays related to research locations or annual holidays in other cities and departments of Brittany, hits to avoid unnecessary people looking specifically for vacation rentals in other towns of Brittany. Therefore, in our example, we have also removed all notions of research on rental Vannes, Brest, Auray, Rennes ... and other regions of France (South of France, Ardèche ...).

Finally, in the establishment of the ad, add a restriction to France and the French language (but this had been done during the initial campaign site location).

In a second optimization of the Google Adwords campaign, it might be possible to create specific campaigns for example English (targeting England, with announcement in English and keywords in English).

For more information about using negative keywords you can visit Google.

Google Adwords Tip: Type "allinanchor:" followed by the keyword of your choice on Google, and so you get a list of all pages that contain the keyword as a link. Then each result one by one and find all the links with the keyword that redirect to your competitors. Very useful to know which keywords to use the various offers on the market ...

Google Adwords Tip: To avoid unnecessary clicks, remember to add words not related to the purchase as a "service", "problem", "defective" ... unless of course you do troubleshooting. Some resellers have also understood using keywords like error messages to sell their services and repair the problems identified.
Create ads pushing for action.

Now that all keywords have been defined, we must now turn to writing ads. There are several types of ads google:
- Ad texts: the more conventional and easier to implement
- Ad-type images (eg 120-square ...) which require the intervention of a designer.
- The Geographical type ads (ads on Google Maps).

In this example we will present the type of ad text, and the second part of the file "Google Adwords" we will see how to place ads picture.

A Google AdWords text ad can be broken down as follows:

Title: 25 characters
Line 1: 35 characters
Line 2: 35 characters
Link seen by Internet users: 35 characters
Link to your site: 1024 characters

According to a study référencement.org, 13% of clicks would be bound under 55% in the first line, 23% in the second line and 1% in the visible URL. Nevertheless, the results of this study are to be taken with tweezers, because experience shows that we must make every item in the Google ad.

Here is an example of ad that works correctly:

The title and the 1 must repeat the keyword to convince the user that matches your ad to search.
Line 2 is to reassure the Internet, explain why your product is different from your competitors, and possibly present a bonus (free guide ...) or exclusivity (promo, price ...).

For the title:
- Reminder of keywords typed by the user (here "Location Britain")
- Guilty on "vacation" to keep 25 characters.
- All first letters of words in capital letters (as well as other key words of the announcement, including the URL).
Line 1:
- Reminder of the keyword ( "Britain")
- Presentation of filtering and essential elements of the ad ( "House 4")
Line 2:
- Add the numbers because many people are sensitive to factual (150M), and indicate the element differentiator compared to other ads (close to the sea).
- The telephone number for prompt action. In addition it allows any user to call without clicking.
URL:
- Add keywords in the URL (here "BretagneLocations").

In the case of an ad with the sale of products, it is possible to play on other springs:

Title: Reminder keyword the ad (accounting software SMEs). Last capitalized key words.
Line 1: Reminder of competitive advantage (99 € and postage included), and call to action with the word "promo in September.
Line 2: Incitement to click through a free book offered a reminder of the word accountant.
URL: Keywords are recalled in the URL (accounting SMEs) and the Promo ( "/ promo").

The positioning "promo" appears clearly with the word promo 2 times (line 1 and URL), plus the reference price (which allows you to filter candidates). Moreover, the September promo mention can indicate a sense of urgency for a call to action.

The announcement meets the expectations of different types of customers: the emotional (For SMEs, guide held accountable ...) and factual with numbers (99 €, ... September). In addition prices have the merit of attracting attention, and the word "Available" should attract undecided.

Note: this announcement could be improved because the keywords are not the same everywhere (accounting, bookkeeping, accounting). Nevertheless, the root "account" appear several times in bold.

Remember however that there are no absolute rules for writing an ad, it must be especially readable and attractive, but it always leads to action. You can here many styles of titles, including the following:
- Verbs with the imperative call to action: Pay less ... Do ...
- The narrative of product: Stay Mexico 350 €
- Question to the Internet: backache?
- The text that dream: The experience of your life!
- Problem: Tired of paying taxes? ...
- A benefit "Pay less tax!", "Save money!" ...

For lines of text, it must simply give the reader want to know more and therefore to click.

To get a better rate of return is usually distinguish itself from its competitors by making 1 characteristic before, a special bonus, an exclusive specialty ...

There are a few tricks as "click here", "stock", "Latest stock", "Promo special", "Jury Prize XXX", "No. 1 sales", "official website", "distributor Official "," limited supply "," Last Pieces "," limited quantity "," delivery in 24 hours "," 1 gift "," 1 purchased, 1 free "... that work very well to encourage click!

For the URL there are several options:
- Simply put the name of your site / keyword / or product concerned: www.voyage-espagne.com/barcelone
- To a URL with the product or profit: www.creme-barcelone.com
Both options are interesting, the second being particularly useful if you want to put forward a particular keyword in the ad.

Google Adwords Tip: Avoid superlatives, exclamation points, while texts capital ... which are censored by Google.

Google Adwords Tips: Do not hesitate to target ads for a better CTR: "For women", "Men", "Special child - 18 months" ...

Google Adwords Tips: Simplify your ad text, delete the "The" "in" ... which are not indispensable to understanding the message. But let possibly "You", "Your" ... that customize the message. For example, in ads for locations we have gone from "vacation rentals" with "Your holiday in Brittany." It is also possible to let some spelling mistakes in your texts to get below the maximum limit.

Google Adwords Tip: Try special characters to distinguish ads from those of your competitors, for example • to separate words or + = - ...? , ^, ¢, £ ¤ ¥ §, ¬, ° ±, º ø, þ ... A symbol very interesting to use it ®, because the "Copyright", especially if you are the official distributor of a product. As against it is prohibited to use ~ | * ....

When testing your ads, there are some elements that may seem minor, but that can make a difference. For example, is change the titles by putting capitalization for the first few letters, change the word order ...

Google Adwords Tip: Try ads with ... "at the end descriptions to think about the user that there is more choice than the ad and give him desire to know more.

annnonce-example-google adwords -

Remember that you do not have to fill all characters in the ads, test ads also very short.

It is important to make the watch regularly and watch what your competitors to copy the good ideas. To identify the ads that work well, just out advertisements in climbing very quickly, it means that the person has staked a significant amount, or that advertising is strongly clicked!

Google Adwords Tip: usually when conducting a new campaign should be between 4 and 5 different versions of an ad to test new beams and new styles. This may seem very long, but that is what you will improve your CTR and sometimes have very good surprises!

When you write your ads you have to identify which keywords are magic react your hot prospects. Those magic words may be a price (ex: 1 week 799 € Barcelona). By putting forward these magic words that you attract people really interested in your products and services. In this example a person who wants a low-cost travel to Barcelona do not click, but a person who wants to stay "pleasure" will be interested.

Google Adwords Tip: depending on your position you have no interest in setting prices or attract calls with free. If you have quality products or you're on a niche, you have every interest in putting forward a more specific your price. To verify that your offer is not deceptive (= it attracts the world, but people are not conquered by your offer), check the time left on your pages (if an average close to 0, this means clicker that have seen your site, but your offer is ultimately not suitable. This means that you have lost money because the click you pay only served nothing). If the time users stay on your pages is low then you must either change your ad to an ad least "misleading" or that you must put forward another product, or you must create a specific product ...

Google Adwords Tip: Try selling 2 stroke! If you sell technology products or which have a complex decision-making (no impulse buying), rather than to attract the customer by price or by selling momentum, we must offer something "Free" to attract the prospect and then to sell your product. For example: report free book ... which presents a problem and how to fix it.

Google Adwords Tip: If you change the destination URL you lose your quality score (your web page has changed the score will also change). It is therefore quite advisable to bring a new ad if you change the name of the destination URL and not the page itself ...

Special case of dynamic titles with the tag KEYWORD:

It is the opposite strategy to optimize the titles of ads. Indeed securities dynamic Google Adwords allow you to include in your ad title (or in the body of the announcement) exactly what the user typed into a search engine.
In theory, it is very effective: the user sees your advertising exactly what they need ... In practice this means the rabattage a maximum of less qualified prospects. Therefore a strategy to use when the price per click is not expensive or if the objective of your campaign is to recruit a maximum of prospects!

The syntax is as follows recommended (KeyWord: text-alternative-if-displayed text-to-upper-25-characters)

Example:

(KeyWord)
House 4 people
150m from the sea - 350 € / week
www.bretagnelocations.net

Of course with some different syntax:

Keyword = () keyword typed appear in the ad, but beware, if the word is too large it will be cut ...

(Keyword: text =) if the keyword is too long, is "text" that appears.

(KeyWord: Text) = The first letter of each word capitalized.
Top bet for launching a new campaign!

Now that you have keywords and ads must know how much to bet on your keywords. Normally you have multiple campaigns (themes, keywords highly sought ...).

Begin by entering an identical bid for all keywords (regardless of the amount is only for testing purposes). Then run the "live".
As against it should be put online a few seconds, immediately after the stop ... Indeed, the purpose of this online check is the minimum payable by keyword and the quality scores by keywords.

Before presenting what should be done, here's a review of the current campaign, which will allow us to see "what not to do".

In our example there were only 2 groups and campaign ads. This is a classic feature of Google Adwords campaigns to "amateur" little campaign ad groups, with a lot of keywords (including many inactive), which ultimately does not have "the keyword almost. " Indeed this campaign included a fifty keyword inactive (no clicks or displays), and the budget of 1 € / day for this campaign was never used up because there was not enough clicks ...

The mistake was classic: the auction bet by key word was just above the minimum bid, which meant that the ads were ranked 20th in the back seat and do not in the list ... That means that there was a vicious circle: very few displays, so a very low CTR, and always with a poor quality score ...

And therefore more time passed, the announcement was less visible, and there were fewer clicks. The only way was to raise more budget to click, but as the campaign was "weighed down" by its history (low CTR, poor quality score ...) the increase by euro cents after several days launch had virtually no effect.

On the contrary, when we put up a new Adwords campaign, you must bet a significant amount in cost per click (CPC) on strategic keywords from the campaign.

Indeed initially the only variable that you have real power to position your ad is the amount of CPC. Indeed you have no historical clickthrough rate, and you go from 0 while the ads already in place already have a history of CTR that will promote.

Your goal should be simple: to be posted as soon as possible on the first page to generate many clicks and greatly increase your CTR, and what you will exceed the ads currently positioned.

But the interest is that once your campaign installed Google will naturally diminish day by day how much you pay per click, especially after several drops in Google that you can reduce the cost per click any retaining the top positions.

Again attention, does not decrease too quickly your cost per click or you'll drop your ranking at the same time as your budget ... You must allocate this decline over several days by reducing your budget of only 0.05 or 0.1 every time , At the decline by maintaining your CPC. By doing this you should be able to reduce your Adwords budget from 5 to 10% while remaining well positioned in the list of ads displayed.

In the end, you must consider the additional cost of starting an advertising investment that you will return over the long term.

Example:
On the keyword "Holiday" is to build 1 € / click at the outset. Normally the announcement should happen quickly on the first page (it is a word with a lot of research, and an ad generates a very attractive rate of click allowing it to arrive in the first 5).
The same day, the price finally paid to click is not 1 but € 0.97 €. It was not until ...
2 days later he moved to 0.94 € ... but nothing should be done!
4 days after he went to 0.88 € ... this is the time to lower the price slightly to 0.96 per click (and not € 0.88).
5 days after he went to 0.85 € with the same place ... We must still wait.
6 days after he went to 0.83, then move to 0.92 €
...
As the day your CPC will become lower and you can also decline, while allowing you to stay in good position.

This strategy must of course be applied only on very competitive keywords. For keywords with little competition where you can easily reach the top, just to build an amount exceeding the minimum amount to get into the top slots. The rule to follow is to try to quickly reach the top positions, even gradually decrease.

Google Adwords Tip: often by paying just above the minimum pay you get a quality score "Excellent", but with a very distant positioning ... We must not let the auction at this level, but the increase to back in positioning. Indeed a good quality score and poor positioning is useless.

Google Adwords Tip: If you spend virtually all your maximum budget Adwords in the day, this is not a good sign ... This usually means that your daily budget is reached before the end of the day ... you must increase the budget and see what is the minimum investment (nb: if you do not have the budget, then see what is the ROI keywords, and possibly re-allocate the budget).

Google Adwords Tip: You can maximize the hours of times your ads: you bet students, it is not worth displaying advertisements all day, but at noon, evening and weekends.

Google Adwords Tip: If you have a keyword or two major and very expensive, it is interesting to create an ad for the singular and the plural with specific ads. Indeed depending on the price of the keyword CTR and it is possible to pay (a little) cheaper to click, and thus to save money on volume.

Google Adwords Tip: If you do not have a big marketing budget, try to make a promotion to Start exceptionnelle your campaign to attract most clicks. Indeed Google believes that you have more clicks, your ad is more relevant.
Consolidate your keywords automatically groups

One of the most practical Google Adwords Editor is to consolidate ads automatically in groups (Tools Menu> Keyword Grouper). This tool is very interesting because it can create a few tens of seconds of ad groups with keywords, which is strongly recommended by Google to improve the quality score.

For example, in our group "Star Search," Google Adwords Editor offers:


Google Adwords Tip: It is interesting for its strategic keywords to separate the keywords with Excellent quality score of those with a score mediocre or poor to create performing groups. Usually a group of keywords "classic" must contain between 15 and 20 words and phrases.
Not necessarily looking for the 1st position

The rule to be in the top positions is valid if we want to generate traffic, and it has a large budget, but not necessarily the most profitable keywords strong competition.

That is why for keywords not necessarily strategic, it must accept being third or fourth position, because the price difference is sometimes 3 times less expensive for a slightly lesser visibility.

In addition, if your ad is particularly relevant (good rate CTR) and a good quality score, you can expect an announcement naturally move from one position above.

As against remember that the Internet can hardly ever click beyond the first 5 answers, and therefore know that if you take the risk of being in 5th or 6th or 7th position you will receive far fewer prospects (but often more motivated) and the more you risk being ejected from your seat by a newcomer (it will therefore be monitoring your ranking).
Follow closely your new campaigns ... and try everything to zero if necessary!

New campaigns generally start slowly, but after a few days your ad must be better positioned and therefore generate more clicks. You should therefore carefully monitor the number of clicks, the position ... and possibly act on the budget, beaming, the offer ...

If this is not the case (ie after 100 to 300 clicks) or if the rate of visits to command is not good, then your ad or keywords are not good. It is better all over again! Indeed we should not insist on a campaign or ad group that has not worked. It is better to remove and rebuild an entirely new (or your history will fill ...).

There are tools to track your Google Adwords ads and automatically increase the amount payable (see our next party), but if you have some campaigns that Google Adwords is the easiest to monitor from time to time if keywords do not become inactive, if your number of prints or if your CTR does not collapse ...
To do this just to get to the root of your Google campaign in Google Adwords Editor and to sort the column "Off" (the name of this column will change soon).

keyword-inactive adwords

Google Adwords Tip: If you are in a very competitive industry it is often tempting to want to be its competitor at any price and therefore continually pay 0.1 € more to stay first. But ultimately it does make rich as google. It is much more profitable to work on its ads, its pages ... to improve its CTR and conversion rates.

Google Adwords Tip: there are some factors "hidden" that affect your quality score. For example Google Adwords does not like an ad that leads directly to an application for documentation (must be content with text) or a single image or too AdSense. We must therefore create pages quality, with links if necessary quality (Wikipedia ...).
Make a natural selection drastic!

It's probably one of the most important tips for successful Google AdWords campaigns: it must identify the keywords that you relate and those who plombent your performance:
- The "good" keywords will be an announcement specific group of keywords, ad name, URL ...
- The bad keywords must be removed (if they relate nothing) or displaced in campaigns with low yields.

To work effectively its selection of keywords must be taken into account the sales generated (and more margin processed), for example using Google Analytics ... but we shall see in Part 2 of the file.

For the moment we are already optimized "simple", based on impressions, clicks, positioning ... using the table below:


Here are below our campaign with keywords, and some optimizations that we made:

- "Rent houses" received 3 clicks, but for 2400 impressions ... This is a keyword that has some potential, but plombe the CTR of our campaign. We must therefore create its own campaign, create an ad with the words "Rental Properties", adding negative keywords not related to our campaign (August, August, betting, southern France ...). As it may be a search for rentals by city, we must also remove cities in France other than it (to just make a copy and paste from Wikipedia http://fr. wikipedia.org / wiki / Grandes_villes_de_France)

- He has some words that have enough impressions (eg rent furnished house rentals, rental housing ...) which provide a large number of display but no clicks. Obviously these keywords are not valid for our ad, they must remove to improve the CTR for the campaign.

- The case of "Rent Britain" is against very interesting: it offers many research (933), and a good clickthrough rate (2.14%) despite a very distant position (26th position). It is therefore up on this request by offering an advertisement and especially a specific budget to click much more important to go back in the ranking.

- Adding new ad groups with keywords related to themes: September arrivals, Wednesday location, location Finistere ...
Optimize your landing pages

Once you have attracted visitors to your website must convince them to order. To do this a few principles to remember:
- The title of your landing page must resume if possible your ad text (at least the theme). If you are e-commerce and you can not 1 page per product, made a page with the main products in this category and add the words "Search for" Keyword "(where" keyword is the keyword Google's announcement).
- All information should be to order on the landing. Your prospects should not be required to consult with other pages to be convinced to order. You must tell them what they need to know, and where they must click to buy (a big 'Buy Now' button, price, costs, availability, technical information ...).
- Do not write too much text, the information must be legible (possibly propose a data sheet in PDF ...), you must have a clear offer (maximum two products to order, but not "dilemma" with 3 or 4 products to choose) for additional information add links to not overload the page (HTML text link must be very visible) ...
- Add a "safety net" if your prospect still has doubts: insert your phone number or a better call back (automatic in 1 click, for example via Linkeo.com).
Conclusion of the first part of Google Adwords File

The purpose of this first part was to give you the tools to implement your own Google Adwords campaign, but also to improve an existing campaign.

In the next part of the file we will further optimize Google Adwords ads:
- Creation of advertising-type "images".
- Add your ad in Google Maps.
- Managing campaigns with Google AdSense.
- Using optimization homepages (Landing Pages) google.
- Presentation of some automation tools and monitoring Google Adwords campaigns.
- The system of home pages turnkey Google.
- ...

A final piece of advice to remember: managing Google ads in a professional manner takes a long time, there are lot of tricks, optimization of parameters ... Attention on the one hand not to spend too much time, but you leave lead by the madness (and easy) auctions and raise prices to drive traffic ...

Use Google Adwords can quickly become a game of poker, where the concept of money spent is more visible ... We must always think before "bet", set a budget to spend and know ... Please stop Do not you play the "real money" to each click!

Remember also that for a campaign of a few thousand euros per month, it takes 4 to 5 hours / week optimization, plus 1 afternoon each month to test, optimize its ads, find new keywords ... That is the price to pay if you could quickly see your keywords become inactive, or lose your ads performance!

If you want help in managing your Google Adwords campaigns, please send us an email to fred@conseilsmarketing.fr and we will put you in connection with our partners in managing Adwords campaigns.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

4 questions about Buzz Marketing

1 - How a community can reinforce a brand?

There are at least 7 good reasons to use the communities:

- Consolidating buyers in their choice to take the brand to brand the community used to add additional value-added product (advice, uses unique ...) which will reinforce the feelings of the customer to have made the right choice. In addition it can reassure its relations on the seriousness of the mark, climbing a further dialogue. For example, the site of the PACE. Com offers within a community that allows members to share their experiences and enhance the data already on the website.

- Obtain a customer base that is willing to receive messages, which was not necessarily to sell the community can spend more messages quickly, more informal and non-commercial, instead of going through the usual channels of communication that are locked and formatted (both by the internal process of self-censorship by publishing procedures and validation ...). The community puts in place a less corporate communication. For example, the division of Sage CRM has established a community for users of Sage SalesLogix one of their software.

- Get customers from other brands: establishing a community theme with high added value can also be recovered from customers of other brands that are looking for information related to a generic use of the product. For example, the site www.buzzpoker.fr federates the first community of poker enthusiasts in France, but ultimately this will be a tremendous tool for recruiting crazy poker!

- If the trend in a sector or sharp edge, setting up a community around a brand also helps to make "the reference" on this subject on the Internet. Indeed, on the net more than elsewhere, there is a premium first-come, thus raising barriers to entry for the following. A community is also very interesting to federate the early adopters and influencers that will make this community a reference. For example, Orange Business Services has established a community of bloggers around the security of data, thus enhancing their expertise in this area (nb: for now this community is exclusive to employees of orange, but it should not fail to be open to a wider audience).

- Make a community work for you: set up a community can generate content via users instead of having to produce all or even ... That is how we acquire a better visibility (more text, images ... improve the natural search of a site) but also new and original content generated by the members (video ...) a bit like blogbang.com that provides members to create their own videos.

- Develop a communication tool for loyalty in the long term in that role by his "neutral" in relation to commercial messages is the ideal tool to implement a customer loyalty program.

- Get the ski field more quickly and directly. For example, the site developers of the software to animate Act allows resellers such solutions and validate them live with the new features, patches ...
Ideally this website allows you to develop specific products that can be carried by this community because after it. This is already the case in the salesforce community where customers and resellers can share together, their customers requests and their partners specific addons. It happens to the establishment of a win-win ecosystem where everyone finds his advantage.

The dangers of the community:
- No longer controls its communication
- Show its strengths and weaknesses of its competitors
- To manage its distribution channels

Prerequisites:
- Accept to hand over to users
- Provide content to the growing community members to become interested and get involved (tips, help, new content, value added ...)
- Providing the means to launch the machine to start supplying the content, and moderate figures published.
- Be patient: a community must be built over time. The accession of new members is a lengthy process that gave little fruit at the start ... and to ensure that successive it is essential that a communication relay (information in newsletters, to relay commercial, organization of events ...).
- Identify the number of leads generated or it via the community to justify its existence.

2. The viral marketing a new Eldorado?

Viral marketing is an Eldorado for both brands but also (and especially ...) for communication agencies ...

In fact all companies now are dreaming of a buzz campaign that could very quickly make them known to millions of Internet users through the calling native of the Internet allows a rapid and decentralized information.

This trend is especially strong as the apparent ease of achieving a viral marketing campaign can now dream and in most communication plans there to become a new line of video on the buzz ...

Why a video of buzz over another media (image, sound ...) me would you? Simply because the video has democratized (which has not had to suffer the projections movies weddings, communions ...) and secondly most amateur videographers have a much better control of video and bases special effects (see Film Sweden).

Finally broadcast platforms are easy to use and broadband allows for easy viewing on the Internet.

In the final video is a tool that may not cost too much and big ... if we manage to succeed his video and its dissemination (see an example of viral video failed because of bad actors) ...

Indeed another aspect of viral marketing is the use of social networks to disseminate information. It can be done through organized networks (facebook, koreus.com forums, communities rigoler.com, like digg as chauffeurdebuzz.com, influential bloggers ...) and free (dissemination via the Internet directly by email)

Again these tools do not necessarily a lot of money but a good knowledge of the tools and time to convince and identify influencers (places and persons) ...

Communication agencies have fully understood this because they now offer these tools in their catalog of services ... the problem is that most have a very theoretical buzz and therefore they produce videos promoting products rather than videos buzz ...

More who do evil new communication tools of Web 2.0 they are often not to disseminate their "advertorials videos clumsy" ... and therefore the last few months of communications agencies virales days have seen the benefits with quality very often variable ...

Finally viral marketing can be a good solution for a small creative company that wants to be known (with a successful example www.mymajorcompany.com) or for companies who choose a specialized agency.

However lack of knowledge of this tool and an agency, most companies will find themselves face to face with communications agencies located in the viral marketing that a new opportunity to increase customer's bill without having to assume a result ... because who can predict success at the failure of a viral campaign ...

3. Could you give 3 tips on using the new tools of marketing alternative?

- Focus first on the idea the prime substance over form. A very funny but not very well formatting will always be more effective than a nice message, but that does not viralité. You must ask yourself these questions "Why someone would transfer this information?" "What's funny enough, surprising ... that the reader will think that it would appeal, or one of his contacts?"

- Put as much time and money in putting the operation in its implementation. That is for 1 euro invested in the creation you have to invest 1 euro to promote it. This can be done by purchasing tickets to sponsorisés bloggers, buy advertising space, by renting mailing lists ... it's even more important that tens of viral campaigns arise every day, and to distinguish have a good idea is not enough to be on its success ...

- Do not forget the visibility of its brand: a viral video (or any other tool) is to attract traffic to a site, generating orders, increase awareness, make the teasing ... it must ensure proper visibility of the brand or best offer a series of viral videos with a relay on a dedicated website.

For more information you can read our articles viral videos:
- To publicize his business through a viral video
- 4 tips for successful buzz.
- Behind the buzz of a successful

4. As bloggers what do you want a brand that you approach?

A brand any interest to contact the bloggers of its theme, because they represent a huge audience (targeted or general) and so far google greatly favors the blogs in the natural search ...

There are 3 types of bloggers with different behaviors, and therefore different approaches ...

- Bloggers niche: they are sophisticated in their themes and they attract a targeted audience. To seduce them must be content, action, publicity ... relating to their activities. Personal contact is of course essential (for example, a point between the mark and a recently published article) to establish a relationship with him. Another plus is to offer a small gift that will motivate them to speak more quickly your product.

- Bloggers low hearing to mark the time income is too low to justify an individual contact. It will be interesting to make the membership or advertising adsense ...

- Bloggers stars (or influential) as their specialty, they are courted by the marks because a posting on their site is equivalent to hundreds (or thousands) of visits ... It is therefore necessary to provide a quality and highly personalized. For example, in making contact well before the release of its news, offering exclusive (very popular blogs like TechCrunch) ... and of course the evening or gift vip!

However all have in common that can only have time and therefore we have always to say why the blogger would be an article about his business, and present this argument in his email presentation.

How to create a successful online community?

Loyalty often based on creating a community of users, here's an article about virtual communities, from design to promotion.

What is a virtual community?

A virtual community is a group of people who communicate through mail, Internet, mail, telephone, for professional, social, educational or otherwise.

The word virtual is used to signify that they are not face to face communication (as in a classic association). This community can use various tools to shape the internet, simply forum like Yahoo Answers, the real-time 3D world as SecondLife.com.

The concept of community also includes many types of content, whether forums as mutual www.commentcamarche.com, sites doctissimo.com of information, sharing sites like www.scoopeo.com of links, interest groups on Facebook.com ...

The virtual community is a multifaceted tool that allows you to federate about a subject or a specific need, to earn money by placing advertising on the pages, identify influencers in a sector of activity (and thus lock in the market) ...

The interactivity of this community is of course set by its creator, which will define the content: discussion between members or publications unilateral communication between the various members ...

5 key factors for successful virtual community!

1 - The community should be based on the needs of (future) members and not a tool or technology.

In fact, the most common error when trying to create a community on the Internet is to spend too much time on the choice of the tool or the desire to make the "Web 2.0" ...

It is better to spend more time analyzing the needs and expectations of future members to identify what will come and participate in this community.
Always ask yourself the question: What is it? Why a person should be on my group? What does it brings? What is that these users are looking for?

If necessary remember the Maslow pyramid, with the classification of the different needs of individuals.

You must offer your members at least 1 of these elements, possibly the most basic. For example, for security advice is to use the product in case of trouble, the other considers it to be recognized as an expert in the field with a ranking of the Top users ...

It should be noted that generally the users of a community are looking for one or two major functions, and all your ancillary functions will be little used or not ... We need to focus and do what your visitors are focusing (to have the visibility, find tips, communicate with each other, ask questions ...).

A perfect example of technological unpacking is unnecessary Digg Like Blogasty.com offering very many functions, but where 99% of users use only the publication of links, then there are functions "unnecessary "but who have taken much time to its author (mapping of the members listed on a map of France, xview a square in the news, groups with thematic live un ... like Twitter).

Warning: usually works for a community must be a part of users enjoy the benefits of membership of the community and lead by their dynamism remaining members ... This may be to offer free advice to land expert in then to sell their services to attract visitors to a website ...
It is difficult to find at the outset of users entirely voluntary as is the case on large forums www.Commentcamarche.com.

2 - Watch out for conflicts of interests among different populations.

Among your members, you have to distinguish different people have different motivations (the new, experts, users, resellers of products ...).

These populations can sometimes enter into conflict with each other or even among themselves (eg if there are several retailers of different products or different websites). You must determine the rules from the outset, even if it means excluding certain types of messages or populations (or limited to certain parts of the forum).

To do this you must, of course, moderate the forum, but also delegate this task to the most active users and more "transparent". These "super users" should be identified as such in order not to generate misunderstandings with other users (color, title ...).

Remember that there are different types of members (see below), and you have to identify contributors and creators to be the real engine of your virtual community.

Attention against to keep control of your community, or you may not be the master! Always be involved (or at least informed) of the various events and developments, otherwise you may become a victim of your community ... Indeed one of your competitors may infiltrate the community and use it against you (false rumors ...).

3 - Promote your community.

It is illusory to think that a community naturally attract your customers and prospects. You must plan a launch in order to recruit members.
As for your customers you should notify by email, possibly automatically include this community, save the information in your email signature, offer exclusive events or preview in this space (eg pre-launch VIP) , establish a newsletter containing the best articles ...
For prospects, the community may be the first step towards the brand by offering a community theme not exclusively related to your brand. This community will be more general, the more it will attract a wide audience.

We must not forget your influencers (bloggers, prescribers ...) that must also be included in the project long term, as they contribute to sustain over the long term your community.

4 - Encourage members to return.

A community that does not live (message, issues, events ...) is a community that died ... it means that you realize your own content, but you plan to let users generate content by themselves (questions, debates , competitions, votes ...).

The content must be updated regularly, and communication should be sent to members (at least every month). If you start a new community you will have to provide from the outset with a lot of content in a regular line to "make the sauce, and very often intervene to create life.

5 - Measure the success of your community.

Like any marketing tool is not directly related to the sale, a community tend to be quickly abandoned if it does not prove its relevance in the generation of revenue (sales, benefits and services ...).
You must clearly identify what is the turnover generated via a dashboard that allows you to justify the maintenance of a tool that is sometimes cumbersome.

For against do not limit yourself to just the margin generated: You must also take into account the improvement of the quality of services, sales of new services (eg the forum may be an additional service to technical support) ...

Finally time to leave your community to set up: it takes several weeks or months to see a community come alive. You must allow time to time.
How to start your community?

The start of the community can be very long (several weeks or months ...), should therefore follow a few rules to expand its virtual community:

- Highlight from the home page how to register and how to participate in the community, and simplify the procedure (to write a comment and only then nominate, do not ask to fill in forms too long ...) .

- Attract influencers of other topics close to yours. We just have to intervene in the communities and meet competitors by adding links to your own community or find blogs with issues close to yours.

- Produce at the outset content very high quality and high value added. This can be quickly respond to highly technical issues, post records practices ...

- Give visibility to new contributors (image of the member of days on the home page as in ClubMarketing.fr), and make sure that when you click on their profile the number of reading is recorded and that the links are clicked well tracked as coming from your site through Google Analytics so that your visitors contributor shows that you are responsible. It also give importance to your best contributors, creating a "private club", such as the Circle of Experts in Marketing www.marketing-etudiant.fr.

- Animate your community by organizing competitions and challenges, such as a contest of those who post the most information as regularly Doc-etudiant.fr.

- Be registered by Google to attract traffic via natural search. Indeed there are many communities whose content is not searchable by Google as protected by a password (eg communities Viadeo).

- Relay the contents of your community through a newsletter and / or a blog to promote the best content of the communities and make it your sounding board. In fact most members of a community that rarely do consult it, it must give them reasons to return. You can follow the example of Eric Dupin Citron.net-Press, which publishes every week a Top Hebdo links clicked most of Fuzz.fr.

- Explicitly ask your members to participate, it is enough to send a message to its members asking them to respond on a topic (survey, news ...) to give a boost to its community!

- Put some real in the virtual world: organize meetings physical, video-conference ... in order to forge stronger ties with your members.

To know what are the most important forums, you can download the map forums Francophone leaders.


What solution to create the Virtual Community?

There are many tools to create its virtual community. It is possible to create communities on private social networks like viadeo.com / Ning.com / Facebook.com / ... making it possible to capitalize on the pool of thousands of members who are already in these communities.
The interest is that these sites offer the most to create a community ready to use free! This means you do not need to manage all the technical aspect and you can focus on content. However please note that these sites are not designed for that purpose at the base and so you arrive very quickly to the limits ...
For example, in communities Viadeo.com it is not possible to add images, easily create dozens of categories ... In return, Viadeo has a very large community of professionals that you can attract and encourage them to join your network.

So there are more traditional tools to create free Forums turnkey such www.forumactif.com. The interest of these solutions is that they are perfectly suited for the management of a forum, and it is possible to shift from free (with a display of Adsense ads Print Engine Forums ), the model where you pay your own display advertising.

There are also solutions for creating communities such as thematic Pligg.com or Reddit to create its own Digg-Like. The value of these tools is to federate users around a specific topic and generate content by its users. For example www.fuzz.fr Digg Like the Press-Citron.net, Digg Like our www.conseilscreateur.com for entrepreneurs ...
The interest of these solutions is that it takes less than 2 hours to set up a site with minimum customizations (logo, translated into French ...).

To create communities beyond the sharing of links, it is also possible to use tools like Joomla, elgg.org (see example Vibstar) and Drupal.

It is also possible to create Twitter-Like its communities to create micro-blogging, use engines like http://twingr.com/et Laconica. As against these communities are very limited, because it is possible to publish messages about 140 characters ... without pictures or monitoring reactions or other frills! However this tool can be very interesting to create temporary communities (at a salon for his comments, students ...). It is also a way to involve its readers in the generation of content and enhance the membership of a group, such www.koodji.com of caledosphere.com.

It is also possible to use Wordpress to create a community, through the construction of a collaborative blog like LeJournalDublog.com or blog Safety Orange Business Services.

If you want a more personalized there are also fully customizable solutions, here is a list based on that Blog Dion Hinchcliffe, with favorites such as Joomla, Drupal and DotNetNuke (nb: the list is not ranked by order preferably you to choose according to your ambitions).

1. Joomla (free)
2. Drupal (free)
3. PHP-Nuke (free)
4. Zikula (free)
5. Sharepoint (Microsoft)
6. Lithium
7. DotNetNuke (Free)
8. Community Server
9. KickApps
10. Jive Software
11. Mambo
12. Lotus SameTime
13. OneSite
14. BoonEx
15. Crowdvine
16. Facebook Open Platform
17. Mzinga
18. Leverage Software
19. HiveLive
20. SocialGo
21. IglooSoftware
22. GroupSwim
23. SocialCast
24. Tomoye
25. Pinax
27. BlueKiwi (Start up French - Fee)
28. MediaWiki (toolbox used by Wikipedia)
29. elgg.org (free - allows you to create communities)
30. Typolight (free, an equivalent of Drupal)
31. Plone (Free)
32. Dolphin
33. PhpBB
34. shoutem.com (micro blogging free)

To go further visit the french version of this article.