Archives for May 2018

May 14, 2018

11 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Google Adwords can be a key component to driving new business for your business. Pay-per-click advertising can drive instant traffic to your website that can result in new leads, customers and ecommerce sales.

Related: 5 Google Pay-Per-Click Tricks To Save Your Business Money

If you are a business owner, entrepreneur or marketer who isn’t certified in Adwords, nor do you have the time to manage your campaign, a PPC agency could be a viable option to save time while making your campaign work smarter for your business. While a PPC company will likely take a percentage of ad spend or charge a flat fee, it is a better option than improperly managing a campaign. Yet, plenty of PPC agencies could mishandle your budget and campaign, which is why you need to ask the right questions.

I view PPC agencies in a similar way to golfers. There are a lot of people who can pick up a club and make contact with a golf ball. There are very few scratch golfers who can shoot near even par. Here are the questions you need to ask to determine if the PPC company you are looking to hire is more similar to a PGA golfer or a weekend warrior.

1. Will you provide search term results?

If you are not analyzing your search term results, you don’t have a true gauge of the quality of traffic that’s being driven to your website via PPC.

According to Google, this is the difference between a search term and a keyword: “A search term is the exact word or set of words a customer enters when searching on Google.com or one of their Search Network sites. A keyword is the word or set of words that AdWords advertisers create for a given ad group to target your ads to customers.”

I’m a visual learner, so let me show you what I’m talking about. Below is an example of keywords I’m bidding on within a client’s account. While these are the keywords I’m bidding on, other search terms will drive people to click on the advertisement (unless we’re bidding on exact match, which we’re not).

Most people will see the keyword report, but they won’t see the search terms report. In the example above, you’ll notice there is a “search terms” tab. Make sure to click on this to view this hidden gem (or pile of garbage, depending on how well your campaign is managed). Below, you’ll see some of the search terms that were pulled in for these keywords.

A couple of quick observations: If your law firm didn’t have a female on staff, the search term “female divorce attorney tampa” likely wouldn’t convert. If you didn’t have any reviews on your website, this should be something you consider. If you don’t offer free consultations, the keyword “free” also wouldn’t be viable for you.

Every business should analyze its search term reports and work with its PPC agency to determine what will convert and what won’t convert so it can add the proper negative keywords (read more about negative keywords in the next question to ask).

Related: PPC vs. SEO: What’s Best For Your Business?

2. How proactive will you be when it comes to adding negative keywords?

Once you dig into the search terms results, it is very easy to see how many search terms there are that won’t convert for your business. Even the best PPC managers will find search terms that come through that are complete garbage. When you see these low-performing keywords, you need to be proactive and add negative keywords either at the ad group or campaign level.

According to Google, a negative keyword is a type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase.

Below, you can see where the negative keywords tab is (within the old interface) and the negative keywords that were added within this campaign. By adding negative keywords, you will drastically improve the quality of search terms coming in from your advertisements.

Related: SEO vs. PPC: Knowing Which Is Right for Your Website

3. How much time will you take to understand my business?

As much as I pride myself on my PPC skills, when a search term comes in for an ecommerce skin care line, I’m not 100 percent certain the keyword will convert based on what I’m seeing in the search terms report. I’m not an expert in that line of work, nor is the PPC consultant you’ll be hiring.

For example, in Google Shopping, if a search term comes in for “retexturing scrub” and I’m seeing a lot of search volume for this based on a specific product, I need to make sure this is a relevant keyword for the client. That’s why I need to be in communication with the client and he or she needs to be proactive with the partnership.

As a business owner, entrepreneur or marketer, you need to make sure the PPC company is willing to spend the time learning your business and asking you the right questions. Does it need to have an intense understanding of your product line or service? Not necessarily. It does need to know your geo-specific area, your top performing products and your most profitable services (to name a few). It should also be checking in with you on negative keywords.

Related: Of the 4 Popular Pay-Per-Click Platforms, Which is Best for You?

4. How will you track conversions?

You’d be amazed at the amount of businesses who run Adwords campaigns yet don’t have the proper tracking in place. 

I can’t tell you how many people don’t have DNI tracking set up on their website. DNI is a dynamic phone number that swaps out after someone clicks on your advertisement and visits your site. If someone clicks on your advertisement and calls into your business, the PPC advertisement should get credit for this. Yet, many people don’t know how to do this, so they under-count conversions.

Within your Adwords account, if you click on “Tools” and then “Conversions,” it will pull up several conversion tracking options. To track phone calls, you will select the option for “phone calls” and then you’ll proceed to select “calls to a number on your site.”

This is the most complicated conversion to track, as you’ll need to place a DNI script on your website. You can reach out to a developer well-versed in Adwords, and she should be able to tackle this for you within 30 minutes.

Select “Phone calls.” 

Select “Calls to a phone number on your website.” 

For ecommerce websites, your business should track the amount of revenue generated from the sale after someone clicks on the advertisement so you can measure the ROAS (return on advertising spend).

If you don’t have the proper tracking, you can’t make the right decisions on whether to pause keywords or advertisements, which can cost you a lot of money. Make sure to ask what platform the agency uses for call recording and reporting and whether it has development resources to place pixels for all of your tracking needs.

Related: 4 Ways Advertising Agencies Can Protect Themselves From Click Fraud

5. What is your online advertising niche?

Just because someone is a PPC expert doesn’t mean he is proficient in Google Shopping. You need to ask about the niche of the PPC company you’ll be hiring. If the agency comes back and says they are experts in all areas, ask them what percentage of their clients’ ad spend is allocated toward Google Shopping versus standard PPC. What industries are they most well versed in?

Google Shopping (for ecommerce businesses) is a different beast compared to PPC. You want someone who has a high skill level in this specific area and knows the ins and outs of product catalogs.

You should also ask the PPC agency how much money it manages for its clients. While this is a personal question, if the company you are seeking to hire is transparent, it shouldn’t be afraid to give you a ballpark number. If it manages under $100,000 in ad spend, it is likely smaller and possibly not as established. If it manages over $1 million, it has some decent-sized businesses that trust it. If it is over $10 million, it either has one extremely large account or it likely has numerous businesses that trust it. There are plenty of individuals who handle less than $10,000 in ad spend and might be perfect for your company since they’ll give you more personalized attention.

Don’t be afraid to ask about their skill set, how much money they manage and ask for references — at least two to three!

Related: How to Distribute Your Marketing Budget Between SEO and PPC

6. Will you have ownership of your Adwords account?

This could be the most important question of all to ask. You need to make sure you have complete ownership and control of your Google Adwords account. There are a lot of agencies that will create your account within their own Adwords account and not relinquish access if you try and take control of your own campaign or take your business elsewhere. Additionally, they could withold information from you if you don’t have access to your account, such as the search terms report (which I mentioned earlier).

Make sure to set up a Google Adwords account using your own Gmail account. After setting up your own account, you can provide the agency with access without relinquishing ownership.

One of the most valuable components of Adwords is the data you collect within your campaigns. You don’t want to lose this advertising history.

Related: 7 Common Mistakes Companies Make With Google AdWords

7. What is the fee structure?

Some agencies will take a percentage of advertising spend. Others will work off of a flat fee. The more money you spend, the more inclined you’ll be to negotiate for a flat fee. If you spend $1 million per month in advertising, a percentage of ad spend likely won’t make sense for you since you’ll be giving up a large chunk of money to the agency or individual managing your account.

Make sure you aren’t paying an agency $1,000 a month if you are only spending $500 on advertising, unless it is doing an initial audit to lay the foundation for your campaign. Typical agency fees (based on ad spend) range from 10-20 percent, so keep that in mind when running the numbers. Some agencies will have minimum monthly requirements for their service offerings.

If you have a small budget and still want the assistance of a professional, an audit would be a better option. You can rest assured knowing your campaign was set up properly, you can run ads for a month or so and if you are seeing positive results, you can spend more money on advertising.

Related: 5 Secrets to Increasing Adwords ROI

8. Do you have development and design expertise?

There are a lot of businesses that are surprised when the PPC company they decided to hire doesn’t have the technical expertise to implement pixels on their website and a website developer is then another expense added into the equation. Make sure to ask whether agencies have the skills to implement code or if they’ll need to bring on a developer.

The same is true for landing pages. A solid landing page is an important factor for a successful PPC campaign. Does the company you are looking to hire offer landing page design as a core service offering, or will this be something you need in addition to their services?

While there are great landing page sites like Unbounce and Instapage where a non-developer or designer can create a lander using a customized template, it is good having someone who can make the page look pretty along with someone who knows what needs to be placed where to achieve a good conversion rate percentage.

May 13, 2018

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Moms are an incredibly important demographic to reach when it comes to branding and marketing. With 85 million moms in the U.S., it’s safe to say their opinions are highly influential when it comes to making purchasing decisions for themselves and their families.

Related: Teach Yourself Online Marketing With This Simple Technique

Unfortunately, businesses and brands tend to miss the major marketing opportunity here because they don’t understand how moms engage online, consume media or even buy products. So to help you out, here are some insights you should know.

According to recent research, 56 percent of American moms say they feel marketers simply don’t understand them. These surveyed mothers admitted that brands often depict them as “saintly, perfect people with the hardest job in the world,” while instead they say they feel “flawed and idiosyncratic.” Not only that but motherhood isn’t a job — it’s an emotional role. And a mother’s role varies from a career person to a life coach and a friend.

Related: 7 Dreadful Marketing Mistakes to Avoid in 2018

Another important insight that brands should be aware of when it comes to mothers is that they are tech-savvy. Research finds that 96 percent of American moms use the internet and 87 percent are on social media. Overall, the average American mom spends 3.5 hours a day online and of that, 2.25 hours on social media. Fifty-five percent primarily use smartphones to access the internet, while 36 percent use desktop computers and 9 percent use tablets.

Related: Why Podcasting Is the Next Marketing Frontier

Mothers are complex creatures, and there’s lots more to learn about them — especially when it comes to marketing. For more, check out MDG Advertising’s infographic below.

May 12, 2018

2 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Do you constantly daydream about getting away, whether on a vacation or just out of the office? Maybe you’re not daydreaming, but perhaps you often find yourself bored, burnt out or even envying others. If so, then you might be in a bit of a rut.

Related: How I Got Out of a Funk (and Saved My Business)

A good tactic for combatting these thoughts is by doing something spontaneous such as leaving work early to see a show or exploring a new area of the city you live in. There’s no need to do something huge such as plan an international vacation or quit your job. Instead, think of fun things you can do locally and last minute.

Related: Getting Out of a Professional Rut

Try focusing on yourself and do something that used to make you happy. Whether it’s a round of sudoku or a jog in the park, focus on your own well-being and happiness. And if you’re feeling extra ambitious, you can even try to step outside of your comfort zone and develop a new habit. Some ideas might be to learn how to surf, volunteer at your local community center or take an acting class.

Related: 12 Upbeat Ellen DeGeneres Quotes to Put You in a Good Mood

There are plenty of things you can do to jumpstart your passion and reignite the light in your life. To learn more, check out NetCredit’s infographic below.

May 11, 2018

5 min read

In 2003, Anthony Casalena’s parents gave him a $30,000 loan to help get his business idea up and running. Fast-forward to 2018 and it would appear that Casalena is more than able to pay that loan back. The company he started with the $30,000 is Squarespace, the website-building resource that now has over 800 employees and its logo emblazoned on the jerseys of the New York Knicks. Also, according to Bloomberg, a valuation of $1.7 billion. Not too shabby.

Casalena hasn’t forgotten how that loan made all the difference, and so this year Squarespace and the New York Knicks teamed up to create the “Make It Awards,” a program that provided four entrepreneurs with a $30,000 grant and use of Squarespace’s marketing muscle.

Entrepreneur connected with Casalena to learn about his company’s journey from an idea that existed in his head to a logo that is stitched on NBA All-star Kristaps Porzingis’s jersey, and where he hopes it heads next.

Related: 10 Tips for Web Design That Drives Sales

Tell us about the “aha!” moment for creating Squarespace.

When I started programming Squarespace in 2003, I wasn’t intending to start a company. I initially created Squarespace for myself for two reasons. First, I was frustrated that there were many different pieces of software that had to be integrated in order to create a website — page-building software, blogging software, hosting and website analytics software were all separate. Secondly, I was bothered by the fact that there seemed to be no products on the market that were paying attention to design.

There was a moment in my dorm room when I was still developing Squarespace where a friend offered me some small amount of money for the platform, thinking it would be useful for his website. It helped me realize that the problem I was solving for myself was something a lot of people might be struggling with.

How did it feel the first time you saw your logo on a Knicks jersey?

Pretty incredible. My first apartment in New York was actually 10 blocks south of Madison Square Garden, and I know the area well. The Garden and the Knicks are iconic, and it feels great to be a part of what makes this city amazing.

Credit: MSG Photos

What was the toughest part of getting Squarespace off the ground?

I ran Squarespace almost by myself for a number of years, which was immensely stressful. In the early years, I often resorted to using engineering to solve problems versus making other decisions that might have made Squarespace into something that resembled a company a bit faster. I was very slow to hire a team, and when I did, I think it took a while for things to click into place.

Related: Hiring Your First Employee? 5 Things You Need to Know.

What do you wish you knew then what you know now about fundraising?

I’ve actually tried to minimize the amount of money I’ve had to raise for the business. Squarespace has always been a company that generates revenue, so our dependence on outside capital has always been quite limited. The rounds we have raised have been used in very specific and strategic ways in our history, versus rounds that we’ve had to raise to “keep it going” or to try and prove our model. All that said, I think it’s important for anyone raising capital to understand what the exit terms are on that money. Do your investors want to be in for a year? A decade? What kind of return qualifies as a success for them, and how do they want to achieve that result with you? It’s important to keep everyone aligned around outcomes and timeframes.

Did you ever doubt yourself when you were starting out?

I typically initially approach situations as a skeptic, so I think there was a healthy understanding of the amount of uncertainty involved in running and scaling a business. Squarespace has always been successful at earning initial traction and leaning into that growth in all of our endeavors. That doesn’t mean that every idea we launch works, but we try and move away from our mistakes quickly and instead move on to what is working. I think the ability to be nimble in that way has been encouraging, and it helps get us through periods where things are bumpy.

Related: Tim Ferriss Explains How to Scale Your Business in 3 Steps

Why is the Make It Awards initiative important to you?

I got a $30,000 loan from my parents when I was first starting Squarespace, which I used for our initial servers and to get some early design work done. So along with The Madison Square Garden Company, we thought it was great to be able to build on that notion and give away a symbolic $30,000 to a few local entrepreneurs who were doing great things. Squarespace as a company is about helping people with creative ideas succeed, and this initiative is just another way we can highlight and help entrepreneurs who are just getting started.

May 10, 2018

6 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Let’s be honest — there aren’t enough hours in the week for most entrepreneurs. Days run together and soon you are begging for an eighth day of the week to catch up. We call this imaginary day “Smursday.”

Related: How to Manage Time With 10 Tips That Work

When you’re working this hard, it’s difficult to distinguish when your week starts and ends. It can be even harder to keep track of your startup’s accomplishments and accurately measure your progress. Velocity needs structure.

Now, I’m not telling you to slow down. Even if I did, you probably wouldn’t listen. But, unless you can actually create a new day of the week, getting more done means getting more from the hours you have. I’ve picked up a few strategies over the years, which were recently put to the test when our team was weeks away from launch with months of work remaining. With these tips, we clearly defined our work days, maximized productivity and launched on target.

Tip 1: Establish a regular cadence of commitment and celebration.

Frequently measuring progress toward your goals is just as important as setting the goals themselves. With everyone working at top speed, even one week of execution without direction can be treacherous. Check-ins force conversations that answer questions like: Is everyone focused on the highest-priority projects? Does everyone agree this week’s focus will produce the most valuable results for the company? What interdependencies will exist three months from now based on today’s work?

At Clearcover, we use an Objectives and Key Results (OKR) framework for goal setting at every level — from company strategy all the way down to weekly priorities. The “objective” part of OKRs is a rally cry — it is meant to be something bold, broad and a little bit scary. Imagine it as the type of accomplishment that inspires team members to get out of bed each morning. The “key results” are the quantifiable measures of success in reaching that objective.

Related: Get it Done: 35 Habits of the Most Productive People (Infographic)

While the OKR process helps us establish direction, it doesn’t necessarily ensure we’re making progress toward those goals. So, we take time every Monday to develop our individual work priorities (called “Monday Commitments”) and share them with each other. These check-ins communicate everyone’s focus areas for the week, establish why we’re doing them and identify how we can help each other along the way.

Then on Friday, we get together to celebrate “wins” — the things we’re most proud of accomplishing that week. This includes employees sharing their big milestones, small victories and even what was learned from mistakes or failures. On Fridays at Clearcover, one person is awarded a stuffed banana for taking a bold risk that didn’t pay off. Beyond the obviously awesome payoff of a bright yellow plush fruit to display on one’s desk, this “distinction” represents our commitment to recognizing risk even when it doesn’t reap reward.

Our “Monday Commitments” and “Friday Wins” practice not only supports our regular cadence of goal setting and measuring progress, but also allows the team to take a moment and pause, understand what everyone does all day and appreciate what each discipline means to our overall success.

Tip 2: Develop frameworks for decision-making and time management.

In a fast-paced, dynamic environment, entrepreneurs need to be able to make quick decisions and focus their energies on the areas that will impact their business the most. Lots of time can be wasted on low-value tasks or trying to make perfect choices.

To encourage focus on high-value tasks, we use the “Eisenhower box.” The Eisenhower box classifies actions based on urgency and importance. Dealing with customer issues, for example, is an urgent and important task, while grabbing coffee with that person who messaged you on LinkedIn may fall under low urgency, low importance. By classifying your to-do list using these criteria, you can better manage your time and eliminate low-value action items — you’ll get more productivity out of fewer hours.

Related: 4 Reliable Signs Someone Is About to Waste Your Time

To complement the Eisenhower box, we use a “cost and reversibility matrix” to encourage high-velocity decision-making. Just like the Eisenhower box, the Clearcover matrix sorts actions based on two important questions:

1. Is the decision easily reversible?
2. Is being wrong costly?

Image Credit: Courtesy of Clearcover

If the decision is easily reversible and not costly, don’t waste time on the decision — go ahead with experimentation. Similarly, if the risk is costly and change is permanent, employees should engage in a thorough and deliberate decision-making process.

The cost reversibility matrix enables team members to move quickly and empowers them to be independent leaders of their own projects. This way, quality of work doesn’t have to be sacrificed for organizational speed.

Tip 3: Commit to distraction-free productivity.

Stop me if you’ve heard this before: You set a goal at the beginning of the week, block off time in your calendar and then, halfway through your work, you get a message on your phone. Before you know it, you’ve wasted an hour texting and catching up on miscellaneous emails.

Related: 10 Simple Things Successful People Do Every Morning (Infographic)

Thanks to the internet and technology, our attention span is shorter than ever. This makes it doubly important to commit to productivity. Turn off your phone, disable calendar notifications, physically isolate yourself for blocks of time or try Chrome extensions like HabitLab. Seemingly small attention-grabbers pull you out of your work rhythm, which is damaging to maintaining deep work — the type of work required for maximum productivity.

Now, no matter how hard you try to disconnect, emails and calls will inevitably find you. It’s important to resist the quick, short bursts of dopamine you get from answering them. Your monkey brain will encourage you to procrastinate, making it harder to complete simple tasks accurately and on time. To hone your focus, I recommend auditing your day to see how much time you spend on both menial and important tasks. This will help illuminate where you’re wasting time and where you need to trim activities that keep you from achieving your goals.

As an entrepreneur, there will never be enough time in the week to accomplish all of your goals. But, by clearly defining your weekly priorities, celebrating the wins and the mistakes, empowering your teammates and being disciplined with your time and attention, even the busiest of entrepreneurs can get more out of every week — even ones with only seven days.

Related Video: Powerful Productivity Tips to Get More Done in Less Time

May 9, 2018

4 min read

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Over the last two weeks, I have shared steps you can take to identify your next big thing and an exercise that will help you align your passion and profession with your vision. The final step you need to make your dream come true is to ready yourself and make needed changes.

When it comes to making big changes in the world around you, you must first challenge your mindset. Mindset is a powerful thing. Our mindsets determine everything: what we believe to be true, our value systems and the actions we take. And what got you to where you are today may not necessarily get you to where you want to be tomorrow. The good news is that there is a way to change your mind, change your actions and change your future.

Image credit: PSDNetwork, LLC

Related: Don’t Wait for the Competition to Disrupt Your Business — Disrupt Yourself

1. Define your disrupter mindset. 

Live as if your vision was a reality. For example, my vision is to change the way the world views female leaders and how female leaders view themselves in business, politics and society. To engender this type of change, I need to hold many new beliefs and actions, ones that will disrupt the status quo mindset.

I chose three disrupter mindsets that I must adopt and believe to be true. In order to live in a world where female leaders are seen as equal to men, I need many other people to also hold that belief. Therefore, I must value transformational leadership. Because there is incredible risk to my reputation, business opportunities and personal relationship, I also must view that risk as an enabler. Finally, because I am not a household name, I must believe that I can cultivate a platform that is used to orchestrate a new conversation.

As you consider your personal transformation, try to limit your mindset shifts to one to three only. It is too difficult to change too many things at once. After you have mastered a disrupter mindset, you can replace them with new focus areas.

Related: Fake Disruption: 3 Companies That Claimed to Change the Game — But Didn’t.

2. Identify your status quo mindset.

For this next step, think about the mindset you hold that keeps the status quo alive. If I put more value in transactions than transformations, I would favor ego metrics — where the number of powerful people on my contact list matters — more than the value-based relationships I hold and cultivate.

The topic of gender equity is a passionate one and instills fear in the people who currently thrive in the current system. If I were one of those people, I would place greater emphasis on risk. The potential barriers that put my reputation, relationships and future at risk would consume my thoughts and would potentially cause me not to move forward.

Finally, the status quo mindset is that in order to be a person of influence, one who could drive meaningful transformation, you first have to work hard toward what you want, earn enough money and power and only then could you be a voice and leader of disruption.

Related: Disruption Is More Than the Buzzword It’s Become

3. Explain the impact of living your disrupter mindset.

Take a step back. Think about the impact of staying in the status quo mindset, where all your actions are driven by your existing behavior. Chances are, things will stay the same or get worse. We live in a world of constant change that results in increasing complexity. If you don’t change your mindset and, ultimately, your behavior, no change will happen. Even if it does, it might not be the change you believe to be needed.

Now, consider the impact of moving from a status quo mindset to that of a disrupter. In the example above, the building blocks of cultural transformation are place. Through rich, trusting and mutually relationships, stakeholders and supporters will be able to help navigate barriers by turning them into strategies waiting to happen. In short, every risk becomes an opportunity to disrupt what’s not working or what’s in the way, clearing the path for the people coming behind you.