Click to go to the public home page for Lucid Minds

Vibrant Life Plans Electronic Information System Plan Data Admin Scale For Vibrant Life
New Theme Page Policies Programs Notes Table Of Contents
  New Database eCourses Quizzes Search

The Google Advertising Program

Finalized On September 10, 2003
Now considered "Final" subject only to minor changes

Last Revised On September 12, 2003

 

LWT's Background Data

Google Company Explanation

Comments By Others About Google

 

Major Target:

To learn about the Google AdWords Program and, when approved, implement such a campaign for Vibrant Life.  This includes writing a guiding Policy about this.

Primary Target:

Somebody There:  Tom Martin is the IC for this Project

The Worthwhile Purpose is that search engines still account for a very large percentage of all web visits.  Our Vibrant Life web sites have a large percentage of "word of mouth referrals" and we have, heretofore, considered that a huge plus for us. 

Also our web page design has been so good that we have literally hundreds of search engine rankings in the first ten positions.  Thus, even though we get mostly word-of-mouth visitors, we still get many visitors because of our dominant position in Search Engine rankings for key words/phrases related to "oral chelation."

In fact we can be pleased with both sources for visitors, but we are NOT getting the many thousands of prospective customers who are NOT looking for "oral chelation" or not referred by a friend --  but are looking for more traditional search terms.  This Program contemplates a Google WordAd for a key word/phrase that might be used by persons looking for much more traditional advice or products related to heart disease than "chelation therapy."

Somebody taking responsibility for the area or action:  Tom Martin. This can be changed to be Nick Reid, with Karl's approval. Both of them can work on the Project, but there is still only one I/C.  Tom should realize that while there are mechanical and programming aspects to this Program, there are also sophisticated marketing and promotion aspects to this Program.  This is, at the core, a Program about the creative thinking that goes into Marketing, not computer programming or animation.

Form of Organization Planned Well:  Karl Loren is the Plan I/C, and this web site presents the various elements of the Plan.

Form of Organization Held or Reestablished:  Tom Martin reports progress to Karl Loren and Karl keeps the work within the Plan, and revises the Plan, as necessary so that it always covers the work being done.

Organization Operating:  The organization for this Project is and has been operating.

Vital Target #1:

You must read the background information on this Google AdWord Campaign.

Read the WSJ Article About the New Popularity of Web Ads

After a downturn that threatened to wipe out the nascent Internet-ad industry, big advertisers are showing renewed interest in touting their wares on the Web. Overall, purchases of Web ads rose to $3.2 billion in the first half of this year, from $2.8 billion in the same period last year, according to Evaliant, the online unit of market researcher TNS Media Intelligence/CMR.

Read the comments about this by my son, LWT.

Read the official Google Description of the service.

Comments By Others About Google

There are many web design services now offering to "manage" your Google AdWord campaign. Many of them make dire claims of why you will "fail" unless you have their special help. It is worth reading some of these to make sure we can do it ourselves.

 

Vital Target #2:

Subscribe to the Wordtracker Service.  I have had a subscription to this before. I believe it will be very useful to us for many purposes related to promotion.  It takes some real study to understand all the terms and features.  Charge the cost on the AMEX business card.

Note that this company (Wordtracker) is associated with Web Position.

Click here for an this-site page with much of the explanation of what this service does.

Click here for the free trial page, check it out. Spend a few hours on this service until you understand it well.

Vital Target #3:

Recognize that another vital purpose for THIS program is to give Karl more practice in writing Programs and to give Tom Martin more practice in learning about and using the "programming" tools developed by Mr. Hubbard.

Vital Target #4:

In this program, as well as most others, you will be bumping into many other web sites.  It would be good to observe these and start cataloging those features in various webs that you think of as good or bad web design.  I happen to think that the Google pages are well designed and would use them as a "good role model" to develop our own standards.

Recognize that you will be developing a Company Policy or an Article for the Public, on the best criteria for the design of various web pages.  For instance, my own web page design often features a "page" which, if printed, would take up 30 or more pages of paper.  This is technically a single file.  It may also be called a "single page" but if we are careful with our language it would be considered a "30 page file."

Generally, those pages which YOU (Tom Martin) designed for www.organicgermanium.net were "short" and there would then be many more separate files.

I believe the general consensus among web designers is that files should be short -- even short enough so that no scrolling is necessary.

It is vital that you do not have a final fixed opinion on this matter, but start noticing various webs that you visit, such as the pages for the Google AdWord service (which features mostly very short pages) and start building a logical "ideal scene" for a web page.  I may have to change my own opinions on this, but want to see an analytical and logical explanation of the best criteria.

If it where possible measure the "use" of some of my long pages (by how many seconds Urchin reports that people might spend on a web or page) versus the short pages, as in www.organicgermanium.net .

Vital Target #5:

We had a very comparable campaign in the early years of Vibrant Life, when we were placing print ads in a newspaper called The Spotlight.

We found that generally a larger ad got more response than a smaller ad -- that when an ad would cost $100 the result in about 20 people who asked for a free copy of the tape lecture (on heart disease) we were offering.  That made the cost of getting ONE name about $5.00 plus about another $5.00 for postage and cost of sending the cassette tape.

If we spent $400 on a larger ad, we still got the same cost of response -- since we got more responses for the larger ad.  We might well get 80 responses.  One of the things I "played with" was different size ads to see if the cost per response was lower or higher.

We then figured (partly at first by estimate, then by results) that about 20% of the people who got the tape became customers. The cost per customer was then $25 each.  It was then fairly easy to estimate the "average first order size" and figure the "sales per customer -- first order."

The projections became less exact when we then figured the repeat-order rate, and a total expected sales during a one-year period, but it appeared that we sold at least $300 per year to each customer (accounting for some who bought more and some who bought less).  That meant that we paid about $25 to get one customer who ordered $300 in the first year.

These were figures back when the "dollar" was worth more, and our prices were lower than now. 

That meant we were paying about an 8% commission on those sales to get the customer.   The continuing sales in subsequent years, and the referrals we might have received from any one such customer made this process all the more attractive.

We considered that the 8% commission was a fair amount and that as long as we could continue to get the same types of results with continued advertising, it was worthwhile to do.

We quit advertising in The Spotlight after it appeared that we were paying about $25 per request, rather than $5.  At this rate the conversion of requests for information (tape) into customers may have also dropped, but it was already too expensive to continue.  Just on the basis of the $25 cost per request, our commission rate would rise to about 40%, rather than 8% and that seemed too high.

I judged that I had "saturated" the subscriber list of The Spotlight -- with ads that ran in many issues of the newspaper.

Very similar reasoning must be used in judging the "return on investment" ("ROI") in the Google AdWord Campaign.

Vital Target 5A:  This is data I found only after some vital new data was discovered about a service offered by Google, called "Froogle."  That information is HERE  and HERE.  I have developed a separate project to deal with "Froogle" on this page, but this Froogle information should be factored into the Google WordAd Program, as well.

Operating Target #1

I want to use www.newheartplan.com as the target web site to which we want the click-throughs to aim.  (Projects can then be developed to use other web sites and other AdWords.  You can plan for a similar campaign to aim at www.organicgermanium.net following the same procedures as developed in this program.  Also, for www.emmessar.com_)

Start gathering data about this web site so we can further plan the proper words for the campaign.

This web site was developed to be a miniature of the www.oralchelation.com web site.  This web site is currently getting only one or zero visitors per day.  Thus, it is a good choice to see what happens when we turn on a new campaign aimed at just this site.  This web site is apparently not indexed by Google.  A search for "link:www.newheartplan.com" shows no links to this site. 

Please verify that my entry phrase was the correct one to look for links, and check any other way you can to see if this site is indexed by Google.

Order #1:  Go through each of the pages on this web site -- check each and every link to be sure it goes to somewhere intended.  Many of the links will, properly, lead to other web sites.  That is OK.  But, I want to be sure there are no broken links.  This is a process that eventually must be done for all 95,000 pages on all 25 web sites -- so you can also develop a "Project" to do this when we can assign an apprentice to do the work.

Order #2:  There are SOME links I do want to get changed/fixed.  On the next-referenced link below, for instance there is a note to "send this page to a friend" which shows a wrong link.  Look at this page:  http://www.newheartplan.com/oralchelation/p5.htm

Find any more pages like this one.  Also, there are pages that show "Write to Karl Loren" and those pages include a reference in the resulting eMail that mentions a different web site than the one from which it is being sent. These need to be corrected to refer, only, to www.newheartplan.com Generally I fix these by working within the HTML code.

 

Operating Target #2

Karl Loren is to do some considerable editing on this site. This site was originally designed to work with Karl's radio interviews.  References to radio interviews will be taken out and other changes to keep more of the reading within this web site rather than linking to other web sites.  Karl Loren is responsible for this target.

The later editing will depend on the words we settle on for the Adword campaign.  I would expect to create "special" pages to emphasize the specific key word/phrase we then use in the Adword campaign.  There could be a dozen or more of these "special pages" each being its own portal into the rest of the web.  For instance, if a keyword for the campaign is "bypass surgery alternative" there should then be a single target page for the Google ads that pop up for that term and this single page should be optimized for that phrase with Page Critique.  Karl will do this, but you can help also.

Operating Target #3

A Web Position Mission should be configured to run weekly, use Google as the only choice of search engines.  Insert into the "key words" list all those words currently used for the mission for www.oralchelation.com and with www.chelationtherapyonline.com that have anything to do with heart disease or oral chelation.  Get this mission started into scheduling right away.  (Nick Reid is generally IC for a large program to get all of Web Position working again.)

Operating Target #4

Dream up a large list of possible key words and/or key phrases.  Keep track of all words/phrases tested, and test these in a regular Google search.  Note for each such word/phrase three items for each such search:

Key Word/Phrase Number of Results Number of Sponsored Ads Date
bypass surgery 609,000 4 September 7, 2003
by pass surgery 1,040,000 4 September 7, 2003
bypass surgery alternative 167,000 5 September 7, 2003
by pass surgery alternative 148,000 5 September 7, 2003
bypass surgery alternatives 22,600 4 September 7, 2003
by pass surgery alternatives 60,200 1 September 7, 2003
heart disease 4,350,000 3 September 7, 2003
"heart disease" 2,660,000 6 September 10, 2003
stroke recovery 560,000 5 September 7, 2003
heart attack 3,910,000 3 September 7, 2003
false cholesterol danger 8,940 8 September 8, 2003
Note:  The above key phrase already produces one of our web sites as the top ranking site. 
stroke prevention 784,000 2 September 8, 2003
"bypass surgery alternative" 17 5 September 9, 2003
"by pass surgery alternative" 1 5 September 9, 2003
heart disease alternative 1,560,000 5 September 9, 2003
"heart disease alternative" 306 5 September 9, 2003
oral chelation 54,000 1/8 September 9, 2003
"oral chelation" 24,000 1/8 September 9, 2003
The Top Sponsored Ad is NOT oral chelation.  It is from a drug company that wants to woo people looking for a non-drug approach back to using their drug!  This company is actually only promoting trials for cancer treatment.  So, they are paying a very high premium to have their ad appear even when the search term has nothing to do with their service.

Our Web is the number ranked web site for this term.  Yet, out of ten rankings, we have only 3 listings.  So, someone entering this term will see our web featured prominently, but our own success is both driving others to optimize their webs and to pay for sponsored ads!

One of these sponsored ads is NOT selling "oral chelation" but is selling only their own intravenous chelation therapy.  They are obviously willing to pay for a sponsored ad on the term "oral chelation" because they know that has term has become a "hot button" on the web.  The other ads were offering "oral chelation" that I consider "junk products."  We have here included MLMs that sell something they call "oral chelation" and their individual distributors seem to be willing to spend their money to get impressions even though they will never make enough profit to pay for these ads for very long.

We so much dominate the term of "oral chelation" that it has proven very hard for others to get any good ranking, yet they see the apparent success we have, they can easily drum up a formula and offer "oral chelation," so they are prime candidates for paying Google for an AdWord campaign.  There are actually EIGHT different sponsored ads for this term.

We may dislike these sponsored ads, but they are a fact of life in our marketplace and we should understand them and use them ourselves, to take business away from those who might have high rankings for NON-ORAL CHELATION products, but where our sponsored ad can attract enough people to pay for itself and more.

nondrug heart disease 3,150 1/3 September 9, 2003
non drug heart disease 1,100,000 6 September 9, 2003
"non drug heart disease" 0 1/5 September 9, 2003
       

A bigger, more complete chart like the above should be gathered and published on its own page, in Notes, and linked to your report on this Target.

Operating Target #5

Do the same here as in Target #4, but using Wordtracker as the tool.

In this usage we would not normally expect an "oral chelation" web site to ever get a high ranking in a search engine for "heart attack alternative" but we can expect to get good click throughs to this web site with a sponsored ad instead of the "earned" ranking.

This is further illustrated in the Wordtracker page:

Hi Karl,

Welcome to the Wordtracker trial!

Your aim is to discover frequently used keywords with little or no competition. Use them to generate traffic to your website

We do NOT want or need to use our web page design skill to get a high ranking. We are using the paid sponsor links to get the visitors.  When I did this Wordtracker trial, myself, I published my results HERE.

Using this tool, the chart of results would be something like shown here.  You should understand this page thoroughly. When we have subscribed you would be able to get a very similar report, but with more choices and alternatives.  In particular understand the meaning of this section.

Order #1:  Demonstrate that you now understand how to work with the Google and the Wordtracker tools to come up with prospective key words/phrases for the Google AdWord campaign.

Write me a note of that understanding.  Publish your note in the "notes" section of this web, including a link and short description about the "note" on the "home page of the notes section."

Operating Target #6

From the above actions, #4 and #5, do some creative thinking on what might be the right words for us to use in an AdWord Campaign.  Keep in mind that the words used in the ultimate ads are just as important.  For instance you can avoid the large number of "impressions" of using "heart disease" as the words being paid for, and use "heart disease alternative" as OUR paid-for words.

But, if Google would allow this, we could choose a very broad key word, such as "heart disease" and narrow the click throughs, deliberately, by having the resulting ad feature the words "oral chelation."  Only a few of those who are interested in "heart disease" would likely click on our ad, but those who do would be very good prospects.  Google will not allow an ad to stay in use that gets a large number of impressions but a small number of click throughs.  It is worthwhile, however, using this technique as well as we can and stay within the Google acceptance level.

Consider these criteria, but also suggest additional criteria or considerations:

Criteria #1:  A traditional person might click on an ad NOT containing the key word, "alternative," and have no real interest in a site promoting an alternative to, for instance, bypass surgery.  We might pay for lots of click-throughs, but there was little screening of his original interest as there would be if "alternative" were a word included in the search.  Note from above that we can do our "screening" with the words in our ad as well as the word we pay for to Google.

Criteria #2:  A person already oriented toward alternatives might be more likely to read and buy than the guy above.  Thus the key word/phrase should include some "alternative" flavor if we want to "narrow the scope" with the words paid for. What are the synonyms for "alternative?"  Google has a "synonym tool -- use it.  Another possible word to screen our viewers would be "fake" making reference to "fake cholesterol danger."

Criteria #3:  A key word/phrase with relatively small number of results would likely mean that is not a popular word/phrase?  But, then we should have by now subscribed to "word tracker" service and check out what words/phrases are most used in search engines, and create a chart showing that type of result too.

Criteria #4:  It is entirely possible to design a Google AdWord Campaign with several different key words/phrases, even to each operate at the same time, and each to link to a different page on the target web -- a target page that emphasizes the key word/phrase.

Thus, you can have one campaign with seven key words paid for and several alternative text ads associate with THOSE key words -- to test which gives the best results. Then, another campaign can be designed to pay for different key words and use different text ads.  There are many complexities to this process.

Order #1:  Write your conclusions and ideas on words as a NOTE, publish, and notify me that it is published.  Keep in mind that the general agreement among Google Adword users is that selection of the key words is the most important part of the campaign.  (Writing the text ad is probably next most important, with the content of the target page being important for turning a "click-through" into a customer.)

Order #2:  Keep Karl Loren informed on so that under Operating Target #2 he can create or revise pages for the target links from the AdWord Campaign.

Operating Target #7

Re-study the Google advices on picking key words/phrases.  Here is a verbal overview if you have not previously seen it.

New! Click here to view our online tutorial and discover the benefits of keyword matching options.

Operating Target #8

Consider including at least one foreign country for our ads to appear in.  The targeted page should include either a reference to, or actual data on the payment, shipping and customs details for us to ship to that country.  If we have any testimonials from that country, they would be good to reference or link to a special collection of them.  Consult Maia on which countries might be good to use for a trial.  Get several probable order packages, get the shipping weights and actual costs by a few different methods -- all to be published on the target page.  Foreign customers are likely to be concerned with shipping and customs as much as the effectiveness of the product.

Vital Target #6:

By this time you have already done a lot of research and reading on AdWord.  Now is the time to get into the sophisticated analysis of what key words/phrases we should use in a trial.

Realize that MOST people who will be interested in AdWord with Google are those whose web sites are not ranking very high in the search engines.  Many of these have poor web design, but there are some search categories (like "heart disease") with such a large number of webs that it would be very hard, by page optimization alone, to achieve a high ranking in a search engine.

So, for these people, they can "PAY" money to get a top listing.

Thus, the person has a service he thinks all "heart disease recovery patients" should know about. Despite his best page optimization he can't get a high ranking.  So, he pays for a sponsored link when someone enters the term "heart disease."

If you enter "heart disease" (without quote marks) in Google, you get about 4,000,000 possible web results, and it would be very hard to be in the top ten of those web rankings.

If you enter "heart disease" (with quotes), you get 2,660,000 possible web sites.

If you enter "heart disease recovery" (without quotes), you get 793,000 possible web sites. 

If you pay for a Google ad for "heart disease recovery" (without quotes) your interest (heart disease recovery) however, would be listed near the top of the 793,000 webs.

But, if you pay for a Google ad that allows the add to appear ONLY when "heart disease recovery" (with quote marks) is used, your "competition would only be the 74 webs that come up for that type of query.

You might then check with Wordtracker using that term, with quotes, to find out how many times that exact term has been entered in search engines in the past 60 days.  If that term (in quotes) has a large popularity, with only 74 web sites, then it would be a good term to use.

You begin to see the analysis that lies behind picking a key word/phrase.  The words used in the text ad are just about as important and it is the combination of the paid-for words with the text words that results in high value to us.

Now, the above still relates to the guy who sells "heart disease recovery" products, and can't get a high search engine ranking for his web.  It might make good sense for him to pay for a sponsored ad for "heart disease recovery" (with quotes), to make sure that HIS ad appears on the first page, and to make sure that the browser has entered in this rather rare, but exact phrase.

Thus, to pick a good word for an Ad campaign, we need to estimate what phrases are going to be entered by the browsers, for what conditions he may have.  Casual browsers who have just had a "heart attack" might enter "heart attack" in the search engine.  They might enter "heart attack recovery" or "heart attack consequences" or any of many other phrases.  The creative marketing approach here is the figure out what words and phrases are likely to be entered by what people, with what interests, and couple all this with how the words in the text ad will influence that person.

We are actually going after a different type of browser.

We figure that EVERY ONE who is interested in "heart disease" (remember there are 4,000,000 webs for this term, SHOULD be interested in "oral chelation."

Certainly if someone already knows about "oral chelation" and enters THAT phrase in a search engine, he will find our webs in the top ten.

But, if he enters "heart disease" he won't find us in the top ten.

So, we have to now guess at what the guy is "thinking about" when he enters the vague term "heart disease???"

Or, we have to pick some other term that narrows down the interest of the browser.  OR, we can leave the paid-for words "broad" and do our narrowing with the text ad, if Google will allow that because, remember, Google is interested in the largest possible amount of money per impression, not per click-through.

How do we narrow down the interest from the general (where there may be millions of click-throughs from people who have no real interest in oral chelation) to something MORE general than "oral chelation" but LESS GENERAL than "heart disease."

This is where some good thinking is called for.  If we use "bypass surgery" as the AdWord we will be getting lots of people, probably, who only want traditional information about this term.  If we enter "by pass surgery alternative" we get a much smaller number of web sites, probably the browsers would be more interested in our sponsored ad, and we don't show up in that listing.

If we use the broad term, "bypass surgery" we can still narrow the clicks by using "narrow" words in the text ad.  (I doubt that Google would allow us to use "heart disease" as the paid word and have our test ad feature "oral chelation."  Such an ad would get us millions of impressions, but few clicks. It would be very good for us since we pay for clicks, not impressions. But, Google would be getting a very low return on the impressions that we get and probably not allow such a campaign to be run. You should find out, however.

Should we design a page for THAT term?  There will always be decisions to make in this area -- between designing a page for a term or paying for a sponsored ad for that term.

The sponsored ad can, also, be for any one of several different terms entered by the browser.

So, there is a lot to consider in picking words and phrases for both the paid words and the ad text words.  According to some services that offer to help you with this job there are some that imply that "without their expert help" you would fail in picking the "right" search word/phrase or text ad words.  It is the combination of these two parameters that needs to be juggled.

Operating Target #9

You should draft the initial ads for this campaign.  Probably there will be a batch of ads to be changed in accordance with the campaign configuration.  Each ad MAY need its own cost and ROI estimates.  The selection of the key words WITHIN the ad is just about as important as the selection of the words for which we pay Google.

Karl will write, edit, revise these ads as he thinks necessary.

Keep in mind that there are severe restrictions on the number of characters, or lines, that can be used in an ad.

Karl plans to invest about $1,000 to try out this and related campaigns.  We should get at least $10,000 in sales, within the first 30 days of expending that $1,000. 

Operating Target #10

Meet with Karl to settle on the key words/phrases along with key words within the text ads and the details of the campaign, including various costs.

You should prepare for this meeting with your own estimates of the costs, click through rates, conversion into customer rates and average ultimate sales per click through, using the logic described ABOVE.  Google, as well as we, will use "Return on Investment" or "ROI" in this regard.

Operating Target #11

Make sure we have a system for collecting the necessary information and measuring these results. 

(Note, this may mean assigning some tag or unique identifier to those who purchase after having gone through this click through process.)

Operating Target #12

With the keywords and ad texts written, there will also be a destination page.  These pages will be created and or revised by Karl, but Tom can also run a Page Critique Analysis of any such pages, after Karl's first draft, testing that page for the exact key word.  Even though we don't expect these pages to get high rankings on their own, the AdWord campaign should send people to these pages and we want to be sure that people looking for "XXYY" find "XXYY" on the destination page.

Operating Target #13

In all of this there must be ways of measuring the results.  Google provides the most direct information.  Find a way to present the below information on our own web page, presumably restricted, so we can have a permanent record of these statistics:

3. Detailed Ad Group Statistics:

Operating Target #14

We can also insert a "tracking tag or URL" on the destination pages.  This should be done.

Track conversion by creative.

Operating Target #15

Find a way to tie in the above statistics with Urchin results -- if useful.

Operating Target #16

Before activating any such campaign, consider putting shopping cart order forms on the target web site -- so that a person can become a customer without being distracted by other products and other web sites.

Operating Target #17

Launch when you get Karl's approval.

Operating Target #18

Monitor the daily results at the Google Account Center.  Make day-by-day changes as appears necessary to improve our ROI.  Provide regular reports to Karl, and for Vibrant Life posting, for all to see.  This daily for the first two weeks.  Then weekly until we have recovered at least $10,000 from sales through this campaign, for the $1,000 invested.  Then it should become a part of our regular statistical set (which needs yet to be developed).

Operating Target #19

Write up all your conclusions and findings, as a guide to future such campaigns.  This will be a Company Policy, authored by you, authenticated by Karl.  Depending on how much of this we consider proprietary we can also publish this in the unrestricted part of the web as a public document.

Operating Target #20

Lay out the plan and program for improving this Program, as possible, and continuing and expanding it as appropriate.  Get this continuing program assigned as a regular part of someone's job here, with Karl's confirmation.  In other words, Karl will be developing an "Organizing Board" showing all 21 of the operating departments.  Somewhere in one of those there will be an assignment of this AdWord concept to a person for continuing attention.

 


 

Tables Of Contents With Full Details:  Page Title, Comment and Date Last Modified
Alphabetical List Of All Company Policies Table Of Data in Title Order Staff Assignments showing titles Programs & Projects In Title Order Table of Notes In Title Order
Policies In Order Of Last Modified Data In Order of Last Modified Staff Assignments  showing date last modified Programs & Projects In Order of Last Modified Table of Notes In Order Date Last Modified