You can advertise on search networks, popular blogs, video sharing sites, social networking platforms, television, radio, newspapers, and phone books. Let’s not forget smart phones, billboards, magazine, newsletters and even weekly church bulletins. There are so many places your potential customer could be found, and you only have so much advertising budget to go around.

You’re not sure where to put your next advertising dollars. I get it, as do all marketers. We live in a state of constant media “noise”, and we ourselves are fighting for a seat at the table. We want your dollars. You aren’t even sure you want to spend them, but business has been tight lately. Your sales force has had more time on their hands, and you’ve had to let a few people go.

Well, if you’ve gotten this far you’ve probably already found a good solid source or two for marketing. Perhaps you’ve reached the point with them that you can’t squeeze any more out of those sources. Maybe they have even become less dependable outlets for advertising. So, what’s the next step? How do you make that big investment that saves your company?

As an employee of an agency our goal is gain as much of your advertising dollars as possible. It only makes sense to do that. The smart companies “test the waters” as they say. They often give a smaller, short-run contract to agencies like mine. They usually do this with two to three agencies, sometimes simultaneously to gauge success. If the results are lacking for an agency they have not invested or lost much. If the results are great then the company rewards that agency with a bigger and longer contract.

Be one of the smart companies. Test the waters. Make the agency prove they deserve your dollars. That way you never have to fear the big investment.

I thoroughly enjoy Wikipedia and use it frequently. I love to read information and facts, and Wikipedia makes doing so all too easy. The information is of course provided by users, so there is a lot of info on Wikipedia that is wrong, but overall it is still informative.

Google liked the idea so much that they decided to take the same idea and monetize it. Now, users can create informational articles on ‘Knol’ (www.Knol.Google.com) and create an ad to go along with the article. The articles default to allow Adsense ads to which the writer will share some of the revenue. Google says that there is very little oversight to the veracity of the ads except that users can leave reviews.

This sounds easy to take advantage of for profit. One of the problems with the idea comes down to the fact that Google is the one that gets the rest of the profit. They are also the one that controls the rankings. While, I really do believe that Google will operate with integrity and avoid unfair practices, I still think that Google is opening up a can of worms they may not be prepared for.

The other problem is directly on Google.com search results. Most search results pages are littered with at least one Wikipedia link or more. It stands to reason that Knol will do the same as long as the information within the articles is significantly different. This will create another challenge for the SEO community. Luckily, I’m just a PPC specialist. More Adsense space creates more Content Network real estate for my clients. Heck, creating an article designed for a client’s ad seems to be……..ummm…forget I said that.

Anyways, despite the way it sounds, I really do like the idea of another open source encyclopedia. I love the offerings that Google brings to the web. I think Google would have been well advised to walk away from this one. As questionable as the idea sounds for Google, Knol is going in my fav’s anyways.

In case you haven’t heard the news Yahoo will begin showing Google’s Adwords ads in the next few months pending a Justice Department review. This all happened on the same day that Microsoft and Yahoo officially broke off talks about Microsoft buying Yahoo.

The big questions are:

1. What does this do for Yahoo?
The ads on Google have more competitive bids. Yahoo will receive a percentage of what Google receives from these clicks. This will actually bring more money to Yahoo than their own ads by themselves. This will also probably give Yahoo a jump-start to their bidding competitions. It remains to be seen whether the Google ads compete with the Yahoo ads on a level playing field.

2. What does this do for Google?
This will not actually improve Google’s statistics for search volume. Still, it’s just one more piece of real estate for Google to expand their ad network to. It also provides a way for Google to boost its click revenue.

3. What does this mean for the search industry?
Google is growing in dominance. Yahoo is being given a brief reprieve from their long slow fall from grace. Microsoft is left at the altar wondering what could have been.

Your sales person has brought a potential client into the office, your team has made the stellar pitch, and the energy between everyone was electric. In the end the $20,000 a month deal went to another agency. After going through the usual check-list of reasons in your head try going through this additional list.

1. Techie-Talk – Most search marketers that I know don’t have a marketing background. Most of them have a tech background which drove them to search. If they can’t speak money to a client the deal is probably going to be hard to get past that business’s marketing department.

2. Condescension – Trying to prove to a potential client that you know your stuff by throwing out all the industry jargon can come off like a call to a tech-support guru. The caller walks away feeling insulted.
3. Confusing Data – Clients only care about click-through-rate if that means more money for their company. This is like the number one issue. If they can’t understand the data then it is worthless information.
4. Reputation – It is too easy to mislead a company, and the corporations are catching onto this fact. They are acting more and more like the sales process is an interview. They are searching the web for the name of the agencies they are talking to. Poor placement on the search engines or negative links look like your company doesn’t know what it is doing. Talk the talk. Walk the walk.
5. Employees – This is the same as the last note, except that it applies to the employees. Any person the potential client might meet is game for being searched. Who really cares if one of your people has posts about their drunken exploits on their MySpace page? Your clients do. It smacks of a lack of professionalism.

Just because you’re in the industry doesn’t mean you can fool clients. It is just too competitive out there. Make sure your clients see the best side of you, and you will be rewarded.