It is a great strategy for your competitors to buy your brand name on Google Adwords. You invested time and money into your brand name and they reap the benefits by showing their ad every time someone searches on your brand name.

Should you stop them? Not necessarily:

• If they are the bigger brand it may be smarter to advertise on their name and let them to continue to advertise on your name.
• Since they are better known you will get more exposure than they will.

If they are not advertising on your name should you advertise on their brand names?

That depends.
You have to consider the legal issues. Consider this recent case from Israel, where Dr. Dov Klein won a court case against Google because his competitors in the plastic surgery field had bought Google Adwords using his name.

The case was interesting because the case was outside of the USA. This means that you may be exposed under different laws which apply in different countries. In the USA the courts take a different view. Read this long article to see how a USA court views this issue.

Google Adword Trademark Lawsuit in the USA is different than the one in Israel

And the opposite is true. If you want to stop your competitor from using your brand name it may be worthwhile to start legal proceedings in a different country—depending on the local laws and if your company or subsidiary is registered there.

Check with your lawyer. I may know something about Internet marketing but I don’t purport to know anything about the law.

Are you advertising on someone’s brand name even if you didn’t buy the name?

When you choose broad match Google’s Adwords algorithm goes to work and may add your competitor’s brand names in automatically. If you decide not to advertise on their names for legal or other reasons don’t forget to add their names on the negative match list.

Usability studies need to be done frequently on websites to make sure that you are not leaving money on the table. That is why we recommend doing fast and dirty studies rather than big budget infrequent studies.

Unfortunately many of you forget to test email/landing page interfaces. Before you send out email send it to people in the office and let them follow the links and make sure everything works and makes sense.

If Google would have done that they would receive many more conversions with their Israeli Google Engage project.

Landing Page Usability Problem Google Missed

The email stated that the program “just launched in your area”. That gave me confidence to click through.

Google launches Google Engage in Israel

Unfortunately when I reached the landing page it stated that “we can accept US & CA applications only.”

Landing page makes it clear that Google forgot to do a usability test

I think that most Israelis would simply ignore it, as I did.

In the Israeli culture:
• It is a more egalitarian society with less respect for authority—even Google
• We realize that people make mistakes and that Google simply forgot to update the landing page.
• There is a “can do” attitude
• There is a tendency to test things

However in other societies I am sure many people will see the instructions that the form is just for Americans and Canadians and drop out of the funnel.

So when you do your usability tests on the email/landing page interface don’t forget to test people from different cultures. You will be surprised by the results!

Matt’s message on TED had nothing to do with webspam—his day job at Google. It is a road map on how to improve your life. Since it is difficult to change your behavior it is best to try something for 30 days. Learn more by listening to his lecture:

The essence of the message is that to change behavior you should break down change into more steps so it is less intimidating. That way it is more likely that people will start a chain that will culminate in the behavior you want. Let’s say you are selling something:

• You might first ask your website visitor to read a sample newsletter
• Then you can ask them to sign up for the newsletter
• After reading your persuasive newsletter they may then buy your product

Facebook does this very well. It is explained very clearly on BJ Fogg’s Behavior Model website.

Try implementing this conversion optimization idea on your website within the next 30 days

1. If you are using Google Analytics you will see that GA includes the Ipod as a mobile device. This may be misleading since behavior on the iPod is much different from a mobile phone.

You don’t have the problem of a tiny screen. In order to get more meaningful results, I recommend analyzing mobile devices with the iPad taken out.

2. After you do that the first thing to do is check the conversion rate as compared to the rest of the website. If it is much less, then your site may have major usability problems on mobile phones. Before you jump to conclusions, check that the same kind of traffic is coming to both mobile and non-mobile devices. If it is not similar that could be the reason for different conversion rates.

3. Compare mobile bounce rates vs the rest of the site. If there is a big discrepancy you may see that your navigation system doesn’t work on some or all mobile devices. Flash menu systems don’t work on the iPhone.

Make sure you continually monitor the mobile segment as its importance is growing all the time. In light of this, the Mobile Marketing Association has formed a committee to establish mobile analytics standards.

All of our clients show faster growth in mobile than almost every other segment.

One last tip: For most of our clients the iPhone and Android are the most popular mobile devices. Check your stats and make sure your Internet marketing people are testing your website using these devices.

Your boss tells you that the company needs a viral video fast. What should you do? There are two easy viral video paths. One is to have a company game the system which is outlined in this post.

Look at the Youtube stats (it is right under the video window) of videos which have more views than you would expect. You can see that many of the views come from India or other countries where you may suspect that someone may be buying views.

I prefer the second option: make a great video and use a company that specializes in this. They will have a head start on getting exposure. The company which did the viral video below has a subscriber module, and a track record that helps.

Youtube shows websites which helped this viral video get exposure.

Enjoy the viral video below. Note the effort required to make this video: ]: song writing, rehearsals, picking the best location, getting everything on video (several videos are needed) etc.

Not everyone knows all the references in the video. Which makes it a good test for SEO companies interviewing new prospects. Anyone who doesn’t smile and know all the social media sites mentioned in the video would not be suitable for the job.

If you have a smaller budget then you will need to work harder. But that is a subject for another post.

It is safe to say that creating a viral video for companies takes tremendous effort no matter what strategies are taken.

Vote for the Best Ad

We were so impressed with the creative ad entries that we received for the Google Adwords Creative Writing Contest, that we decided to add a runner up, and we want you to choose!

We selected 10 of our favorite ads and would like you to vote for your favorite creative ad. All you have to do is:

• Visit: http://www.aims.co.il/blog/creative-google-adwords-ads/
• Click on the ad that you like
• Rate the picture by selecting the number of stars you want to give the ad
  
• Fill out your email (so we can enter you in the draw)
• Click the send button
• Confirm your vote via email.
  (You will receive an email requesting confirmation up to 5 minutes after voting)

Voters will be entered into a draw where 1 lucky winner will win a $100 gift certificate to Amazon.
The entrant whose ad gets the most votes will win a $100 gift certificate to Amazon.

Contest ends on August 1, 2010.

Mobile phone access to websites is becoming more popular everyday. Although the percentage is still small, for some sites it is already significant. One of my clients’ sites has 14% of its visitors accessing through mobile devices.

Most people know that a mobile friendly site is important. Many websites have the standard tips. However there are additional issues that need to be considered.

• On the iPhone and other mobile phones accessing numbers necessitates extra work.
  • Think twice before adding numbers to URLs.
  • Also, on forms, if you don’t need fields with numbers leave them out.
• On the iPhone there is a key for .com. Therefore .com sites are easier to type in than .org, .net or other TLDs.
• Since typing on mobile phones is much slower than on a computer—keep visitors typing to a minimum:
  • Shorter URLs are better than longer ones
  • Use less fields on forms
  • Instead of open fields use drop down menus for choices or radio buttons where possible
• Give more prominence to linked phone numbers than emails. An email requires typing. It is much easier to click on a phone number and start talking.

Use common sense to make things easier on you mobile website visitors and you will see your conversions increase.

Tips for getting those creative juices moving

Due to stiff competition it is critical to write ads that perform. I hope these ideas will help you increase your Adwords campaigns performance.

• Try writing the opposite
  • For example:
    • Instead of: Get the Fastest Computer
    • Write: Don’t get a Slow Computer
• Put the words in the opposite order
  • For example:
    • Instead of: Free Shipping & Returns
    • Write: Shipping & Returns Free
• Tell the Truth – If your product is expensive, figure out a way to turn that into an advantage
  • For example:
    • Pay More & Worry Less
• Explain why you shouldn’t use the product
  • For example:
    • To Get Fat Don’t Buy

Have any ideas that will help others? Know where some Adwords copywriting resources are? Send them to me at ron@aims.co.il

Have a good idea for an ad?

You can win a great prize by joining our Adwords Copywriting Contest

Additional Resources:

Funny ads which can help get your creative juices flowing http://blog.xnepali.com/funny-text-ads-might-not-be-that-creative-but-funny-they-sure-are/

Adword tips with realworld examples http://www.googlelady.com/416/10-killer-headline-adwords-tips/

I didn’t plan on testing the Israeli ISOC website. All I wanted to do was sign up for a conference. I received an error message that I have to enter the system.

The problem is that there aren’t any instructions on how to do this.

Israel ISOC Internet site has serious usability issues

Unfortunately there is no phone number or other contact info available for me to sign up offline.

I am a resourceful website user and eventually found a tiny contact us link at the bottom of the page. It linked to a page with phone numbers. The automated answering machine didn’t give me good choices but luckily I found the right person.

She knew about the bug.

I can understand not having enough resources to fix a bug. But I can’t understand why they didn’t leave a more helpful message – with contact info so people can sign up offline.

Website Usability Test – Lessons Learned

• Always check your forms and try to break them.
• When a bug is found – immediately update error messages so people are not left high and dry
• Fix bug as soon as possible. If it is not worth it to fix the bug make sure your error message is effective.

People are writing amazing ads for our Google Adwords contest. Here is the one I like the best so far:

Another good one – although a little dated:

Can you do better?
You can write it for any product or service you can think of—real or unreal.
$500 Prize for the best ad!

More information here.