There are many benefits that can be had from hiring an agency like LeapFrog Interactive to manage your PPC campaigns. Doing so will give you a leg up on your competition and ultimately better position your business in your industry.

Better Investment of Marketing Budget
The first and greatest benefit from working with an agency is to your bottom line thanks to the access you’ll have to a number of tools and resources that might cost far too much for your budget to consider purchasing on your own. An agency can afford to invest in these resources because they can be used for a number of clients. This helps justify and offset the cost in a way that might not be possible for a single brand.

Expertise in Your Corner
The second benefit you can receive from hiring an agency is the addition of dedicated, experienced resources to your campaigns. An agency also understands how to use these tools and can achieve more conversions for the media budget spent, test multiple landing pages, control bids 24/7, and provide detailed reports in addition to many other benefits. LeapFrog’s PPC specialists have years of experience across multiple search engines, research tools, software systems, and analytics tools. When you hire our agency, you get access to a kind of experience that takes years to hone and perfect.
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Many times PPC can seem, on the surface, like a set-it-and-forget-it marketing model. But I believe the opposite is true. An initial PPC ad can generate considerable initial user click-through. To maintain and even build upon these initial results over the long haul, however, requires a more active approach. This is when working with an agency like LeapFrog can really catapult your efforts because we have the expertise and the time to jump into the account and optimize it to perfection.

One of the many things we will do to optimize a client’s PPC campaigns is ad copy rotation. Fresh and effective copy helps sustain a PPC campaign’s marketing success. Ad copy rotation helps make sure that the best possible ad message is out in front of your user. We strive to make sure a great message is presented to the user because it is their first introduction to your product or service and oftentimes you only get that one introduction to make your impression.

On a scheduled interval, we add additional versions of ad copy to the rotation. At campaign launch, we run a number of ad texts and serve the best version the most. It’s simple; the ad with the most clicks gets served most often.

By frequently adding additional ad text to the mix, it’s possible to change up your call to action or brand message to see which ones speak to your target audience. The winning ad then becomes the control to test new creatives against and the rotation process continues from there. It is important to test different messages in your ad text because often the ones you think will do the worst will actually outperform all the rest.

A social media page can be a great way to meet people and make new friends, but it can also be a great way to make a fool of yourself and even lose your job. When it comes to what you post about yourself on Facebook, MySpace, or anywhere else, keep in mind that too much information (TMI) is never a good thing.

If you’re not sure what qualifies as TMI, ask yourself these questions before posting anything:

• What would my employer think? Would the thought be, “Why is this foolish person working for and representing our organization? Get me Human Resources on the phone right now!â€?

• What would my mom think?

• What would happen if this got into the wrong person’s hands (e.g., posting when you would be out of town and thus announcing precisely when your home will be left an easy target for a break-in)?

• Is this something I would want everyone to see (as in everyone online, as in billions of people)?

• Is this something that I want to have online forever (because even if you remove it, someone else might have already posted it somewhere out of your control)?

Just because social media gives you the means to share whatever you possibly might want to share about yourself online doesn’t mean that you actually should. Be friendly but be sure to be smart because online embarrassment can last forever.

We recently sat down and chatted with Amberly Stitzel, an interactive marketing manager here at LeapFrog. As a result, we now know that, among other things, when she’s not sleeping in she’s watching TV, and she thinks a certain Disney diva’s recent cinema magnum opus was “so cute.�

What is it you do exactly?: I lead our pay-per-click marketing team.

What’s one thing someone needs to know about you to get an idea about who you are?: People should know that I’m very direct. You’ll never have to ask me what I think about something because I’ll probably tell you and what I tell you won’t be a lie. I will speak up when I think it is necessary.

Biggest fear: Honestly, I’m deathly afraid of fire. I could see the smallest fire and lose it. When I was around 13, my mother was cooking Thanksgiving dinner and as she was basting the turkey in the oven, some of it spilled and caught fire. The flames shot up through the vents and caused something that was sitting on top of the oven to catch fire, too. I wasn’t sticking around. I was out the door before anyone else even moved.

Favorite word: My second favorite word is “subsidiary� My favorite word is a little content questionable (but still a funny word to say), so we’ll go with #2, which I think is just fun to say.

Least favorite word: Vomit

Favorite weekend activity: Sleeping in and catching up on my TV shows.

Ideal job (other than working for LFI): A singer, probably locally. I don’t want to do the whole stardom thing. I’d want to play at bookstores, coffee shops, parties…nothing like the bar scene because that’s not me. (more…)

Since Tim posted his thoughts on Heroes Friday, I thought I’d talk about one of my favorite shows today.

When is 4 less than 3? When it comes to American Idol judges.

I love American Idol and have watched religiously since the very first episode of the first season, but the switch to four full-time judges has me confused. Lately there have been recurring problems with the show running too long and the show’s attempts to address this (e.g., having two judges comment on half the contestants while the other two comment on the other half) aren’t working.

It’s nothing against the newbie. Kara DioGuardi has more industry credibility that Paula Abdul. After all, Kara has written many hit songs and knows enough about the technical side of the industry to provide good advice for the contestants. Paula is, well, Paula, which means she can be entertaining but doesn’t necessarily offer the most constructive criticism. She oftentimes dances around the negative by mentioning the positive or by pointing out negatives in a vague way. (more…)