Details are on the Blog from Motive8 but in summary:

Date; 27th March 2009
Venue: Killiney Castle Hotel
Time; 10am – 4.00pm
Cost; €120 per person includes lunch
Places limited. Book before 15th March and get 20% discount
Anyone who is unemployed /redundant pays just for lunch ( €20)

“This workshop is about taking action. It focusses on how we go about developing an attitude or mindset that will get us through this difficult period with a little less stress and allot more control over the final outcome.”

If you go then maybe you would like to do a guest post here about it. I want to continue the theme of “Feck The Recession” that we started at BizCamp.

At the same time – let me know if there are any other similar events that are running – I’m happy to provide some link love and publicity.

Thanks to Joy from Flexitimers for bringing this to my attention.

In connection with the Geansai Gorm competition I ran a Google Adwords campaign. It fit very nicely with a Google Adwords training I was providing and I thought it would be fun.

The competition finishes on Monday 1 Dec at 15:00 so I thought I’d prepare some details of the results I achieved and add my personal conclusions.

Keep in mind that I have not actually maintained the ads so please don’t take anything here as a “best practice” example. Maybe a “wasted opportunity” example. I guess that’s the first lesson:

Lesson #1: Make sure before starting a Search Engine Optimisation and/or Adwords campaign that you are going to have the time to maintain it.

The Geansai Gorm Ads

I created the initial ad as a joke and then decided it might actually produce some interesting results. It was along the lines of:

I nearly got sidetracked into creating ads to see how much bad language I could sneak into Adwords but that’s a project for another day.

Lesson #2: Even if Google policies say no – you should experiment. You might get away with it.

What surprised me was how quickly people started clicking on the ads. I guess there was a general curiosity to really see what gobshite was spending money on ads that linked to Geansai Gorm and had no incoming revenue associated with them.

Lesson #3: Keep your ads interesting and catch people’s attention.

I must admit I was a little concerned with getting lambasted by Damien Mulley for messing around with his competition and was relieved when he left a comment on the blog. I might still get a telling off when he sees that I used his name as one of the keyword phrases. It’s a big no no to use someone else’s name/trademark in that way. I’ll buy him a pint the next time we meet and beg for forgiveness – hopefully you’re open to bribes Damien.

Lesson #4: Don’t break trademark rules – you’ll seldom get away with buying a beer and saying sorry.

After the bad language ads I had something a little different:

This actually did pretty OK for something I put about 10 seconds work into – I was getting a click through rate of 1.56% (i.e that percentage of people actually clicked on the ads). At that stage I added some extra variations and decided to stop messing with the ad and see how it ran over time:

That’s when the campaign started to fall apart. The number of impressions (how often the ad was displayed) was increasing quite rapidly but the click through rate was dropping. If I was doing this for a real product then I’d need to start tweaking my ads.

Lesson #5: Keep tweaking your ads and try out different variations.

So why were the ads “failing”? Maybe people misunderstood my sense of humour and thought they would be linked to an inappropriate site. I suspect that the number of people searching for Geansai Gorm was actually quite low and the ad had been seen by most who were interested. The large number of impressions was most likely people refreshing the pages to see if their position on Google had changed. It’s quite possible I’d reached some form of saturation and without doing something to reanimate the “target market” my ads would continue to fail.

Lesson #6: Never loose focus of who the ads are trying to attract.

I didn’t change the ads afterwards which means my totals were not as good as they would have been for a properly maintained campaign. If nothing else this experiment made it clear to me how important it is to maintain the ads and make sure they stay focused.

The Geansai Gorm Ad Results

The ads were started on 6 Nov (a little over a week after the competition started) – what are the results?

Upto Saturday:

- 9895 Impressions on the search network
- 112 Clicks

- 54341 Impressions on the content network
- 20 clicks

At the end of the competition today (Monday):

- 11,233 Impressions on the search network
- 126 Clicks

- 63,209 Impressions on the content network
- 24 clicks

I used just 4 keyword phrases – picked because they were the first things to spring to mind

- Geansai Gorm (118 clicks – up 14 since Saturday)
- Ireland SEO (3 clicks)
- mulley.net (3 clicks)
- Damien Mulley (2 clicks)

Conclusion

Not exactly what I would call a stellar success rate. A total of 150 clicks with a CTR of 0.20 percent. I’m glad I was not actually selling anything. Of course – how do you measure success? If I just wanted to get my name displayed then I can say it was a success if someone remembers the ads when I meet them at some business event. In that case the total cost of €28.36 €33.52 is a bargain.

I just hope they don’t remember my name and the word gobshite at the same time.

As for the competition – as far as I know the rules exclude me using this blog so I can’t enter. Having said that – this blog did appear at slot 77 at the closing bell. You can’t be lazy when it comes to SEO – it won’t get you anywhere.

Martin is a business and executive coach at Empowerment Coaching and Ann runs the Roll n Bowl Entertainment centre in Portlaoise. It was great to be able to catch up with both of them.

I know I’m biased because I run them but I currently recommend Internet Marketing courses to any business owner that is serious about their website. Even if you are only in the planning stages it can help you avoid the mistakes that end up meaning your website is not reaching full potential. It’s hard work getting a good website in place and it needs to provide a return on investment.

Internet Marketing / Search Engine Optimisation is one of those areas that can seem really daunting at first. If you start doing your own research on the Internet you are likely to find hundreds of sites with info – many of them confusing. There are a number of things that you can do as a business owner to make sure your site is not getting lost in the crowd. People spend a fortune on developing their website but then don’t test it or promote it. When I see websites that lock out the serach engines through bad design I tell people it’s like have a beautiful shop full of products and leaving the door locked.

If your local Enterprise Board or Skillnet program does not currently run a marketing course – then tell them you are interested. They need your feedback. If you can’t wait for a course and can afford professional assistance then there are numerous companies specialising in this area. One Carlow company, T2, is currently pushing their search engine optimisation services and have been offering coupons to the members of the Carlow Chamber of Commerce for an initial consulation. Tell them I sent you and you might be lucky and get the first one for free.

In short the course will help you to critically review your business processes and analyse the impact potential disasters would have on them. It will help them to figure out which parts of their business are the most critical and to document in advance what needs to be done if the disaster materialises. At the end of the day the intention is to make sure that a little advance planning will help ensure that the business survives.

A breakdown of the content is below. For more information contact me directly  or the Carlow Kilkenny Training Network. The course will take place at the new Carlow Chamber of Commerce Gateway Centre on the Athy Road, Carlow.

Course Breakdown

Lesson 1 – What is Disaster Recovery
This introductory lesson covers the differences between disaster recovery planning and business continuity planning.

Lesson 2 – Reviewing your current status
This lesson starts with a review of your current state of preparedness. It then reviews the reasons for such planning and the consequences of not being properly prepared.

- Worksheet – Business Impact Analysis
- What is a Business Impact Analysis?
- How Prepared are some Organizations?
- Top 5 Consequences of Disasters
- The Extended Impact of Disaster

Lesson 3 – Planning and Preparation
This lesson covers the steps and methods needed to do an analysis of the business processes and the risks those processes face. The risks are divided into categories to aid in the analysis and determination of the final impact a failure can have on the business. The lesson reviews the pressures faced when setting priorities and demonstrates a system for quantifying risk vs. impact.

- What steps do you need to take to ensure you are prepared?
- Methods for Completing a Business Impact Analysis
- Categories of Risk
- Additional pressures when setting priorities

Lesson 4 – Business Systems and Technology
This lesson reviews some of the tools needed for a disaster. It also covers some tips to help reduce the impact of a disaster event.

 Do you have the tools you need in case of a problem?
- Inexpensive options to reduce the impact of disaster

Lesson 5 – Incident Response Planning
This lesson reviews the first steps to take in the event of a disaster and discusses how to prepare a timeline of actions suitable for your organization.

 What to do what the crisis strikes
- Timeline preparation

Lesson 6 – The Next Steps
This closing lesson reviews how a contingency plan might actually look and discusses the long term activities that are needed to make the plan is a success.

- Sample Contingency Plan Format
- Publishing the Disaster Recovery Plans
- Testing the disaster recovery solution and ongoing assessment of the plan