Learnings from Google Marketing Seminar
by Tod on 02/04/10 at 11:33 am
Roland Lange recently presented Google’s book initiatives to employees at Thomas Nelson. Mike Hyatt discussed the three hour seminar in a recent post, Why Authors, Agents, and Publishers Should Embrace Google Book Search.
Yesterday, Aimee Hong from Google put on a marketing seminar for our sales and marketing teams. With 1.8 billion Internet users spending 12 hours on line each week searching for information, it is clear that consumers need to be able to find our books. Aimee focused on three areas:
- How To Enrich Your Web Site
- How to Drive Traffic To Your Web Site
- How to Measure The Effectiveness of Your Web Site
I have four pages of notes from the marketing seminar I am happy to share with anyone who wants them. Too much for this blog. Just shoot me at email at tshuttleworth@thomasnelson.com if you would like a copy of the notes.
In summary, however, these are the key points Amy outlined for each of the three areas above:
How To Enrich Your Web Site
- Blogs – The more relevant content you have, the better chance you have of driving the kind of traffic you want.
- Google Calendar – Especially effective when used with promotions
- Google Preview – The book’s content becomes part of the standard search for all Google queries. Our books may be the answer to query.
- YouTube Direct – Embedding videos a popular item with readers.
How to Drive Traffic To Your Web Site
- Google Books – Our book content becomes part of every relevant search query. Gotta love that!!
- YouTube – Done right with a relevant title, description and key words can drive traffic to your site.
- AdWords – You only pay for click through when a consumer specifically clicks on your ad.
- AdSense – A chance for relevant ads to show up on your site and you get a cut of the ad revenue.
How to Maeasure The Effectiveness of Your Web Site
- Alerts – emails you about relevant topics you wish to be kept informed
- Trends – Monitor who is talking about your content
- Insights for Search – Measure which words and phrases best resonate
- Website Optimizer – Allows for testing of various types of content such as images, titles, content and design that maximizes traffic to your web site
- Google Analytics – Measures many aspects of the sites performance from where traffic somes to what pages are most and least popular, where people leave the site, etc.
It was a great session.
Nelson employees – I would to hear your comments below on the most important takeaway you had from the seminar. The best one gets lunch on me.
This will also help Aimee, as she is looking for feedback from the presentation.
Thanks to all the Nelson employees who attended.
Ben Waugh
Apr 2nd, 2010
I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.
Ben Waugh
Apr 2nd, 2010
Hi,
I’m just getting started with my new blog. Would you want to exchange links on our blog-rolls?
BTW – I’m up to about 100 visitors per day.
todshuttleworth
Apr 3rd, 2010
Ben – I went to your site. Very nice. I have added you to my blog roll links. Thanks.
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Abby Barnhart
Apr 5th, 2010
The biggest take away in this seminar for me was the obvious crossroads the kind of information Google provides can be for our company.
Stats, trends, a better picture of our customer, all can be interpreted by the various branches of the Thomas Nelson tree to benefit each branch individually and also the communication between teams.
For example, the Google Analytics on our new kids site, TommyNelson.com, tell us exactly who our target Mom is and exactly what she likes and doesn't like about what we are currently offering. Publishing can use this information to test ideas and create products that fill a need in this consumer, Sales can use this information to place the products in front of these moms (physically – we can see where they live!), and Marketing can use this information to make sure these moms know and are excited about the products we are offering.
The binding tie is the information – and with just a small chunk of time devoted to understanding and dissecting it, all three branches, and the teams that make up those branches, will benefit and grow.
That's my two cents. Lots more to learn. Thanks to Google for the seminar.
todshuttleworth
Apr 5th, 2010
Abby – I am so impressed with how well you get this. And, I can see it in the results you are getting with Tommy's social media efforts. You hit the nail on the head. Tools like the ones Google provides allows for a convcergence in sales, marketing and publishing efforts. Never before have we had such tools to share information. Thanks for leading us. Keep up the good work.
Claudia Duncan
Apr 5th, 2010
Tod,
Every time I attend one of our technology seminars, I come out feeling overwhelmed with information – in a good way – but excited at all the possibilities that social media and these new marketing tools provide for us.
You have no idea how much I love the fact that we can MEASURE where we are investing our marketing dollars. In the past, we did a lot of good things, created websites, ran print ads, etc, but had no way to measure anything. We really didn't know whether or not our money was invested wisely, or whether we did it through the proper media channel.
I have done Facebook ads and can automatically target a specific audience. With that, I get stats, demographics, countries, gender, age, etc….information that is so essential to say on top of our game. I mentioned that because I know we can do so much more with Google.
Our new website, Tu Vida Hoy, will run Google analytics (we have not used it up to this point) – so with that, we will get stats, trends and information that will help us be more effective in our marketing campaigns. Our intent in that website is to open the lines of communication with our readers, capture information, listen to them, etc.
I will definitely look into using Google advertising and Google trends. I think Google trends will be a great tool to learn what people are talking about in the Spanish speaking world – if we listen to what people need, we can publish books to meet those needs… Still so much to do and learn…
The seminar was excellent. Thank you so much for helping us all understand how to use these tools.
Claudia
todshuttleworth
Apr 5th, 2010
Claudia – The ability to measure has been a huge ah-ha for me too. And, it amazes me that you can learn things you never thought you would learn by using these tools. Thanks for making Grupo Nelson a leader in the Spanish publishing social media efforts.
@PFNikolai
Apr 5th, 2010
Of the many possibilities, the one that keeps coming back to mind is the ability to see who is interested in particular topics (Trends) and what topics are the strongest (Insights). Is there a way to use Excel to feed data into Trends and Insights and then to have the resulting reports export back into Excel?
todshuttleworth
Apr 6th, 2010
Pete – This is a great question and I do not know the answer. Let me check with Google and get back to you. My gut is we do not yet understand what we can learn when we get this close to the end consumer.
Debbie Wickwire
Apr 6th, 2010
This was my first webinar–and it was great! Except for the echo that was likely only problematic for me and Aimee (and any other virtual attendee) I was able to feel more a part of the meeting with the aid of the visual beyond the audio that normally comes with a traditional conf call.
Because I'm officially in editorial and only "hang out" in marketing when my projects move to that phase, I was surprised at how much I knew generally about these things. What was new to me, and will obviously be most useful, is the intro into Google Trends & Insights–to search what topics people are curious about, also to use these tools to "test" our titles as we go through the T&P process…except now, for the life of me, I can't figure out how to access any of these tools on the Google site! I was there during the meeting, just lost the "address" or directions for access. Can you remind me?
todshuttleworth
Apr 6th, 2010
Debbie – I think we are only beginning to understand the power of these tools. I would guess you can "google" these tools, but I will hunt them down and get back to you.
todshuttleworth
Apr 7th, 2010
Debbie – Here is how you can find those tools:
You can find Google Trends here: http://www.google.com/trends and more information on Google Trends here: http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html.
You can find Google Insights here: http://www.google.com/insights/search/ and more information on Google Insights here: http://www.google.com/support/insights/?hl=en-US.
Dan Lynch
Apr 8th, 2010
There were some great reporting items that I wasn’t aware of and I loved how to use Google Analytics to drive into the mapping report to break down to the city level. For Tommy Nelson it was interesting to see our top areas were Tennessee, Florida, Texas (no surprises), but equally in California with a lot of followers in LA and San Diego.
There was good Adwords stuff as well, but I want to be cautious that we use this wisely in kids/gifts. It doesn’t cost a lot, but this year especially EVERY DOLLAR has to be spent very thoughfully.
todshuttleworth
Apr 8th, 2010
Dan – I agree that it is a pretty neat tool to be see where your traffic is originating. This is one of those things where something you learn with these metrics helps you make decisions elsewhere in the business.
Eric
Apr 25th, 2010
Tod,
Every time I attend one of our technology seminars, I come out feeling overwhelmed with information – in a good way – but excited at all the possibilities that social media and these new marketing tools provide for us.
You have no idea how much I love the fact that we can MEASURE where we are investing our marketing dollars. In the past, we did a lot of good things, created websites, ran print ads, etc, but had no way to measure anything. We really didn’t know whether or not our money was invested wisely, or whether we did it through the proper media channel.
I have done Facebook ads and can automatically target a specific audience. With that, I get stats, demographics, countries, gender, age, etc….information that is so essential to say on top of our game. I mentioned that because I know we can do so much more with Google.
Our new website, Tu Vida Hoy, will run Google analytics (we have not used it up to this point) – so with that, we will get stats, trends and information that will help us be more effective in our marketing campaigns. Our intent in that website is to open the lines of communication with our readers, capture information, listen to them, etc.
I will definitely look into using Google advertising and Google trends. I think Google trends will be a great tool to learn what people are talking about in the Spanish speaking world – if we listen to what people need, we can publish books to meet those needs… Still so much to do and learn…
The seminar was excellent. Thank you so much for helping us all understand how to use these tools.
Claudia
Simon
Apr 28th, 2010
Dan – I agree that it is a pretty neat tool to be see where your traffic is originating. This is one of those things where something you learn with these metrics helps you make decisions elsewhere in the business.