Course Reflections

            As we come to the end of this course, it comes time to reflect on what we learned this semester in preparation for final exams. I learned a lot about the use of Google AdWords and the different strategies that can be applied to online marketing. I also learned what not to do and that there is a lot more to online marketing than I first thought.

            One of the biggest things I learned this semester was how to use Google AdWords. Knowing how to set up an advertisement and allocate budget money properly is essential when working for a digital marketing company or industry. Knowing how to use Google AdWords may help me to get a job or internship in the future.

Knowing how to use Google AdWords is beneficial, but only if one knows what the metrics and dimensions mean. I now know what a click-through rate is, what an impression is, and what clicks mean in the realm of digital marketing. If I didn’t know what these things meant, knowing how to use Google AdWords would be practically useless.  The courses we took through Google were very beneficial to learning about how to use Google Analytics and what the metrics and dimensions actually meant.

Thank you for reading this semester, and have a great summer!

Google Webmaster Tools

It's been crazy lately! Hockey season ended, I went on spring break (home and San Francisco) and then went to the American Marketing Association International Collegiate Conference in New Orleans! Because marketing is entering the Golden Age of technological advancement, I’m going to talk about Google Webmaster Tools and how they will be useful for our client’s digital marketing efforts in the future.

Google Webmaster Tools can be very helpful when running a website. Image from: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-webmaster-tools-now-tracks-indexed-urls-specific-sections-website-including-https/96749/

To start using Google Webmaster Tools, one first has to sign up and verify the account. There are four ways to verify that the account is really you: by uploading a file to your server, adding a meta tag to your HTML, adding a new DNS record, or by using your Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager account. There are a lot of different things that can be helpful with the webmaster tools. Once you have signed up you will have access to your site’s traffic referral sources, like pages that link to yours, and your internal links. You will also be able to see what search queries match with your site, and which search queries people will be searching for when they see your site come up in the results. For our client’s digital marketing efforts, I would say that using Google Webmaster Tools would be a great choice.

A very important part of making sure your site is working properly and that your users computers and information are not being compromised by hackers and malware, and the Google Webmaster Tools help you to track anything that could be malicious on your site. In addition, you must update your software regularly, so sign up for any mailing list that your website management tools utilizes to make security announcements so that you know when there is new software available or a new bug to watch out for. It is also possible to set up Google Alerts to notify you when there is a spam-related keyword detected on your site. There are also user-generated spam issues that can come about from forum posts and comments on content by users. We’ve all seen the annoying social media comments and tweets from spammers where there are twenty in a row with a link and some eye-popping caption or title. Users may be inclined to click on these spam comments and be sent to a harmful or undesirable web page. The easy way to get around this is to create a spam policy to protect your site from these spammers. It would be good for our client (who’s site is an online gift registry in which you can categorize and make your own items with links to product pages, or any page really) to make sure that a good spam policy is in place for all wish list products. It would be very easy for anybody to link to a malicious site through the product pages.

There is also information on how to improve your site’s HTML and you can get suggestions on how to do this, as well as how to removed a page or site from Google Search results if you do not wish for it to show up on a search results page because it is under construction or old. You can also submit a sitemap to help search engines with their crawling and categorizing. I would suggest that our client would submit a sitemap so that Google could easier crawl and categorize the website.

Experimental design? What?

Wow, it's been a little while since I've written for this blog! For this week's assignment, we are to talk about Experimental Design. We were asked to read two articles and watch a video and write a post pertaining to the content. I will go in to more detail than usual, as I am to lead discussion in class on Wednesday, and experimental design is the topic. Depending on how the discussion lead goes, I may post my slides and notes for those who are interested. 

The first paper from the Harvard Business Review "Finally, A Majority of Executives Embrace Experimentation" by H. James Wilson and Kevin Desouza talks about Greg Linden's idea of product suggestions on Amazon product pages, and what he went through to test the idea before he was allowed to implement the idea on the Amazon website. This article delves deeper in to the concept of experimentation and tells us the three different types of experimentation: prototyping, simulation, and test groups. Prototyping is more of a trial-and-error approach, where slightly different variations of the proposed product are created and tested to see which fits the environment the best. After testing, the prototype would be refined and tested again, and the cycle of refining and testing would be repeated until the prototype gains satisfaction from the producer. Simulation is the use of computer programs and scaled experiments to experiment with different designs; simulation has become huge in the 21st century as computers have become increasingly advanced. Test groups take two products/pages and show a certain group the original, and the other group the other with one variable to see which responds better. Test groups are often used by Amazon to experiment with new features on their web pages, and is how Linden implemented the experiment of his suggestion feature for Amazon. It is important to note the differences between each type of experimental design, and the uses for each. Simulation is best used for things like car safety features, because it would be more efficient to use a computer program to analyze all of the different reactions to a crash. Simulation is a quick and efficient way to experiment, whereas prototyping takes much longer, like Tony Stark's suits in the Iron Man movies and comics. Tony has so many suits because he will tweak something or add a new feature, and want to test it out, and in the Iron Man movies, Tony ends up staying up for days at a time working on his suits. To me, the easiest way to explain experimental design is to think of it as implementing scientific theory in a business environment. Whoever said "I'm not a science person! That's why a majored in business!" I hate to burst your bubble, but science and it's theories are literally everywhere. 

The second article we were asked to reflect on is also from the Harvard Business Review, and is titled "How to Design Smart Business Experiments" by Thomas H. Davenport. Davenport's article looks in to how experimental design should and should not be used in business environments, and when it should and should not be used. The article is quite lengthy, and if you are interested in learning more about experimental design, I would encourage you to take a look as I will not be covering everything it talks about in this write-up. The most important part of this article is this sentence: 

"Formal testing makes sense only if a logical hypothesis has been formulated about how a proposed intervention will affect a business."

This sentence means that there is not always a need to test, but when a test is needed one must go about it in the proper way. Experimental design is based on scientific theory, and follows the same steps, just with more of a focus on re-testing and refining to find the perfect variable. However, in business there is the challenge of risk and reward. While some may choose to take the risk of failure from implementing a change without testing, the safe route will always be to test the waters with the new variable. 

Experimental design uses the same processes as scientific theory, but is focused more on refining the hypothesis and variables. Image from "How to Design Smart Business Experiments" by Thomas H. Davenport of the Harvard Business Review. 

The video we watched was a "Ted-Ed" video called "Not all scientific studies are created equal" by David H. Schwartz, and helps to explain how experimental design is based on scientific theory. Schwartz talks about scientific studies and reliability of information. Schwartz goes through the different variables of random clinical trials and epidemiological studies. Random clinical trials are better known as voluntary experiments with medications and placebos. Randomly selected participants will receive either the medication or the placebo in either a single blind, or a double blind experiment; the variable being tested is the medication, and whether or not it effects the actual thing it is supposed to be targeting. The FDA often requires there are two random clinical trials for each new drug produced before it is marketable to the public. Epidemiological studies simply observe the subjects going about their regular every day behaviour instead of putting the participants in to variable groups. Epidemiological studies are not the preferred method of scientific experimentation, as there is a large margin for error; but are good for measuring the health effects of things like certain herbs or ingredients in food. Participants who already ingest the ingredient in question are known as the cohort, and there is also a control group of participants who do not ingest the ingredient. However, we can not rely on even the best of epidemiological studies to give us reliable information because every epidemiological study has inherent flaws. Sometimes, participants may not be randomly assigned to cohorts and control groups, but are grouped based on why they take a certain herbal supplement; this is known as selection bias. There is also the issue of confounding variables, like whether or not the participant has better access to healthcare or leads a healthy lifestyle. 

After reading these articles and listening to the Ted-Ed video, I have begun to wonder just how reliable all of the studies about what goes in to our food are, based on what types of testing and what variables the producers tested. On the business side of things, we were asked to think about what kinds of experiment we could implement in our client's AdWords campaign for the Google Online Marketing Challenge. What I would like to experiment with is the landing page of our client's website, and how the landing page might change the subscription conversion rate. I would also like to try changing small parts of the "product page" to optimize the online affiliate marketing that our client uses to create monetary conversions. The first thing to do would be to take one variable and create a hypothesis: "If we change part A of the web page, there will be more conversions". The next step would be to create a plan/method to implement the experiment, down to the details of how many people see the original page and how many see the new page, and possible new HTML coding. Then the experiment would be implemented, analyzed, and then we would decide based on the results whether or not to keep the landing page the same and test another concept, or to implement the new landing page. 

Keyword Planning

For our fourth individual assignment, we were given four search engine optimization tools to explore, and are required to discuss two. This is not the area that I am really interested in, or good at. I find all of these things quite confusing, hopefully writing it out helps me understand. 

The tools we were asked to explore are all tools that one can use for search engine optimization, and are mainly for keyword planning and site mapping. I am only going to discuss a couple of the tools, for the sake of not repeating myself.

I learned a little bit more about the Google Keyword Planner that comes with AdWords, and took a look at how AdWords actually works. This will be especially helpful for the Google Online Marketing Challenge we will begin competing in next month. AdWords Keyword Planner takes your keywords and tells you how many advertisers are using that keyword, and the probability of your advertisement/page ranking high enough to make an impression. AdWords also asks for your daily budget (how much will you spend in a day on advertisements?) and tells you how many impressions and clicks you can expect to have in a day. With a budget of $1.00 a day, one could have over 103 impressions, and more than 11 clicks. Before this week, I was confused as to what the difference between an impression and a click was, and I'm sure if one is not familiar with online marketing - it should be explained: an impression is when a person sees and reads the advertisement (aka, it shows up on somebody's Google Search results page when they search for a keyword you have designated as relevant), a click is when somebody physically clicks on the advertisement and goes to explore the web page. The Google Keyword Planner does take in to account that AdWords makes Google money, and tends to choose the keywords that will benefit Google the most. To find other keywords there are a couple of other tools (the ones I was given the option to explore):
Moz.com: SEO Software, Tools, and Resources for Better Marketing
Uber Suggest: keyword brainstorming/suggestion tool

The other most interesting and important tool I explored was Screaming Frog, which is a desktop program that "spiders" all of a websites' elements in a way that is easy to use for search engine optimization. Screaming Frog organizes all of the material and makes it easy to look through and analyze every page, link, image, URL, script, CSS, and app. This tool is especially helpful for finding duplicate pages on a medium or large site with lots of pages, as duplicate pages can detriment a page's search engine ranking (this, I did not know!). Screaming Frog also allows one to export the information to Excel, so as to have a form of the information that can be shared with others. This could help my team immensely with search engine optimization, because the our client's website is complex and well developed already.

The most important thing I have learned from this assignment is what to do with AdWords, how to use AdWords better, and how to find the keywords that will work the best to search engine optimize our client's website (and my blog).

Of course it is a good thing to have great keywords, and use them to have your site rank better in Google's index, but don't forget that there are consequences for overloading your site with keywords. "Keyword stuffing" as it is called, is a black-hat marketing technique, will have your page marked as spam and earn you a lower ranking in Google's index (quick recap: black-hat techniques are the techniques that are not approved or seen as cheating the system by the search engine). Before I go, here's a funny for this short reminder about keyword stuffing:

Who likes turkey without gravy anyways? Image from: https://www.seo.com/blog/keyword-stuffing/

Is working at Google really like the movie, "The Internship"?

So much has happened in the last week, I will have to flood this blog with posts tonight! I have another post due before class tomorrow, and I am planning to write another about the guest speaker we had in one of my other classes - I am super excited about that one too! Hopefully there will be time to write everything tonight, in between studying for a Spanish exam. This post is also really long because I love the Google office and really, really would like to work there... gotta get my internship in order. Sorry in advance! But seriously, if you ever have the chance to visit a Google office, go. The Pittsburgh office is apparently considered relatively conservative compared to the rest, but awesome nonetheless.

Perhaps you have seen the movie, "The Internship"; where two best friends in their late 30's/early 40's or so get an internship at the Google headquarters, and realize how awesome it would be to work at Google - three meals a day provided, snacks, you can work wherever you want as long as you get your stuff done, a really cool office with all kinds of themes and innovations. I can now confirm with you, that "Yes. The Google offices are that cool."
Yesterday, our Digital Marketing class had a field trip to the Google Pittsburgh office in Bakery Square, where we were joined by the clients we will be working with and a few guests from Chatham. The closer we got to getting inside the building, the more excited I got. I was really excited - I had heard good things, and I had seen "The Internship". I was hoping it would be like the headquarters in California that were used to film the movie. We gathered in the main lobby and took the elevator up to the seventh floor, where we were given visitor tags and briefed on the security protocols (unfortunately for everyone, photos are not allowed). The first thing one sees when walking in to the offices is a games room (what a great start, right?) and micro kitchen. The Pittsburgh headquarters has quite a few micro kitchens, two cafeterias, office space for 300 people, and much more spread out over four floors of the Bakery Square office building.
The building is very unique and each floor is themed: there is a Kennywood themed floor, a tunnel and outdoor areas of Pittsburgh themed floor, and a Nabisco themed floor (the building was once a Nabisco factory). Nabisco is the company that makes Triscuit crackers, Ritz crackers, etc. and each room on the Nabisco floor is named after a Nabisco product, each room of the Kennywood floor is named after a ride at Kennywood, and the Pittsburgh floor had rooms named after parks, tunnels, and landmarks in Pittsburgh. One of the best features of the whole tour was the cargo net lounge, which is a cargo net suspended above some of the office space, with pillows. When we went by, there were Google employees seated comfortably in the net with laptops propped up on pillows, working. That's the beauty of Google - you can work anywhere in the building and make your own day as long as you get your work done. We were walking past the language support office space and were pleasantly surprised to see an adorable French Bulldog wagging her tail at us a we passed. You can also bring your dog to work as long as you have proven that they are a safe animal to have around. The cafeteria has a hydroponic spice garden, an outdoor summer garden and beehive, and a heated chicken coop outside with laying hens. Not only is Google innovative, they are trying to be more friendly to the earth, and promoting healthy diets among their employees. The micro kitchens were filled with healthy snacks like dried fruits and açai berries, fresh fruit, and various healthy snacks. The kitchens have feature chefs every once in a while, and serve a delicious spread which we unfortunately were too late in the afternoon to experience.
After our tour, we attended a private presentation on Search Engine Optimization, and were able to network and have a question and answer session with experts at Google. My questions about link farming were answered and I got to find out for myself what Google is really like. The visit to Google gave me hope that I can someday have an office job (I am not the type of person that easily sits still and does the same thing all day, in the same cubicle, with the same people, every day) and that I would like it.

Sometimes I miss classes - No big deal!

Due to the nature of competitive hockey, my team is forced to travel all over the northeastern United States to play against opponents in our conference. We are doing well this year, and recently broke the program record for wins in a season (we are 7-6 overall and one spot out of playoffs). This weekend we travel to Oswego, New York to play against SUNY (State University of New York) Oswego Lakers. We travel by bus, around seven or eight hours on Friday, in order to play on Friday night, so I will be missing all of my Friday classes. To make up for our absence, Dr. Chung has instructed my teammate, classmate, and good friend Marie and I to write an extra blog post this week. The topic of the blog post must be about what the class is supposed to go over during the session that we miss.

This time, we are missing a discussion on how search engines work. We were asked to take a course on "the Search Landscape" (it's videos and easy listening - a man with a British accent narrates! Click the link to see for yourself), read chapter 2 of our online textbook from Stukent, and take a quiz afterwards. The course content includes the history and evolvement of search engines and the "search ecosystem". Also included are the trends of search and audience behaviours and insights, and the implications of search for marketers.

The reading from chapter 2 of the Stukent textbook explained how Google works and provides the basic PageRank formula used to calculate the website's popularity, as well as how a search engine calculates the relevance of a webpage to a certain keyword. For instance, the keywords that show up at the top of a webpage give the webpage a higher PageRank score as opposed to the words at the bottom. It is also important to know the difference between a webpage and a website: a website can have thousands of pages (webpages).

Also included in the reading for chapter 2 were two important Google updates: Google Panda and Google Penguin. Both updates include changes to the google search algorithm to try to make the experience of using Google Search better. The Panda update helps to filter out websites with thin content and lower relevance from the top of the search results page and show the more relevant results at the top of the page while the Penguin update aims to decrease the rankings of pages that use black-hat search engine optimization techniques. Search engine optimization was also explained a little bit, but will be covered a little bit more in Chapters 3 and 4. Search engine optimization is a very important thing to have knowledge about if you would like to have a good online presence, and would like to avoid black-hat techniques.

Google Panda and Google Penguin are updates to Google's search algorithm that improve the overall search experience for everyone, except the black-hatters, that is. Image from: http://giselleaguiar.com/social-media-training/understanding-googles-panda-penguin-hummingbird-seo/

I'll admit that just like many others, I have very little previous knowledge of how search engines work and this is a lot to take in at once. Who knew search engines had rules for the sites that end up on the search results? I can't wait to learn more about search engine optimization and to start working with our client for the Google Online Marketing Challenge.

Week 2: Market Research Tools - Courtesy of Google

Google has a lot of cool features, and all you need is an account. It's incredible how many different things you get when you sign up for a Google account: a YouTube channel, Google+ page, GMail account, Google Drive, a blog (just like this one), your own calendar... and it's all free and hosted on the world wide web, easily accessible from any computer with an internet browser and a local area connection-

- okay, enough nerding out over the awesomeness of Google - let's get to the details. This week, we have been asked to explore three market research tools: Google Trends, Think with Google, and Global Market Finder. All three are affiliated with Google, and completely free. We also selected our teams for the Google Online Marketing Challenge (GOMC) this week, and are beginning to work on researching about the businesses we will be working with.

Google is a large part of what we are currently learning in BUS213: Digital Marketing in the Global Marketplace. Image from: http://p1.pichost.me/i/55/1790280.jpg

Google Trends is a portion of Google dedicated to search trends around the world at given times during the year. In this article by Christopher Ingraham in the Washington Post, the trends for the search term "hangover cure" are explored for the entire year. It turns out that "Thirsty Thursday" may not be as prevalent in North American culture as one might think, and that everyone seems to like one last "kick at the can" before they pledge a New Year's Resolution of sobriety. Google Trends will likely prove to be a useful tool for identifying when to run advertisements on Google AdWords for our team during the GOMC, and which keywords to use in coding/scripting for websites and other online projects.

Think with Google is a site chock full of creative insights and research on a huge variety of subjects, designed with businesspeople and marketers in mind. The subjects vary from automotive and retail, to advertising and tech, and everything in between. Think with Google provides information and cases of where technologies are used to reach people, and shows us many different creative and innovative ways to reach people through technology. My favourite part of the Think with Google page is the Creative Gallery, which combines creativity and technology into fun things, like StylePit's digital lookbook. It's basically a BuzzFeed for techies!

The third tool to be explored is the Global Market Finder. The Global Market Finder is a search engine for keywords in different countries and regions. If you need help finding out where you should run an advertisement, or if it's a good idea to try and sell in a certain country, the Global Market Finder can really help you out. You put in where you are, where you would like to analyze, or the G20 countries, and then whatever keywords you would like. For instance, I searched the keyword "hockey" in the G20, and I was given a list of countries where there is a market for "hockey" advertisements, the number of local monthly searches for "hockey", a recommended bid price if I was wanting to run an advertisement, and what there is for competition in that country.

This semester I will find out which of Think with Google, Google Trends, and the Global Market Finder will help the most with marketing for our client, as well as learn of, and how to use some more helpful marketing tools. Hopefully I will also have time to explore more on the Think with Google page!