The Google Analytics courses #5

The Google Analytics courses provided me with the opportunity to further my knowledge about Google Analytics.  I was able to grasps the concepts that were presented and following along.  The most rewarding part of the course was the actual hands on experience with setting up your own account and maneuvering through this.  When setting up the account and analytics, the experience better help to understand the whole assignment and it made the campaign purpose that much more exciting.  The course assessment took a some time because I actually had to break the assignment up into 2 sections each because of time constraints.  This caused me to review the material a little more which helped me understand better.  Overall, I would recommend this course to anyone, the only thing I would say is that this should have been a little earlier in the course.  It was a rewarding experience and very enjoyable, especially keeping my attention for this long. 

BUS 572 # 4-Analytics and things

In this session and work I would the how analytics lesson very interesting in particular the way cookies work.  This was an eye opener for me because I did not know that the cookies were a permanent thing that could last up to 2 years.  It was interesting to know that there were time tables on various cookies.  It was my own understanding that cookies were a temporary thing that kept track of your information while on the browser.  Now knowing that cookies also have a different purpose was very informative.  There are 4 primary types of cookies that are used in the google analytics.  The first is the unique visitor identifier cookie that usually last 2 years and then expires.  The session identifier cookie usually expires after 30 minutes of inactivity.  The traffic source identifier cookie stores values.  The last is the custom visitor segmentation can provided defined segments for reporting attributes.  In addition to the primary types of cookies, there are also 2 kinds of cookies 1st party cookies and 3rd party cookies.  The 1st party cookies are sent by the domain of the website visited and only that website that created the cookie can read it.  The 3rd party cookie are set by 3rd party sites and other sites that are visited.

 The second takeaway from the session was having the speaker give feedback and learning some key concepts as we move forward to our Google campaign.  The speaker, Emily Gouwens of Impaqt, was very knowledgeable and informative. Emily talked about how the budgets of her clients vary and that this has an impact on how you approach the campaign.  Emily also stress the fact that it is not the money but it is how you use your keywords and run your campaign that is the most important concept.  At least that was my takeaway. Her feedback to our group about reworking our ad words to make sure we include things like "waterfront" since this is the place in which most of the events are held.  This was a good point and could actually benefit our financial outlook in our campaign. The key concepts discussed in class like the principle of price vs. search volume  in which you should always look at the price in relation to the search volume was a very important information.  Making sure that the variety of key words creates conversions.

These were important concepts to learn to continue to link the theory of the class to actual practices that are needed to have a successful campaign.  Being a novice at the marketing world, these concepts are very important in developing skills in marketing.  Does anyone wonder how this will actually turn out?  I wonder how this will all pan out and what will actually happen when we engage in our campaign.

http://youtu.be/qzaBOydlEUk

Bus 572 Blog 3 Understanding Optimization & Adwords Campaign

The reading assignment on search engine optimization helped me see the whole structure of how search engines and websites work hand in hand.  The role of the search engine is to help users find what they are looking for and to make sure that the results are relevant to the user.  The five main areas for the technical practice of the Search Engine Optimization clarifies its extreme effectiveness.  
1-Search Engine-friendly website structure
2-A well-researched list of key phrases
3-content optimized to target those key phrases
4 -Link popularity
5-Emerging Trends
The website needs to be structured in a way that allows the search engine to optimize results for high rankings.  With that, search engine optimization is basically getting the user where they want to be be simply using key phrase and key words to find relevant search results.  Also, in reading the material, key phrases was a concept that I kept confusing with keywords.  Key phrases are made up of keywords.  Given the recent work on key words, it was not hard for me to get them a little twisted.

The presenter Timothy James was a delightful and fun presentation.  His knowledge was very helpful in campaign prep and other principles such as ad words and key words.  It was rather intriguing when Timothy said that ad word express was for an audience that is quick get it done now type of folks.  This means that this would not be idea for an ad campaign you want to plan for an extend period of time.  The concept of ad words being an auction as another way to look at things. Being able to look at the choice of keywords of an ad campaign as an auction puts the spin of money and how far are you willing to go in mind.  It is a visual of a person at a podium yelling out pricing.  It was also good to know that being too specific may limit the results that you get.  For maximizing your click, you certainly don't want to be too specific.  Also, the display URL was another way explained by Mr. James.  He mentioned that the best way is to use 35 characters including spaces to optimize.  So given this the two basic question that can be applied to the current campaigns is what sets the business apart from the rest and what is the call to action of this campaign.  

http://youtu.be/UbATbN1k4XI

The most important concepts I have learned from this session is the way that a campaign can be optimized through various vehicles.  It is very key that the main purpose of the campaign must be understood and that you narrow down the work to specific ideas.  You don't want to get too specific with ad words but you should be very specific on how you chose your ad words, how you frame you campaign, what results you want to obtain and the ultimate goal of your campaign. 

Just curious, Did anyone find it a little challenging to come up with relevant keywords right away?  for me, I was stuck on just trying to figure out were they good ones to use or too specific.  Also, how does your team interact and how often do you meet?  I have an outstanding team and we use Google drive and gmail a lot to communicate.  Just wondering how other teams are working together to accomplish their goal.

Bus 572-2 Digital Marketing Relevance

The first concept I learned about in this session was in the Google digital marketing course search 201.  In this tutorial, there were many concepts that were very informative.  The keyword is defined as a word or set of words that ad words advertisers create for a given ad group to target potential customers.  This will be very helpful in assisting the client, I made it, to draw a new client base and expand the population of potential customers.  The ideas of keyword lists, which include, expand, target, refine, and group as a way of using the keywords.  There are best practices concepts which include negative key words, search for synonyms, selecting location and language and start with general keywords.  These best practices provide insight into the important work for creating a successful campaign for the client.


The second concept I learned about in this session was whole idea of digital marketing in the presentation by Sarah Peduzzi.  This was a well crafted informational presentation that tied the course with the current projects.  The concepts presented gave clarity to how effective and precise the campaign has to be for the client.  The very specific information has provided tools to create success for our team.  The presentation also put the monetary value of ads into perspective.  Not having the knowledge of the actual costs of marketing, this information gave a clear picture of how costs fit into the equation.


The most important skill set I have learned is the ability to use ad words and navigate through the Google site for digital marketing. It has been a little challenging to learn all the aspects while making sure that the practices are aligned with the theory learned.  These concepts has given me the ability to get the clients needs into a more perspective view and make sure that principles are applied to the actual work we are going.

http://youtu.be/-3JGmwMmsVk

Bus 572 First Blog spot

BUS 572-First Blog Spot The two key concepts I learned thus far was search engine marketing and emarketing strategy. Search engines have been a topic that I have been wanting to learn more about for a while now and the opportunity for me to do that has presented itself. The most intriguing thing that caught my attention is the dominance of Google in the search engine market share. They are mountains above the rest of the competition. There are two types of search results organic search results and paid search results. The Organic search results are non-financial and usually are found on the left hand side of the search engine results. It is the natural results that you get, hence the name organic. These results don’t consistently attract users. The paid search results which are the pay-per click advertising that involves results that business pay for when you click on their advertisement. The pay per click differs from the organic search, in that, paid placement is involved. The pay per click is usually displayed on the top on the right side of the search engine results page. With these two concepts, understanding the concept of the search engine comes into perspective. 

The next concept is that of emarketing strategy. It is very interesting the read about the evolution of the internet how so many changes have come about by capabilities of technology. Often times thing are taken for granted and we don’t stop to recognize where we have come from. Emarketing has changed the geographic standard by making products available on a much larger scale. This is a fairly new environment for business and consumers to grow together. McCarthy’s four P’s product, price, placement, and promotion, has been greatly influenced by the internet. There are more of a variety of products, more competitive pricing, great ability to reach out for placement and better opportunities to promote where previous opportunities may not have existed. These four P’s have been changed by the influence of the internet and changes the fundamental thought process. 

There were several takeaways from the last class session. The first is learning more about google. The second was being about to set up and start a blog. There are many google apps that are used daily and I did not realize that it could actually have more fun if I actually used them. The ability to share documents was one of the most important parts being that we had assignments due. Blogging is actually the better part of the session. I have never blogged before and now I am actually doing the first blog ever and happy to be doing something new. The personal journey has already added some great experiences. We were able to meet clients that want to give us the unique opportunity to assist their business. They have the faith in the students in our class to do the job. The next was making sure that the team was set and have the ability to network. This proved to be very rewarding. 

The most rewarding was being able to have all this opportunity to learn new people, ideas and systems. The challenging part of it all is letting it all soak in. It was a lot of information and things happening that really kind of made it all run together, but reflecting back, it was truly a great experience.