Google Adwords presents a cost-conscious solution for any company to begin online advertising. Because Adwords is both technical and artistic, it is best to use professional counsel like a firm or media buyer to set-up a campaign.

With Adwords, potential customers can be recruited by organic Google searches, and companies are able to highly target potential customers by geographic region and through select keywords. For example, a local-based company would want to set their Adwords within a 20-mile radius to ensure they are reaching the right location.

Ads are made up of campaigns, each containing one or several search terms. Google allows advertisers to have any number of campaigns. Adwords is unique in that the ad is created based on the message or service the potential customer is searching for, not the message the company wants to deliver to the potential customer, as with a traditional ad campaign.  

Costs for advertising incurs each time an ad is clicked, up to a prefixed daily amount. Those costs can go as low as a company wishes, although $250 a month seems like the lowest reasonable amount. How does the budget limiting work? If a campaign budget is set at $10 per day, once that budget limit is reached, the ad will not appear for the remainder of the day. The cost per click for each ad will vary depending upon the popularity of that keyword.

For a company beginning Adwords, it’s best to start small and build spending and campaign size once a better understanding is gained of how Adwords functions and what keywords are most effective. Ideally, there should be a dedicated employee, or an outside media buyer, to monitor and modify the campaign on a continual basis.

An effective Adwords campaign requires continual monitoring and refinements. Google provides several helpful tutorials and tips for best practices with Adwords.

- Bailey

Yesterday I had the pleasure of visiting Tracy Green and her students at Newport High School.  Tracy is Newport’s culinary arts instructor and the students are lucky to have her; they’re lucky to have the culinary arts facility.

The culinary arts “classroom” at Newport is a cross between a lab and commercial kitchen.  It’s a large room with tall tables and stools in the front with the rest of the space filled with anything and everything you’d expect in a modern kitchen.  They have a commercial gas range, ovens and deep fryers all under a giant hood system.  There are color coded sets of knives and pans along with color-coded mixers, food processors and blenders that are shared by the different cooking groups in Tracy’s different classes.  And there are all sorts of other toys like immersion blenders, steamer baskets, potato ricers, cake pans, pie pans, cookie sheets and pretty much anything else a four-star restaurant would need.

I had no idea such facilities existed, and they apparently don’t in very many places.  Tracy told me that the Washington Restaurant Association representative who visited said her classroom is the finest of its kind in the state, possibly the country.

I was visiting because a group of her students will soon compete at the state level in a contest where they are judged on a restaurant business plan.  The restaurant her winning group of four students developed is called The Grotto and the concept is classic Italian fine dining with a vibrant bar.  Sounds pretty darn good to me.

What they wanted to talk to me about was marketing their place—building buzz surrounding the opening and then making sure the right people became regulars.  We talked about the power of Yelp and other user review sites, the importance of building strong lunch patronage among the local business crowd, and cross promoting their offerings via earned media, radio, newspaper advertising and e-mail marketing.

I wish the students the best of luck at state.  I think they’ll do great.

Nathan Hambley

The WOMMA eblast on marketing definitions reconfirms for me that the communications industry faces a dilemma of identity based on less than cohesive definition for its services.  More than 50 of the top marketers responded with their definition of marketing and all had unique comments.  The variation reminds me how challenging it is for communications consultants to sell in marketing services – or any services – when prospective clients all have their own ideas of how to define the category.  I advocate that we pick a definition and stick to it and that as a group we elaborate on the various types of marketing segmentation that exists. 

So, what is the formal definition? Go to the American Heritage dictionary and the noun “marketing” is defined as “the act or process of buying and selling in a market” and “the commercial functions involved in transferring goods from producer to consumer.”  Webster’s definition is not far off, but it also lists what I think is a good example of how to make marketing more understandable: “an aggregate of functions involved in moving goods from producer to consumer.” The latter definition makes it clear that there are necessary steps that need to happen within the marketing category to create a successful program.  It is curious to me, however, that the focus is on B to C and does not include B to B.   I’m off to compare the definitions of PR, social media, and more.  Stay tuned.
-Erika Schmidt