PardonMyFrench

How Important Is Google Places to AdWords?

I just finished taking the Search Advertising Advanced Exam for Google's Professional Certification Program and there were quite a number of questions on linking your Google AdWords accounts with your Google Places Account.  (BTW if you are wondering, the exam is super hard but I did pass).  So this got me thinking how important is Google Places?

Now, I've been keeping a close eye on the local marketing tactics available via Google Places.  Not familiar with it?  Basically as a small business owner you can customize the way your business appears in the local map results.  This is super important because the odds are if you are a local business your website will most likely never get enough visits to warrant a high organic listing.  However, if you customize your local business listing/Google Places page you can be high up when Google shows the map results ahead of the traditional organic listing. 

Besides getting the high listing in maps, you get free traffic reports, ability to add coupons and events, and for a flat fee per month you can highlight your listings.  However, the big kicker for me is when you link your AdWords account with your Places account.  Now your text ads can show an address which makes it stand out from your competition.

I can only conclude based on the amount of questions regarding Google Places that it is a key component of Google's growth in the future.  Sure the big ad agency is slowly embracing paid search, but if I had to guess, Google is really looking for a surge in accounts from the small business universe; hence the amount of questions that you needed to answer correctly in order to get your Advanced certification.  Need some help with your small business account, let me know...

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

HP, Extended Warranties, and The Web

So back in winter I dropped my laptop and it chipped the outer shell and caused some cosmetic piece to pop off.  The laptop turned out to be fine, but I called into HP Customer Service because I had the extended warranty only to discover accidents weren't covered but they could fix it for $298.  However, since I decided to order the iPad when it was available I thought $298 and the loss of my laptop for up to 7 business days wasn't worth it.

Fast forward to yesterday and my "N" key popped off.  I tried popping it back on but it didn't work.  The Control button also popped off a few months ago but I didn't use it so I didn't care, but the N key is a big deal. So I went over to HP support which is always such a "treat" and couldn't find any documentation on how to fix it so I contacted support.  In a nut shell, they would replace the keys for free, but if they found it was due to an accident they would charge me $298 but in either case I'd be without my laptop for 7 business days.  So I started to think, hmmmm, cracked shell with a chip missing, what are the odds they are going to try and charge me $298 for a repair?  If their customer service/repairs department is a profit making unit, pretty good, right?

So I googled "replace key on hp pavilion laptop" and right at the top I found this article on how to replace keys on a HP Pavilion DV1000 which was close enough to my current laptop model.  In about 2 minutes I had the key replaced and therefore didn't need the service.  In fact, the entire online chat with HP's rep took almost 45 minutes to setup the process - too long and too tedious.

So this got me thinking.  How damn hard would it be to put that documentation on HP's website?  How many people have shipped their laptop back for something that took about 2 minutes to fix?  Besides the chat and losing my laptop for 7 business days, I'd have to remove all passwords and backup all of my files - all for a damn key.

You know what I learned from all of this?  Extended warranties are crap.  HP customer service (not the rep) was crap - I get trying to upsell clients but for a damn process that took 2 minutes to fix you couldn't put that on your website?  In this area of transparency, crowd sourcing, and instant satisfaction via web search, couldn't HP do a better job of trying to put easy fixes out there especially for us suckers that bought the extended warranty?  I don't think extended warranties are worth it and perhaps all of the money I pay for a Windows - HP laptop isn't worth it anymore either...

PardonmyFrench,

Eric

AT&T Using Rapid Response to FCC Bill Shock Inquiry?

Yesterday evening while waiting for my grill to heat up, I turned on my SkyGrid app on my iPad.  The number one most talked about story was about the FCC reviewing the wireless industry practice (or lack of) on cell phone bill shock.  You know the shock you get from a big bill when you aren't paying attention to your wireless usage especially when you are traveling internationally.

Now, I already had my own bill shock surprise not when travelling overseas but just using my wireless phone.You see when I first signed up for AT&T I didn't get an unlimited voice plan, but now I  love my iPhone so much that I started using it for all of my calls.  My wife pays the bills and didn't pay much attention to a $500 bill, but when it hit $1,000 I called into AT&T.  They were great and credited my bill basically the full amount over the two months minus the cost of an unlimited plan.  Also, when I do travel overseas I get the international wireless data plan, but even that is just good for email - you open up an app and wham - you download a ton of data.

Anyway, I didn't pay much attention to the articles because I've had my personal experiences and I can see the bill shock problem for customers and even though I'm an ex-AT&T guy, I actually agree with the consumer.  My own experience with AT&T was great, but then again with a little advanced warning I might have caught it early.  Well today, I received this email from AT&T regarding Travel Tip for Your iPhone which I found the timing very interesting.

Is this just a standard email sent out by AT&T? Perhaps, but then again I think they know this is my second iPhone.  However, even if this was already a planned email, did AT&T notice the buzz yesterday and decided to be proactive and send out this email?  

I think the answer is Yes.  I have to believe AT&T has buzz monitoring services and someone at AT&T must have had their own SkyGrid type report and decided this email should be sent out on the heels of the big news story. I think this was very smart political rapid response which is something I know a thing or two about.  I think they would have been perfect, if they were running some paid search ads or had some sort of website devoted to tips for fighting bill shock, but the timing on the email was beautiful.  Nicely done.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric

Is There Something Wrong at 1-800-Flowers?

Some of you readers are probably thinking, oh here we go again.  You are probably expecting a big rant from me based on the title of this post, but I think you might be a little disappointed.  However, I am fired up enough to rant a little about the problems we've been experiencing at 1-800-FLOWERS.

It started about a month back when my wife ordered an exotic bouquet from 1800-FLOWERS.COM   for one of my relatives in the hospital. We put the order through my iPad, our credit card was charged, and we got a confirmation.  Unfortunately the flowers were never delivered.  So my wife called into their customer service number when we heard from my relative that she hadn't received them.  Let that set in for a second, we got charged on our credit card and if we didn't check with my relative we probably never would have known they weren't delivered.  Anyway, the customer service rep was very professional, credited our account, and we received a letter with a 20% off coupon.

So, we just assumed this was a glitch and placed an order last week for another relative using the 20% off coupon,  Our credit card was charged for a simple flower bouquet with balloons and once again 1-800-FLOWERS failed to deliver.  So my wife called in again and this time was quite upset.  1-800-FLOWERS tried to contact the local florist but failed so 1-800-FLOWERS credited our account again (as of this post we haven't confirmed the credit but we are not worried).

That was the last time we will order flowers from 1-800-FLOWERS.  Their customer service reps are extremely professional and very nice, but based on our recent experiences I think there is something wrong in their order fulfillment process.  It just seems too odd that two consecutive orders from us would fail in similar ways.

I don't think 1-800-FLOWERS is a bad company, just we've had 2 bad recent experiences with their order fulfillment and that usually means to me, that they are cutting some corners that they probably shouldn't be.  Have you experienced similar problems or are we just a little unlucky?  I'd like to know.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric 

Dear Google - Fix My AdWords Pet Peeves

Dear Google,

I love you.  You know how much I do.  I spend countless hours in AdWords for both desktop and mobile campaigns.  I also religiously use Reader, Gmail, Docs, AdPlanner, Google Places - the list goes on and on. However, I'd really like you to fix these pet peeves on mine - some are easy while one requires some work.

1) Please, please make Quality Score a default setting in AdWords.  Do you have any idea how many times I have to customize my keywords view to add Quality Score?  A ton.  Now any real student of paid search will profess how important Quality Score is so why not make it a default setting?  Yeah I get it that a small percentage of users actually add it to their views, but maybe that's because they have to know to add it.

2) Make an iPad version of AdWords Editor (this is the hard one).  Look you have to know by now that the iPad is really a mini computer, so why default users to your stripped down, kinda lame AdWords reporting interface?  Why not make an AdWords app?  I get you are in this battle with Apple but really this just hurts your users.

3) Writing about AdWords Editor why not add the ability to download ads made with your Google Ad Builder tool? Yeah I get that the ads are perhaps proprietary to you and perhaps you don't want users to get access to the Flash code, but cut us a break.  These ads are pretty cheesy so I wouldn't worry so much about people copy and pasting them onto their desktop or perhaps you can use some of those engineers to figure out a way to prevent the code from being downloaded.

4) Finally, give me the ability to download click to play video ads into AdWords Editor.  You know you want advertisers using it so why not make it easy for us to copy and paste it into other ad groups?

Thanks Google for listening.  I hope you make these changes.  PardonMyFrench,

Eric