Entries Tagged as Google

Last week I had the honor of speaking at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management for a class entitled BA 1905 — “Internet Search Economics, Google, and New Business Opportunities” - a great name for a course covering this relatively new industry, with some truly engaging curriculum around my favorite topic of conversation: Search Engines, Marketing, and creating a business model around increasing visibility on the web.

With a blank canvas to work with and many possibilities for conversation, the professor and I decided that it would be best to do an hour long presentation on Google.  The presentation pretty much wrote itself from that point on.  Here is the full slide deck:

Since I am so closely involved with, and dependent on Google (I use their products, actively read their blogs and use their search engine every day) the talk came naturally for me.   The presentation was mostly just an “off the top of my head” overview of what I know about Google from various books that I have read, interactions with teams, etc.  Here is a loose outline of what I talked about:

* “Really neat info on how to make money from Google.  Very informational, straight-forward.  Good presentation.  Cool guy.”

* “I thought this was a very interesting presentation. I learned a lot of fascinating things and this opened my eyes to a completely new industry that I was unaware of before.”

* “I thought the presentation was really good.  The presenter is very knowledgeable and passionate about what he does.  I liked hearing about what we have been learning, from the perspective of someone who is in the business.”

* “Jeff was really great.  He is very knowledgeable and willing to share information.”

* “Presented and covered many relevant topics about how Google’s innovations have made the company successful.  Suggested possible market or venues that Google could venture into.  Answered hosting and marketing questions and gave advice to explore interests in internships and find contacts and connections.”

* “He was interesting and very knowledgeable about Google.  He also had a job related to Google which made the presentation especially interesting.  Interesting to learn about the new company.  Fun to see different things about Google.”

* “I liked the real-world timely examples given.”

* “Would have been interested to hear more about Three Deep Marketing and how they grew their company.  More relevant info about online business growth and models would have been helpful and interesting.”

* “Very interesting to get a real-world perspective on some of the issues/topics we’ve talked about in class!  Very worthwhile/interesting!”

* “Some of the information was review, but speaker was very informative and gave a really strong overview of Google.  Really gained my interest when he started to analyze why Google does what it does and how to be successful through Google.”

* “I thought the presentation was very interesting.  Jeff had a lot of good, useful information that was very relevant to the class.  I like the fact that he had experience and real-life examples of certain things (such as the stories about domain names) because it was so real and put things into a good perspective.  He knew a lot about the topics he talked about and presented it in a way that was clear and easy to understand.  I learned a lot.”

* “The presentation helped to link all the different Google ideas into the real business world and how they relate.”

* “Good and clear information provided.”

* “The information about starting your own website was very useful and interesting.”

* “Useful overview and review of Google with insights from the real world.  Great personal anecdotes that related to subject matter at hand.  Material was presented in a catchy and eloquent manner but did not go over my head.”

* “I found this very interesting and I was very engaged the whole time!  Jeff knows his stuff and has a great way to get his information across and was a great speaker.  It made me want to get into starting my own website.  Great presentation!”

In December, several members of the Three Deep team attended an event at Google’s offices in Manhattan, NYC.  Google’s offices made for an intimate setting, and compelling presentations from BabyCenter’s Tina Starkey and Google’s Jim Lecinski made for a particularly worthwhile event for our team to attend.  Since many of our clients tend to be in the business of marketing to moms (and we often execute these marketing programs), this event was right in our sweet spot.

Parisian Love

The event started with a quick video that was produced by Google that told a love story through search.  It was a compelling video and told a great story of a long distance relationship where the subjects are brought together through the magic of Google.

Continue Reading Moms Are Searching For YOU →

I am writing this post on the second business day of the new year, and I’m already very excited to see what 2010 holds.  At Three Deep, we have already had two great accomplishments to start off the year:

Upgrading Our Website Design

Depending on who you ask, our old website design needed anywhere from a “cosmetic refresh” to a “complete overhaul” – for this design, we chose to go somewhere in between. We updated the layout to be wider (using the 960 grid system) and make the site less cramped.  We also softened some of the corners and made other tweaks in order to make the site look more inviting.

The major change on the site is that we improved the animation/offer area on the home page to better highlight the core services we offer. Rather than our old home page focus of lead generation (which is definitely part of our business, but not the only part of our business as the graphic implied), we decided to create a very SEO friendly carousel that showcases our core services and easily understandable to our visitors.  Using jQuery, we were able to animate the features area while still keeping it search friendly; it’s amazing how well it works!

We had been talking about updating the site for months, and we finally put a date on when it needed to get done; January 1st.  We knew we had to get the site updated before January 4th, because we would be getting a lot of traffic from …

Continue Reading 2010 is Going to be a GREAT Year! →

This week, several of our team members are attending the Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (GAAC) Partner Summit at Google’s campus in Mountain View, CA.  The event has been great so far, with a great combination of conceptual and technical presentations, as well as lots of Google information that is not available to the public at this point.

We also got some pretty awesome Google shirts and other swag with Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer logos on them… but the best part of the conference is definitely the presentations and the great conversation that we are having with other GAAC consultants.

Continue Reading Google Analytics Partner Summit →

Congratulations to our client Cardinal Builders for being mentioned in the upcoming issue of Replacement Contractor Magazine. Cardinal Builders will be featured in the article To Your Credit.  The story is about how contractors are quickly incorporating the new tax credits that are available to homeowners who make qualifying replacement window upgrades in 2009 or 2010 into their overall marketing strategies. View the article from Replacement Contractor Magazine featuring Cardinal Builders.

Two days after the 2009 Economic Stimulus Bill was signed into law in February, Cardinal Builders VP of Operations Mike Lelasher called Three Deep Marketing with an idea.  He wanted to put a red CNN style breaking news banner across the top the Cardinal website with the headline:

Breaking News: President Obama signs stimulus plan into law, includes up to $1500 tax credit only for windows with .30 u-value or lower. All windows Cardinal Builders offer meet or exceed requirements to earn tax credit. Click here for more information.

Continue Reading Three Deep Marketing Client Cardinal Builders Featured In Replacement Contractor Magazine. →

Google has consolidated several awesome new tracking features into a single view in AdWords over the last week (some features have been there a while, but are now receiving more exposure due to a recent interface update) and we at Three Deep are in the process of putting several of these into action. The first thing that we will talk about today is the call tracking feature that they have recently added.

Ever since Google acquired Grand Central in 2007, I knew it was only a matter of time before they would start adding call tracking into AdWords.  For good reason, as phone calls to local or 1-800 numbers on a landing page can account for a large percentage of leads generated from a PPC landing page.¬† In fact, for some of our clients, phone calls have outnumbered free estimate request forms at a 2 to 1 clip.  Even for those clients where request forms still dominate leads, adding a unique tracking number to a landing page has allowed us to truly track the number of leads that we generate for clients.

Continue Reading Google AdWords New Features – Call Tracking →

Leave it to Google to announce something big on Labor day and keep me working through the night. I first heard the breaking news on the Minneapolis Star Tribune, then caught wind of it on the Official Google Blog. After that, the news came from about 20 other sources on my Google Reader, I knew that I had to post about the subject of Google launching their new browser, which is named Chrome.

Several sources have already weighed in on the subject of Google’s new browser, but I thought I’d chime in my $.02 while it’s still fresh on my mind. While most of the feedback I have seen is negative, mine is overwhelmingly positive:

Google Chrome is awesome!

Continue Reading Google Chrome = Greatest Browser Yet? →