Saturday 28 February 2009

Times Are Tough. Advertise Smarter.

I did a complete re-branding for Pardon Services Canada a few months ago.

It was wildly successful. I provided them with new:

TV
Print
Brochures
Ambient/Online
#1 on Google (4 times!)

Here's my favourite ad of the lot. It's playing now on SportsNet, W, Space, Comedy, and ANET.



Vancouver advertising is in a state of flux, if you can no longer afford $100,000 for a TV ad, I can make you one for $20,000.

Friday 27 February 2009

Thursday 5 February 2009

Natural Search Results vs Paid Advertising

Show of hands. Have you ever clicked on a paid ad on a website? On purpose, anyway? You know the stuff in the yellow bar on your Google search?

I avoid those things like the plague.

I think most people do.

If I want a moving company, I search for a moving company:

Moving Companies Vancouver

Now, that's a competitive market. There are six paid adverts on the top (including Yellowpages placements) and eight down the side.

The first of the real (natural) results is: Two Small Men.

I don't know about you, but I'd rather check out a company that Google deems legitimate over a company that has paid Google for their stamp of legitimacy.

The Spill-off Effects of Blogs

It is one thing to be #1 on Google for one thing.

It is quite another to be #1 on Google for everything to do with your topic.

For Pardon Services Canada, I created a blog: Pardon Me, Canada.

Not only does this blog have the #1 spot for Pardon Me, Canada, which was the intention, it also has tons of spill-offs, where it has #1 on Google for things not originally intended.

Here are a few of the searches conducted last week that led to the Pardon Services Canada blog:

will a criminal record in canada show up on an american record?

traveling with criminal record

criminal charges show up on cpic

I just took these off the Statcounter. People were searching for these thing today, and went directly to the blog.

I'll get into the advantage of Statcounter in the next post.

Either way, great spill-offs! This blog is getting hundreds of hits a week, from things you could never anticipate.

Tear A Yellow Pages In Half

It's not easy to do, but it can be done.