Welcome to the Escape Blog

Pay-Per-Click Advertising has revolutionised online advertising (if not advertising in general).

Basically, you only pay if someone reads and clicks on you advert. Sounds good doesn’t it? Sounds easy and effective doesn’t it?

Some argue that the market is already saturated but don’t worry, there are still lots of people out there doing it badly enough for you to make an impact at a cost where you will see a return.

It may be worth reading John Grants Article on Marketing Profs - Five Proven Ways to Waste Money With Pay-per-Click Advertising.

1. Use your homepage as the landing page
2. Don’t bid enough to secure a top spot
3. Don’t make your ad copy specific
4. Don’t align your landing page with searchers’ keywords
5. Don’t bother with testing

If proof were needed that the web (call it web 2.0 if you like) is affecting everyday life, look no further than Slivers of Time.

It’s basically an eBay-style recruitment service where employers can book workers by the hour.

Slivers of Time launches in Liverpool next week and more than 400 workers have already signed up to the programme, which is backed by a £500,000 government grant, with a further 5,000 workers waiting to take part.

Interesting at the moment, and I may well be way-off mark. Also, please note for all you spies tracking my post, this is a personal observation.

1. There is a current story in the press in the UK about the suspected poisoning of the exiled former Russian agent Alexander Litvinenko in London. It’s big news. I can’t remember the last time I heard a story like this in the press. I can imagine these things happen all the time but we never hear about it. How comes this one made the news?
2. There is also a new James Bond Movie out.
3. Serving MI6 agents have given their first ever media interviews Colin Murray’s BBC Radio 1 show (ref. BBC) in an attempt to attract younger recruits to the spy service.

I guess in the cluttered media world of the young, even MI6 needs some exposure.

It’s great to look at pages on your website, with increased knowledge and awareness, knowing you can make them better.

You don’t get better by not improving and every word and every graphic on every page is up for grabs.

So, we re-worded our old and boring newsletter signup page. We should have done it before but being tucked away it was a case of out of sight, out of mind.

During a sales meeting, it was brought up, and it started the ball rolling.

• We moved it as a call to action on every page
• We reworded it and jazzed it up.
• We included reasons for subscribing

Implemented during mid-October, it had the desired effect.

Go have a look - maybe even subscribe.

It’s Tuesday. The gusto you started yesterday with is starting to wear off and you’re desperately willing Wednesday to come so you can start counting down to the weekend. You want to crack on and get that important project done but you just can’t find the motivation.

What you need is a pick-me-up. Fortunately deviantArt is full of them.  My new favourite of which is Line Rider.

"Its not a game, its a toy." Says *fsk, the creator. "What i mean is there are no goals to archive and there is no score." Simply draw lines onto the white background and watch the little guy on the sledge ride them.

Smashing! Bet you can’t make a loop-the-loop!

Check Line Rider out here.

Thank heavens, common sense prevails!

News from the BBC about a test case in California.

Bloggers and US internet providers cannot be liable for posting defamatory comments written by third parties, the California Supreme Court has ruled.

It followed the case of San Diego woman sued after posting allegedly libellous comments online about two doctors.

Some of the internet’s biggest names including Google, eBay and Amazon have supported a woman in a US legal battle that may save them from libel cases.

The judges said the ruling would protect freedom of expression.

You can argue, if you are a purist, that having online tools is killing the skill of experts and (to a fashion) I’d agree.

Working with some talented people at The Escape I see the value in having things custom-built. For instance, I am personally not a big fan of content-managed systems and user-generated content, because ultimately quality rules and the sites I get involved in at The Escape are about selling - they are about return on investment.

That said (as I step down from my soap box) I am a typically impulsive marketeer. I don’t want to wait for the plan or for the report; I want to do it NOW.

Why? Because if it doesn’t get done now, the time might pass. This blog post is appearing now because the following link found me through the Blogosphere and I wanted to talk about it NOW. It makes me look up-to-the-minute clever and attracts the NOW traffic, NOW.

… tomorrow is too late

So, if you want need some auto generator tools to enhance your online presence, this Smashing Magazine Article is a great place to start - go have a look NOW!

The most common mistakes that the [lazy] big boys make with their websites from SEOMoz. Number two being my current favourite for an easy win.

1. Un-Spiderable Navigation
2. Disregard for Relevant Keywords
3. Flash & Image-Based Content
4. URL Cannonicalization Problems
5. Content Distribution & Partnerships
6. Cookie or Session-Variable Requirements
7. Controlled-Access to Content
8. Multiple Site Creation

Great post here from SEOBook about how to manage your website for the most effective search engine marketing.

Report over on our Boomerang Blog about the predicted growth of online sales in the UK for 2007.