I Was Born

I work at a small, some may say, "boutique", advertising agency. We like it that way: zero bureacracy, zero useless meetings, free-flowing creativity and best of all, flexibility.

In order for us to remain small and flexible, we all have to wear many hats; Master of Many Domains - our business cards could be four feet long!

For example, I am the Controller. It sounds pretty fancy - as if I have a CPA, or Great Caesar's Ghost!, an MBA. It just so happens that I majored in Philosophy in college but I REALLY wanted to be in advertising, so I took the long way and got in any way I could, which was doing the Bookkeeping, which is also being the entire accounting department.

I like the symmetry of numbers. There is a certain beauty to the simplicity of the correct path through a transaction.... and back out of it. There is even creativity in Accounting in that there is not always one solution.

I digress. I am the Accounting Department at LMI Advertising http://www.lmiadvertising.com. I am also the Office Manager. It's all fun until someone gets bored. The Universe abhors boredom, therefore, boredom must be a vacuum (I had to sneak a little logic in there, stay true to my roots).

I got bored. Then the Universe dropped Google in my lap. At first I simply tallied up the click throughs and the cost in order to bill our clients. No fuss, no muss. It was, however, not only boring but a royal pain the butt.... UNTIL someone asked me to create a couple of campaigns.

I was like the old deer in the headlights. What to do? I had never created a campaign. I hadn't even bothered to look at conversion rates. There was no way I could "lose face" by asking where the heck to begin, so I jumped in feet first - and loved every minute of it.

You could not keep me out of my campaigns for ten minutes. I was researching the ins and outs of optimization on the web all day long and on weekends too. Negative keywords! Mirabile dictu!

The Keyword Tool! Lookee here, four pages of keywords! Obviously I had allot to learn.

Enter chance, Serendipity? I found Lunametrics http://www.lunametrics.com in one of my strolls through the internet forest. They were hosting a full day of training on Google Analytics. I got on a train in my pajamas (in order to carry my laptop as well as a change of clothes) and off I went.

I was born. I had used GA in my day to day analyses of our campaigns - but what wonders to behold! This was a great class. I learned how to use GA in a methodical manner; there really is a method to the madness (I mean gobs of data under all of those buttons).

The most important Aha! moment I had was doing a content drill down. Our clients' customers were not looking for them in the same way we thought they would. I can have four pages of keywords but if they aren't the words our clients' customers are using to find what they want, none of them matter. The fact of the matter is, the Lunametrics Folk were so nice, so approachable and so, so knowledgeable: I had no choice but to throw myself into our Google campaigns with every spare minute I have.

I even went so far as to study like I was writing a thirty page paper for a graduate Philosophy of Language course, just to take the Google AdWords Professional exam. What good is know how without a little title and logo to make it look as pretty as it feels?

In my next installment I will elaborate on the importance of a really great web site to go along with a Google campaign. Right now, I have a burning desire to engage with my campaigns! Until then, Cheers!