Google sets themselves in a league of their own above other search engines by their relentless pursuit of new ideas, inventions and technologies that emerge from the depths of Google Labs to become a reality. Google AdWords in particular stands out from other PPC marketing platforms by the enormous leaps and bounds that they have taken throughout the last several months that are changing the face of the search engine marketing industry. Several of the new technologies that are quickly turning AdWords into a marketing Mac truck include Click-To-Play Video ads, Pay-Per-Call ads as well as Google Publication Ads.

Click-To-Play Video Ads

Google has recently announced plans to launch a new form of advertising that is undoubtedly going to revolutionize the search engine marketing industry. Click-To-Play Video Ads are the newest edition to the AdWords advertising arsenal. This new spin on AdWords advertising gives the campaign manager the same control over the ads as they have with static image ads throughout the Contextual Advertising network.

You will be able to show your ad on a specific web site of your choice or you may also choose for your ad to appear along with content that is directly related to your products or services in order to generate pre-qualified visitors to your site. As always you have complete control over geographic targeting which means you have the option to show your video ads on an international, national or local level.

The Click-To-Play Video ads will initially appear as static images when the web page first loads. You then possess the ability to actually interact with the advertisement, the video will begin with a single click to the play button that appears directly below the ad. Furthermore you may advance the video by means of a slider bar, adjust the volume, pause the video or click through directly to the advertiser’s web site. The element of interaction within an advertisement not only triggers the potential customers curiosity but also provides a fabulous method for an advertiser to really solidify their company’s brand into the minds of the viewer.

Over the last several days I have heard a lot of buzz going around the different search engine forums and throughout the blogosphere stating that AdWords Click-To-Play Video Ads would provide beneficial results solely for the big brand, fortune 500 companies. It is true that big brand advertiser will most definitely benefit from this method of advertising. On the other hand the way I see it is a means of evening out the playing field to grant an opportunity for smaller up and coming companies to show off their products and services in the same lime light as the giant corporations.

The video ads will be able to be displayed in several different formats including Flash, image and animated ads. You also have quite a variety of different sizes that you may pick from for creating your video ad that include:

Skyscraper (120 x 600)

Wide Skyscraper (160 x 600)

Banner (468 x 60)

Inline (300 x 250)

Leaderboard (728 x 90)

Pay-Per-Call Ads

For the last several months Google has been experimenting with a method of advertising know as Pay-Per-Call Ads. Ads that appear on search engine results pages (SERP’S) are accompanied with a small green telephone icon. Upon clicking the ad Google will then call the searcher then Google will dial the advertiser and whoala you are connected.

When you become connected to the advertiser Google will block the call thus, the phone number that you are calling from will be confidential from the advertiser. Google will not share your phone number with any third parties and after a four month time period your number will be deleted from Google’s database.

There are a number of benefits that come along this form of advertisement. For example, you are able to instantly initiate a customer relationship starting right from the branding stage and retain that relationship all the way to the transaction stage. You are able to offer explanation into complex aspects of your products or services. You possess the ability to quickly overcome any objectives that your customer may have and instantaneously offer clear concise solutions that will benefit your customer. A prediction from Kelsey Group states that the Pay-Per-Call Advertising market will flourish to become a $1.4 to $4 billion dollar industry by the year 2009.

Pay-Per-Call Advertising is not exactly considerate cutting edge news. MIVA, Ingenio and Jambo just to name a few have been serving these types of ads for some time now. As Google has proved in the past they do not need to necessarily reinvent the wheel in order to offer a top of the line product that proves to be extremely beneficial for all parties including the consumers as well as the advertisers.

Google Publication Ads

Recently Google has been experimenting with AdWords campaign managers placing ads in select print publications. The ad formats that have been tested range from templated ads and text ads to full page spread ads. Where your ads appear is based on an auction type format much the same as the AdWords bidding system. How the process works is you will compete head to head with other advertisers and set a max bid price. When the bidding stage closes the winning bidders campaign manager will be contacted by a Google representative who will notify them and work along with them to produce an advertisement that is ready for print publication. If you are declared the winner of the auction you will never pay more than what you set as your max bid, in fact you may very well end up paying less than what you originally set as your max bid.

At present there is a wide range of publications that are participating in the Google Print Ads program including popular publications such as lifestyle, automotive and technology. To be more specific a few of the magazines that are participating consist of PC Magazine, Maximum PC, Budget Living, Information Week, Motor Trend, Outdoor Photographer along with many other popular titles.

As Google continues to experiment and explore with print advertising it will not be long at all before they create a highly effective, efficient way for Google AdWords advertisers to break free of the computer screen and stretch out to reach readers of popular magazine publications all over the world.

Conclusion

My intentions as you were reading through this article were to explain to you how the folks over at Google AdWords are constantly striving to bring to the table cutting edge products and services that are highly beneficial to both the advertisers as well as the consumer. There is no doubt that AdWords will continue its quest for creative new services that will secure their position at the top of the search engine marketing podium.

The other day I got a nasty call from one of my students I was training to be a home based marketing consultant.

He was angry because I taught him it was easy and fast to get clients. That if he did things the right way, clients would all but fall into his lap.

But for him, that just wasn’t the case.

And so I called him back and asked him what he was doing. He said he was doing telemarketing and direct mail, but the people he was talking with just won’t believe the things he was saying he could do for them.

Luckily for him, this was no big deal and getting him back on track was easy.

Here’s what I told him:

First of all, if people don’t believe the things that you can do for them, then something’s wrong in the presentation. That’s where you’d want to take a look at what’s happening in your direct mail and your telemarketing that’s preventing you from getting the appointments.

And one big problem was that I think it’s a mistake to even do the direct mail anyway, or try to sell anything over the phone. Both are a colossal waste of your time, because it’s hard for them to believe something that just comes to them in the mail or over the phone.

Instead, all you have to do is stop trying to sell anything but the appointment — in either mail or phone. Make it an objective to get an appointment so that you can determine if they’re a qualified prospect or not first.

This is not as much about you selling them anything as it is you qualifying whether or not you should even work with them in the first place.

You see, there are more of them (i.e. small businesses who need and want marketing help) than there are of you (i.e. marketing consultants). You get to choose them first. Then they get to choose you.

So the key is to get the appointment, see if they qualify (do they need, want or have the money for your services?) and then tell them how you can help them. At that point you sell. Before that you are qualifying.

You can sidestep the entire “belief” element just by doing things in that order. That way you make money and build your home business rapidly — with qualified customers who know and understand what you are doing for them — instead of slowly trying to “sell” everyone something.

If you are marketing an online business as an army of one…and many of us are…then communicating effectively is critical to your success. Notice that I did not say good writing or good copywriting, but communicating effectively. Is there a difference?

Imagine you are on a business trip in an unfamiliar city. It’s late in the evening and you decide to walk back to the hotel after a dinner meeting. You are in the financial district. The streets are nearly empty.

Suddenly you are short of breath and feel pain in your chest and down your arm. There are only two people nearby. One is a dapper Oxford don in town to receive an award at the university Linguistics Society. The other is a scruffy bum spitting through the holes in his bridgework while fondling a paper bagged bottle of Thunderbird wine.

You plead for directions to the nearest emergency room. The Oxford don in perfectly structured English tells you that he knows less about the area than you do but he’ll make a guess. The bum in a disjointed, distorted sequence of grunts, hacks and gestures tells you he goes to the emergency room all the time. He points to an alley, tells you to travel one block east and turn left directly into the ambulance entrance.

Are you going to tell me that you would give the Oxford don all your attention because his presentation was perfectly styled? Of course not. You hung on every word and gesture from Mr. Thunderbird. You never noticed his grammar was non existent. You never even heard the F-bombs.

What was Mr. Thunderbird doing that the Oxford don was not? He was giving you information you wanted to know…needed to know…right now. He knew something you didn’t and you couldn’t care less how he presented it so long as he got it out.

Chances are whatever you’re marketing online isn’t as critical as directions to the emergency room, but no matter. People will pay attention to what you have to say if you know something they do not and they need or want the information you have.

So forget whatever Miss Trumble told you about your chicken-scratch nonsense writing way back then. Know more about what you’re selling than anybody else online and people will pay attention to what you say.

Of course that’s no reason that you cannot or should not improve your writing skills. You won’t be any less of a communicator, just a better writer, and people will reward you for that with even more business.

If you own a mobile Fleet washing business or a pressure washing company then you should consider using direct-mail advertising to get to the clientele that you are interested in. There are many ways to do this and one of the easiest ways is to get with a direct-mail company that sends out packages and coupons out to specific ZIP codes.

If you own a mobile Fleet washing business it makes sense to send your flyers for Fleet washing to areas where high-income net worth individuals live because they are the ones that own businesses or are executive managers of large companies that have fleets of vehicles. You should also ask the advertising executive for the direct-mail company if they have zip code mailings that are motly business districts and those too should be mailed out to in order to get more fleet washing accounts.

A mobile Fleet washing company should also send flyers, which are inserted into the Chamber of Commerce newsletter, which is mailed out to all members. If you live in a large city then you may be able to pick up a book of lists, which has the names and addresses and contact information for the largest companies in various market sectors. You should then fax a bid sheet or proposal to wash all their vehicles or send them in an envelope with your flyer and information that is handwritten on the envelope. Please consider all this in 2006.