Business Experiment Methods

Executives Embrace Experimentation
There are three types of experimentation that executives have been more open to try; prototyping, simulation, and test group and A/B testing.  Prototyping uses trial and error to develop an idea and is tested in different environments until they get close to the results they want.  From there, they fine tune it to create the desired results.  Simulation allows for better communication within a team and great decision making because it allows for collaborative problem solving. Test group and A/B testing allows a few subjects to be tested on select groups of people and with that data, they can see what customers are more responsive to.

Smart Business Experiments
Smart businesses do small scale experiments so if there are mistakes, they would have not wasted as much money and time if it were a large scale experiment.  As it becomes more and more successful, they will grow it.  There is a method to test-and-learn so that team members can go back and change the things that they might need to.  It is very similar to the scientific method of testing a hypothesis and reaching a conclusion to determine if the hypothesis was correct or not.

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Many different scientific studies have been performed and many have different results because of the way they're tested. Not all scientific studies are performed the same because there are different variables that need to be considered and this can lead to different results.  For medicines, scientists test animals and single cells but the only way to know how it will effect humans is to test humans.  Other factors need to be considered before selling a medicine over the counter, The FDA has determined that at least 2 successful trials need to be completed for it to be considered to sell.

This leads us to consider how well products or services will work in a real market. When testing new ideas, you should have a small focus group and see how well these ideas work and determine if you get there results you want.  This can happen through trial and error or through other experimental methods.  Trying new things can be dangerous but can also lead to great rewards. 

For my team's client, we will come up with positive and negative keywords and routinely check on which ones are getting a higher CTR and also factor CPC to see which ones we should keep or get rid of.  We will also change descriptions if we see that one is working better than another and edit the title to appeal to the user.  Through experimenting, we will create a great AdWords campaign. 

AdWord Keyword Tools

On Wendesay, January 28th, our class and other Chatham University students and faculty attended a trip to Google to learn more about Google AdWords and Key Word Planning.  Key Word Planning will help my team create ads better geared toward keywords that fit our client and their business.  When we first arrived to Google Timothy James and his colleague gave us a tour of their building and gave us some "fun facts" about different parts of the office.  One thing that I took away from James' presentation was to make sure that you create a good ad or ads and try to give yourself a higher drank so that your ad will be more likely to show.

In the Google KeyWord Planner, you must sign up to view any of the content. Once you create an account and sign up to use AdWords, you can play around with the keyword planning tool.  There are so many different ways that people can search for something and when writing and AdWord Campaign, you want to try to get the Google users who search for the not so popular things as well.  Timothy James take about this tool in his presentation and a key take-away is to not overload one AdWord with all of the keywords, but rather have multiple AdWords and tailor the keywords to each ad.

Another tool that will be helpful in this course is Moz.  Moz is a marketing software tool that specializes in SEO Marketing.  It started in 2004 and has grown since then and has helped numerous people and businesses with their online marketing strategies. This tool, like many others, searches and catalogs the entire internet, analyzes the data, and generates results that will help its users create good ads to run. Another, more simple tool, is UberSuggest.  It is very simple to use and does not require anything to sign up for it. I would not use this tool regularly because it does not appeal to me. Screaming Frog is another software system that will help in SEO marketing, it is extremely similar to Moz.

Google KeyWord Planner is set up so that the user can control everything and Google suggest their tools for you to use.  Moz seems like it is set up to run a marketing campaign for you by helping you and suggesting things to actually do.  It is hard to say what Moz actually does for it's customers because you need to sign-up and it is not free, so I was unable to view the content and what a user would actually see.

Week 2: Google Market Research Tools

Google Trends

Google Trends allows users to see what is being searched given specific categories over a period of time. This includes most searched things in the past week in Business and Politics, for example.  This is great tool when someone wants to keep up with popular points of interest in today's world.  In the Digital Marketing Class we can use this for our client to see how often people are searching for what the client offers, whether it is a service or a product. 

This link will take you to an article that I found interesting that Dr. Chung made available to the class, the students. It tells the reader how often "hangover cures" is searched on Google and it is incredible how much it is searched on January 1st. At first I thought maybe other holidays would have high searches for that phrase but I then realized that this is the only holiday that the whole world celebrates together.  It is amazing that the whole world consumes so much alcohol on New Year's Eve that Google Trends can see how it has impacted so many people and can help them cure their hangovers. 

Think With Google

Think With Google is a useful tool when interested in knowing different data in different industries that Google has collected.  It also contains a page of tools that can be useful to any business when trying to figure out what the best next move would be for the business.  You can also navigate through different industries and platforms.  This is a very diverse website and appears extremely useful for the clients that the class will be working with.

Global Market Finder

Global Market Finder is a tool developed by Google that is specific for the use of AdWords for this course's Google competition.  There are other applications similar to this but Global Market Finder is best for what we will be doing throughout this semester.  The use of this tool will greatly help our clients as we create AdWords for them and move forward with the competition. 

Google Online Marketing Challenge (IA1)

The Google Online Marketing Challenge is outlined through 9 steps that the teams follows.  The beginning steps are mainly involved with registration through Google and the professor.  This page also includes a timeline of when registration and the competition begins and ends.

Being online matters because it is a global location where anyone can find information about a person, a business, and practically anything someone wishes to enjoy.  When you have a presence online, you can build it to become more attractive and when a greater presence is created, more people will be talking about you.  Having this online presence also allows for feedback, negative or positive, which can help you or your business.