Category: ABT Culture

I recently had the opportunity to speak to two founders of venture-backed start up businesses about their business story and how they went from a napkin idea to a full-fledged product.  Since both companies are in the development phases, they have yet to start marketing their respective products.  Therefore, one of the big questions we got stuck on was – how do you market a product that people may not be shopping for yet?   As we discussed this topic, I was happy to hear that one solution involved using pay-per-click as a means to expose their product to the public.

This blog post will talk about benefits I have identified when working with PPC as well as an example of how one small business used Google Adwords to market their new product.  This “small business” is now ranked #104 on the Fortune 500 list.

ShareFile.com : From small business to INC 500

Last year, I participated in a challenge called “Duke Start-up Challenge” which is an annual competition sponsored by Duke’s MBA program that allows its participants to present executive summaries, business plans and elevator pitches to a panel of successful entrepreneurs.  During the introduction of the panelists, they told us their story about their business.  One of the stories was told by Jesse Lipson who is the founder and president of ShareFile.com.  Jesse’s story of creating a product from scratch was an amazing one to begin with.  However, what really amazed me was his ability to market the product through Google Adwords.

Two things to note here :

1. Jesse had allocated a budget for marketing the completed product.
2. Jesse relied on Google Adwords to initially market the product.

I was floored by the amount that Jesse had spent on initially marketing his product. After his speech, I approached him and curiously asked him how much he is spending on Google Adwords  for the current state of his business?  His response, they had ramped up the Google Adwords spend since its initial success when first promoting Sharefile.com.

The beauty of pay-per-click is not only do you get to see return on investment quickly, but you also get to see if the increase in advertising spend suffers from diminishing marginal returns.

If you are unfamiliar with diminishing marginal returns, what it means in this situation is:

1. Owner Bob spends $100 on advertising and brings in $1,000 in profit.
2. Bob then thinks to himself, “Let me spend $1,000 on advertising and bring in $10,000 in profit.”
3. Bob invests $1,000 on advertising and only brings in $5,000 in profit.
4. Instead of getting $10 for every advertising dollar, he is now getting $5 dollars.

This is an example of diminishing marginal return where you have increased advertising spend but reduced the rate of return per advertising dollar.

However, in some cases with pay-per-click Bob could have brought in $15,000 in profit when investing $1,000 into advertising.  Meaning, the additional advertisement exposure increased the ROI per advertising dollar by $5 dollars!  Instead of making only $10 per advertising dollar, he is making $15.
Benefits of Google Adwords as a PPC tool : Quick Analytics Integration & Measured Success!

The beauty of Google Adwords as a pay-per-click medium is that it integrates with Google Analytics quickly and easily.  For any site that is signed up with us to do internet marketing and ppc management we install Google Analytics onto their website as the absolute first step.

Unlike most offline marketing channels we have the ability to leverage a tool like Google Analytics to quickly collect data on our online marketing efforts.

Google Adwords and Google Analytics allow us to see how well our pay-per-click click campaigns are currently doing with only a day of delay (if that).  When running an Adwords campaign we are able to see how many people came across our advertisement, engaged with our advertisement and even how many people from that advertisement have entered into our lead generation process.   All this beautiful data with a relatively low margin of error.  Not only are we able to see these different metrics (and much more), but we are able to see the results as they come in which allows us to quickly adapt our online marketing strategy.

Benefits of PPC: A/B Testing!

My last point for this blog post about PPC for small businesses is that PPC allows for simple A/B Testing.  As we saw in the paragraph above, we are able to constantly measure the success of our advertisements daily if not hourly (based on how much traffic you are paying for which is directly based off of your advertising budget).

For clients with a higher advertising budget, we are able to compare keywords we are bidding on side-by-side.  For instance, we can see that advertisement A versus advertisement B (both advertisements pertain to the same product) have a conversion rate of 5% versus 0.5% respectively.  Let us just assume that we have taken chance out of this equation and have a large enough sample set to make the conclusion that advertisement A is a better ad to bet on than advertisement B.

From there, we can immediately throttle spend on advertisement B and divert the funds to the advertisement that converted at a higher rate.  The above scenario can also be applied to the keywords you are bidding on, the landing page you are bringing individuals to, what time you are showing the advertisements and much more.

Google Adwords also has a built-in feature that applies statistics to the advertisement engagement metrics for any given advertisement set and automatically decides which ad variation it should show more often based off of the advertisements past performance.

Please feel free to comment with any questions and I will answer as soon as possible.  A question for the business owners out there, when creating your business – did you allocate a budget for marketing?  If so, did you invest any of it for the online medium and was it successful?

Raleigh, NC –September 1, 2010 – Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc. (Atlantic BT) and Crabtree Partners, LLC announced today the companies have signed an agreement under which Atlantic BT’s real estate holding company will acquire a significant ownership interest with options in Crabtree Partners and the prime real estate it holds on the corner of Glenwood Ave. and Creedmoor Rd. across from Crabtree Valley Mall. Additionally Crabtree Executive Center held by Crabtree Partners will be renamed “Atlantic BT Center” and  Atlantic BT will relocate its headquarters to the 3^rd floor of the building.

Under the terms of the deal, significant interior and exterior renovations and modernizations have been planned for the building. “Crabtree Valley has always appealed to me as a center of activity in Raleigh and we are excited to have the opportunity to become a part of the area,” said Jon Jordan, president of Atlantic BT.  “We believe that the location gives us a great competitive advantage, not only in significant visibility and nearby shopping and dining, but its central location is very convenient for our employees from the Raleigh, Cary, and Apex metro areas.”

Atlantic BT’s current headquarters is also located on Creedmoor Rd. a few miles away. The new headquarters at over 11,000 sq ft. more than doubles the company’s current space and will provide room for the company to continue expanding. In recent years the company has grown rapidly, landing on each of the most recent Inc 5000 lists containing the fastest growing private companies in America. This year alone the company has grown more than 50% in year to date revenues.

Provided in the agreement is an initial 5 year lease with options to expand within the building as well as rights to increase its equity participation and to extend the lease  for up to 20 years. “We are excited to have growing technology company like Atlantic BT make the decision to move its headquarters into our building, and look forward to working with the company to undertake the planned renovations,” said Richard Ladd, managing partner of Crabtree Partners.

Atlantic BT has been involved in other expansion in the past 4 years including the acquisitions of Novel Projects, eSearch Logistics and Praxis Studios giving the company strategic advantages in .Net development, hosting and design respectively.

Peter Pessetto of Keller Williams Commercial represented Atlantic BT in the transaction. Crabtree Partners was represented by NAI Carolantic and CDS Properties.

About Atlantic Business Technologies

Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc. is a full service Web development company that offers the tools, resources and services to get any business moving. The company focuses on combining new ideas, specific requirements and years of experience into high-quality, results-oriented Web solutions for small to medium sized businesses. Atlantic BT offers end-to-end solutions for over 800 clients, including professional business Web site design, e-Commerce and programming solutions, business grade Web hosting, Web strategy and all facets of Internet marketing.

Wondering which holiday terms were searched most often in Google last December? If you guessed ‘Christmas Tree’ or ‘Christmas Music’, you are correct! Internet users (in the US) searched both terms more than 11 million times each in December of 2008.

• #1 Christmas Tree (11,100,000)
• #1 Christmas Music (11,100,000)
• #2 Santa Claus (6,120,000)
• #3 Christmas Cards (4,090,000)
• #4 Christmas Gifts (3,350,000)
• #5 Christmas Decorations (1,830,000)

Surprisingly, ‘regifting’ was not in the top five.

We were also surprised that ‘Aunt Vivian’s Fruitcake Recipe’ did not make the list either.

By now we have all heard about the Apple iPhone. Since its release in 2007, it has dominated the smartphone market with over 30 million units sold worldwide. Both RIM (makers of the Blackberry) and Palm have been working hard in their R&D departments trying to create a product that will trump the all-in-one from Apple. They aren’t the only ones, even companies like Samsung and LG have entered the competition. But all of this competition is good, especially since it can only force Apple and others to continue to improve on their products.

Satisfaction Guaranteed?

The Apple iPhone has brought back the hope we gave up on the Mobile Web years ago. Lets face it, it feels great to browse the web on the iPhone. ChangeWave reported that the Apple iPhone 3GS had a 99% satisfaction rate. Even the earlier models — having a 73% satisfaction rate — outperformed competitors in usability testing.

While viewing websites are relatively easy on the iPhone and other similar devices, it can be much better. Sites that do not have mobile-ready alternatives always end up getting scaled down and this makes it difficult for the end user to properly navigate through the site. End result – higher frustration levels from users. If people can’t read the site or navigate it effortlessly, they will leave and move on. This results in lost opportunities for businesses.

The End of the PC Era?

The mobile web is gaining attraction and more people are using their smartphones to access the web each and every day. People aren’t sitting at their desks anymore using desktop or laptop computers. They are on the go. Teenagers today are setting the example as they text message, tweet, blog, or whatever else on their mobile devices. The web is conveniently there for them to access. RBC analyst Mike Abramsky estimated in a report that by 2011, shipments of both PCs and smartphones will be roughly 400 million per year. What is more staggering is that by 2011, smartphone shipments will surpass PC shipments. Designers and developers need to make sure that their sites are as usable and accessible as possible. This starts with optimization.

Performance Matters!

In my research, I found that by optimizing mobile websites for devices such as the Apple iPhone you can tremendously increase performance. The following is an excerpt from the abstract in my thesis:

User performance on the optimized mobile websites was enhanced by as much as 550% compared to performance on the non-optimized sites. Furthermore, user ratings of usability were strongly correlated with their actual performance of specified tasks. Based on these findings, it was concluded that optimization of websites for mobile web use can greatly enhance usability and reduce frustration from users, allowing organizations to better reach the growing mobile audience.

Source: Identifying and Applying De Facto Standards in Mobile Web Design Using the Apple iPhone, Mark Riggan

Companies are beginning to realize the potential that the mobile web has on their audience, due to the popularity of devices such as the iPhone. However, there are still a lot of websites out there that ignore the mobile market and allow the devices to render their sites as is — which in most cases will be scaled down. Speaking from personal experience, I get tired of having to zoom in and out of websites in order to review information. This of course is implying that I have the patience to wait for the site to load entirely.

And So I Conclude…

Designers unite! Let clients know the potential in mobile websites. The Apple iPhone is only going to get better as well as the other competitors such as Blackberry, Palm, and Google. Learning how to design websites for different types of devices will only strengthen us as a whole.

So what are your thoughts on the mobile web? Does the iPhone make you want to surf the mobile web more? Can you imagine a world where desktop computers are fading away? Check the facts…the future of the web lies in the palm of your hand.

The results are in; Atlantic BT’s Inaguaral Pumpkin Carving Contest was a great success!

Atlantic BT strives to enhance culture with various team building activities. The most recent, which closely aligned to the candy holiday that is known as All Hallows’ Eve, was a pumpkin carving contest. This being the first of its kind we weren’t sure what to expect. We knew our designers could carve a mean pumpkin but were pleasantly surprised with the originality and enthusiasm all the departments showed. We had a lot of good laughs and enjoyed reviewing each other’s work.

The rules were simple. Atlantic BT provided the pumpkin and employees brought the tools of their choice. Props could be used to help support the overall idea. Initially we did set a time limit but soon found out the task was of greater difficulty (our pumpkins were massive, gutting alone took 30 minutes) and quickly removed it. Tools used ranged from delicate clay modeling tools, pumpkin carving kits and Dremel sets to less refined Dewalt drills.

We had a great time and it truly showed in the final results.

Voted by Atlantic BT employees.

The Winners

• Overall Winner

  Mark Caron

  Pumpkin Name: “Guessalope”

• 2nd Place

  Eileen Allen

  Pumpkin Name: “Why so serious?”

• 3rd Place

  Andrew Bartlett

  Pumpkin Name: “Hannibal”

Take a look and let us know which one you liked the best.