My Entrepreneurial Journal

  As my website is up and running and my Google Ad is out there, it is time to get my name out there and draw attention to my websites.     We have spent our time this week talking about the importance of social media and which sites would best help promote our websites.     I have very much enjoyed this week’s topic and focus.     As my target market includes teenage players and their parents, I think utilizing Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat (for the teenagers) and LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter (for the parents) would all be beneficial sites to start to promote my business on.     While I plan to make a presence in each of these sites, I will begin my focus heavily with Instagram as I feel this is the space my target market spends most of their time.  I have also noticed that my competition promotes heavily on Instagram.  I am slowly learning how to utilize the site, but it has been fun learning.  I realize t...

This has been a very insightful week.  We have focused on landing page optimization and basic SEO.  I will first talk a little bit about landing page optimization as I actually feel a little passionate about this topic.  I am a big believer in being honest and direct in what you are offering, what you are about, and what you are advertising.  Headlines are like promises in a way.  What we promote in our headlines needs to be what we are actually offering and should appear on the landing page.     We talked about several ways to help improve our landing page optimization.  As mentioned above, I think one way to improve our landing page optimization is by making sure our headlines are offering an accurate, honest and fair description of what we are offering.  Then having a landing page promoting exactly what was advertised.  I also think having an attractive landing page is important. ...

This week our ads went live!  If I am being completely honest, I have mixed emotions about this.  It is exciting to see how this all comes together and I love being able to track the progress we are making, yet it I am afraid to be charged.  Spending money always makes me nervous.     As my ad went live, and as we studied how to track and optimize ad performance, I was able to see how all the numbers work.  I learned how to get my tracking code and install it on my website. I have enjoyed learning how to track.  I am especially interested in learning which pages are being visited.  My ad had only been up for a day and I was able to see how many impressions and clicks I have received.  I also received an inquiry about my club today, which perhaps this is all working the right way.   One confusion I have is why do my keywords change on their own.  This has me baffled a little.  I ...

 W09 Reflection:  Relevance & Quality Score As we continue to move forward with the launching of our businesses, we directed our focus this week to quality scores and relevance.  I very much enjoyed learning about quality scores and how to focus on expected click through rates, ad relevance, and landing page experience.  The two elements I am most interested in is ad relevance and landing page experiences.  Our ads really need to be an accurate description of what service we are rendering and must lead to an attractive landing page that matches what we are highlighting in our ad.     As a class, we saw a case where the ad was highlighting and promoting lots, while the landing page was focusing on homes for sale.  I think it is very important that the two match.  This will allow us to attack the correct audience and lead that audience to a call to action on our landing page.     I have actually ...

  This week we continued to focus on our Google Ads by selecting keywords, headlines, and descriptions to promote our businesses. After researching more about expanded and effective ads, we were asked to go back and add or modify what we had already come up with the week before. I used an expanded text ad, which allowed me to use three headline words in my ad that I thought would call attention to my ad.     As I have added a store selling Bacana Beach merchandise to my club website, I decided to focus the ad on sales.     I used headlines like “join the fun,” “Beach Volleyball Apparel,” and “Shop Online Now.”     I am hoping that my headlines create fun, excitement, yet a call to action.       As creating a Google Ad is new to me, I was impressed with the suggested Ads Google created by looking at my website. I know when my website was being created originally, the web developer purposely used keywords that would call attention and give...

 W07 Google Ads and Keywords This week has definitely been a learning curve me.     I have never really looked into Google Ads or Keywords.     To be honest, I had never even considered running a Google Ad before this week.     I have enjoyed learning about Google Ads and keywords however.     For my website, my Google Ad will start with a focused Ad specific to North Carolina and will later expand to a larger region within the US.     I will start in North Carolina only because my club location is here and my customers and target market are specific to the North Carolina area.     As I expand my store and add products that will serve beach players from other regions, I will add new Ad regions.     When determining which devices, I would like to run my Ads on; I think smart phones, computers, and tablets would be the best.  I coach teenagers who spent most of their time on a smart phone and have come qu...