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ULTIMATE GUIDE TO GOOGLE ADWORDS

An exemplary Google AdWords manual that could easily prevent costly mistakes and help boost profits.

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This how-to guide cracks the code of Google AdWords.

Internet maven Marshall (Ultimate Guide to Facebook Advertising, 2017, etc.) joins with Google AdWords evangelist Rhodes and web specialist Todd, two debut authors, to delve deeply into advertising on the world’s leading search engine. This voluminous fifth edition boasts 37 chapters that manage to address the needs of both novice and advanced users of Google AdWords. For the real pros, the authors serve bonus material online (at perrymarshall.com/supplement) that includes extended reports and videos. Keywords are the core of Google AdWords, and this book authoritatively explains how to find profitable ones, implement keyword matching, and use the Google Keyword Planner. The content is more expansive than keywords alone; also included are excellent chapters on writing Google ads, following the company’s editorial guidelines, split testing, conversion tracking, bidding strategies, and more. The manual also goes beyond Google AdWords to cover landing pages, Google’s Display Network, advertising on YouTube, Google Shopping Campaigns, Google Analytics, and remarketing (aka behavioral retargeting), which the authors call “the single most profitable online advertising strategy.” The chapters on marketing are particularly astute. For example, an ode to the 80/20 rule (with material extracted and condensed from Marshall’s book on the subject) takes the popular formula and demonstrates how it can extend to online marketing and “just about everything you can measure in a business.” A smart chapter regarding the use of email marketing offers tips for how to transform clicks generated through Google AdWords into a valuable list that can be used for long-term cultivation. The how-to’s throughout the volume are its greatest strength because the authors not only provide lucid explanations, they often include screenshots that illustrate tactics and techniques as well. Oversize pages enhance the screenshots, and frequent sidebars facilitate readability. In a novel nod to online marketing’s direct marketing roots, the authors include a number of excerpts from the 1923 book Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. “Uncle Claude,” as this outstanding guide affectionately calls him, pioneered results-driven advertising, so celebrating Hopkins by relating his timeless wisdom to modern-day marketing is a nice touch.

An exemplary Google AdWords manual that could easily prevent costly mistakes and help boost profits.

Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-59918-612-2

Page Count: 380

Publisher: Entrepreneur Press

Review Posted Online: June 4, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018

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THINKING, FAST AND SLOW

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...

A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.

The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.

Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.

Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011

ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1

Page Count: 512

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011

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REIMAGINING CAPITALISM IN A WORLD ON FIRE

A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.

A well-constructed critique of an economic system that, by the author’s account, is a driver of the world’s destruction.

Harvard Business School professor Henderson vigorously questions the bromide that “management’s only duty is to maximize shareholder value,” a notion advanced by Milton Friedman and accepted uncritically in business schools ever since. By that logic, writes the author, there is no reason why corporations should not fish out the oceans, raise drug prices, militate against public education (since it costs tax money), and otherwise behave ruinously and anti-socially. Many do, even though an alternative theory of business organization argues that corporations and society should enjoy a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit, which includes corporate investment in what economists call public goods. Given that the history of humankind is “the story of our increasing ability to cooperate at larger and larger scales,” one would hope that in the face of environmental degradation and other threats, we might adopt the symbiotic model rather than the winner-take-all one. Problems abound, of course, including that of the “free rider,” the corporation that takes the benefits from collaborative agreements but does none of the work. Henderson examines case studies such as a large food company that emphasized environmentally responsible production and in turn built “purpose-led, sustainable living brands” and otherwise led the way in increasing shareholder value by reducing risk while building demand. The author argues that the “short-termism” that dominates corporate thinking needs to be adjusted to a longer view even though the larger problem might be better characterized as “failure of information.” Henderson closes with a set of prescriptions for bringing a more equitable economics to the personal level, one that, among other things, asks us to step outside routine—eat less meat, drive less—and become active in forcing corporations (and politicians) to be better citizens.

A readable, persuasive argument that our ways of doing business will have to change if we are to prosper—or even survive.

Pub Date: May 1, 2020

ISBN: 978-1-5417-3015-1

Page Count: 336

Publisher: PublicAffairs

Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2020

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020

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