Pete Whitmarsh is Head of PPC at Search Laboratory and is  responsible for a team of 20 PPCers.

Today on Digital Marketing Radio we discuss the following:

How do you really know the optimum amount you should be bidding on a keyword, on Google AdWords?

Should everyone be targeting specific devices and times with their Google AdWords' campaigns?

What are the up and coming paid search opportunities to look out for?

Is Google AdWords generally the best place to start in terms of PPC?

How does Google AdWords work?

Are there better targeting opportunities on Facebook?

How do you know the optimum amount that you should be bidding for your pay per click traffic?

How do you establish the best ROI?

Is there a best position number to be aiming for?

Do you generate much more traffic if you appear at the top of the paid search results?

What impact did the 'enhanced campaigns' update have on average click costs?

What ad extensions or other bid options are worthwhile paying close attention to?

How important is landing page quality?

Pete's Past, Present and Future of PPC video presentation (see below)

The Past, Present and Future of PPC  - video presentation by Pete Whitmarsh

Some of the key answers shared on today's episode...

Software I couldn't live without

What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact the success of your business?

Excel [PPC tools]

AdWords Editor [PPC tools]

What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future?

Adthena [Competitor monitoring tool]

My number 1 takeaway

What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their own businesses?

Don't be afraid to try new things. Keep on top of the industry news. If you never try it, you never know if it's going to work.

Oren Greenberg is MD of Kurve, a search specialist digital marketing agency and head of search for Wonga internationally.

Today on Digital Marketing Radio we discuss the following:

What's it like working as head of search in the payday loans industry?

What SEO tactics don't work anymore?

SEO techniques in 2014

When your brand perception is tarnished, how do you handle that from an SEO perspective?

Competing in an industry known for black-hat SEO

Spammy, short-term SEO vs. a longer-term approach

Why using advertorials for SEO isn't a good idea

Does guest blogging still work?

Do you have to be a big brand to rank well nowadays?

Are backlinks still important?

Is there a correlation between rankings and brand mentions?

Is Google's algorithm different in different countries?

Is foreign language SEO easier?

Some of the key answers shared on today's episode...

Software I couldn't live without

What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact the success of your business?

Link Research Tools [SEO]

Linkdex [SEO]

Moz [SEO]

What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future?

Newscred [Content marketing]

Contently [Content marketing]

Quill Content [Content marketing]

My number 1 takeaway

What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their businesses?

How can you really improve if you're not measuring successfully? You've got to measure in order to succeed.

Jon is head of JontusMedia, a creative marketing & design agency operating out of Stockholm, Sweden. A small team of guerrilla marketers, Team Jontus currently serve clients in Europe, North, South America, and Asia.

Today on Digital Marketing Radio we discuss the following:

How long should a marketing campaign run before you know it's been a success?

How does old school print media sit with the digital marketing world?

What are the biggest mistakes that entrepreneurs make when it comes to digital marketing?

How would you define guerrilla marketing?

Guerrilla marketing examples

The return on integrating offline marketing with online activities

What are some of the biggest mistakes that online marketers are currently making?

Why you need to identify your goal before you start your marketing campaign

Why a lead isn't necessarily a goal

Some of the key answers shared on today's episode...

Software I couldn't live without

What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact the success of your business?

Asana [Project management]

What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future?

Trello [Project management]

My number 1 takeaway

What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their businesses?

Content marketing is a commitment, not a campaign.

Allen Zuk began his career in newspaper design and production in 1990, working his way up to production management, then moving on to web design and multimedia in 1997. He became involved in the book publishing industry in 2001 as a technical editor of digital design titles, and in 2004 he relocated to Toronto to start Clamour Creative Inc, a company providing digital publishing services and consulting to self-publishers, media companies, and various other publishing industry clients. He has also been teaching technology courses in the Toronto Humber College Creative Book Publishing Program since 2006.

Today on Digital Marketing Radio we discuss the following:

How to self-publish a book

What recent change has had the biggest positive impact in the publishing industry?

Is self-publishing complicated?

Is there still a perceived value in print books vs. e-books?

Are there any other print-on-demand options apart from CreateSpace and Lightening Source?

Does using CreateSpace give you a better opportunity to appear on Amazon?

Does Lightening Source produce better quality books compared with CreateSpace?

Will most readers be able to tell the difference between a print-on-demand book and a traditionally published book?

Where are the main places to publish an e-book?

Should you give away your content for free?

Is having a bigger publisher behind your book important?

What comes first, the title or the book content?

Some of the key answers shared on today's episode...

Software I couldn't live without

What software do you currently use in your business that if someone took away from you, it would significantly impact the success of your business?

The Adobe Creative Suite [Web Design software]

What software don't you use, but you've heard good things about, and you've intended to try at some point in the near future?

Zoho [CRM software]

My number 1 takeaway

What's the single most important step from our discussion that our listeners need to take away and implement in their businesses?

It's important to always consider self-publishing as an option - consider having a print-on-demand book instead of a business card!

David: How do you ensure that your website is as user friendly as possible? Is it best to focus on multiple digital marketing activities at the same time or is it sometimes better to focus on just the one single activity? And what are the most effective digital marketing activities at the moment? Those are just few of the questions that I intend to ask my special guest today Lyena Solomon. Lyena, welcome to DMR.

Lyena: Thank you very much. Hello, everybody.

David: Hello and, well say hello in everyone's behalf. Lyena designs tactical steps to optimize websites, digital content and search marketing, with one goal in mind. Revenue. Her expertise is a SEO, PPC, analytics and usability. So Lyena, what comes first SEO or website design?

Lyena: It looks like it's a trick question. Like, what's comes first, the chicken or an egg?

David: What comes first? The chicken or the egg?

Lyena: It's important to have both SEO and usability in mind when you design a website. The design should be pleasing to the people who come to your site. It needs to meet their expectations and as well as if you're paying attention to SEO, SEO should be helpful for users as well as search engines to identify what your website is about and help everybody to read your content and consume what you have available.

David: Right, okay. I simply ask that question because I get frustrated myself when I deal with website designers or I get asked to help to optimize websites that have been designed already and designed in a horrific manner with no SEO thinking in mind at all.

And of course SEO really is never really finished and probably good website design can evolve overtime as well. The important thing is just, as you say just to be aware of one another activity as you progressed to design phases. How do you ensure that your website though is as user-friendly as possible and you can really maximize whatever conversion rate goals that you have setup?

Lyena: I think that you need to understand what your visitors are looking for. When they come to your website, they have a mission. You need to help them complete that mission, at the same time help them complete your mission as well. You have to have calls to action. You have to help clear visitor paths that they have to go through and that's where design and usability help a lot.

David: Do you need a content marketing strategy before you start producing content? Is it important to have a consistent tone of voice in all of your content? And is it essential to have a call to action at the end of your content? Those are just three of the questions that I intend to ask today’s special guest, Elisa Gabbert. Elisa welcome to DMR.

Elisa: All right thank you very much for having me.

David: Oh thanks for joining me. Elisa is the Content Marketing Manager at WordStream, an online advertising software and services firm that also offers free tools for digital marketers. So Elisa, how would you define content marketing and how has it changed over the last couple of years?

Elisa: Well I suppose I would define content marketing as using content, which has become sort of a buzzword, but all that really means is things like blog posts or guides or videos, anything that you post on the web and is consumable by people as a way to basically bring in potential leads, possibly new customers, and just to build your brand. This is something that companies have been doing actually for a really long time but I don’t that they always called it content marketing.

I guess I would say that the main way that it's changed is that there’s really has been a focus on making sure that the content is high quality and that it’s really what your prospects want so that they’re delighted by you and that they want to keep coming back and consuming your content and sharing it with other people. As opposed to maybe previously there was more of a focus on search engine rankings and quantity-over-quality. Yeah, I think it’s basically putting content quality and readability first over things like technical SEO, search engine optimization.

David: Okay, and so that's your thoughts on what it is, do you think it’s evolved quite a bit over the last couple of years?

Elisa: I think it has evolved. I think that more and more people are doing it and that just makes it so much more competitive. First of all you have companies who are doing it really for marketing again as a way to generate needs or to try to just drive more traffic if you have an e-commerce model.

We’re also competing, all those companies that are doing internet marketing are also competing with more of like journalism type models, big media models, websites like Huffington Post and BuzzFeed. There’s just so much new content coming from so many different sources all the time.

A lot of times you’re competing for attention on social media and what blogs do people read, how much space do they have mentally to read content, what newsletters are they already getting? It’s very very competitive so … That’s a big challenge.

David: How should you get started in content marketing? How do you determine the content that performs the best? and how do you best serve your existing customers with content marketing? Those are just three of the questions that I intend to ask my special guest today, Daniel Burstein. Daniel, welcome to DMR.

Daniel: Thanks for having me.

David: Welcome. Daniel is Director of Editorial Content at MECLABS working with a team of reporters digging for actionable information while serving as an advocate for the audience. So Daniel, how have website visitor's expectation of content changed over the past few years?

Daniel: That's a great question because when we think back, we're talking on the pre-call by how much time you spent online and online marketing. We think back in the early days of online marketing, it was just impressive that there were websites, right? People were just happy to be able to go online at any time of day. I remember some of the first ads for some of the brick and mortar companies who had websites up was, "You could visit our store 24/7." It was just that big of a deal.

In the early days, people were just happy to be able to go on a website and get any information, but as things has evolved especially in the late 2000s, over the last decade, 2008, 2009 leading into the turn of the decade, there have been such a growth in social media, in blogs, in online content in general that there's just been a lot of noise that's been created.

Customers now have to try to find a way to filter through that noise, so it's not enough to just give them basic information. You really have to serve them and you really have to give them something that helps answer a key question or key pain point they have.

Sometimes when I talk to marketers now, they have a blog up or they have a free e-book or they have a free white paper and they think that's something of value because it's free, the audience could get it there and it's free, but it's really not because when you think about it, they're paying with your time, they're paying with their energy, they're paying with attention.

David: What are the benefits of SEO versus PPC? What is the downside of SEO versus PPC? And how does search marketing stack up against other forms of online marketing such as social media? Those are just three of the questions that I intend to ask our special guest today, Cara Whitehouse. Cara, welcome to DMR.

Cara: Thank you very much for having me.

David: Welcome! Cara, heads up, Reload Digital, a London-based agency specializing in helping clients find the right blend of search, social, and other forms of online marketing to grow their business. So Cara, how do you define when a client should be using SEO or PPC?

Cara: There's a lot of factors, really, but I guess the main one that we generally focus on is about understanding the time frames that a client is working to. For example, if it's October and the client wants to be looking at boosting their traffic in run up to Christmas, the only realistic search marketing option is PPC because SEO, as a general rule, just simply won't kick in quick enough to get the results that they need. Time frame is definitely ... That's one of the most important.

There are others as well. Competition, of course, is another factor, particularly in terms of the SEO side of things. We have to consider how difficult it will realistically be to achieve results, depending on what other players in the market are doing, and how big they are.

Budget as well, of course, plays a role, especially when it comes to costs per click. PPC can be a fantastically profitable platform, but if those costs per click are exceptionally high - I've seen £40 per click - that definitely adds a layer of risk that some clients just aren't prepared to take.

David: Okay. £40 per click, I would imagine you're talking about Google AdWords there.

Cara: Yes. Of course, PPC does go across other platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, anything really whereby you pay per click. I think most people think about it primarily as Google, and that's probably where we work with most of our clients.

David: What are the rules for prosperity in the new economy? How do you apply conventional sales skills to an online world? And is it really possible to sell from a mobile device? Those are just three of the questions that I intend to ask our special guest today, Andrew J. Cass. Andrew, welcome to DMR.

Andrew: Hey, David. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.

David: Well, thanks for joining me. Well, Andrew was a seven-figure producer in two separate sales businesses before the age of 35. He's also one of the few Dan Kenndy certified business advisors and co-founder and president of RemarkaMobile. So Andrew, do you think that new web-based businesses are forgetting about learning sales skills?

Andrew: I do actually because what's funny today is a lot of people I think like to hide behind, they like to hide behind the internet today or hide behind the web today and sort of sell virtually, which I think you can to a degree. But I think, the more you try to remove the actual person-to-person touch that we came up with or at least, that I came up with. You're leaving a lot on the table.

David: Right, okay. So sales skills then definitely apply in the new economy?

Andrew: For sure. I think when we talk about the new economy, we're talking really internet, the internet economy, the mobile economy that we're in right now. I think that we rely too much on technology. I know, I don't and you probably don't, David, that's why we're here. But I think, many people do. I think they rely too much on technology and it makes them a little bit lazy and they start to forget that at the end of day, people buy people and people trust people. And they do business with people they like and trust. We have to kind of keep the person element in the sales process as much as possible.

In my work, I like to talk pre-internet and post-internet since as you mentioned before, I was a young stockbroker, investment banker in New York when I came up when I was 23, 24 years old. We only had a telephone, that was it. There was no internet, no video, no Google, nothing, just the telephone. We had to make a lot of dials and do a lot of prospecting, so we really learned the art of telephone communication. Then post-internet, as I got online and built an online information information and internet marketing business, I was able to maintain the communication skills I had and then, blend them with technology; automation and leverage. I think if you do those two things, you can build an amazing business.

But what I find today is people do one or the other. The old school tends to stay old school. The new school doesn't want to hear from the old school. They just want to be new school. Like I said before, they sort of hide behind technology. It's a delicate balance and it's a balance that very few businesses even explore.

David: What SEO and link building tactics are working for big name brands in 2014? Is guest posting dead or is this something that still works from an SEO prospective? And what about link bait, what are the most effective strategies to encourage back links? Those are just three of the questions that I intend to ask, today's special guest, Justin Deaville. Justin, welcome to DMR.

Justin: Thank you very much David, how are you doing?

David: Very good thank you. Well, Justin is Managing Director at award winning digital marketing agency, Receptional.com. He was also previously Chief Executive officer at Keyword Research company, Wordtracker. So Justin, you've been involved with keywords, SEO and link-building for quite a few years, now. What's your opinion in terms of how SEO and Keywords have evolved over the last few years. Do any tactics that used to work six or seven years ago, still work today?

Justin: That is a good question, David. And, maybe I could let you in to a secret and say that most of the tactics I will be talking about, while not exactly the same format, you know, marketing in its general sense hasn't changed that much and there will be kind of variations on some of the tactics that were working several years ago. I mean, I think SEO has changed probably more in the last eighteen months than almost any point in its history and so some of the old school tactics of directory style link building that, you know, you used to employ someone often that would be someone in India who would charge you $10 to generate a thousand links. That kind of old school link building is absolutely dead. That would do you a lot more harm than good but, you know, the old school tactics which were based around good solid marketing and replicating the good marketing tactics that you would use offline but online, those things will work and will probably continue to work for many years after I am no longer here.

David: (laughter) Well let's hope it’s a long way off.

Justin: Yes. (laughter) I think we both agree on that.