You’ve got yet another way to slice up your Google traffic: The folks finding you on their computer plus the folks finding you on their mobile device.

I’m not talking about mobile format ads on Google. That’s not news. I’m talking about the option that Google now gives you in your Campaign Settings to show your ads on either desktops/laptops or iPhones and mobile devices, or both:

You can check the boxes or leave one unchecked. Both are enabled by default.

Some folks have a problem with that. One blogger asks, “Realistically, how many of your customers are likely to search for your goods via their iPhone? Most companies should be able to safely disable this setting.”

But that’s like saying, “Don’t advertise on the content network! It’s a waste of your money!”

We don’t recommend you just shut off the mobile devices. No, we recommend you do with that traffic what you’re hopefully already doing with the content network: separate it and test. Create a test campaign that’s mobile-only, and see what ads and keywords work for you.

If I see your ad on my iPhone it probably won’t “look” notably different from an ad of yours I see on my MacBook. That’s not the point. It’s the context in which I see it. I’m out and about. I’m in a different frame of mind. I’m in a hurry, or I’m in a crowd of people, or I’m in a conversation, or I’m in a busy, noisy place.

I predict yet again: What works for traffic sliced this way is heavy distraction. Ads that catch your eye. Like with the content network. Heavy distraction plus the absolute paramount principle of offering 100% relevance above the fold.

Remember that the space “above the fold” is a lot smaller on a mobile device than on your laptop. And my iPhone doesn’t do tabbed browsing. Plus it’s slower. So if I see your ad and click on it and see nothing on my iPhone that’s of any *immediate* relevance as soon as the top portion of the page loads,, I’m going to get pissed off, and I’m going to stop clicking on any ads at all.

Google knows which ads are being seen where. They know what the quality scores are on which network. They know how many iPhone users are clicking on ads and then hitting the back button quickly.

So how your ads do on iPhones and such will evolve differently from how they perform on regular computer browsers. Depending on the market you’re in, that could make or break your business.

Shut it off? Ignore it? No, sir. The word on the street is that we’re not far at all from mobile Internet devices far outnumbering laptop- or desktop-based Internet browsers, several times over. It’s a reality of the ongoing evolution of the Internet.

Embrace it!

My Kitchen Mop is a Continuity Program

Continuity is where the true profit is made in an online business, or most any business. It’s the repeat customers and it’s the customers who are paying you every month, every quarter, every year to be a member of your program. As you gain more customers over time and a significant percentage of them stay on regularly as members, then their simple $9, $29, $99 monthly membership starts to add up in your favor, and your numbers start looking pretty damn good.

That’s why Jim Edwards coaches his members to build their businesses like a giant wagon wheel: all of the one-off products are the spokes, designed to get customers down to the “hub” of your business, which is one of several forms of continuity.

I got puzzled about something a month or two ago. I saw ads for the Swiffer Sweeper, a kitchen wet-and-dry mop you can buy at any grocery store, and the ads promised my money back if I wasn’t satisfied. That’s not something I’m used to seeing for commodity products sold off the shelf. How can they get away with that?

They make their promise known, on TV commercials, radio ads and print ads. Everywhere. They’re doing massive promotion and branding of this thing. And even their Google ad emphasizes the guarantee:

Either way, it looked compelling to me. I do all my own housecleaning, and I like a good ballsy promise. So I headed over to my local Super Saver to buy one and try it out.

And that’s when I figured it out: The Swiffer Sweeper is a continuity program.

It’s sold as both a dry mop and a wet mop. It uses the static charge of replaceable white dry pads to do floor dusting for you. It uses a pre-moistened wet pad to do the washing part for you.

Problem is, the initial package comes with only one single wet pad, and no more than 3-4 dry pads. “Also sold separately,” in other words. And sold, as a matter of fact, in separate packages or 20 or 30 or 50 or more.

Now I get it! The sweeper is a front-end one-off sale, designed to get you onto the regular continuity program of buying the wet and dry pads.

So I passed on buying it. I’m a tightwad who can mop his own kitchen and bathroom floor without paying a monthly fee for wet and dry pads, thank you very much. But hey, if that type of cleaning product tickles your fancy, then by all means buy it.

And here’s a selling model you can probably imitate: A bold, shout-out guarantee on an item you sell as a one-off purchase. And you offer small, medium and large packages of XYZ on the side to make the product fully functional on an ongoing basis. Folks just come back and buy whenever they need it.

That makes the value of a typical front-end buyer worth 2x, 10x, 100x more over time.

Are These Fans Obsessed, or What?

College football in the U.S. is big business. Huge business. No single anything pumps more dollars faster into a university than a winning high-profile football program. The top coaches among the major universities earn between $1 million and $5 million a year.

Sure, basketball is more universally understood and gets huge publicity in March. But those games are smaller venues and there are three times as many of them. Nothing shuts down a major college town and backs up interstate traffic for miles and miles like a Saturday afternoon football game.

As a native of Lincoln, Nebraska and a lifelong Husker fan, I can assure you that is no exaggeration.

As TV and cable and satellite networks expand, more college games with more college teams are getting broadcasted nationwide. The “smaller” schools are now attracting a bigger share of star high school players and cashing in on it big time in a way they couldn’t even ten years ago. End-of-year holiday bowl games are multiplying like rabbits and turning out newly-made local millionaires by the dozen.

Despite the fact that it’s a huge business, the appeal of college football is in its localness. With very few exceptions (e.g., Miami, USC), college football is a small city thing, not a big city thing. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Columbus, Ohio. Norman, Oklahoma. Gainesville, Florida. Austin, Texas. Blacksburg, Virginia. Eugene, Oregon. Happy Valley, Pennsylvania. These are not major population centers, except on game day.

So yes, I’m one of the fans. Sure, my beloved and storied Huskers have been all but completely irrelevant for the better part of ten years now, but I still follow the game obsessively. I never miss watching a major matchup. Yahoo’s college page is number one in my browser bookmarks. I know all the major coaches and all the major players by name. I know who got hired where, who got fired where, who’s getting recruited and who’s getting drafted. I can list off every Heisman trophy winner and every national champion and co-champion, without looking, going back to 1981.

Naturally I also own “NCAA Football ’09” for PS3, along with its big thick accompanying how-to guide. Don’t ask how many hours a week I devote to playing it.

People often wonder, “Why college football, Bryan? Why not the NFL?” And my answer is always the same: When was the last time you saw fans of an NFL team after a big win storm the field and tear down the goal posts?

And that usually ends the discussion.

This kind of rabid behavior, of course, is the kind of thing Perry and I are constantly harping on our customers to pay attention to and capitalize on. In every market there are the rabid followers, the mavens and the chronically obsessed. You must know who they are. You must build stick-like-glue relationships with them and feed their hunger. That is what will keep you in business.

This week I saw just such an example of how obsessed we really are.

You see, college football has one major, glaring problem: It has no system for playoffs to determine the champion at the end of the year. All but the top two highest ranked teams go to separate “bowl” games in January. Who decides who’s 1-2? The “BCS” system: a computer formula plus votes from coaches and sportswriters deciding who’s in and who’s out.

Barack Obama went on ESPN Sportscenter the weekend before Election Day, and when asked what changes he would make in America that might affect the sporting world, he didn’t miss a beat. “I would institute a college football playoff,” he said.

That’s how you win votes among college fans!

Devotees of the sport have been screaming and crying and begging for a playoff as long as I’ve been alive. So what stands in the way? The current BCS system plus a tiny handful of college presidents and the commissioners of a couple of New Year’s Day bowls, that’s what. They and their good-ol’-boys club stand to lose huge amounts of money, at least in the short term, if a playoff got implemented. And they hold the keys, so they’re not budging.

But this is what I saw this week that showed how obsessed American college football fans really are: A news headline that read,

“Lawmaker Proposing Bill to End BCS System”

That’s right. Representative Joe Barton of Texas, the ranking Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and another lawmaker from Texas and one from Illinois are stepping in to do something for disgruntled college fans. They’re proposing to pass a law to end the BCS.

Hell, I hate the BCS as much as the next guy. But getting the government involved? As Reagan put it, in this present crisis government is not the solution to the problem.

That’s just Legislated Recreation. “This championship game brought to you by the United States Congress.”

Doesn’t matter, though. There will be support for this. Huge support. Not necessarily majority support, but then again, the 80/20 Rule tells us that you don’t ever really need actual majority support to make anything happen. You just need an overpowering and highly vocal minority. That’s how every president for the last 200 years has been elected. That’s how everything works, period. It’s the squeaky wheel that gets the grease.

So in the meantime, you can get business for yourself by playing the heart strings of die-hard college football fans everywhere. (Especially if you happen to be doing business right now in Austin, Texas or in close proximity to the University of Southern California.) December is always a huge month for this. Join the annual pointless ranting and blog about playoffs for college football, and you’ll get instant search engine traffic, no matter what your business is. Bid on playoffs keywords. Promise buyers of your products that with a purchase of two or more you’ll send a letter on their behalf to their congressman encouraging him or her to vote to oust the evil BCS. Offer fan gear too. Pennants and t-shirts and coffee mugs and replica helmets.

Even a pair of free tickets to a bowl game, if you can get them. Just not a BCS game, please, oh please.

Cheering from the nosebleed seats,

Bryan Todd

p.s. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Nebraska fans are the most die-hard, the most loyal, the most rabid, the most wholly consumed football fans in the nation. In September, 2009 Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium will celebrate its 300th consecutive sellout. All 81,067 seats. Dating back to the 1960s. An NCAA record. I rest my case.