Interview with Dave Carlson of GO TOAST
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The Hosting News sat down with Dave Carlson, CEO of GO TOAST - the first service to
offer a comprehensive solution for managing pay-for-performance search listings
and bids - to get some insight into the future of the paid search arena.
The Company
GO TOAST, LLC, is a leading global provider of pay-per-click search engine
optimization and online marketing management tools. GO TOAST is a part of
eonVentures, which incubates businesses for eonBusiness Corporation. GO
TOAST enables online advertisers to manage thousands of keywords and marketing
campaigns simultaneously across all major domestic and international search
engines. It optimizes clients' bids and positions in leading pay-per-click
Internet search engines, which saves clients time and money, improves ROI, and
increases Web site traffic. GO TOAST offers Rules-Based BiddingSM along with
exclusive conversion tracking tools, comprehensive Web analytics, detailed
e-mail status updates, scheduling tools and custom campaign management. An
independent third-party provider, GO TOAST offers unbiased advice to optimize
their customers online marketing investment.
The Hosting News: How did GO TOAST get started?
Dave Carlson: I founded GO TOAST in August of 2001. The
impetus for GO TOAST was that we were helping people manage their online
marketing campaigns, and you can imagine that our clients were spending hours
each day checking their pay-for-performance accounts, positions, and their bids.
So we automated this process.
After we automated it, we quickly realized that we should put a web-based
interface around it to help other people that are having the same problem.
Things took off very quickly after that.
The Hosting News: How large is your company?
Dave Carlson: GO TOAST currently has more than 30
employees.
The Hosting News: What is your company's core strategy?
Dave Carlson: Our strategy is to help companies manage
anything that has to do with an online marketing campaign. That?s our long-term
strategy.
The Hosting News: Tell us a little about your core product.
Dave Carlson: Our primary focus, and the way that we entered
the business, was managing pay-per-click search engine campaigns with our
BidManager.
If you are a medium to large sized company and you have excess advertising
dollars and you want to get into the space, we have another solution. It?s
called the MarketMaker solution which is a complete, turnkey, hands-off
service. An account representative here will drive your campaign using our tool
set. We initiated this service because we had people using our service who
needed additional resources to manage their accounts.
The Hosting News: How does a web site manager identify that they
are a good candidate for GO TOAST and your services?
Dave Carlson: The first indicator is how much are they
spending?. You have to have an ROI for our service as well. To put numbers on
it ? if a company is spending $500 or less per month on pay-per-click
advertising ? we?re probably not the solution for them. Typically, if a company
is spending $3,000 or more per month, then GO TOAST can yield increased
productivity.
Another indicator is the number of keywords that are being used. If a company
has a few hundred keywords up to hundreds of thousands of keywords, then GO
TOAST will probably make a lot of sense. Those are 2 key parameters.
Another is simply a lack of time to update the listings. If you have a
business that runs 24 hours per day, but don?t have the resources to manage the
bidding process continuously, then I would suggest that our service is very
important.
The Hosting News: In the past year there has been strong shift
towards the ?maximum bid? or proxy bid concept ? where a pay-per-click account
can simply be set not to exceed a maximum payment for each click and then the
pay-per-click service ?auto-manages? the bid. What effect has this shift had on
GO TOAST?
Dave Carlson: We were very surprised when that happened,
we saw a positive impact on our business. The reason that it is positive is that
somebody can ?jam? the bids. For example, if you choose to set your maximum bid
at $5.00, the guy below you just sets his bid to $4.99 jamming you into
always paying your maximum amount.
We have a feature called "Rules-Based Bidding SM". There are 20 rules.
Everything from time of day, to finding the best position in the top 10, to
keeping a listing in the top 3. You can also apply multiple rules. Another
favorite rule is to be ahead of a certain URL or to be below a certain URL.
People have related companies that they work with, they have wholesalers, they
have retailers, and they don?t want to be beating each other up for a certain
placement.
There are also rules based around ROI. This is where our ProfitBuilder,
Conversion Tracking and Web Analytics services fit in. I would never ever ever
run an online campaign without some form of tracking. The reason is that you
need to know exactly what's happening. Otherwise, it's like trying to fly to
Chicago in the fog with no radar.
We have certain rules called "Return On Advertising Spend" rules and "Cost
Per Acquisition" rules - which can be applied by keyword or on a broad basis
but we can't utilize those tools without proper tracking.
The Hosting News: What are the top 3 benefits of managing a
pay-per-click campaign with GO TOAST versus doing it yourself?
Dave Carlson: You save time, you save money, and you
increase sales ? all in one shot!
The Hosting News: Are you currently running any special
offers?
Dave Carlson: We are offering a 14-day free trial there's
nothing better I can recommend than that!
