Free AdWords ROI Calculator

We've posted a free AdWords ROI Calculator on our site for downloading. It's the same one that comes in the AdWords Strategies and Tips book, but many people requested just the ROI tool so we are making it available as a free download.

Let us know if you have suggestions for other AdWords or PM tools!

Product Management & Product Marketing Reading List

People often ask me for book recommendations, so I've set up Product Management Books and Product Marketing Books pages on the 280 Group website.

If you know of other books that should be on this list email me!

Google Speaking at SVPMA

I'm on the board of directors for the Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA) . We have monthly meetings with prominent speakers from Silicon Valley companies.

Next month Dipchand "Deep" Nishar, Director of Product Management at Google will be speaking. Here's an overview of what his presentation will cover:

Gmail, Google Desktop Search, Google Maps, Google Scholar, .... The list goes on and on. And these are just some of the products that Google launched in the past twelve months. How does one company launch so many innovative products in such a short period of time? In this talk, Dipchand "Deep" Nishar will give us a peek at the product management process at Google and provide some insights into Google's approach at rapidly bringing breakthough new products to market.

I'll be at the meeting - if you decide to attend find me and say Hi.

New AdWords Strategy & Tips Book

The 280 Group has just released a new product called Google AdWords Strategies & Tips. It's a booklet that includes all of the tips and ideas we've learned by running AdWords campaigns for our clients and working with the internal Google AdWords team. It also includes an AdWords ROI calculator - an Excel spreadsheet that helps you figure out how much profit you'll make based on how much you spend.

You can download a sample if you want to check it out.

Lookout for Outlook

I've been trying out Google Desktop search and MS Desktop search for a while now. I think that for me the jury is still out for both of them - we'll see whether I like them enough to deal with the background indexing.

In the meantime I've stumbled across a very useful product named Lookout (recently acquired by Microsoft). This product indexes everything in Outlook very quickly, and then provides searches that are really fast. I have over 30k emails, contacts etc. in Outlook - Lookout indexed them in less than five minutes. When I search I would say it is about 25 times faster than the normal Outlook search.

And being free, the price is right. Give Lookout a try.