Why PPC ROI Is More Important Than CTR
Are you hovering over your pay-per-click marketing CTR numbers daily, expecting them to change – maybe even go up? If so, you could be wasting your time.
It’s not that CTR isn’t important. Rather, it’s just that ROI is more important. After all, what difference does it make if your click-through rate is sky high if your conversion rate is below the floor? Return on investment is the measure of your success. It’s how much money you put in your pocket.
There are two ways to affect your ROI. Pay less or make more. Do both and you increase your ROI.
But the key is to do all the right things with the money that you do invest in PPC marketing. Simply writing ads and turning them on isn’t enough. You have to manage them, and that includes logging into your PPC accounts daily. There’s tweaking that needs to be done.
Bidding on your keywords is good, but are you bidding on keywords that you shouldn’t even be targeting? Prune your keyword list down to target only the most important keywords – the ones that will return a profit.
And something else that many PPC advertisers overlook is the value of a good landing page. Does your landing page need to be optimized? Are there elements on your page that don’t need to be there? If it isn’t closing sales from the traffic your ads are sending, then it isn’t doing its job and it’s costing you in terms of ROI. Optimize that landing page.
Instead of focusing on CTR, turn your eye toward ROI and improve your PPC marketing.
Who +1s Your Google AdWords Ads?
We’re continuing to deliver the latest news on Google+ developments and here’s another reason you should join the service. If you are a PPC advertiser on Google’s AdWords platform, then you can see social annotations if you turn them on.
I believe social annotations are going to become a key metric for a lot of online marketers. They could very well be a major part of your PPC campaigns going forward, and it’s real easy to see why.
Dan Friedman of Google’s Inside AdWords Crew says that 71% of shoppers online make decisions based on the recommendations of their friends and family. If that’s true, then you give your fans every opportunity to +1 your content, PPC ads included. When a searcher calls up a search results page and sees that their friends have +1ed your ads, they’ll either +1 it themselves or click on the link. It could increase the effectiveness of your advertising.
At the very least, you’ll have a key metric to judge the effectiveness of your advertising. Getting tons of +1s? Then you’re making an impact. Getting +1s but no click-throughs? You can evaluate the reasons why. Getting +1s and click-throughs but no conversions? Check your landing page.
Social annotations are here. Now it’s time to try them.
Why PPC Is King
You’ve likely heard that content is king. And that’s true, if you are talking about website marketing strategies. Nothing beats content. But PPC is king in terms of online marketing strategies.
Pay per click marketing wins hands down for a number of reasons even though it costs you money.
For starters, PPC allows you to get instant results. Write your ad and get it live today, you can actually see click throughs today and marry those up with conversions. No other online marketing strategy has that potential. If you build a website, you’ll have to get it indexed. There’s no guarantee that will happen in one day.
Social media can be effective marketing, but it likely will take you some time since you have to build up a following, build trust, and develop a track record. That takes time.
Video marketing can also be effective. Again, the chances that you can produce a video, get it online, and see results in one day are pretty phenomenal. It can happen, but not likely.
Other online marketing strategies show similar potential. You may get better results long term from SEO, social media and video marketing, but only PPC promises same-day results. And that’s just one reason PPC is king. There are others.
When To Stop Your PPC Campaign
Is there ever a time when you should stop your PPC campaign? Absolutely. But when is that time?
Obviously, you don’t want to stop something that is working. So if you have a PPC campaign that is bringing you an ROI, then that’s not a campaign you want to stop. But you do want to stop those campaigns that are not working.
How long should you let your pay per click campaigns go before you decide to stop them? You don’t want them to go on too long.
It depends on how much money you have invested, but if you aren’t experiencing enough click throughs or the click throughs you are getting aren’t converting, then that’s when you want to put your PPC ads on pause and redirect your advertising efforts.
CTR is an important metric. How many click throughs is enough? It’s different for every campaign, but if your click throughs don’t match your expectations, then it’s time to find out why. You can pause your campaign long enough to tweak your ads and see if that increases your CTR.
Conversion rate is another problem. If your PPC ads aren’t converting, it’s likely your landing pages. Have you tested them? If not, then you should pause your PPC campaign and engage in a little multivariate testing of your landing pages. Find out what works, then restart your pay per click campaigns when you have the kinks worked out.
Facebook Takes Google On
For years now Google has encouraged advertisers to spend money on Google AdWords by giving away $50 credit to new advertisers. In many cases, if you set up a new Web hosting account, you got this credit from your host. Google is still doing this.
Now, Facebook has joined the party.
Starting next year, Facebook will give away $10 million in free advertising to small business owners.
There’s more to the story than Facebook merely wanting to steal your business from Google. That would be nice for Facebook, but they really want you to start advertising on their platform – even if you continue using Google AdWords.
Most small business owners haven’t figure out how to use social media as a marketing tool. But they understand advertising. With 800 million + users, Facebook has a huge opportunity for small businesses to tap into the company’s user base and that’s why they are willing to give you $50 in free advertising to get you to at least try it.
I think the opportunity is a great opportunity for small businesses. Google AdWords has proved to be a very effective marketing channel for businesses that have tried it. Facebook’s advertising platform is a different animal, but it’s an animal worth riding nonetheless. Pay per click is no longer a search engine advertising tool; it’s gone social.
Generic Domain Names Are Better For PPC
Domain Sherpa conducted a study involving generic domain names and non-generic domain names on pay-per-click advertising. Their conclusion was that generic domain names were better for PPC advertising than non-generic domain names.
Heck, we could have told you that.
Generic domain names are not only good for PPC, they’re also good for organic search. The reason is real simple.
Searchers perceive generic domain names to have more credibility in the search results. Taking the divorce lawyer example provided in Domain Sherpa’s article, would you rather sit down with an attorney from DivorceLawyer.com or one from VladimerLaw.com?
For some reason, DivorceLawyer.com carries more points in terms of credibility and reputation when conducting a search at one of the search engines. That’s because the searcher is looking for a divorce lawyer. Unless that searcher is searching specifically for a brand name, no single brand is going to stand out as most credible in a generic search for a service.
That’s why generic domain names are preferred for SEO and PPC by most search engine optimization experts.
I think generic domain names work better for SEO as well, for similar reasons. It’s a matter of credibility where the generic search is concerned. When planning your next online marketing plan, take that into consideration.
4 Organic Uses Of PPC
The best online marketers have known for at least six years how to use pay-per-click advertising to improve their organic search rankings. Here are 4 ways you can use PPC to make your organic search marketing more effective:
- Keyword Research – One of the most popular ways that PPC advertisers use their ads is to test new keywords. If you achieve high click-throughs on your keywords, then they should also be good for your organic search campaigns.
- Testing Meta Descriptions – If the ad text in your ad is effective, you’ll get more click throughs. You can use that same text for your meta descriptions, however, the ad text is limited to 70 words. The best meta descriptions employ 80-150 words so you might want to add a little bit more to those when you convert them.
- Testing Page Titles - If your PPC ads generate activity, then you can re-use your PPC ad titles for your web page titles as well.
- Testing Landing Pages – PPC is perfect for testing new landing pages. Do they convert? If they won’t convert for PPC, then they won’t convert for organic search either. Test them with PPC, tweak them, then use them for organic search.
Pay per click advertising offers the perfect opportunity to test for organic search. Don’t let that opportunity slip away.
Why Facebook Ads Beat PPC
Many small business owners are beginning to see the value in Facebook ads. There are plenty of reasons why Facebook ads can be better for marketing your small business than PPC. One reason is because of the better features for targeted marketing. You can actually narrow your Facebook ads down to more focused targeting.
You can also get creative with your Facebook ad targeting. Much more creative than with traditional PPC.
Here are five tips for making the most of your Facebook advertising, as shared by this article.
- Set your goals and plan. You won’t be very effective, with Facebook ads or PPC, if you don’t know what you want to achieve.
- Use creative targeting tactics. One example is to use your Facebook ad to say “Happy Birthday” to prospects a few days before their birthday. Try that with PPC!
- Choose text and graphics that compliment each other. This is very important and could increase your click-throughs tremendously.
- Create and test multiple ads. Instead of just creating one ad and going with it, do some multivariate testing with more than one ad.
- Be ready to receive the traffic. Make sure your Facebook page is updated and ready to handle the traffic you’ll get from your ads.
Facebook ads are a relatively new opportunity in PPC. Make them work for you.
How PPC Is Evolving
PPC, like all other things (on the Web and off) has evolved. And it continues to evolve. Google has largely been responsible for that evolution, but Facebook has played its part too. And it’s likely to evolve even more, but who knows who will be most influential in how that happens in the future?
One way that PPC has evolved is in the tools that advertisers use to track their campaigns. Both Google and Bing, and Facebook now, have tools that allow you to track your own PPC campaigns. But you might benefit more by using a third-party tool that you pay for. Especially if you run a lot of PPC campaigns on more than one platform.
PPC has evolved in other ways too. For instance, pay per click has morphed into pay per action. Advertisers can pay for user activity in a number of ways. Here are some of the more popular pay-per-advertising models:
- Pay per lead
- Pay per impression
- Pay per view (for videos)
- Pay per call (for mobile and phone actions)
You can expect some of these to expand as technology improves. Currently, pay per impression is generally expressed in terms of 1,000 impressions. But what will it be ten years from now?
Pay per click advertising has become one of the most effective branding and marketing channels online. Don’t expect it to stay the same. It will change. And mostly for the better.
Using PPC To Brand Your Company
Advertising has always been about multiple points of action. On one hand, advertisers expect to earn a return on investment. But they also want to brand themselves in the marketplace. Sometimes you can do one or the other but not both.
The first step to using PPC advertising as a branding tool is to set your goals. Determine what your point of ROI is for each click price point. Can you achieve branding effects by limiting your ad spend to a maximum so that you can also realize an ROI? If not, then you have a choice to make.
Is branding more important or is that ROI more important?
The key to using PPC as a branding tool is to plant your company name or product brand in the top of your prospect’s mind. You want them to think of your company when they think of the benefits of using your service. To do that, you’ve got to establish your brand as a top brand through psychological condition. That may require throwing out your advertising budget and just focusing on being No. 1.
Large corporations have been making these decisions for years. Online, with PPC particularly, it’s a decision that even small companies can make.
High Dollar PPC Ads
Does it matter how much you spend on advertising? Does it matter how much you spend on pay per click advertising? I’d say it only matters if you are not achieving an ROI on your investment. Or, rather, it doesn’t matter if you are achieving a positive ROI.
It seems that Google is making hand over fist on the top 20 PPC ad keywords.
No wonder. Look at the top 5:
- Insurance
- Loans
- Mortgage
- Attorney
- Credit
If you are in the banking, mortgage, credit, or legal business, then you have to pay top dollar for your PPC ads or risk big chances that you won’t get much traffic from your advertising. But the bottom line for any advertiser is, How much ROI do you realize based on your ad spend?
If you are a small insurance company, for instance, and you target your PPC advertising toward a specific niche within the industry or a geographic location, then you can cut your ad spend down based on a narrower market definition. You are also more likely to realize an ROI.
The key is to target your advertising to the specific niche you want to do business with. Narrow your market down as far as you can before you advertise. Long tail keywords are much more profitable for smaller budgets than general keyword phrases.
Local Search Is In High Growth Stage
Predictions show that local search ad revenue will increase by as much as 10% per year through 2015. Furthermore, 30% of all searches performed by then will be local in nature. That spells it out loud, if you’re listening: Get on now to get ahead.
By “local search ad revenue,” let’s be clear what we’re talking about. It’s a clear reference to pay-per-click advertising. And that leads us to an obvious question: Whose revenue?
The search engines, of course, will be profiting from that growth. However, that doesn’t mean that others won’t profit as well. Local businesses that learn how to leverage online advertising – particularly PPC advertising – will also profit. They will profit from the traffic they receive from that advertising.
Are you ready to take that leap into local search advertising? You should be. Historic studies show that PPC advertising pays. Advertisers who use PPC to drive traffic to their websites and who learn to harness the power of the written word on their landing pages do rather well.
Here’s the big difference between the PPC advertising of the past and the PPC of the future: It’s going local. All that really means is that local businesses are going to enjoy a lot more of the benefits that global businesses have been enjoying for the past few years. Are you ready to get in on that?
Can You Buy Targeted Website Traffic?
In the 1980s, it was chic to buy a mailing list from a list broker who might promise that the list was targeted to a specific type of customer within a specific industry. You could call the list or use the list for direct mailing. Either way, you were spending money. And if you used the list and it brought you some business, then you were effectively buying targeted sales leads. You were buying customers.
Can you do the same thing online? Can you buy targeted sales leads or customers online? You sure can.
It’s called pay per click advertising. With PPC, it’s all about buying clicks. You bid on what a click is worth to you, write an ad that draws attention, point your link to a landing page, and snag the contact information from your prospect.
These types of leads are solid leads because they have responded to your calls to action. They responded to your ad. Then they responded to your landing page with a request for private information. If you use an autoresponder with a double opt-in process, then they’ve given you permission to contact them twice. They couldn’t spell it out for you any better.
So what do you do with those leads then? You market to them. Aggressively. Tell them what you have to offer and how much is costs. Sell them on the benefits. When you close a sale, it’s because you effectively bought a lead. A targeted lead.
Is Local PPC Effective?
We’ve extolled the virtues of pay per click advertising over and over again. We’ve also praised the benefits of local search marketing. But what about local PPC? Is it all that?
Yes, it is. And a bag of potato chips too.
Our take on local and PPC marketing is that you should always drill down as far as you can in any channel you are trying to develop. If you are optimizing your website for search traffic and you are a business that caters to a local clientele, then you should be targeting your SEO efforts to local traffic. If you are using PPC, then you should be targeting your PPC efforts to local traffic as well.
This drill down is much more effective, believe it or not, than the alternative. Just think about it:
If you sell widgets and you write your PPC ads to appeal to people searching for widgets without a local geotargeting key phrase, then you’ll be paying for traffic that you may not want. But if you sell widgets in your local shop and you want to reach a strictly local business, then local PPC makes a heck of a lot of sense. Geotarget your ads and you’ll pay only for local clicks, not global.
Not only is local PPC effective, but it is often more effective.
Google Analytics And Page Load Time
Google Analytics is now tracking page load time. This is significant for a number of reasons.
First, conversion rate. It is now widely believed that page load time affects conversion rates. After all, site visitors will not wait long for your page to load. You have about eight seconds to capture their attention. Anything beyond that and they’re off to some place else. This is true whether they arrive on your landing page from an organic search engine listing or a pay-per-click ad.
Secondly, page load speed affects your pay-per-click quality score. There is no doubt about it. If a competitor’s website loads faster than yours and you are both bidding on the same keywords, the slower loading landing page will likely rank lower in the ad placement resulting in fewer clicks.
Thirdly, you will likely lose organic search rankings too. The jury is still out on whether Google uses page load time to determine search engine rankings, but I’m betting that they do. If that is the case, then you will see fewer click-throughs in addition to a lower conversion rate.
What all this boils down to is less traffic to your sub-par pages, and fewer conversions on the traffic you do get.
If you haven’t paid attention to your page load times until now, you should start thinking about it right away. Track and measure those page load times and fix your deficiencies – before they fix you.
Using PPC To Narrow Your Keyword List
If you were to use your entire keyword list for a natural search marketing campaign, it would cost you a fortune. And you might spend a year or two learning which keywords are performing best and which ones are more profitable. We can do that in a month or less with pay-per-click advertising.
By using PPC to test your keywords, we can group those keywords into tight target groups and test them against different ads and landing pages. Using a multivariate approach helps us to gain a better understanding of your keyword effectiveness.
Let’s take an example: If you have three landing pages and five ads that can be rotated to test your keyword list and find that you have one keyword that performs well consistently on all ad and landing page combinations, then we know that’s a strong keyword. But if another keyword consistently fails to achieve any meaningful results, then we know it’s a weak keyword. We can strike it from your list and not waste our time creating content for natural search.
This approach saves you money and time. You will not have to wait a year to determine that certain keywords are ineffective for natural search and the small investment in PPC you make to determine that will save you tons of money on the back end.
How Facebook Is Turning PPC On Its Ear
A few years ago, if you wanted to advertise using a pay-per-click model, you either had to go with Google or opt for one of the smaller search engines, pay less, and get less traffic. In fact, that wasn’t too long ago. But now, Facebook advertising is growing at a very rapid pace and seems to be threatening Google’s dominance. One thing that could tip the balance for advertising is real-time advertising.
According to AdAge, Facebook has started experimenting with real-time PPC ads.
It works like this: You post a status update that says, “I love peanut butter sandwiches.” In that instant, an ad appears on your wall promoting peanut butter. Maybe it’s Jif, maybe it’s Peter Pan, but you know it’s peanut butter. Would you click the ad?
I’m guessing that many users would click the ad – probably enough to make it worthwhile to advertisers to spend money on real-time advertising.
The article doesn’t say whether real-time ads would cost more than regular PPC ads, but if the value is there, it might be worth paying more. Virtually anything can be promoted in real time just based on users’ posting habits. This takes PPC advertising to a new level and it could push Facebook ahead of Google as the preferred PPC provider.
Risk-Free PPC
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Kick your PPC campaign off with some basic keyword research. We’ll search and find the best keywords for your business based on your landing page, your goals, your competition, and past marketing initiatives.
With PPC marketing, you can test your keywords before you use them in your organic marketing. It’s a great way to test new keywords and keyword groups. Why spend countless hours building landing pages and promoting them through social media and articles when you aren’t 100% confident of the keywords you are using? You can be confident in less than 24 hours just by testing them in PPC ads.
Get your free coupon for $100 of PPC advertising right now. Click the link and fill out the form.
Expanding Your Business and Pay Per Click Campaign Internationally
There are many businesses that are not aware that pay per click advertising can be run internationally. Back in December, Google released a new website that could make life for businesses looking to expand internationally a whole lot easier. The appropriately named Google Ads for Global Advertisers website acts as a central hub for all of the tools required to run successful international campaigns.
Of special interest to advertisers with only a little experience with international markets is a new tool, the Global Market Finder. This tool has the potential wow factor for those advertisers who may at least be exploring international options. Enter your keyword and the new tool will automatically translate it into 56 different languages, and then use Google search data to determine which countries have a high demand for that keyword.
As with other Google tools, you can see the search trend data, what competition there is, and the estimated price for your keywords. For many businesses, you may find that trading internationally has a lower cost per click while delivering similar conversion rates – the difference being either more profit, or more funds to up your keyword bid price locally.
There are a lot of businesses that could possibly investigate including overseas trade in their business development program. Google’s new website will certainly make life a little easier when it comes to research. The only concern I have is the use of translation software, especially for those looking to target two or three word keyword phrases. Translation software can often make a real meal of these translations, often with interesting results. Before proceeding with a pay per click campaign in another language, check on the translation first – just to be on the safe side. Have you ever considered expanding internationally? For many businesses, there is a whole new marketing waiting for them.
The Dangers Of Pay Per Click Marketing
A post on Search Engine Journal highlights some of the problems that face businesses when it comes to pay per click marketing. There are several good points made in the post, particularly when it comes to who you hire to manage your pay per click marketing campaigns. The difficulty faced by management is that pay per click is so foreign to them, but they have trouble understanding some of the analytics presented to them.
The management of pay per click marketing should be seen as a professional service. Managers often know little of accounting or legal matters, so they hire professionals to look after those areas of their business. The Internet should be seen in the same light. When hiring a professional organization to manage any of your online activities, you should apply the same due diligence you would show to an accounting or legal firm.
One of the points the post on Search Engine Journal highlighted was that of basic dishonesty - to quote from the post:
Many businesses larger and small don’t ask enough questions from their paid search person/company. Many companies hide what your CPC and CPA is and therefore you will never really know if your PPC is cost effective.
I tend to take issue with the first sentence in that it assumes that most paid search companies aren’t professional. How closely do you quiz your accountant, attorney, or any other professional service provider? That’s not to say you shouldn’t quiz them at times, especially when it comes to determining budgets and the effectiveness of the campaigns. It does come back to due diligence and ensuring you hire experienced and well recognized pay per click management companies.
The one area where we are in total agreement with the Search Engine Journal post is that paid search, when done correctly, can increase sales markedly. When an email marketing campaign is used to follow up sales, repeat business tends to be driven to greater heights. Paid search can be profitable; just be sure the people who are controlling your paid search are professional, experienced, and well respected in the industry.
Why Facebook Ads Don’t Cut It – Yet
2010 will go down in history for a number of reasons and one that stands out for many online marketers is the dethroning of Google by Facebook. Almost 9% of all US traffic visits Facebook. That’s a lot of traffic in one place and you would think a blessing for online marketers. No one would blame you for seriously considering Facebook’s advertising feature as well. Surely you could gain a decent stream of traffic to your web site?
If there is one disappointment related to Facebook, then it would have to be its advertising. They don’t appear to have got it right just yet, and while pay per click is cost free if there are no clicks, there are other certain aspects that concern me. Facebook is not alone – to date, social media has not been a great place to advertise. Let’s face it, most people visit sites like Facebook because they want to socialize, not view advertisements.
So where is Facebook failing? There are a number of areas that Facebook need to work at. The first, and perhaps most important, is that you cannot truly target your ads. In fact, you are limited to profile information such as location, age, and interests. It would be nice if advertisements could be targeted based on content – this would make them more relevant to the user, and more likely to receive a click.
One area that has concerned me for a while, to the point of annoying me, is that ads are repeated, especially if you click on one of them. I do click on ads when doing research, or if curiosity gets me. I notice those ads appear far more frequently than most others. In my mind, this is one way to really annoy users, especially if they have clicked through and become a customer. The last thing they want to see is the same ad appearing day after day.
When it comes to advertising, Facebook is still learning, still fine tuning, and still trying to find a ‘fit’ that will work with their users and advertisers alike. Until they do get it right, by all means do your research, but be well aware of its limitations as a pay per click option.
What To Look For In A Pay Per Click Management Team
Pay per click advertising can be an expensive process if not undertaken correctly. The problem is, most people are excellent at running their business, sourcing or creating products, identifying target markets, and perhaps even identifying suitable keywords. However, when it comes to optimizing their pay per click campaigns, it all becomes foreign territory. That’s the time to call in a team of professionals who can manage your pay per click campaigns. The end result should be a significant increase in traffic and with it a significant increase in sales. More importantly, it should be cost effective and therefore also increase profits.
The problem then is selecting the most appropriate business to manage your pay per click campaigns. Here is a guide that may help you determine the most appropriate people to help you:
Training – Will your campaign be led by a Google Certified Analyst? These are individuals trained specifically to deal with the intricacies of Google Adwords. Just as importantly, they have experience running these campaigns successfully.
Team – It’s a team and not just one person. If you employ one person, you are at their whims and human needs and fallibility’s. Holidays and illness means they may not be available when needed. And, yes, everyone is fallible – so this is where a team effort works best. There is always someone available when needed and teams tend to cross check each member’s work, thus reducing human error.
Communication – Can you easily communicate with someone from your team. With communication comes comfort – do you feel comfortable talking to them – sometimes, it’s a good idea to trust your gut reaction.
Contracts – Are you forced to sign on the dotted line for six or twelve months no matter what? Contracts should, where they exist, allow you an out after the first month. A management team is going to ensure everything runs smoothly if they know the renewal is on a month-to-month basis. A 12 month contract allows a lot of slack time and a poor performance to creep in.
Honesty – This is the hardest since I am not talking about fraud for, example. Is your management team honest in their discussions with you. If they feel the keywords are wrong, do they tell you, or do they plow on regardless – and then blame you for the poor choice of keywords? Being honest and upfront and telling it like it is can save you a lot of wasted time and money.
They are just a few areas that you should consider when looking to engage a pay per click management team. Get the right management team and your business will see a real surge in results. Get it wrong and you will see a steady flow of cash walking out the door – with nothing to show for it.
The Importance Of Quality Scores In PPC
One of the biggest mistakes that new business entrants make in the pay per click market is impatience. They build a site, then, often with the aid of a free $50 or more Adwords offer, start a pay per click campaign. Unfortunately, pay per click does not run like a normal newspaper classified ads. Each of the search engine pay per click markets publish ads based on a score given to each ad – Google, for example, calls theirs a quality score.
Some of the factors that go into a quality score include click through rates, page quality, ad relevance, geographic terms, and landing page load times. Each search engine has their own secret formula for determining this quality score. The exact formula for them determining an ad’s placement is not known, but it could be as simple as your bid value times your quality score.
With that formula in mind, you can see that a high quality score can outrank another ad, even though the bid price is lower. There are other benefits to a high quality score including:
- more clicks for the same budget
- higher placement leading to a higher click through rate
- lower costs for better quality keywords
- better conversions
The last comes, not so much because of your quality score, but because of the work put into your site to gain that quality score. For example, creating a better, faster and more relevant landing page should lead to more conversions when compared to a click just landing on a home page.
For new business owners, it is far more prudent to wait a little longer, to develop a top quality landing page, and to then use any free offers to test out a small range of keywords. If they attract clicks and conversions, you will be on the road to earning an income which you can then use to extend your campaign. Use the approach I outlined in the first paragraph, and you will find your free offer gone with little or no conversions and probably a bad taste in the mouth over pay per click.
Can Pay Per Click Deliver Too Much Exposure
Can you have too much exposure in a set of search results? It’s an interesting phenomenon and most businesses would answer no. Yet I know from my own experience from using search that there have been times when I have felt a little overwhelmed by the results. Let me explain a little further.
Every business wants to rank number one in search results – that’s the general principle behind search engine optimization. For some businesses, that has come relatively easy. In fact, the businesses that dominate the front page of Google, for example. Enter Coca-Cola as a search term and check the results:
- Coca-Cola pay per click ad on top
- Coca-Cola.com at one and two in search results
- Wikipedia entry
- the Coca-Cola company site
- Coca-Cola images
Apart from the Wikipedia entry, that’s total domination of the front page above the fold. For branding purposes, it’s great for Coke. If I was researching this brand, my only options would be Wikipedia, to dig down a page or two in the search results, or (Google’s preference) redefine my search term. Of course, this is a brand name and you would expect a strong presence in those results.
Change the search term to just ‘cola’ and Coke still has a strong showing on page one above the fold, including a pay-per-click listing. Is that too much exposure? There are two ways to look at this. First – you are suffocating your competitors and not giving them an inch. A marketer’s dream. The second is that overexposure can harm a business and that a little competition is healthy.
What do you think? Should you aim for the ultimate total domination of the search results, or could that lead to overexposure and eventually harm your business? Would that pay per click budget then be better spent targeting keywords that you don’t rank so highly with in organic search results?
When Do You Measure The Cost Of Pay Per Click
All to often we take a very black and white view of things. If a product sells for a $100 with a $50 profit, and we know pay per click conversions run at 10% (for arguments sake), we can then determine what the maximum cost per click is to stay in profit. But what if your product sells for $20 and the cost per click is $17-$18 (or more) – should you stay in the market?
If you take the black and white approach, then most definitely not. Fortunately, we don’t live in a black and white world, it is in fact brightly colored. So too is pay per click. There are times when paying those high prices may make extremely good business sense – in fact, you may need to if you want to stay in business. Cost per click and cost per sale are not the issue – what you should be determining is the cost per customer over the lifetime of their patronage.
If your business is trading in consumables, or products that customers are always coming back to, then your aim with high cost pay per click is not so much to convert to sales (although that is nice). Your aim is to capture an audience that you can retarget time after time for repeated sales. Email marketing is ideal as is social media marketing. Being able to capture their email address and to have them follow you on Facebook and Twitter is the ideal. A perfect sign up form should now include all three options in one.
High cost pay per click marketing is popular across many niches. Jesse Laffen has an interesting post that is worth following up on related to this issue. Just because the costs are high in pay per click marketing doesn’t mean you can’t make a profit – you just have to measure those costs across extended data.
Running A Successful Business On Pay Per Click Alone
There are many businesses that have foregone organic search and social media marketing so they can concentrate on pay per click advertising on its own. And they are doing it successfully. There are pluses and minuses to this approach, and one of the biggest minuses is cost. However, well managed, it is possible. Let’s look at some of the advantages.
Content – you don’t have to continuously generate content to stay on top of organic search results. You can create a website that is very tight and that is designed purely to produce results.
Targeted Traffic – the traffic that is arriving on your site is there because they are looking for what you have to offer. Targeted traffic is everyone’s goal; pay per click is one of the best sources.
Costs - while pay per click can be expensive, those costs are tightly controllable. You can set tight budgets, put limits on your costs per click and even control how much traffic is arriving on your website each day.
Control – you have more control over your business. You will have a reasonable idea how much traffic is coming in each day, what the conversion rate is, and in some cases, how much stock you need in reserve. Organic search can be all over the place when it comes to traffic numbers and conversion rates.
While some businesses are highly successful using pay per click advertising alone, it’s not for everyone. To be successful you need a well designed website, good landing pages that convert well, and a good selection of converting keywords. Most importantly, you need good products or services that have profit margins that make pay per click a profitable option. What many of these businesses do have in common is a team of pay per click experts helping them achieve their goals.
Should You Have More Than 100 Keywords?
How many keywords is enough for your SEO or PPC campaign? The truth is, you can never have enough keywords. How you use your keywords is far more important than how many keywords you have.
When it comes to SEO, the more keywords you have the more opportunities you have to capture rankings for those keywords. You figure you have two chances to rank for the same keyword on the same website at Google and once or twice at Bing. If you have a 1,000 keyword list then that gives you about 4,000 chances to rank for those keywords with a 1,000-page website.
With PPC it’s a little different. Pay per click campaigns operate best with tight keyword groups. If you group your keywords effectively and write good ads that lead clickers to well-optimized and conversion-ready landing pages then you should have a profitable marketing plan. The more keywords you have in your arsenal the better your chances of reaching that goal.
But pay per click advertising and search engine marketing effectiveness depend on your use of the keywords you have. Your SEO efforts will be greatly improved if you have a good army of keywords.
Don’t get wrapped around the axle on numbers, just find good keywords.
Adding Extra Links To Your Pay Per Click Marketing
Pay per click marketing, particularly through Google Adwords, has been the backbone search marketing for a good decade now. One of the limitations has been that each ad unit could only have one link. Earlier this year Google made changes to Adwords that allowed advertisers to include an additional four site links in their ad units.
For many businesses, these additional site links have been a real boost. Rather than advertise one product, you could effectively advertise five products. If you sold hard drives for example, and your ad unit promoted and pointed to Western Digital hard drives on your site, your additional site links might point to sales pages on Seagate, Maxell, Maxtor or Samsung hard drives.
The concept is sound and as you can see from the above example, is more likely to increase click through rates than decrease them. If you can convert those clicks to sales and similar rates then your sales and profits will most likely improve as well. For many businesses in that situation, undertaking a split test of ad units with and without site links could be a worthwhile experience.
As with everything in life, there is also a downside to site links. They are not for every business and need to be used wisely. If you are heavily promoting one product or service, the last thing you should be doing is diluting that traffic away from your featured product. More importantly, using site links because you can could be highly counterproductive and result in falling click through rates and falling sales.
Split testing is the key to success when making any changes to a marketing campaign, more so if it is proving to be successful. Site links do exist in Google Adwords, and if you sell a range of products then, used wisely, they could be beneficial to your business.
Do Local Businesses Still Need Pay Per Click?
There has been an interesting change in the way local search results are being displayed in Google. Rather than a seven pack with map followed by organic listings, the seven pack has been taken out the frame and listed in a similar fashion to organic search results. The map has been moved to the sidebar pushing Sponsored Links down the page.
Having conducted numerous tests, the question now is whether or not a business still needs Google’s pay per click sponsored ads. There are points for and against and your decision will depend on your advertising motives. Let’s consider some of those points:
Points Against Pay Per Click in Local Search
The way local results are now being displayed, it is quite normal now for a business to have two free listings in search. The first listing is in the local search results and includes a link to your web site and a link to your Places page along with a Google map placeholder. The second listing could be located below the local search results depending, of course, on your search ranking for that key term.
If your paid listing is not ranked in the first three then it could be pushed down into the side bar listings. These now appear almost below the fold – not exactly a highly clickable location. This could result in a large drop in click-through rates.
Points for Pay Per Click in Local Search
Following on from point one in the arguments against, if your site ranks highly in search results, ranks highly in local search, and ranks in the top three for paid search then you could see your site (and brand) listed three times in a search results page. This may well increase click-through rates in both organic and paid search listings. That amount of exposure can also be good for branding purposes.
What will be interesting to see is the feedback from local businesses. Those that are not bidding for positions 1-3 may see a drop in click-through rates. Those that are bidding for those positions may well see a rise in those same stats. If that does become the situation, you will probably see those positions becoming more competitive, and more expensive. Have you noticed a change in your click-through rates?
Google Places Giving Pay Per Click A Real Boost
Local businesses are currently in the midst of a minor (r)evolution in search with local search receiving a lot of special attention from the search engines. Google have upped the ante somewhat with their rebadged Google Places offering small businesses more features on what seems a weekly basis. One feature that is being trialled certainly has a catchy name – Google Boost.
Although currently only being trialled in San Francisco, Houston and Chicago, it has appeal and should prove to be popular with small businesses, especially if they are already involved with pay per click marketing. So what is Boost?
As you may have guessed already, Google Boost is a pay per click option for local businesses. Rather than going through Adwords to establish an ad unit, business owners can log into their Google Places account and set up an ad through their dashboard. The ads are easy to set up requiring just a short business description and a monthly spend budget. Google Places does the rest. I have not found any reference for the need of an Adwords account either, so businesses may be able to trial pay per click marketing without going through the steps needed for an Adwords account.
Like all things Google, there is a downside to this feature. Rather than selecting your own keywords, Google will do this for you based on the content of your web site. The second downside is that the link in the ad unit goes only to your web site’s home page (or Google Places listing) and not to any deeper landing pages. What will be interesting to see is whether or not these two areas affect costs per click and conversions.
The benefit to local businesses is that their ad unit will appear in the sponsored links area just above search results. How often your ad appears will depend on relevancy and ad quality. If you’re a small business that has struggled to find a foot in open pay per click markets, Google Boost may be a viable alternative. It will be interesting to see what feedback the trial cities offer.