Are Rankings A Panacea?
For the longest time now just about anyone you talked to in SEO circles would sing the praises of the No. 1 position in search results. But have you noticed that most PPC specialists – at least the ones who are worth their weight in salt – prefer to get their clients No. 2, 3, or 4 positions in the rankings? Why is that?
The truth is, No. 1 positions are the most clicked-on positions. That’s true for PPC and organic search listings. But those are not the most profitable positions.
The most profitable positions are the ones just below the No. 1 position. Why is that?
What most people don’t realize is that most searchers will click on that No. 1 position, but if it isn’t what they were looking for, then they hit the Back button and click on another search result. SEOs know this. Clients don’t necessarily know this. So everyone is scrambling to get that No. 1 position.
There’s nothing wrong with being No. 1. But you should be seeking to be No. 1 for the right search queries. What questions does your website answer? Those are the key terms you should seek No. 1 rankings for.
SEO results fluctuate. But they are also much more personal. Google now provides videos, images, and personalized results based on who your Google+ friends are your past search history. Your search results are not my search results. That makes the No. 1 position just about unattainable. Trying to get there is an exercise in absurdity.
The job for search engine marketers in today’s search climate is to produce the best content and promote it in the best places. Rankings won’t cure all your ills.
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.
How To Use PPC To Increase E-mail Subscriptions
The key to a successful PPC campaign is in your landing page. That’s true whether you are talking about driving traffic to increase your e-mail subscriptions or to sell your downloads. Pay-per-click advertising is only successful if you can get traffic to your landing page and then convert that traffic with a good call to action.
The components to a successful PPC campaign are:
- Your PPC ad headline
- Your PPC ad text
- Your landing page
All three of these components have to add up and when they do you’ll see your conversions increase.
Let’s start with your ad’s headline. It’s got to be an attention grabber. Optimize it with the correct keyword so that it appears on the correct search results page, then make sure it gets the attention of your prospect.
The ad text itself is what will get your prospect to click through to your landing.
But it’s the landing page itself that will close the sale, or get the subscription. It doesn’t have to be long. Sell the benefits, not the features. In other words, include your opt-in box in a prominent location on the page and tell your reader concisely why they should opt in to your newsletter or e-mail list.
When it comes to PPC advertising, sell the benefits and you’ll see your conversions increase.
Is It Really All About SEO?
Online marketing is becoming less and less about SEO all the time. That doesn’t mean you should give up on SEO. What I’m really saying is that SEO is not the be all-end all of Internet marketing.
In the early days of online marketing, you had directories and search engines. There were these things called web rings, which on one uses any more. And there were display ads and articles, which was mostly about SEO. But that’s about it.
Around 1998, things began to change. Google was born. SEO took on greater prominence – for about five years.
In 2003, things began to change again. Blogs were becoming popular, social media was gaining ground, and PPC was big and strong. PPC was not about SEO It was about reaching your target market quickly and effectively. It still is.
But in the last couple of years we’ve seen the growth of mobile apps, QR codes, e-book readers, and a number of other emerging technologies that threaten to expand the Internet marketer’s reach outside of traditional online strategies like SEO, link building and social media. And I believe these opportunities are going to grow more prominent.
When it comes to online marketing, focus on what’s important for reaching your target market. SEO is important, but it’s one channel. Don’t get wrapped around a tree looking for the forest.
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.
What’s Killing E-mail?
Here’s a question for you: What’s killing e-mail marketing?
Is it PPC? Search engine optimization? Video marketing? Social media?
Answer: None of the above! E-mail isn’t dying.
It’s fashionable to proclaim the death of old media when new media arrives. Those who remember the early advent of DVDs will remember how they were supposed to kill the movie theater. But the box office is still going strong and some of the biggest box office openings in history have occurred after DVDs.
The Internet hasn’t killed radio or TV. Search didn’t kill directories. Social media didn’t kill search. Nor will it, or anything else, kill e-mail marketing.
E-mail is a private space that people will allow you to enter if you’ve built their trust. You can use other media – search, social media, and videos – to build that trust. Then you use your website to get people to give your their private e-mail address, which you can then use to send them invitations and marketing messages that close the sale or seal the deal. E-mail is where the transaction is solidified.
E-mail marketing is far from dead. The best Internet marketers are using it to make their dough. You should too.
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.
There’s No Business Like A Slow Business
Is your business slow? What do you do to drum up new business in your down times? When the market slows down and you have a deficit in customer relations, do you get proactive? Do you spend money? Here are five ways to turn your slow business into a thriving business during any economic circumstances.
- Build a new website. There’s nothing that says you should stick with one website. If you have a business with clearly defined multiple markets, build a website for each market. When your business slows down is a good time to start planning for the next wave or upsurge. Put your extra time into something productive.
- Initiate a PPC campaign. Many small business owners cut back on the marketing budget when business is slow. That’s when you should step up your marketing efforts. PPC is the perfect vehicle since you don’t pay for a click until after you receive it.
- Make a video. Since you have some free time on your hands, why not create a video. You can put it on your website or distribute it through YouTube and other video marketing channels.
- Connect with a new audience. Social media engagement can be time consuming, but it doesn’t have to be. In truth, you should be engaged through social media even when your business isn’t slow, but what better time to get engaged than when things slow down?
- Refine your SEO. You can always find a way to improve your search engine rankings. Prowl your website for new SEO opportunities, and take them.
Instead of fretting about your business being slow, take action. Find new opportunities to connect to old customers or go out and find new ones.
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.
Anatomy Of An Online Marketing Campaign
There are different ways to skin a cat, as they say. But when it comes to kicking off a brand new Internet marketing campaign, there are certain things that you definitely want to include in that effort. Leave them out at your own peril.
Here are the steps you need to take in your online marketing campaign. Some of the steps can be performed in any order while others should be performed in the proper order stated. I’ll let you know when it’s OK to veer into a different direction or rearrange the order.
- Competitive research – Start with understanding where your competition is and what they are up to. Someone was in your space before you. Find out who they are and what they’ve done and are doing.
- Keyword research – You should include keyword research along with competitive research, but it does extend beyond competitive intelligence. You want study the competition’s keywords, but you also want to do your own independent research.
- Pay Per Click – PPC advertising will be your first test of your keywords. It’s fast and gets you the information you need quickly, plus you can drive instant sales with PPC.
- Search engine optimization – Next, take what you’ve learned from your competitive research, keyword research, and PPC and build a solid SEO campaign. You can do SEO before PPC, but I recommend performing PPC first so you can us it to test your keywords.
- Social media marketing – You want to save your social media campaign for later in the game. It’s a lower threshold type of marketing. It’s good for branding and building relationships, but you want to get your SEO and PPC going first so that you can use them to test your keywords and strategies.
- Video marketing – With videos, you can market with them before social media or after. It makes little difference, but you don’t want to start your video marketing campaign before SEO or PPC.
- Link building – Other forms of marketing like articles, blogs, and link building efforts are ongoing. Start them as soon you get your SEO campaign going and don’t ever stop.
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.
PPC Or Social Media: Which Is Better?
Over the years, many Internet marketers have compared search engine optimization with pay per click advertising and offered their opinions on which is better. It’s not an apples to apples comparison, but at least the fruit are in the same family. Both rely upon keyword research and use search engine marketing principles. But what about a comparison between PPC and social media? How would that fare?
While the comparison between PPC and SEO is more akin to a comparison between a lemon and a lime, the comparison between PPC and social media optimization is like a comparison between a raison and a tomato. Both may be fruit, but they have very little in common.
Social media, for instance, does not require keywords in order to be effective; PPC does. That’s not to say that a social media campaign cannot incorporate keywords. If social media is keyword-based, it can influence your search engine rankings. The jury is still out on whether PPC influences such rankings.
Another difference between social media marketing and PPC is that social media is about building relationships. PPC is about driving traffic. Period.
You can develop a relationship on social media and lead your prospect to a sale right there on Facebook or Twitter without ever getting them to your website. With PPC, your goal is to get them to your website or landing page. Period.
PPC is better for short term results. Social media is a marathon. Can short term results happen? Yes, but if you don’t get short term results in PPC, you’ve failed. Not so in social media.
Both social media and PPC can be effective, but the threshold for success on PPC is much higher. You can expect lesser results on social media and still be effective. Plus, it’s easier to measure results with pay-per-click marketing.
Would I discourage you from using either channel? No. I think you should use both deliberately. But understand their differences before you do.
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.
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Questions To Ask Before Hiring A Professional Internet Marketing Firm
Internet marketing is a very broad field taking in every online aspect from web design through search engine marketing and on to social media marketing. Whether you need all of these services, or just some components, before shelling out what resources you may have, consider asking these questions first.
- Do they offer agency support for all search engines – many firms can offer support for Google, but they are not the only player.
- What sort of training and experience have their consultants had
- Do their consultants have technical knowledge and expertise of the search engines; again, not just Google
- Do they have PPC management experience including keyword selection and split testing
- Do they have access to PPC Beta programs
- Can they identify and monitor click fraud
- Can you agree to a month-to-month contract rather than committing to longer periods
- Can they offer complementary services such as video production and the creation of Facebook Fan Pages
- Do they have social media marketing experience
- Can they provide professional reviews or examples of the work
- Can they guarantee results
The last is almost a trick question. If they do guarantee results, ask them on what basis. In most cases, Internet marketing professionals may offer guarantees on their work, but not necessarily on the results since there are so many uncontrollable variables. If they offer guaranteed results – be wary.
When asking questions of prospective Internet marketing firms, you are looking for two things. Number one, you are looking for a team that is professional and proficient at what they do; and, number two, you are looking for a team that you can comfortably communicate with. The latter is almost as important as the first since poor communication often leads to disappointment and unsatisfactory results. It’s your money and your business – you need the best that you can afford.
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.
Are You Missing The Human Element?
If you have a web site – why? Is it to help market your business and build a brand? Is it to attract customers, make sales, and over time, deliver a healthy return on your investment? If your web site is connected to a business, or in reality, the whole business, then I am sure your answer to those questions is a resounding yes. If that’s the case, how do you intend to attain those objectives. For most businesses, they use one or more of the following:
Search engine optimization – who can argue with free organic traffic? Of course, that’s not an overnight program so you may use:
Pay Per Click Marketing – if you can’t secure free traffic overnight, why not buy it? That is essentially what PPC marketing is all about – buying traffic. That will kick start your business so you decide on:
Social Media Marketing - you get social perhaps building a Fan Page on Facebook and building up a list of followers on Twitter.
There are many other methods that you could use to try and attract traffic. The one thing that is missing in this process is the human element. Aside from business-to-business commerce, you are trying to sell a service or product to a human. Whether it’s SEO, PPC or Social Media Marketing, you should never lose sight of who your customer really is.
SEO is a prime example of becoming wrapped up in finding a way to the top of the search results while forgetting that your customer is actually a person. Finding a keyword that is well used but is easy to target may get you to the top of the search results. You may even gain bandwidth-busting traffic – however, if the search term has little to do with actually purchasing the product then it’s likely your sales will be low. The reason – you have missed the human element. You have gone for a perceived easy target without considering it’s worth to your business.
The same is true with PPC and social media marketing. The latter is littered with small online businesses that have looked for quantity when it comes to followers, and not quality. Your customers are humans, not numbers or keywords – forget that, and no amount of internet marketing can hope to achieve your initial goals.
Is CTR More Important Than ROI?
A lot of pay per click marketers place too much important on click-through rates. Yes, it’s true, click-throughs (CTR) are important and you want to measure your CTR, but at the end of the day what is really important is ROI.
Let’s assume that you spend $1 per click on a PPC campaign. In one day you get 10 clicks so you’ve spent $10. How many of those resulted in a sale? If you got no sales then you had no ROI. You’ve spent $10 and made no money.
But let’s suppose that you are paying $2 per click and you got the same number of clicks. Now you’ve spent $20; but suppose that one of those clicks resulted in the sale of a widget that resulted in a net profit of $22. Now you’ve got an ROI of $2.
That’s not much, I know, but it’s better than $0, right?
It’s great that you’ve got an ad that can draw clicks, but you have to look beyond your ad and see your landing page for what it is. If it isn’t converting your traffic then you’re just throwing good money after bad. We’ve discovered that sometimes a simple tweak of a landing page can result in more conversions.
Now imagine in that second scenario above that you got 2 conversions instead of 1. Your ROI moved from $2 to $24. Now imagine doing that every day. Isn’t ROI a lot more attractive then CTR now?
What Is A PPC Evaluation?
Before you begin a pay per click campaign it is always a good idea to get a PPC evaluation, which is a way for your PPC manager to see what you’ve done, how it’s affected your ROI, what worked, what didn’t, etc. There are 5 key elements to a good PPC evaluation.
- Website Evaluation – There are certain aspects to your website that are important for consideration when you use PPC to drive traffic to it. First is usability. Do your visitors find your website usable or is it difficult to navigate? How about conversion optimization? Are your landing pages ready to receive orders? And we’ll also take a look at your page load times to ensure that your PPC ads have a high quality score.
- Existing PPC Accounts – Do you have existing accounts? How effectively were they managed? What potential issues are there in those accounts, what are your missed opportunities, are you targeting the right keywords, etc.?
- New PPC Accounts – You’ll need to outline your PPC strategy, estimate your average cost per click on each keyword, set your monthly budget, and define your marketing channels.
- Google Analytics Account – Do you have one? We’ll set one up for you. You also need to set goals and establish lead funnels.
- Custom Pricing – Finally, you’ll need to get your pricing set for your campaigns. Not a one-size-fits-all budget, but the cost for your campaign.
If you’ve been struggling with PPC and you’re ready to take on a campaign that will be successful, get a PPC evaluation.
Questions To Ask Your Internet Marketing Company
Before you hire a company to handle your Internet marketing, whether you want them to do your SEO, you PPC, or social media marketing, ask these questions (and make sure you get responsible answers):
- How do you budget Adwords to simultaneously maximize the number of clicks and minimize cost?
- How do you know which keywords to optimize for natural search and which ones are best left to the “bubble chasers?”
- Which search engines have the lowest incidence of click fraud?
- How do you set up a tracking phone number? Why should you?
- How do you track and handle leads when they come in to your firm?
- Is it better to have a lot of ad copy on a landing page or a lot of bullet points?
- How do you write your ad copy so people will fill out your contact form or call you?
- Where should the phone number be on a page? Which pages should have them?
- How do you fix a “page highjack?”
- Is there a penalty for putting too many keywords in your meta-tags?
- What are the benefits of a “content management system?” What are the drawbacks?
- How do you know when to use a broad match, phrase match or exact match in a Google Adwords campaign?
Internet marketing is not rocket science, but I wouldn’t say that anyone can do it either. The truth is, a professional company will look out for your bests interests. They’ll develop a useful strategy for marketing your company to your intended clientele. And it will make sense that they do the things that they do.
PPC Call Tracking
One of the benefits to running a pay per click (pay per call) campaign is that you can track your phone calls to see where they are coming from. Call tracking results in the following benefits:
- Fewer missed calls – When a caller calls she gets an automated e-mail and the call is stored in our internal database. You can get an on-demand call report at any time.
- Call blocking – Receive only the calls you want to receive based on area code or state.
- ROI tracking – Know for sure how much money your PPC campaign is making.
- Call recording – Record every call for monitoring purposes and to better train your employees.
- Get a local, toll free or international number – Use the phone number that best makes sense for your marketing and customer service purposes.
- No additional charges – One monthly fee and no extra charges.
Track your calls to see how effective your PPC – pay per call – campaigns are. Get actionable intelligence and act intelligently upon it.
A 12-Step Program For Increasing Profits Through PPC
Visit our case studies page and you’ll learn how we’ve helped some clients save money on expenses while increasing revenues. We saved one client 47% on expenses and increased profits by 14%. How did we do this? With these 12 steps:
- Shifted content matching to serve targeted sites only
- Identified broad match keywords with low conversion rates and drilled down to exact referring keywords
- Rewrote ads and split tested to determine maximum click-through rates
- Started a keyword campaign based on competitor names
- Reduced image files to increase page load speeds
- Added a script to highlight referring keywords
- Improved shopping cart usability and lowered abandon rates
- Improved website’s internal search features
- Retargeted previous visitors to increase return rates at a fraction of the cost of PPC click-through rates
- Made navigation menus easier to read
- Regrouped keywords into tighter groups and rewrote landing pages to improve quality score
- Used special offer pages more effectively
We did all of this in 40 days. We’re sure we can help you improve the efficiency of your PPC campaigns as well. It doesn’t cost anything for an initial consultation.