Frequently Asked Questions
Why some
small businesses fail at PPC?
What exactly is Pay-per-click advertising? What are Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture)?
What exactly are "impressions", "clicks", "hits" and "conversions"?
Why do I need a Pay-per-click advertising campaign?
Where will my advertisements appear?
When will I begin to see results?
What is an appropriate budget for my campaign?
How does the ranking system for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing Overture) work?
What position or rank should I attain? Is higher always better?
Is it necessary for you to access my website and/or make changes to my website? How do I know if my website needs changes to help make a PPC campaign more effective?
I've been managing my own PPC campaign and I haven't seen the results I had hoped for? What did I do wrong?
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Why some small businesses fail at PPC?
As much as
I’d like to say that all my clients have been
stunning successes, I can’t. However, I have learned
why some of them fail. In many cases despite knowing
what it takes to be successful.
1. Understanding the internet marketing sales
process
-
Having a successful PPC campaign means we have to
get a lot of things right. We have to make sure we
understand and address all the steps in the "buying
cycle" and don’t leave anything to chance or the ROI
will suffer. After all, marketing copy is really
salesmanship in print.
When we
meet someone in person we can size up the situation
by looking for body language, listening to
conversation, appearance, etc. But with PPC
marketing, we have to rely on technology and copy
(ad text, web site text, graphics, etc.). I like to
think of the process as a chain, and this chain is
only as strong as its weakest link. If any link
breaks, we lose the prospect and the resources we
spent getting them to this point are gone.
Here is how
I describe the chain and the links within the chain:
-
What the prospect is thinking
-
What they actually type, i.e. the search
query
-
The ad copy; headline, description and display
URL
-
Your landing page
-
Your follow up
Ideally,
everything is tied together into one continuous
thought. If it isn’t, if you have left out a step or
taken too big a leap in the process or failed to
anticipate what they are thinking, you will lose
them.
While CTR
(Click Through Rate) is very important when it comes
to maximizing traffic and reducing CPC
(Cost-Per-Click), it needs to be consistent with our
goal of generating leads and ultimately making
sales. Having a really compelling ad that generates
a lot of clicks isn’t helping if we can’t convert it
to a lead or sale.
Many
advertisers who try PPC themselves and even hire
professionals to create campaigns, fail to
appreciate the significance of the entire sales
cycle. The best set of keywords only gets a prospect
to see your ad. The best ad copy only gets the
prospect to see your landing page. If the landing
page and web site do not SELL, then you won’t
be able to get the visitor to do what you want them
to do and your ROI
suffers. This is
the single biggest issue that prevents my clients
from being more successful!
2. Understanding the search visitor
- Search visitors have
certain characteristics you should be aware of.
Unlike someone who comes to your web site after
being referred by a friend or colleague or having
read a brochure or an article, search visitors know
nothing about you or your company.
-
They have very little patience. When they click
on your ad they want to see exactly what they
were looking for. If they don't see it or can't
get to it very quickly, they will "bounce" or
leave your site. Quickly! But you may have paid
a heavy price for that visit that only
lasted two or three seconds.
-
They are skeptical, cynical and have very high
expectations. The quality of your site directly
reflects on you and your company. If the
graphics are not of the highest quality, if the
text isn't clear and compelling, if the
navigation isn't intuitive, their interest will
wane and they won't be coming back any time
soon.
-
If they don't know exactly what they want, then
they need to see a selection so they can further
refine their search. If your product or service
has a selection, then you should display it as
images if possible. Remember that web site
visitors, especially from search engines, don't
read web pages, they scan them.
-
Internet search prospects are inherently price
shoppers. If you are not prepared to compete on
price, you need to have a very compelling
landing page and value proposition. Even then,
you should be prepared for a lower conversion
rate.
3.
Understanding the cost model –
By having a PPC campaign, you have now entered the
world of "direct marketing". And while PPC is the
fastest and most flexible form of direct marketing
ever invented, it still conforms to many of the
statistical averages that have proven out over the
last 100 years.
Unless you
are very lucky or have invested heavily in your web
site and sales process, you should expect a
"conversion rate" of around 1-3%. That means about
2% of the visitors to your site will take "the
desired action". The desired action can be any one
of a number of things such as; signing up for your
newsletter, downloading a special report, calling
you on the phone or perhaps
buying something.
Now you can
do the math. If your average CPC is $1.00, you are
paying about $50 for each conversion. Is that
acceptable? Only you can determine that. My job is
to get the average CPC down as low as I can while
still getting qualified visitors. How I do that is
by having lots of relevant keyword phrases with
lower CPCs, having compelling, yet qualifying ad
text and using techniques to filter out unwanted
visitors. There is a lot more to it, but these are
the basics. If you want to get an idea of what the
average CPC is for some of your most popular
keywords, go to
SpyFu.com.
The
life-time value of a customer - Once you have
acquired a customer, what is the likelihood of them
buying from you again? How extensive is your
offering? Really successful internet marketers can
afford to loose money on the first sale because they
have an extensive back-end. Meaning they
have many other, more profitable products or
services they can sell, once they have acquired the
customer. If you don’t, then you can’t effectively
compete with these advertisers.
4. Commitment and patience
–
PPC is a form of direct marketing, but it’s not like
a flyer you send out and hope for the best. It’s
like a flyer you send out thousands of times a day and modify
continually based on the feedback you get in the
form of campaign performance data and web analytics.
PPC is not a task or an event, it is an iterative process. An
overly simplified description of the process is;
test, track, adjust. This process gets executed over
and over and over until you are satisfied with the
results. All successful direct marketers never
stop executing this process.
There is no
guarantee that PPC will work for every product and
every business, but if you are serious about knowing
if it will work for you, then you need to be
prepared to make a commitment to perform an adequate
test. I recommend at least three months. During that
three months you need a daily budget that is large
enough to bring the necessary traffic in order to
make statistically significant decisions for tuning.
If a typical conversion rate is 2% and your average
CPC is $1.00 and you only have a daily budget of $10
with hundreds of keywords, you won't be collecting
enough data. In order to manage the campaign there
needs to be data that only comes from visitor
traffic and time for the campaign manager to work on
the campaign.
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What exactly is Pay-per-click advertising? What are Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture)?
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, also known as sponsored search advertising or more generally, as search engine marketing, allows businesses to vie for the most visible spots on search engine results page using an auction-style format. You create an ad or several ads for your product or service, choose the keywords that you want to trigger your ad, and choose the maximum price you are willing to pay for a lead. You pay not for each impression of your ad, but for every click your ad receives. To the higher bidders and more relevant sites go the higher locations on search engine results pages. Google AdWords shows ads on Google, AOL, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and a number of content sites, and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) shows ads in Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite and many content sites. MSN recently created their own program called MSN adCenter. Using these services, your business can show ads in the most important and heavily trafficked search engines and content sites on the web, reaching nearly 100% of active Internet users.
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What exactly are an "impressions", "clicks", "hits" and "conversions"?
An "impression" is the action of your ad, or sponsored link, being visible in the results page of a search engine. Whether or not someone clicks on your ad, if your ad appears, that counts as an impression. You are not charged for impressions. You are only charged once someone clicks on your ad.
A "click" is the action of a search engine user literally clicking on your ad, or sponsored link, in the results page of a search engine and being delivered to your site. This is also known as a "click-thru." All "clicks" cost a certain amount of money that is unique to all terms and rankings therein.
A "hit" is the action of visiting your site. It could come from an ad, typing in your URL or any other means of delivery that you are employing.
A "conversion" is the action of your visitor completing the action that you desire from your website. It could mean filling out a sign up form, buying a product or picking up the phone. In many cases, conversions can be tracked right on Google and Yahoo Search Marketing to help determine the return on your investment.
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Why do I need a Pay-per-click advertising campaign?
Without sponsored search engine advertising, there are only a few other means of reaching your potential clients: organic search results, spam, banner ads and pop-ups. Using search results, you compete with every single page on the Internet that features similar words as your site. You could be lost in a sea of other business sites, informational websites, leisure sites and other sites that may have little or nothing to do with the search terms. Spam, banners and pop-ups are similarly non-specific and are considered annoying. They may hurt your business as much as they help. PPC advertising allows you to specifically target the type of consumer you are looking for and is also essentially free until one of your leads enters your site through your sponsored ad. It is the most efficient means of advertising ever created and it is now at your fingertips.
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Where will my advertisements appear?
Your ad will appear at the top or along the right hand side of the search results page on Google, Yahoo, or whichever search engine your prospect is using.
In Yahoo Search Marketing your ad will be placed higher among your competitors as you choose to increase your bid. If you bid $0.51 and your competitor bids $0.50, you will both appear among the sponsored sites, but you will appear higher than your competitor. In Google, the click-thru ratio is also a factor; if your ad is more relevant and receives more hits, it will be ranked higher for less money per click. Your ads will be highly visible as long as you are among the top bidders, although different sites choose different locations for their sponsors.
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When will I begin to see results?
Once we begin the Start-up phase it
usually takes three to four weeks before we enter the Development phase
where your new campaign begins displaying ads. If you are ready to get started, visit the Contact Us page and tell us when you would like to begin.
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What is an appropriate budget for my campaign?
This is one of the most difficult questions to answer. Every industry is competitive, but the level of competition in the search engines differs immensely. The bid price of your top performing keywords, the geographic area your ads appear in are only a couple of the key contributors. Please visit the Services and Pricing sections of this web site for more information.
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How does the ranking system for Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing work?
Both Google AdWords and Yahoo Search Marketing operate on a basic auction system.
The ad rank is determined by several factors which neither company will
explain in detail. It is their secret sause. The two primary
ingrediants are the Max CPC or the maximum you are willing to pay and a
"quality score". They quality score is an ever-changing algorithum which
takes into account such things as ad copy, landing page relevance, overall
web site quality, just to name a few. See the page titled Google verses Yahoo for more information.
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What position or rank should I attain? Is higher always better?
Although the top position is certainly beneficial, your business may not require it to make your marketing campaign most efficient. Additionally, based on the different buying practices of different consumers seeking different products and services, it may in fact be the case that a lower ranking yields a far better return, due to consumers "shopping around". I will be monitoring your campaign and evaluate the results of the various keywords and their respective positions to make sure that your position is optimized, which will vary widely across your field of keywords.
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Is it necessary for you to access my website and/or make changes to my website? How do I know if my website needs changes to help make a PPC campaign more effective?
I do not require access to your website to create or maintain your marketing campaign. However, I strongly recommend that we use web analytics to improve your campaign’s performance and hence the ROI. This will require that your web site developer place a few additional lines of code on each page of your web site. Once we have established your account, I will provide you or your developer with the code. There is no additional charge for this service, however the information it provides will be invaluable.
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I've been managing my own PPC campaign and I haven't seen the results I had hoped for? What did I do wrong?
Many people, attracted by the ease of starting a PPC campaign, quickly learn that actually running a successful campaign with a good return on investment is not easy at all. PPC advertising is far more complicated than it may initially appear, and that is why so many are turning to experts to manage their campaigns.
Some don't see results they hoped for because they don't have enough keywords, or are not using the different keyword options (broad versus specific matches) effectively, or don't understand the intricate differences between an Yahoo Search Marketing and a Google campaign. Some marketers fail because they insist on a position-based strategy - i.e. being in position #1 even if it doesn't make sense to do so. Others pick a maximum click-thru price and assume that all clicks are created equally, which is not at all the case.
Different clicks from different keywords reflect different types of consumers in different stages of the buying process, and therefore some clicks are worth far more than others. This is not apparent to most advertisers, but is something that is fundamental to our understanding of PPC.
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