Tag: Adwords

Your Customers are Looking for You, but Can They Find You?

These days, more than ever, it’s not enough just to be good at your business – you have to know how reach your customers and potential customers where they live. And, today, more and more of them are living online. So, if they can’t find you on their computers, tablets, and smart phones, then you are probably losing them to your competition. Here are some tips that will help them find you when they look:

1.You must have a professional looking website that is highly functional and easy to navigate. If your customers can’t get the information they are seeking within seconds, they will hit the back button and go looking somewhere else. Make sure that your website meets current usability standards and that it is optimized for use on a mobile phone; that the information is correct and up-to-date; and that it is easy for a potential customer to do business with you.

2. Concentrate on your local market as most consumers still prefer to do business with those nearby. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, and Bing provide business owners with a free way to get businesses listed ahead of all the search results via their default map systems.

3. Get listed on review sites. People want to know that others have done business with you and have had positive experiences.

4. Attract buyers by blogging. Blogging not only elevates your professional profile, it can help raise your company website to the top of the search engines pages.

5. Use social media. People buy into you before they buy from you. Social media lets you connect with potential customers without coming on too hard as a salesperson. By having an open, interesting dialog with people who may be interested in your goods or services, you stay in their minds. Then, when they are ready to buy, they are more likely to remember you.

6. Use online press releases. Think about all the new and interesting things going on in your business and write an article about them. Embed a few links back to your website, and send the release to the most appropriate online press release services.

7. Shoot a video and upload it to YouTube, or any of the other video sharing sites, and be sure to link it directly to your website. Then promote the video with social media to increase your online presence.

8. Send out regular email newsletters to current customers and anyone else who has contacted you in one way or another. By sending out fresh, new content on a regular basis, you’re reminding your customers that you’re still out there.

9. Content is still king. Create useful content and give it away free to your customers on your website. There are many types of online content: white papers, articles, reports, case studies, and webinars, for example. In addition, the more useful and original your content, the higher your site will rank on search engines.

10. If your budget allows, pay for online ads with Google Adwords and/or Bing Adwords. Paid placement will get your business on the front page of their search engines when customers are surfing the web. Get some professional advice, though, before you spend a dime. Doing it right can help your business thrive; doing it wrong can wreck your bottom line.

Remember the old conundrum: If a tree falls in the forest and there’s nobody there to hear it, does it make a sound? Well, if your customers are looking for you, but can’t find you, can you really do business with them?

Google’s AdWords vs. Bing AdWords, Who is better?

Search engine marketing has become an integral part of a business’s online strategy, and paid search is one of the top sources for driving traffic to a company’s website. In fact, PPC (pay-per-click) advertising provides the highest ROI (return on investment) of any type of online marketing scheme.

The two main search engine platforms for PPC campaigns are Google AdWords and the Yahoo! Bing Network. Each one has its pluses and minuses and depending on a business’s market, budget, competition, etc. one may be a more viable solution that the other.

Google AdWords is the leading search engine with 67 percent of the market share. It consists of two networks: Google Search Network and Google Search Partners. Google AdWords is generally considered an easier platform to manage; it’s user-friendly, has a high search volume, and more advertising extensions than Bing. It’s better for medium or low competition markets with a clear advertising strategy and flexible budget.

Like Google, Bing also allows businesses to advertise through two different networks: Bing Search Network and Bing Content Network. Bing Ads has less competition than Google and its CPC (cost-per-click) are 50-70 percent cheaper; its impressions are 90 percent cheaper, as well. With Bing Ads, small businesses can easily rank higher while getting increased ad exposure, despite relatively small marketing budgets. So if cost and high competition levels are major factors in a company’s advertising budget, then Bing could be a better choice, resulting in low cost-per-acquisitions.

In addition, Bing allows a business to assign different campaigns, different time zones – Google does not. Bing also has a very helpful customer service department willing to help small companies that spend at least $500 per month, whereas Google’s ante for good customer service is $500,000 per year.

So, for a more user-friendly platform with high search volume, Google AdWords is often a better choice. Bing prevails for high competition, low-budget startups. For businesses that have the budget and ability, working with both platforms gives them the best of both worlds.

How Small Changes in your Online Ads Boost PPC Conversions

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If people are clicking on your PPC ad, but then are not converting to a sale, you’re spending money, but not making any. The point of your entire campaign is to convert lookers to buyers, so in order to create a successful PPC campaign – one that results in enough conversions to make it worth your while – you need to do many things, some big, some small.

Here are some big and some small things that can help you increase the ROI of your PPC campaign by increasing your conversion rate:

• Understand the five general phases of the customer buying cycle: Awareness (Can you help me?), Consideration (What do you do?), Interest (What’s different about you?), Preference (Are you the best value for me?), and Purchase (How much? How long? And When?). Now, make sure that your ad contains elements that appeal to customers in each stage of the cycle.

• Track everything from the beginning. In order to be successful with PPC you need to analyze and adjust constantly. Little changes over time make huge overall improvements. There are plenty of good-quality tracking programs, and some of them provide a lot of in-depth information. The good news is that Google’s free conversion tracking tool will do a great job most of the time.

• Make sure your ad copy correctly describes the product or service you are advertising. And make sure that the content on your landing page is related to your ad copy. And finally, write high quality, engaging copy.

• Test everything. Again: test everything. Test your PPC ad text; text the images you use in your ad, your call-to-action, or anything else that has to do with your campaign. Then test it again against a variation to determine which concept gets better results. Then test your landing page to find out which pages are more successful at driving conversions.

• Be different. Lot’s of PPC ads are the same. Same doesn’t work; same is boring. Instead, try to create emotionally-charged ads with strong triggers that showcase your unique proposition.

• Use the right keywords. The nature and intent of the keywords you’re targeting is critical. Use keywords that are “transactional” and have high commercial intent, meaning they are used by people who are ready to buy. Also, it is crucial to regularly scan for new keyword ideas, and then test them.

• Use re-marketing as a conversion rate optimization tool. Remember: only about two percent of website visitors convert on their first visit. But various studies have shown that re-targeting ad campaigns – showing individuals who have seen your ad but have not yet converted, the same product or service you are offering on websites they later visit – result in a steep rise in conversion rates. You should also offer additional discounts in re-marketing ads that give people a reason to come back and convert.

• New ads can have as big an impact on conversion rates as new landing pages. Keep updating, honing, and improving your message. Small changes to ad copy and your call-to-action can help better qualify website visitors.

• Give people a reason to buy TODAY!!! If you have a sale, push it. If a sale is ending, make a big deal of it.

• Block irrelevant or unqualified searches by finding and then excising negative keywords that don’t align with your advertising objectives.

• Use AdWords extensions or anything else that will help your ads stand out.

• Revise your ad scheduling to run only on days and/or hours that represent the most optimal times to reach your conversion requirements.

Finding New Ways to Reach Customes Online

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While the media used to reach customers may have changed dramatically over the last several years, there are some things that haven’t changed in the world of marketing: before you can sell your product or service, you first have to engage your target audience. And in order to engage that audience, you must reach out to them where they live. And today, the vast majority of people live online.

It’s axiomatic that every business must have an attractive, well-organized, and well-structured website rich in information. It must contain the relevant keywords so that it can rank as high as possible on all search engines, and it needs to have as many inbound, outbound, and internal links as possible.

Most important, it must include useful and original content that will resonate deeply with its intended audience. By maintaining a blog that targets potential customers’ interests, a business can position itself as a thought leader and expert in a particular industry. Finally, every website must be optimized for mobile and tablet usage, with as much video content as practicable.

In addition, to having a website, many businesses prosper with the use of paid channel advertising, specifically Google AdWords. Buying ad space on Google, or on another search engine, such as Bing, puts a company’s website on the engine’s first page, where most web surfers begin, and often end, their searches.

But in order to really reach the present generation of shoppers and consumers, a business, today, must know how to leverage the many social networks that people now use to communicate with one another. While the average person might only spend 15-30 minutes per day on social networks, many others spend multiple hours each week. That suggests that any strategic marketing plan must include a steady dose of social media.

The most widely-used social network is, of course, Facebook. Facebook provides an opportunity to showcase products, share company news and milestones, and present pictures and blogs that can engage and entertain the Facebook universe. It is an excellent way for people to see new content with every post. Facebook has a simple sign-up process that can establish a business online in minutes and it’s fairly easy to customize how a company can represent itself to its users.

Of course there are many other social networks that can be utilized to engage its users. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc., all have possibilities for the savvy business owner to exploit. The most important thing to remember is the importance of finding out where one’s potential customers are spending their time and then maximizing the relationship opportunities better than the competition.

Remember – regardless of the type of media used, the most important factor in getting and retaining customers is keeping them interested and engaged in your company’s product or service. We may talk to each other via many different electronic media, but keeping it human and personal is still the key to business success.

Efficient Pay-per Click Techniques Make a World of Difference for Your Business’s Bottom Line

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Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing is an advertising model used to direct traffic to websites, in which an advertiser pays the publisher – typically, the website owner or host – each time one of its ads are clicked on by a potential consumer, surfing the web.

Search engines such as Google and Bing allow businesses to buy listings in their search results. When someone searches on a keyword that is related to a business’s offerings, its ad will show up on as a sponsored link or banner ad on a results page, along with the natural, non-paid search results.

There are two types of PPC advertising – flat rate PPC and bid-based PPC. In the flat-rate model, the advertiser and publisher agree upon a fixed amount that will be paid for each click. In bid-based PPC, ad placement is sold at auction. Each advertiser informs the host of the maximum amount that it is willing to pay for a given ad spot based on a keyword. The highest bid has the best chance to appear first in the rankings.

Whether utilizing a flat-rate, or bid-based model, PPC’s effectiveness as a source of profit assumes that the costs of all the clicks will be substantially less than the overall gain from sales made as a result of the portion of clickers who eventually convert and buy. When PPC is not working correctly it can hurt a business’s bottom line – the cost for ads are greater than the income for sales that close.

Effective and profitable PPC campaigns rely on a broad set of carefully thought-out and well-implemented components: researching and selecting the right keywords; organizing them into ad groups; creating ad text and landing pages that are optimized for conversions; and knowing how to target the correct audience, how to test ads, and how to use the tools and analytics that measure, and can thus help refine, results. Search engines reward advertisers who can create relevant, intelligently targeted pay-per-click campaigns by charging them less for ad clicks.

Google AdWords is the largest and most popular PPC advertising system, simply because Google gets the most traffic. Every time a search is initiated, Google digs into the pool of AdWords advertisers and chooses a set of winners to appear in the valuable ad space on its search results page. The winners are chosen based on a combination of factors, including the quality and relevance of their keywords and ad campaigns, their click-through rate, the quality of the page to which and ad points, and, in the bid-based model, the size of their keyword bids.

So, in order to become and stay a Google AdWords winner, a business must do the essential work of creating and maintaining its PPC campaigns. Effective techniques include:

• Crafting relevant keyword lists, tight keyword groups, and proper ad text.

• Creating optimized landing pages with persuasive, relevant content and a clear call-to–action, tailored to specific search queries.

• Consistently reviewing the effectiveness of ads by testing them and then optimizing them as necessary.

• Tracking conversions and sales in order to measure return on investment.

• Avoiding keyword bidding wars that end up costing more than an ad’s potential return.

Pay per click is now a basic Internet marketing tool and very few businesses can afford to ignore it. But like any other marketing campaign, a PPC campaign must lift the bottom line, not drag it down.

What are the Differences Between PPC and SEO?

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Current marketing research makes it clear that in order for a contemporary business to flourish, it must have a strong web presence in the most commonly used search engines, such as Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc. Under the general heading of Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) are two tools that businesses use in their internet marketing campaigns in order to get their brands in front of their target audiences.

Research also shows that, in many cases, the ultimate success of an online business will often depend on the amount of “traffic” it can generate for its web pages utilizing either, or both, of these two modern marketing methods. However, there are several differences between PPC and SEO, and under certain circumstances, one approach may be preferable to the other.

First, let’s look at SEO. SEO is considered an “organic” method of driving web traffic because it is free, and depends on its success by means of its intrinsic value. SEO employs a number of sophisticated techniques whose aim is to propel a website to the highest place possible on the first page of the major search engines, where it will be seen by the greatest number of people. It does this by providing a website that is “optimized” for search engines.

An optimized web site has the most accurate and well-written content, the most “keywords” that people enter when they are searching for something online, and the widest variety of links to other sites. For example, Google, which is the world’s foremost search engine with over 400 million searches per day, employs a complex algorithm that ranks websites according to their level of relevant and accurate information, and how constantly they provide their searchers with continuing value.

SEO is most beneficial for an online business that wants consistent results, a reputation for authority, and benefits that are more affordable in the long run. Ranking high in search engines takes a long time, but most marketing experts agree that the results are worth the cost and effort.

PPC campaigns are more like traditional advertisements because they are paid listings. PPC ads are the ones you see on a search engine that are above or to the right of the organic SEO rankings. They are in the “Sponsored Ads” or “Sponsored Links” section on a results page. The closer they are to the first page of a search engine, the more they cost. Popular PPC systems include Google AdWords, Yahoo Advertising, and Facebook’s advertising platform. The good news for advertisers is that they only have to pay for their ads each time one is “clicked on” and not every time they are merely viewed.

PPC is more useful for short sales cycles, limited time promotions, or new websites that need to get immediate exposure. A business can get a first page listing almost immediately – if it is paid for. On the other hand, PPC campaigns disappear as soon as a business stops paying for them, which means their existence is usually much more temporary than an SEO listing. However, if there is an adequate budget, and sales need to be made quickly, a PPC ad can be very effective.

Research shows that PPC ads have a slight edge in conversion rates (the percentage of users who buy a product or otherwise do something else based upon their searches) over SEO listings, because the people who click on them are conducting more specific searches and, thus, are more likely to act. PPC ads are also appropriate when a website isn’t particularly designed for SEO.

Why Should You Have Your Pay-Per-Click Account Managed?

Pay-Per-Click, or PPC, is a system of marketing where ads are inserted into a user’s online experience and an advertiser pays every time that ad is clicked. In some PPC scenarios, that amount is a flat rate set out in advance. However, the most common format, including that used by Google, is for the advertiser to bid on certain “keywords”, with ads shown on an auction basis. The highest bidder’s ad is shown first, followed by the next highest and so forth. Google’s PPC programs are called AdSense and AdWords. AdWords ads are displayed during a user’s search, while AdSense ads are displayed on an actual website. For the purposes of this article, we will be focusing primarily on AdWords accounts. Publishing an AdWords ad is easy. One must set up a Google account, then set up an AdWords account. One must then write an ad, following certain guidelines, and choose one or more “keywords” for the ad. “Keywords” are specific words or phrases that describe what kinds of searches an advertiser wishes to target. For instance, “pizza delivery in San Diego” is an example of a keyword phrase that a pizzeria in San Diego may wish to target. An advertiser then bids on their chosen keyword(s), enters a payment method and sets an advertising budget, and publishes their ad, and voila! Their ad is now “live”. This couldn’t be easier process.

However, easy and effective are not the same thing. “Just because someone can quickly and easily buy a basketball doesn’t mean they can play like Kobe Bryant,” Tim, a  PPC account manager with The Click Experts, recently pointed out to me. Having a professional company like The Click Experts manage your Adwords account is important for several reasons, he continued. For one, choosing keywords correctly is very important. If they are too vague, an advertiser risks diluting their advertising money targeting unqualified clients. On the other hand, If they are too specific, an advertisers risks not having them displayed to those users they may be wishing to target. In addition, choosing the keywords carefully can minimize advertising costs while maximizing exposure. Since Google works on a bidding process, keywords are very subject to the vagaries of an open market. Popular keywords are more expensive, with some top words fetching over $50 per click. Choosing a specific keyword, however, can allow an advertiser to carefully target the audience for their ads without having to pay a fortune, since bids can also be as low as $0.10. Knowing how to choose a keyword, and how to correctly arrive at an appropriate bid for that keyword, can mean the difference between paying out a significant portion of the budget for unwanted clicks or making sure as many clicks as possible are made by qualified customers looking for exactly what an advertiser is offering.

Another key reason for having a professional like Tim manage your account is because Google is constantly making small and subtle, or occasionally even large, changes to its policies regarding PPC accounts. One important area Tim highlighted for me was the use of synonyms. When Google first starting in the PPC business, ads were only displayed on searches exactly matching to an advertiser’s chosen keywords. However, in a bid to generate more revenue and (one hopes) help advertisers target more qualified customers, Google changed its policy and began matching ads to synonyms of the keywords. In fact, says Tim, Google often changes its policy regarding the use of synonyms, with the general trend toward more and more permissive use. This can lead to more dilution and waste of advertising dollars. By actively managing an account, professionals like the team at The Click Experts can ensure an advertiser’s budget is being judiciously spent on clicks by users who are actually being actively targeted. In fact, in many cases, depending on an advertiser’s budget and they keywords targeted, The Click Experts can save the advertiser more money in wasted clicks than the account management actually costs.

Clearly, a manged PPC account should be seriously considered by every business desiring to develop and maintain an online presence. PPC, especially when combined with professional website development, effective content management, and a correctly targeted and executed SEO campaign, can deliver a steady stream of qualified, reliable customers who can bolster the revenue stream of a business. Why not see for yourself? Contact us today for a free quote and see what The Click Experts can do for you!

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