Don’t Overlook Paid Search Marketing

Paid-search advertising or “Pay-Per-Click” (PPC) has huge mindshare among even the smallest of businesses as a highly measurable way to drive net-new sales revenue, even if those sales eventually close ‘offline’ via phone, email, or in person.  PPC advertising can also help businesses of any size test new product ideas, generate leads, and skip to the top of Google’s paid search results for nearly any relevant keyword search in a matter of days.

For a primer on PPC advertising basics and the chief benefits to businesses looking for new revenue channels, we solicited the advice of well-recognized PPC expert Geordie Carswell, Head PPC Trainer and author of the PPC training program found on the popular PPCblog.com.

The Basics

With PPC ads, you, as an advertiser, pay only when a searcher clicks on an ad you’ve personally created that leads to your site.  Your ads only show when a prospect is specifically looking for something relevant to keywords or phrases that describe your business or vertical. These ad clicks create an ongoing stream of targeted visitors and leads that many businesses have come to rely on.

Google and other search engines decide where to place your ad on their search-results pages based on an ‘auction’ model that factors in both the amount you’re willing to pay per ad click and the direct relevance of your ad and website content to what their algorithms tell them the searcher is really looking for. 

Google and Microsoft’s Bing have various tools that automatically review your website and suggest keywords that you might want to bid on given the nature of your offering.  You may only describe your business or niche with a few key phrases, but chances are searchers are using hundreds of combinations of keywords to locate businesses with products or services like yours.  Google and Bing keep a record of all these queries and make it easy for you to consider the possibilities of where you might want to place your ads.

Additionally, Google in particular has a massive network of website partners (referred to as the Adsense publisher network) who use Google’s ad services to display banner and text ads on their websites, completely separate from Google Search.  In many cases, your banners can be easily placed on topically relevant sites in your arena for pennies per click.  Again in this instance, you’re only charged when someone clicks on one of your banners or text advertisements.

If you were running a Creole restaurant in Atlanta, you could use geo-focused PPC marketing to take advantage of a variety of related searches:

• You can set a radius around Atlanta to include outlying areas, or even map out specific geographical areas where your ad should display.
• You could bid on generic Atlanta restaurant terms, and use your ad to draw in searchers (“Best Creole in Atlanta,” “Better than Mom’s Food,” etc.)
• You could specifically target “Creole restaurant” terms (“Atlanta Creole food,” “Cajun Restaurant Atlanta,” etc.). Broad matching some of these terms could bring your ads to a wider audience, and inform more local diners of your establishment.
• Because you are geo-focusing and really targeting your ads, you will typically be able to spend less than you would on a larger campaign.

In some verticals, each highly targeted site visitor has a high lifetime customer value, and clicks on these terms can be fairly pricey, up to $25 per click in some cases.  While most paid clicks on Google average around $2 per, competition levels are increasing as more and more advertisers realize the direct click-to-sale or lead measurement that they can get from this highly trackable method of online promotion.  Fortunately, Google and other PPC advertising providers allow advertisers to limit the amount of total daily ‘spend’ or maximum amount each day that they’re willing to pay for clicks.  This makes experimentation with new keywords or phrases easier and allows you an opportunity to “learn the ropes” safely as you get started with a new PPC ad campaign.

In addition to driving new customer acquisition, Carswell points out that there are other significant benefits to consider when utilizing PPC marketing campaigns.

For example:

• Branding and increased visibility – The ads purchased from the major search engines receive premium placement atop the search results page, often highlighted with a specific color background to make them stand out to the user. This premium ad placement “can give significant brand exposure to new companies in highly competitive verticals,” Carswell states. “This is can be a particularly strategic advantage for an emerging company struggling to gain mindshare. It allows newer businesses to compete in well-established marketplaces, in many respects leveling the playing field with companies that may have significantly larger marketing budgets. For established businesses, PPC provides a means to remain visible (or even dominant) in the search results for a variety of vertical-defining keyphrases.” 
• Speed up product pipelines and pricing promotions – PPC provides near-immediate data on the sales potential of various keyphrases. It can also allow you a look into user behaviors and preferences prior to making deeper investments in product development or marketing promos. Carswell explains: “If you’re considering developing a new product, service, or price strategy, PPC campaign data and search engine tools can help you quickly sample the level of competition in the marketplace as a whole, test new product names or marketing messages, even test new pricing by enabling you to send only a specific portion of your ad clickers to given price point or promotional offer, while the rest see regular pricing.”
• Reaching customers throughout the funnel- The type of keywords searchers actually use changes considerably as they become more serious in their online buying research.  As a result, “Buyers can be shown different ad text or messages that best match where they are in the sales funnel.  If they’re using ‘hot button’ keywords like ‘where to buy product ‘x’’, then a free shipping or discount offer might be your best-performing lure.  If they’re using keywords that show they’re still doing early research, pointing out the number of user reviews you have may be the best thing to grab their attention and draw them into your site” says Carswell.  If your ad budget is modest, choosing to place your ad only on the keywords that indicate the user is ready to order or call might be your lowest-hanging fruit.

  “Businesses of all sizes that choose to ignore paid search or PPC marketing do so at their peril” Carswell concludes, “Users are becoming accustomed to search engines giving them exactly what they want, be that a paid map listing to your nearest locations, your phone number, or one-click access to the most relevant page on your site that delivers what they’re looking for.  If you’re not there, chances are your competition is will be.  As we move beyond the phone book era onto the web, PPC provides one of the most attractive, measurable ways to make your marketing investment.”

As the PPC platforms of the major search engines mature, they’re starting to offer even more features to entice businesses to become new advertisers, most recently “click-to-call” functionality that gives users your business contact details directly within your text ad.

If you were running a Creole restaurant in Atlanta, you could use geo-focused PPC marketing to take advantage of a variety of related searches:

• You can set a radius around Atlanta to include outlying areas, or even map out specific geographical areas where your ad should display.
• You could bid on generic Atlanta restaurant terms, and use your ad to draw in searchers (“Best Creole in Atlanta,” “Better than Mom’s Food,” etc.)
• You could specifically target “Creole restaurant” terms (“Atlanta Creole food,” “Cajun restaurant Atlanta,” etc.). Broad matching some of these terms could bring your ads to a wider audience, and inform more local diners of your establishment.
• Because you are geo-focusing and really targeting your ads, you will typically be able to spend less than you would on a larger campaign.

“Businesses of all sizes that choose to ignore paid search or PPC marketing do so at their peril” Carswell concludes, “Users are becoming accustomed to search engines giving them exactly what they want, be that a paid map listing to your nearest locations, your phone number, or one-click access to the most relevant page on your site that delivers what they’re looking for.  If you’re not there, chances are your competition is will be.  As we move beyond the phone book era onto the web, PPC provides one of the most attractive, measurable ways to make your marketing investment.”

For more information:

http://ppcblog.com  - PPC Blog, offering a complete PPC training program for both beginners and experienced PPC marketers.
http://adwords.google.com – Google’s PPC
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/ - Yahoo’s PPC
https://adcenter.microsoft.com/ - MSN’s PPC
http://www.facebook.com/ads - Facebook PPC