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Pay-Per-Click Pays Back Big for Local Business Marketing Efforts
Pay-Per-Click Pays Back Big for Local Business Marketing Efforts The rush of local advertisers staking their claim to the top paid advertising spots on the search engines, networks and local online directories surprised Gordon Borrell, president and chief executive of market research firm Borrell Associates. His firm’s research shows that US companies who operate strictly on a local level will spend $3.9 billion dollars for online advertising in 2005. That’s roughly double what they had predicted for the year and well above the 28.4% growth they reported for 2004. Borrell’s numbers are conservative however, when compared to the United Kingdom (UK) spending numbers released by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. They showed spending overall on online advertising to be up more than 60% in 2004 over 2003. Paid Search Advertising accounted for 39.5% of that figure and was itself up more than 87% over the previous year. "We've always viewed local advertisers as fairly conservative in that they don't have that much to spend," Borrell told Clickz Network reporter Rob McGann. "Typically you expect them to funnel most of their ad spend into direct mail and yellow pages, with only a small percentage for online, but that is not the case at all this year.” WSI Internet Consultant Ron Adelman wasn’t surprised at all. He believes that local advertisers are behaving conservatively when they choose to participate in paid online advertising. In fact, he says 80% of these local business people jump at the chance to do Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns when he shows them how many people locally are searching on keywords related to their business. He also reports that every single one of his current clients is engaged in some level of PPC ad campaign, targeting either a local, national, or international audience. “Pay-Per-Click is the best way for any company to reduce their advertising risk. Because even if your campaign isn’t that good, you only pay when you get results – when you get someone to click through to your site” he shares. The other risk Adelman believes these businesses are reducing is the overall financial risk posed by the high bid prices many generic but popular search terms can pose. Very competitive keywords like “mortgages” or “Web design” could easily command a bid price of $10, $15, or even $30 per click. However, when you add a regional term such as “St. Louis” or “London” to the keyword “mortgages” and use a tool like Overture or Wordtracker you’ll see that the number of searches done on that phrase may be dramatically lower – 30 - 40 searches as opposed to 4,000 to 400,000. Through effective keyword research a business can identify more specific keywords which cost substantially less, oftentimes just pennies a click. One of the major benefits of running a local PPC campaign is that it provides flexibility in reaching local customers within a given geographic area. For example, a florist operating in Edinburgh, Scotland can set-up their ad so that it only appears to users within the Greater Edinburgh area. 'Few industry experts recommend that a small or medium sized business attempt to track their own campaigns and results.' Adelman reports his typical clients happily spend between $300 and $1,000 USD on their clicks each month. His St. Louis, Illinois WSI office charges a very affordable fee to set up PPC campaigns and manage them each month on behalf of their clients. Adelman and his team provide the expertise and careful management that each PPC campaign requires; making sure clients get the optimal return for their PPC advertising investment. While the major search engines themselves offer advertisers a variety of free tools to help them manage and track the results of their PPC campaigns, few industry experts recommend that a small or medium sized business attempt to track their own campaigns and results. They note that while most can track which keywords convert the best, many do not look deeper into their numbers to know whether what they are doing is at the best possible price. Management of a PPC campaign goes beyond setting up an account, keyword research, writing ads and setting a daily advertising budget. It also entails measuring your results and tweaking your ads and placements to improve on those results. Tracking which words convert the best is only the first step across the surface data available. Which search engines or networks return the best conversion results for each keyword, or whether they’re doing so in your targeted cost range are just two more of the many other variables you’ll want to keep an eye on. You’ll also need to know, and use, your average cost-per-sales, average customer acquisition costs, and average lifetime customer value calculation to determine the actual Return on Investment for each phrase, ad, campaign, engine, search network, or local search directory used. While managing a successful ongoing PPC campaign can be extremely tedious and time consuming, even a poorly run campaign can begin to increase a company’s search visibility within days or hours. “I can literally walk in to any business with a document in my hand that shows them how many people searched for their type of business, product or service online last month, and say the one thing that every businessman wants to hear – I can guarantee to put them on top of all those searches within hours of launching a brand new website. I can guarantee that they will be found” exclaims Adelman.
Do More With Your Website
Is There Something More You Can Do? - Increasing website traffic is only half of the equation- There is a lot of talk in the Internet Marketing industry about increasing website traffic – after all, if your potential clients aren't finding your site, what good is it doing you? You can only promote your business' products and services to those who actually find you online. Because of this, many businesses spend a lot of time and money on increasing traffic to their sites through various Internet marketing initiatives, including pay-per-click campaigns, search engine optimization, and email marketing. These are all very effective ways to increase site traffic. So, you can get traffic to your site. But if visitors immediately leave your site without doing anything, the time and money you spent to get them there simply wasn't worth it. Is there actually something more you can do for your site? If you only focus your efforts on increasing traffic, you're only doing half your job. The answer: Increase Conversion.You need to be able to convert visitors to your site into customers – either by making a direct sale or by having them sign up for your newsletter so you can continue your relationship with them long after they've left your site.Example: If 5000 people visit your site each month, and 50 of them turn into actual customers, your website conversion rate is 50/5000, or 1%.If each of those customers equals an average sale of $200, your business has made $10,000. That's not a bad amount. However, by increasing your conversion rate to even 100 customers out of 5000 visitors, your conversion rate has increased to 2%. Using the same average sale amount above, you have increased your income to $20,000 – without increasing the amount of money you spent to get customers to your site! You had the same number of visitors, but your profits doubled! Important Factors to Increase Conversion: Use a Simple Design Simplicity is important in Web design because the more complex the design is, the harder it is for visitors to focus. Complicated flash animation or large images on sites can sometimes cause more harm than they're worth, especially if visitors to your site are unable to load them. If your load time takes too long, visitors will leave without a second thought. Be sure that the focal point of your home page and inner pages is what you want your customers to absorb the most: what your business is, why visitors should browse through your site, the benefits you can offer them, and how to become a customer. Clearly Demonstrate the Benefits of your Product or Service. Web surfers are notoriously fickle, so don't make them read through pages of content and decide for themselves why they should choose your business. If the benefits of your product or service are clearly outlined and backed up with sound content, they are more likely to turn into customers. Include Calls to Action Many websites don't convert visitors into customers for one simple reason: they don't ask the visitor to take action. All pages should encourage visitors to take action – either to purchase a product or service, sign-up for your newsletter or to contact your business. Use Effective Navigation Understand where on your site you want visitors to go most, and make it easy for them to get there. If the goal of your website is to encourage visitors to use your eCommerce functions, link to your eCommerce shopping cart wherever it seems logical – don't make them search for it. Try to think like a visitor to your site browsing through your products or services, and make it easier for them to become a customer, not harder. Take Them Where they Want to go As you know, pay-per-click advertising is a great way to generate traffic to your site, but one of the most common mistakes that many business owners forget to do istake the customer where they want to go. If the customer found you for the search term "Kodak Digital Camera" then ensure you're directing traffic to your selection of Kodak Digital Cameras, not your homepage. This act alone will greatly increase your conversion rates. Sometimes it's just that simple! After you've made these changes to your website and you've increased your conversion rate, imagine the results you'll get when you implement a marketing plan to increase traffic to your site! If you use a pay-per-click or email marketing campaign and optimize your site to make it more visible to search engines, your profits can increase even more. Using the example given above, if you increase traffic to your site from 5000 visitors to just 7500, just look at the results: That's a $20,000 increase from what you were making in the beginning. So, you can see that just increasing the number of visitors to your site is not the answer – you need to convert these visitors into customers to make your Internet presence pay off for your business. We've only begun to scratch the surface on the topic of conversions. Your WSI Consultant will be able to provide you with additional strategies and tactics to help increase your online conversions – resulting in increased revenues for your business. To begin converting more customers today, please contact your local WSI Consultant and start profiting from the Internet today!
Use Your Website To Find Local Customers
Need to drive more business to your door? Use our practical guide to rev up your local web strategy. By Amanda C. Kooser Entrepreneur Magazine - March 2007 The promise of the web has been a global one. It connects companies to telecommuters, outsourcers, far-off countries andcustomersaround the world. But a new trend in the web is bringing it closer to home . . . and business. The “local web” is the way the internet helps connect people with places in their hometowns as well as their business and travel destinations. For local entrepreneurs, it’s about using the web to reach customers and vice versa. We’re not here to preach the value of having a website. You already know about that. This is a look at how to use your site and the many other internet resources available to help customers find you. It’s not so much about e-commerce as it is about getting people to your door. “What we have now is a complicated world where people use many different sources of information to find local businesses. They’re using the traditional mediums that they’ve always used, but now the internet has become a very powerful--and in many cases, [the] primary--resource for people,” says Greg Sterling, founder ofSterling Market Intelligence, an Oakland, California, consulting and research firm with an emphasis on the local search marketplace. “You need to be where your customers are, and more and more customers are on the web,” says Sheryl Sandberg, vice president of global online sales and operations at Google. Take a look out over the web. There’s no one-stop shop formarketingyour local business online. People use search engines, online Yellow Pages, industry-specific directories, referral and review sites and online communities. They follow links from other businesses’ sites and click on ads while browsing. So here’s a primer to help you plan your local web strategy. Get StartedThe first step is usually the hardest one. This initial stage requires a little patience and a lot of groundwork. Here it is: Get listed. That sounds pretty straightforward, but it actually means you have a roster of websites to visit. The three big search engines--Google, MSN and Yahoo!--should be your first destinations. Submit your site to each engine and then visit their “Local” sections and submit your company information. For example, go tohttp://listings.local.yahoo.com. The “Local Basic Listings” link takes you to the service. You can fill in information about your business, including hours, services, payment methods and descriptions. Once processed, your business will appear on Yahoo! Local maps and in searches that correlate to your description and category. Google works in a similar manner through its Local Business Center, and MSN partners withCitysearchto generate local information. Basic listings are free. Ask.com recently launched AskCity for local searches, and AOL also generates its share of search traffic, so be sure to include them in your local web strategy.“You should absolutely get your content into every free directory or listing service you can,” says Sterling. “It’s important to [do this] because you don’t know where your potential customers are coming from.” Don’t overlook vertical sites that serve your particular market and that maintain business directories or listings. Local newspaper websites can be smart and affordable places to post anadvertisinglink. Sites likeCraigslistthat feature a strong local component can be powerful tools. Not only do local customers browse the ads, but the ads are often indexed by search engines, providing yet another avenue for people to find you. Look No FurtherIn a recent study byROI Research Inc.and Performics on the offline impact of internet search, 55 percent to 65 percent of respondents said that search is at least somewhat influential in purchases they make at retail locations. That number is on the way up. Beyond retail products, more consumers are looking for local services online as well. The same goes for other businesses seeking local partners, suppliers and services. Newspapers and physical Yellow Pages haven’t been abandoned, but they’re now pieces of a larger puzzle. A report by Borrell Associates predicts that local online advertising will grow by 31 percent to $7.7 billion and local paid search will balloon by 86 percent to $1.8 billion in 2007. If you want to be found in your hometown, you need to be found online. But being found isn’t always free. Many businesses allocate some of their marketing budgets to search engine advertising. First Crush, a restaurant and wine bar in San Francisco, subscribes to the Google AdWords program. “We started with Google because it was such a big name,” says Shahram Bijan, owner of First Crush. “[We] reached a big audience without having to spend a lot of money.” First Crush uses 20 to 30 different keywords to trigger its ads in Google. Bijan’s goal was to drive search traffic towww.firstcrush.com, where visitors could learn more about the restaurant, its extensive wine list and event catering options, and use its online reservation system. “The great thing about the internet is people are looking for specific information,” says Bijan, 29. “You’re not just bombarding them with ads.”