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Google is getting real aggressive on their ploys to get small businesses to start using AdWords to drive increased sales to their business.  You may have seen an email come through your inbox recently which looks really similar to this:

Sounds enticing, right?  Well, unbeknownst to the small business owner, this program is called “Google AdWords Express” which is a service designed by Google where they will set up your campaign for you, and give you a $500 credit if you spend at least that on your first month.  They’re like the “drug dealers” Jason Fried talks about in his book “Rework”, where they get you a taste for free, knowing you’ll be back for more with cash in hand.

Well, there are a couple of problems with this program.

1) I’m not sure I trust Google setting up my campaign for me.  If the end-all goal is to please shareholders, and that means increasing revenue through the cash cow, which is most certainly AdWords, then what incentive do they really have to optimize my campaign as a small business to get the highest amount of leads for the lowest cost?  If you’ve seen the AdWords interface lately, you might notice that a lot of the tools and campaign optimization techniques are all really designed to get you to increase your budget.  OK, fair enough.  Except:

2) The AdWords Express program doesn’t allow for conversion tracking!  What the f@!%  That’s right….the AdWords Express is pretty much all automated with very limited analytics and tracking.  Store owners are going to have to rely on the old unreliable question of “where did you hear about us?”

I guess the one benefit the AdWords Express program does have is that many of the cost-per-clicks (CPC’s) on keywords are less than what you would be paying in the traditional AdWords program.   That means for words you may be paying $2-$3 per click already, could cost as low as $0.80 in some cases.  In others, like more competitive terms, the rates are about the same.

One company reportedly canceled their subscription because they found Google was bidding on their own brand name.  In other cases, Google was able to get better performance by splitting ads into separate groups, like one for “dog washing” and one for “dog sitting” – something a small business owner trying to manage an AdWords account wouldn’t know to do otherwise.

At the end of the day, if a small business is spending $50/day or more on AdWords, you need a certified professional to help navigate the waters for you.  If you’re spending less than that, then give AdWords Express a shot.

2 Comments »Tags: Google AdWords, google adwords express

As marketers, we would love to know how all of our leads originated.  Far too often, PPC gets the boot with poor cost per lead (CPL) figures, and can be mostly blamed on attribution issues.  Attribution is simply defined as assigning credit to the source which generated the initial (or final) action.  So for example, let’s say you’re running a paid search campaign and you get 100 new visitors to your website.  However, only 2 of them make a purchase.  Unbeknownst to you, an additional 5 purchases came in over the next 7-10 days, but the source was either “direct” or from some organic search term.  In this case, the marketer might attribute 2 sales to PPC, and 5 to SEO, and SEO might win in terms of lower cost per lead.  So what’s the solution?

Multi-Channel Analytics & Funnel Analysis

Google recently launched a new feature which attempts to solve this attribution problem, and show improved ROI on AdWords.  Of course, Google is always interested in finding ways to show PPC really does work, and in this case, rightly so.  But check this out.  If you’ve properly tied your AdWords account to your GA account, and setup goals, you will see this Venn diagram.  You’ll find it under the Conversions section.

In this small e-commerce website, we can see that 4.65% of the conversions occurred when a visitor clicked on a paid ad, and THEN came in later by typing in the domain name directly.  Without this, the marketer may be quick to assume that the 2 sales from the direct path were not in any way influenced by paid search.  Now, this is neat.  I can also see what my “lag time” is between first click attribution, and the actual point of purchase.  Why do you care about this?  Well, if you have enough sales happening too far after first click, you may want to try to run a promotion to those visitors who are “on the fence” about your product or service.

First Click Attribution vs. Last Click Attribution

Marketers often debate whether to give the “first click” credit for the sale, or the “last click”.  Some might argue that even though the PPC ad created the interest and got the visitor into the funnel, it was the “last click” that finally sold them, and so that should get the credit.  This is certainly a valid point, but you have to look at a few more things, such as: a) was there a coupon or discount that may have led to the final decision?; b) was the PPC landing page set up as a lead generation, or a hard sale (i.e. “Buy Now”)?; c) was there a pricing matrix or downloadable whitepaper that may have led to the purchase decision?  In other words, did the last click lead to a decision-making point?  If so, maybe then you assign the credit to the last click, and measure PPC in terms of “cost per lead” only.

1 Comment »Tags: first click attribution, last click attribution, multi-channel analytics

A while back, we wrote a post suggesting that Google serves up its own products over other brands in organic search.  It’s pretty obvious – just type in words like “voice”, “images”, “maps”  or even “plus” and Google assumes you’re looking for their products.  How convenient.

Well, they’re at it again.

A story reported by TechCrunch’s Eric Schonfeld yesterday identified a “classy” move by Google, whereby they bid on the keyword “yelp” to serve up an ad which takes you to Zagat.  On the surface, no big deal, right?  Companies bid on other competitors’ names ALL THE TIME.  The only rule is that you are not supposed to use a trademarked name in the actual ad itself (like it is here).

courtesy of Mashable.com

In fact, here is the official statement from Google, which says in part:

“Google recognizes the importance of trademarks. Our AdWords Terms and Conditions prohibit intellectual property infringement by advertisers. Advertisers are responsible for the keywords they choose to generate advertisements and the text that they choose to use in those advertisements.”

So how did this get through the Google AdWords filter?  Clearly, this misleads the person searching for Yelp.  If you’ve run a PPC campaign lately, it’s not all that hard to get a “your ad has been declined” message, prompting you to dig a little deeper to make sure you’re not using any trademarked words, or among other errors, doing any kind of “bait and switch” tactics.

Ah, well it gets better.  It turns out Google actually purchased Zagat last month (Sept. 2011) for some $151 million.  How convenient that this ad wasn’t “disapproved” by the Google catch-all filter.  It is for this exact reason Google also had to take the stand in front of Congress last month.

No Comments »Tags: AdWords policy, Google AdWords, trademark violations

The two main forms of search engine marketing includes search engine optimization, or optimizing the organic listings, or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.  But which will benefit your business in the long run?

Many small businesses come to us with the ultimatum that they have X dollars to spend, and will either choose to spend it on SEO or PPC, but not both.  The fact is, they should consider spending in both areas.  Here is why:

• The PPC ads can provide instant traffic, and simple campaigns can be set up in a matter of hours.  SEO will take weeks to set up, and months to achieve noticeable results.
• Setting up your PPC campaign will provide some of the necessary keyword research to start your SEO campaign anyway (although the targets will likely be different, it’s a good starting point).
• The PPC campaign click-throughs and conversion rates can provide some intelligence back to the SEO campaign; however, be aware that PPC visitors will behave differently than an organic visitor.
• The SEO campaign will force you to develop more keyword-rich content, driving more long-tail searches.  The PPC campaign will force you to create well-designed landing pages that you can A/B test for best results.

So why then is SEO more beneficial to my business in the long run?

It essentially comes down to the cost, and what stays with you after the cash is spent.  Check out the graphic below.  You can see the slow, gradual increase in performance of the SEO campaign, while the PPC campaign is more “instant”.  Once the SEO effort performs well and you start to appear on the first page of results for some of your primary keywords, you get this area of what we call “maximum exposure” – where your paid ad and organic listing appear on the same page.  It has been said that this type of exposure can lead to a higher chance of getting a click – on the organic listing – up to 7 times more likely.  That’s interesting that the paid ad provided the necessary brand exposure to get a user to click on your FREE organic listing.

So let’s consider what happens after you stop spending in both areas.  Maybe you are in a budget crunch, or you ran out of funding.  The PPC ads come down immediately, and you are no longer visible to potential customers.  With SEO, your time, effort and money will sustain itself for weeks, months, or maybe even years.  This means you’re not going to lose your rankings overnight, and the SEO work will still give you exposure to new potential customers and drive more leads and sales to your business, even though you’ve stopped spending in that area.

Also consider the ROI on both programs.  A click in PPC for a competitive keyword can cost you $4 (let’s say), whereas an organic visitor can cost you merely pennies (take you monthly SEO spend and divide it by the total organic visitors during the same period).

So if you only have X dollars to spend, don’t count out your SEO program.  Instead, split your budget across both and get the maximum benefit for your money.

7 Comments »Tags: PPC, SEO

Before you embark on a potentially expensive paid search campaign, consider this one insight that could change your mind.

While Pear focuses on organic search (SEO), we do mingle around and talk to a lot of experts in paid search. Experts who work paid search campaigns day in and day out. The other day I learned something very interesting.

The longer the sales cycle in your business, the worse your paid search campaign could perform.

In fact, if it takes you longer than 2 weeks to close a potential lead from click to sale, then paid search might not be a great fit for you. This is not an off-the-cuff statement, but rather a conclusion based on a long history of data obtained by a close partner in the business. Now there are always going to be exceptions to the rule, and there are many other factors that go into paid search ROI, but this is a good rule of thumb, and here’s why.

Paid search works better when an impulse action (like a purchase or contact) is involved. Let’s look at a few examples:

Plumbing Service – your bathroom had a backup and is flooded with raw sewage. Do you search 15 plumbers and call for quotes? Not likely. You choose the first or second option you see based on the most credible looking, easiest to contact (maybe they are open 24-hours or offer emergency response) plumber. You probably don’t care much about the price either – you just want it fixed.

Real Estate – most of us don’t buy property in less than 2 weeks. We look at lots of options, talk to lots of people, make personal visits and collect a lot of information before making the final purchase. This is definitely not an impulse purchase. Paid search can work in this case if the margins are high enough to where even if the conversions are dismal, one sale could pay for the whole campaign.

Air Conditioning Repair – it’s already in the 90 degrees here in Texas and turning on your AC is a necessity. Like the plumber, you need the next available company to service your system, and the first or second listing will get the lead.

Home Health Care – getting a parent or loved one into a home health care situation is an emotional experience. Not only is the sales cycle longer than 2 weeks, but the decision is usually not with one person, which makes it a harder deal to close. If clicks are going for $5-10 a piece, you could spend hundreds before getting a new client.

What do you think?  Do you have any examples to share?

7 Comments »Tags: Paid Search, PPC, ROI