“I know I’m wasting half of my advertising budget, I just don’t know which half.”
If only John Wannamaker had the luxury of search engines during his day. We, on the other hand, have the luxury of knowing better. Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) allows you to easily understand how much it costs you when someone clicks on your ad, provide you with their personal information, and even how much it costs to make that sale.
Do people really click on those ads?
Google became one of the most successful companies in the world because searchers really do click on those ads. It amazes me when I hear people still claim they never click on those ads. Really? No one is trying to pull a fast one on you. Advertisers know that displaying ads on Google’s search results means more customers.
Is PPC the Silver Bullet?
With pay-per-click advertising you’ll know exactly how much of your advertising budget is “wasted”. However, PPC is not a silver bullet, not every website visitor is going to turn into a lead, but PPC does allow advertisers to grasp what works and what doesn’t fairly easily. From your target keywords and ad creative, to offers and landing page layout advertisers can make revisions to improve each – pretty much on the fly.
Think your PPC budget may be too small?
With Google’s targeting ability you can limit your reach and frequency. Only want to reach customers within 25 miles of your business? Check. Want to reach customers between 6:00PM and 11:00PM? Check.
Don’t have a website?
You don’t need a website to advertise with Google AdWords. All a small business needs to do is claim their Google Places page and direct paid visitors there. If you’re a small business with a phone number you can still advertise, and track, very easily, how much each of those phone calls your ads generated. Google will give you a toll free number (for free) which routes phone calls to your phone number so you can track the keywords or ads that generated those phone calls.
Is PPC hard to manage?
PPC isn’t mysterious, the information on how to manage PPC is out there, but there are a lot of traps one can fall into. I’ve seen lots of advertisers blow through budgets, targeting the wrong visitors and keywords. If you’ve got a business to run and you can’t afford to fall into any traps you should outsource your PPC management to an experienced professional. Contact me today to discuss PPC advertising.