Posts Tagged ‘Pay per click’

Google Adwords and when you should try other forms of “Sniper” Advertising

July 18, 2011
Fishing for customers

Fishing for new customers!

I am a big fan of Google Advertising  used as part of marketing campaigns for our clients fishing for new customers – the Google Adwords platform is really valuable and I often refer to it as “Sniper” advertising.

Instead of your traditional “blanket” type advertising on newspapers or other media with your Google Adwords campaign you can target anyone that is searching for your products or services – effectively you can target the “low lying fruit” – those people who have already decided that they want what you have to offer.

If you are not found you are not in the game.

Google Adwords operates on a bidding basis whereby you “bid” on particular keywords or phrases – when someone searches for these your advert will display (if you are bidding competitively enough) and if the user clicks on your advert they will be directed to whatever page of your website you have specified. That’s powerful stuff – bringing them right to what they were looking for.

The great thing is that these campaigns operate on a Pay-per-click basis, which means you only pay when your advert is clicked on.

This sounds like an automatic recipe for success but there is no guarantee that the customer will order or enquire – once they arrive at your website you need to ensure that the content excites them sufficiently so that jump into some form of action.

Google Advertising

To Google or not to Google?

Google Adwords Tips

There are many tips for making the most of your Google campaigns:

  1. Avoid broad match – make your bids either “phrase match” or [exact match] (Google either of these phrases and you will find explanations)
  2. Build up Bidding gradually – start low and nudge your campaigns up slowly, keyword by keyword
  3. Quality Bidding – be careful with your adverts – split your campaigns into different groups, write separate adverts for each set of keywords and specify an appropriate landing page for each. Optimise your website ensuring that important keywords are catered for.
  4. Variations – work on your keywords – spend some time working on all the different variations and add geographic variants of these (PR in Dublin etc)
  5. Google Suggestions  – the Adwords software will help you with word variations (make sure you add these in “phrase” and [exact] match formats)
  6. Know your Margins – don’t go beyond what is sensible for keyword bids (pause keywords that are too expensive)
  7. Measure SEO – make sure that you are not bidding on keywords where you are performing well organically
  8. Position First is not necessary – sometimes Position First can be a lot more expensive than 2nd or 3rd, which may make a lot more sense
  9. Reporting – set up your reports and keep an eye on the keywords that are using up most of your budget – make sure it makes sense to spend money on these keywords
  10. Be Patient – people might come to your website a few times before they purchase – would you buy 1st time you visit a website
  11. Awareness – while orders and enquiries might be the ultimate goal other benefits could include awareness in the sector
  12. Compare Value against Traditional Advertising – Google Adwords is another form of advertising – compare the effectiveness of your budget against what you are getting in other forms
  13. Database – Once you get people to your website try to get them to sign up for any form of database (newsletter, Facebook or Twitter)
  14. Content Placement – Avoid content placement adverts in most cases (where Google places your adverts on various websites on the net)
  15. Professional – Get help from a professional when you are setting up your campaign but ask for training on how to use it (if you do not know what you are doing Google can be a hungry beast!)

(I’m sure you can add many more tips – I will gladly include other suggestions!)

Facebook advertising

Facebook Advertising a serious player?

While Google is a great form of online advertising it doesn’t always work and there are times when you should consider switching budget to either Facebook or LinkedIn advertising.

With both of these platforms you target a “fixed” advert(s) and pitch it to a certain demographic of people – these adverts operate on a pay per click basis in the same way as Google. (LinkedIn is the more expensive of these platforms).

The demographic options with both are quite different and as you would imagine LinkedIn is much more suitable for Business to Business advertising.

When advertising here it must be remembered that the person using the platform has not executed a “keyword search” – they are merely using the platform – this probably means that the “click” onto your website is probably less valuable or less immediate than with Google.

I would consider these platforms as an option when:

  • Your keywords are just too competitive, and as a result too expensive on Google
  • Your product or service is quite new and people do not yet know how or what to search for
  • Your objective is more about awareness and branding and building a following (Facebook)
  • You want to advertise to your prospects in a more social or specifically business environment (Facebook/LinkedIn)
  • You want to target people with declared special interests (Facebook)
  • You want to target people who work in particular industries and who hold particular job types (LinkedIn)
  • Demographics are more important that search keywords

A superb feature of Facebook advertising (this is why Google are starting to target the social media space with Google +1 as it is a real threat to their revenue) is that you have the option of bringing users to your facebook business page – here you hope they will “like” the page when they get there and then you will enjoy a cumulative effect with all your advertising efforts.

Once you have an interested person on your page you can then excite them with your content, which should lead to plenty of business over time.

Summary – Pay Per Click

Pay per Click advertising is still growing and should be seriously considered as part of your marketing mix. Now there are even more options online and it is important that you understand each of these and explore how these could work for you.

Each of the platforms present unique opportunities, which if executed properly should bring extra business to you.

Pay per click? – It’s just a click away, what are you waiting for?

Google, Facebook or LinkedIn

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion and runs Pay Per Click campaigns for a wide range of clients

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Posted in Advertising, Online Advertising, Social Media, Web Marketing | 2 Comments »

Click Your Way to Success

August 11, 2009

Do terms such as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Web Marketing make your eyes gloss over and bring on a wave of sudden tiredness?I totally understand how you feel but I can promise you that getting this area right will definitely lead to more business for you. In a tough economic climate this is one of those areas that you can improve easily and it won’t break the bank.

The good news is that it is not that complicated!

Just think of SEO or Web Marketing as “making it easier for potential customers to find your business online”

The Importance of Web Marketing
It goes without saying that being found on the net easily could be the difference between doing business and not doing business.Your website is in effect your ‘on-line brochure’ and it is vital that it is easily found by potential clients who may be looking for your services or products. Over 50% of all product and service searches are instigated by searches on the web. While this figure may vary from industry to industry it is constantly increasing.

Whether someone is searching for a Tax Consultant in Dublin, a Maternity Clothing Store in Limerick or even a PR Company that provides web optimisation services!, it is vital that you are found online if you provide any of these services. Can you afford not to be visible?

For the sake of argument, quickly do a Google search on one of your key services and see how your website performs – if I do a search for ‘PR in Cork’ it is important for my business that Fuzion appear in a prominent position. There are a number of areas to consider as part of your ‘being found easier on the web’ campaign:

Your Website = Your “On-Line Brochure”

It goes without saying that your website should present your business properly and much of this will be down to the ‘look and feel’ of the website in exactly the same way as a professionally designed brochure would create a good impression.
Just like the old saying ‘paper doesn’t refuse ink’, exactly the same applies for websites.

Google and other search engines, while very sophisticated in many ways are actually quite simple. If they are returning the results of a search query they are attempting to match the words that you have searched on with the index or catalogue of words and websites that they have on their giant database.

In doing this the search engines follow certain criteria but the bottom line is that they are trying to find the best match for the query. Words are the key to every search – it makes sense that if I search for ‘Tax Consultant in Dublin’ the search engine will return a website that has these words featured prominently on the site but critically used correctly. They are clever enough to know that a website with Tax Consultant in Dublin written 100 times is trying to cheat the system!

So, words are important but they must be used in the right way.

When planning your website decide on your key services & products and then make sure that the site is optimised specifically for each of these. I would advise a separate page for each key service, which should then in turn be optimised properly. Yawn, I can feel it coming on..

Optimise – this means ensuring that the content includes the important keywords, that the headings on each paragraph carry the keywords and the first introductory paragraph carries the keywords. Search engines can’t read pictures, except for the labels embedded on them – be careful with too many pictures.

If my company specialises in PR then Google expects to find the words ‘PR’ in prominent places on some pages of my website. Besides the content you see on each page there are a few things in the background that the search engines place huge importance on.

The title of each web page, the description for each page and the keywords for each page are really important. These are programmed into the background but it is important that they include the words that are important to you: ‘PR in Cork and Dublin’ should feature on my PR Services page.

How do you know if this is being done for your website?

The title of each web page appears in the line at the very top of the web browser. When you look at any page of your website click a button on the browser called ‘View’ and then ‘Page Source’ which shows you the code that runs behind the scenes. Check to see the content that appears after meta “description” and meta “keywords” and ensure that these include the keywords that are important for this page.

Outside of this your website should be easy to navigate, should be updated regularly (a Content Management System will enable you do this easily yourself), should carry links to relevant sites and make sure it is easy for someone to make contact with you.

Off-line activities

Another good and quite obvious tip to encourage awareness for your website is to use your web address prominently on all advertising, uniforms, packaging and on company vehicles.

This is an area that’s very basic but is often overlooked.

Paid Search (Pay per Click)

If you have done all you can in terms of optimising your website naturally and you are still not achieving a position on web searches then I would suggest trying Google Adwords.

This is very effective in drawing very specific traffic to your website. Google will display ‘paid results’ alongside organic\normal results. These are the websites that appear at the very top of the page and on the right of the page.

In simple terms if you want your website to be displayed when someone searches on a particular keyword, you can ‘bid’ on that keyword. This is often referred to as ‘pay per click’ as you are only charged when someone clicks through to your website from your advert.

Until your organic or natural position improves, it is a great way of achieving a good position with relevant search queries and if your advertisement delivers exactly what a user is looking for then they will be inclined to click onto your site. It is advised that these campaigns are set up very carefully to ensure your budget is not wasted.

Summary
Being found on line is critical for every business. If your website cannot be found easily than this is great news! This can only mean more business when you sort it out, which is hopefully now easier than you originally thought.

After all that a strong coffee is required!

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Posted in Marketing, SEO, Web Marketing | 7 Comments »