Will Online Ads Work for You?

We received a care package from Google this weekend; it reminded me of the packages I send to my kids in the dorms at the beginning of the school year, and it arrived just in time for the beginning of the school year, too.

A recent study found that 78% of moms consider back to school the beginning of a new year, and 90% of them make New Year’s resolutions at this time of year. 6.5 million American businesses are owned by moms, so simple arithmetic suggests that some of the people reading this are making New Year’s resolutions for their businesses. Doing a better job of marketing would make an excellent New Year’s resolution for almost any company.

One possibility is to add PPC advertising to your marketing mix, and that’s what these snacks were for — to remind us to remind you that Adwords can be a great choice for businesses.

Will your business benefit from pay per click? Here’s the kind of business that really benefits from PPC, in our experience:

• A business that can’t expect to rank for the best keywords organically — at least not right now. If you’re a newer or smaller business with lots of local competitors who have good websites, for example, Adwords can help you show up at the top of the search results while you’re working on your organic rankings.
• A company that sells high profit or high price point items.  PPC is likely to cost you more per lead than a strategy that centers on organic SEO — but it’s also likely to be faster. If you sell pricy software in a specialized market, you can afford to pay quite a bit for leads.
• A business with a product that can easily be sold online. “If everything goes right,” a consumer once told me about a major online purchase she planned to make, “I won’t need a relationship with the company.” Some products are like that: you know what you’re getting, you know you need it, you buy it, and you’re happy. These products do well with PPC.

Even if you have a business that will benefit from Adwords, you can spend a lot of money with little result if you don’t set your campaigns up right. Here are some mistakes that can lead to PPC failure:

• Using PPC instead of having a good website. Not only do you need to convert your visitors, you also pay more for each click if your website is poor quality.  As my friend Tammi puts it, Google Adwords is like an auction where the price of the chair depends on how it’s going to look in your home.
• Using bad ads. Again, both cost and conversion depend on the quality of your ad.
• Dumping people at your homepage. If you’ve written a good ad, people will click through with something very specific in mind. If they reach your home page and have to search for the offer they want, they’ll be frustrated and you’ll lose them.

Managing your PPC campaigns well can be time consuming, but it can also reduce your cost per lead and increase your conversion rate. If you need help with that, or if you want to discuss whether PPC would be a good fit for your business, give Rosie a call at 479.966.9761. As a Google Partner agency, we’re certified Adwords specialists. We’ll be happy to help.