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Archive for the ‘PPC for Small Business’ Category
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
There many exciting ways for small businesses to utilize their website to the max. The goal is to offer customers a reason to return again and again, and the only way to do that is to offer fresh content.
Five Fresh Ways to Update Your Website:
• Offer printable discounts and coupons, including birthday BOGOF (Buy One Get One Free), and a discount for referrals
• Offer small tips for do it yourselfers and answers to common questions
• Consider uploading photographs of special events, a customer appreciation award, or featuring a monthly customer. Some sites have a place for customers to use as a “billboard†and wish a family member a happy birthday or happy anniversary. This can drive two or three dozen new people to your site.
• Contests! Everyone loves to win something. Have a weekly or monthly drawing for a free service or nice discount. Tell them they have to register for the contest online. This is a smart way to get them to visit your site.
• Go for the funny bone. It’s great when a business offers a side of humor on their site. Great quotes, clean jokes, and cartoons can be downloaded from other free sites and give your small business more of a family and community feel.
It’s vitally important that small businesses infuse their website with fresh content monthly, or even better, weekly. In order to update your website, and you use a web designer, you will need to know the password and how to log-in so that you can make small changes to the site—or have an agreement with your web designer for monthly upgrades. Many businesses outsource their website and internet needs, but it’s important to begin to learn the ropes and start implementing these upgrades regularly.
Fresh content is proven way to keep customers coming back. Taking the time to update your website regularly will become a Monday morning habit, and can actually become an enjoyable part of your day and well worth the investment of your time. In today’s belt-tightening economy, small businesses must use every incentive they can–discounts, tips, humor, and a little bit of customer attention will create a connection with your customers and establish your presence online and in your community.
Posted in Blogging for Small Business, E-mail Marketing for Small Business, Local Internet Marketing, Networking for Small Business, PPC for Small Business, Small Business Internet Marketing, Uncategorized, website development | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 12th, 2009
You can gain a lot with pay per click advertising. It`s quite amazing what a little well-aimed publicity can do. However, if you don`t know exactly how to set up a proper campaign with PPC, you could be in trouble. It`s very easy to lose a lot of money with this type of advertising when you don`t know what you`re doing.
That`s why it can be useful to hire a pay per click expert to set up and run your ad campaign for you.
- Save money. Though you`ll be paying someone to run your PPC ads for you, you`ll be making money instead of losing it, since they will know what they`re doing.
- More efficient. It takes time and energy to sort through keywords and write great ads. You have better things to do and hiring someone to take care of this task frees you up to do other important business tasks.
- Get better results. Do you know what ad copy works best for pulling in high converting traffic? A pay per click expert does.
Pay per click ads can really help your business, but only if done properly. It`s usually worth it to hire someone to do this part of the job for you, freeing you up for other things and getting better results to boot.
Tags: ads, Pay Per Click, PPC
Posted in PPC for Small Business | No Comments »
Saturday, December 20th, 2008
If you`ve ever clicked on an ad only to end up on a website that appears to have nothing to do with what you clicked on, then you know how bad an idea it is not to optimize your landing page. Pay per click advertising can be very effective if you do it right, but even getting relevant traffic isn`t going to help if people are going to be confused when they reach the landing page.
For each targeted PPC ad that you put out there, you need to make sure that it leads back to a page that will give people what they want. For example, if you are targeting one ad at teachers and another at parents, having them end up on a page that appeals to firemen isn`t really going to do the trick.
Your landing page should also fit with what the ad is about. Using cryptic language on the your advertising will only result in a confusion once the person arrives at the landing page. The chances that they`ll click away are very high and you`ll end up paying for too many clicks that don`t give you anything in return.
Pay per click can be very useful. Just make sure that your landing page is appropriate for the ad and you`ll boost your conversion rate.
Tags: ads, landing page, Pay Per Click, PPC
Posted in PPC for Small Business | No Comments »
Sunday, November 2nd, 2008
Pay per click advertising makes a lot of people nervous. If you don`t understand it, then it`s quite easy to make a lot of mistakes that could really cause some problems down the road, mainly, loss of money.
To make sure that you are getting your money`s worth out of pay per click advertising, here`s what you need to do:
- Educate yourself. If you don`t know much about pay per click, read about it and learn as much as possible before beginning.
- Track and analyze. Make sure you know which keywords are working for you and then increase efforts in that area.
- Start slow. Rather than dumping a huge amount of money into a pay per click campaign, start out with just a few cents a day and keep your budget limited to reduce risk.
Pay per click advertising can be lucrative and pay. It’s important that you don’t lose your head and that you track everything.
Tags: Pay Per Click, tracking
Posted in PPC for Small Business | No Comments »
Wednesday, October 8th, 2008
If you`re looking into PPC for your small business, it`s very important that you know what you`re doing. There are too many sob stories around the internet about people who have lost their hard earned money on pay per click advertising. With a little knowledge, you can go a long way in the PPC arena.
Some of the more common mistakes include the following:
- Bidding on general keywords. If you are bidding on “work at home” the competition is going to be terribly high and you`ll pay far more than it`s worth.
- Not setting up a worthy landing page. It doesn`t matter if you`re getting tons of traffic if your landing page doesn`t convert.
- Forgetting to set negative keywords. Go through your campaign and be sure to set up negative keywords . . . those searches you DON`T want your ads to be shown on.
Make sure you learn everything you can about PPC for small business or get someone to handle your advertising for you. It`s not worth jumping in with both feet and ending up paying out more than you need to!
Tags: Pay Per Click, PPC, small business
Posted in PPC for Small Business | 1 Comment »
Monday, September 8th, 2008
SiteProNews ran an excellent article on PPC advertising through Google AdWords. Toward the end of the article, I found this little gem:
According to research undertaken by Google in 2005, the headline of your ad represents 40% of its impact. The first line of copy accounts for 25%, the second line 20% and the Display URL 15%.
This is great to know and illustrates the importance of writing a good headline. In general, online copywriting rises or falls on strong headlines. Ad copywriting is no different. And it doesn’t really matter whether you are using Google AdWords or another PPC provider, effective headline writing is necessary to get the clicks and turn them into conversions.
But what makes a good headlines in ad copywriting? For starters, it must use your primary keyword. But it must also get the reader to read the ad. The purpose of the headline is not to get the click. That’s what your call to action is for. The headline is simply to get the searcher to look at the ad and read the ad’s text. It should be an attention grabber.
Good headlines are short, to the point, and say, “Read the rest of me.” When you can capture the attention of the searcher and get them to read your ad then you’ve done your job as an ad headline writer.
Tags: ad copywriting, headlines, ppc advertising
Posted in PPC for Small Business | No Comments »
Friday, August 22nd, 2008
If you’re a Google AdWords user then you’ll definitely want to know that Google has changed a few things about how it analyzes quality score.
Specifically, these are the changes:
- Calculated at the time of a search query
- Not marked ‘inactive for search’
- Replacing ‘minimum bid’ for ‘first page bid’
I like what Andy Beal has to say: These changes are intended to bring in more revenue for Google. But if it also results in more revenue for advertisers, it’s a good thing. Right?
I’m willing to accept that calculating quality score at the moment a search query is made will result in more accuracy. How would I know? But I’m not sure the other two changes will benefit advertisers much.
The ‘inactive for search’ message for your keywords was intended to help advertisers by not showing ads based on those keywords because they weren’t going to help you much. If that was the case then why are those ads going to be shown now? Will that increase untargeted clicks? If so then it will eat into your ROI. It means advertisers will have to take more responsibility in choosing the proper keywords.
Changing ‘minimum bid’ to ‘first page bid’, however, is a bit more clandestine. This is an attempt to increase bids. If you know that your minimum bid to be approved by Google is .50 and you have a small budget then you are likely to spend .50 or a little more, but not much more. But if you are blind regarding the minimum bid and you know that it will cost you at least $1.00 to get on page 1 for your keyword, what are you going to do? Psychologically, most people will try to bid well enough to get on page 1, but not necessarily high enough to capture No. 1. As more people compete for page 1 listings, a bidding war ensues. It won’t be long before that $1.00 minimum turns into $2.00. But what if you’re satisfied with a page 2 listing? You’re in trouble.
I think it won’t be long before small businesses trying to nudge their way into pay per click advertising will have to use a provider other than Google. They’re quickly going by way of eBay and creating policies to help the big spenders by cutting out the smaller competition.
Tags: bidding, google adwords, Pay Per Click, quality score, search
Posted in PPC for Small Business | No Comments »
Sunday, June 15th, 2008
If you have $2,200 laying around then you might want to consider taking the Online Marketing Boot Camp. This looks like one action-packed week.
The boot camp will cover analytics and pay per click advertising, social media marketing, and a host of other must-have information on Internet marketing. Speakers will come from Google, EPIK, and elsewhere from around the world. It looks like the bulk of the training will be on Google Analytics, but there should be some useful information on the other topics as well.
I get no commission if you sign up. The downside is travel and hotel expenses. The boot camp will take place in Burlington, Vermont and run for four days. But the knowledge and information you gain about Google Analytics and Google AdWords (the boot camp is sponsored by Google) from experts like Avinash Kaushik appear to be invaluable. Only 70 seats are being offered so you better get in early because it looks like they’re going to sell quickly.
Get more information on the Online Marketing Boot Camp here.
Tags: adwords, analytics, boot camp, google, online marketing
Posted in PPC for Small Business, Tracking & Analytics | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 30th, 2008
Nathan Linnell wrote a great blog post at Marketing Pilgrim on the working relationship between SEO and PPC. The bottom line is neither are more important, but they are both necessary for successful internet marketing. While SEO is great at long-range success, PPC is the short-term thinker.
This is a good analogy and it helps to think about it in those terms. Small businesses that have a small marketing budget would do well to start with SEO. You won’t meet with instant success, but get your SEO right and drive traffic to your well optimized web pages through blogging, social media, and articles before you do any PPC. Then, after you are confident you have web pages that will convert, then you can start your PPC campaign. It will do you no good to drive traffic to any landing page through PPC if the landing page won’t convert. You might as well just take your hard-earned money and throw it out the window. So make sure the optimization and conversion rates are where you want them before you try PPC.
Need help with SEO?
Tags: internat marketing, PPC, SEO, small business
Posted in PPC for Small Business, SEO for Small Business, Small Business Internet Marketing | No Comments »
Saturday, April 26th, 2008
PPC, or pay per click, isn´t always an instant success. In fact, there are several areas where you can end up in trouble with PPC and small businesses, with their smaller advertising budgets, are more likely to face these issues. Here are just a few of the most common ones.
PPC Problem #1: Lots of clicks, no sales.
There are two things that could be going on here. One, your landing page may need revising and two, it´s possible that your ad isn´t clear enough. If people think you mean one thing and really you mean another, they´ll click, realize their mistake and leave. This costs you money, so make sure that you are very clear in your ad copy. Likewise, if your landing page isn´t convincing or doesn´t offer what the ad promises, people will leave.
PPC Problem #2: No clicks.
When you aren´t getting any clicks at all, you might need to rethink your ad copy. It might help to hire a professional copywriter to do the ad for you. And, make sure it´s being shown on relevant pages. Sometimes PPC ads end up appearing on random sites that have nothing to do with their real topic, so check that your keywords are clear.
PPC Problem #3: Super high rates for your chosen keywords.
It´s not always a good idea to get that first place with the best keywords. Try using different, less popular keywords, long-tail keywords, etc. You might be surprised to find that you can get just as many hits from much less money spent on several lower traffic keywords. Experiment and determine which is best for you.
Obviously these aren´t all the issues you could face with PPC, but they are quite common. It really helps to make sure you look for a solution long before these issues become a big problem, or you could end up spending all your advertising budget on things that don´t work!
Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
Back to the Blog
Tags: PPC, problems
Posted in PPC for Small Business | No Comments »
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