Does PPC Advertising Spell Pay Per Crook for Your Business?

By Carl Weiss

When you think about it, it’s amazing that the bulk of Google’s revenue is derived from Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising.I say that because many small business owners whom I speak to, who have used PPC ads, are dissatisfied with their results.  It’s not that they aren’t appreciative of the fact that PPC can generate a Page One position for their business.  It’s more that using PPC does just that and little else.  Generating a click doesn’t mean generating a lead or a sale.  It simply means generating a click, every one of which erodes your ad budget.  While some clicks are spurious at best, before you decide to declare your PPC ads DOA, there are a few things you should consider.

#1: Have You Fine Tuned Your Ad?

One of the things that many neophyte PPC advertisers don’t realize is there are a number of ways to fine tune their campaign.  Adwords, along with most every other PPC engine will leave the pipe wide open unless you specify otherwise.  This means is that you need to determine when, where, and how often your ads are displayed.  If you aren’t the kind of business that offers 24-hour service, why run your ads all night along?  Simply by specifying you only want your ads to be displayed form 9 a.m.to 5 p.m. will literally cut the burn in half.  If you don’t sell your products or services worldwide (or in every state in the Union for that matter), you need to tune your campaign to specify its geographic scope.  Keyword selection is also key.  Not only is it important to choose the keywords and phrases that best describes your business’ products and services, you also need to add negative keywords to exclude your ad being displayed for similar keywords that will generate browsers as opposed to buyers.

#2: Why Being Number One Isn’t the Best Bet

Other than failing to test and measure your keywords effectiveness, the second biggest blunder that any PPC advertiser can make is to insist on being the number one result.  In the first place, since all PPC advertising is based on an auction, jumping right to the head of the line only assures you that you are going to pay top dollar for every click you receive.  It doesn’t necessarily mean you are going to generate the most results.  Far from it, since you will burn up your ad budget the fastest this way.  All that shooting for the top slot means is that you run the risk of creating a bidding war that you can’t win.  

What we aim for is position number three for our clients that use PPC.  The third from the top means that your ad will display at the top of Google.  It also means that your limited advertising budget will go further before your ad reaches your daily limit and goes dark.  

#3: How Strong is Your Offer?

If you really want to get the biggest bang for the buck, you need to spend more time working on your message and offer, and less time worrying about being atop the pile.  In fact, a world-class, text-based ad can help you generate more clicks in the number three spot than a weaker ad can at the top of the page.  Since PPC ads are the only thing online that requires you to be more succinct that when you use Twitter, less is definitely more.

The key to maximizing results is to thoroughly understand the demographic and psychographic profile of your ideal customer.  What age brackets do you wish to target?  Which income brackets are representative of your ideal prospects?  Where do your ideal prospects shop?  Knowing these factors will not only help you hone your ad to a fine edge, but it will also aid you in selecting the best keywords and phrases from which to campaign. 

Once you have a complete profile of your ideal prospects then it’s time to create the ads that are designed to appeal to this group.  That’s right, I said ads.  The beauty of working online is that every click can be tracked.  In order to maximize your results in any PPC environment you want to design and test a number of different ads.  What sounds good on paper may quickly prove to be next to useless in the fast-paced world of the Internet.  Unlike print ads that are fixed in stone for a set amount of time, online ads are imminently adjustable.  Within a few days of launching any PPC campaign, you should be able to determine which ads are pulling their weight and what ads need to be either tweaked or pulled out of rotation altogether.  You should also do the same for your keywords, as well as the networks upon which your ads are displayed.

Unless you intend to shred a mountain of money in your initial attempts to locate and appeal to your ideal prospects, all of the steps above must be accomplished before your campaign is activated and the first click is produced.

#4: Looking for a Happy Landing?

Unlike in aviation, where it is said that any landing you can walk away from is a good one, if you want to have a high probability of converting clicks into cash you need to look at the place you intend prospects to land.  The single biggest mistake advertisers make is to send the prospect to their homepage.  Your homepage is designed to showcase your business, not to create new customers.  As a general rule, it’s too busy.  It offers too many choices to prospects. It wasn’t designed with the express purpose of dangling the bait and reeling in the fish.  In short, if you send a prospect to your homepage you have just reduced your ROI by as much as 90%.

Just like your ad, your landing page needs to be customized to funnel the prospect through the buying process with the least amount of speed bumps to accepting your offer.  It needs to contain a short series of selling lures that will make your landing page stickier.  In short order, you need to answer the following questions:

    1.      What need or desire are you trying to fulfill?

    2.      How does your offer remedy a problem or ease a pain?

    3.      How does your offer stack up to the competition’s offer?

    4.      What counteroffer are you promoting in case the fish doesn’t take the bait?

The best way to crystalize the process is to take a look at your existing landing page.  From a visual standpoint, what catches the eye?  Are you wasting valuable real estate above the fold with nebulous graphics or fancy Flash cells that do little to entice the prospect into taking action?  What type of funnel have you created to limit the prospects’ choices and lead him or her inexorably to agreeing with your marketing message and taking the bait?  How much sales resistance is your offer likely to cause and how does your copy address it? 

#5: Don’t Drop the Ball at the One-Yard Line

U.S. Air Force Academy senior linebacker Aaron Shanor recovers a fumble by California Golden Bears tailback Justin Forsett during the Bell Helicopter Armed Forces Bowl at Amon G. Carter Stadium in Fort Worth, Texas. ID: 071231-F-0558K-010 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So you have made a successful pitch and have generated a lead.  Bravo! Don’t pat yourself on the back just yet.  The secret to turning leads into sales without running yourself to ground is via a drip marketing program.  While most business owners feel that they can kick up their feet and relax once the lead or initial sale is in the bag, I disagree.  All you have done is taken back a tiny amount of ground for a battle that was hard-fought.  If you really want to maximize the ROI of any online marketing campaign, what you need to do next is craft a multi-touch drip marketing plan that reaches out and touches a prospect no fewer than ten times.

If you want to enhance your return, I suggest sending buyers a monthly online newsletter that keeps them appraised of your growing business.  Feel free to include an offer at the bottom of each newsletter.  This tactic not only is a cagey way to dangle an offer in front of a prospect, it is also a way to keep your business top of mind.  If you really want to generate maximum return on every dollar invested, this technique is truly gold-plated.

While many business people lament the sometimes uneven results that they achieve when they employ PPC ads, the best way to turn clicks into cash is to up the ante and make sure that you aren’t robbing yourself blind by failing to fine tune your campaigns.

Since 1995, Carl Weiss has been helping clients succeed online.  He owns and operates several online marketing businesses, including Working the Web to Win and Jacksonville Video Production. He also co-hosts the weekly radio show, "Working the Web to Win," every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern on BlogTalkRadio.com.

The American Dream Machine

By Carl Weiss

One of the many things that has  made our country great is  its dreamers, tinkerers and inventors.  The Internet itself is proof positive of the power of the American Dream.  There are millions of people with great ideas for new businesses, products or services. The one reality many share is that there’s a big difference between drawing an idea on a napkin versus actually bringing your concept to fruition.  This week we’ll discuss six key ways that the Internet can help you achieve the American Dream without breaking the bank.  

People tend to forget that the Internet as we know it is not quite 20-years old. In fact, back in 1994, 

there were only around 10,000 websites.  Fast forward to 2014:  more than 130,000 websites will be launched … and that’s just today.  This gives you an idea of the exponential online growth that has occurred in the past decade.  Many of the sites that currently grace the Internet are business-related, making the World Wide Web the ultimate destination for established businesses and start-ups alike.  But what’s even more incredible is when it comes to either boot strapping or building a business, there’s no single entity on the planet that’s more useful than the Internet.  Allow me to count the ways:

1.      Funding a Business   – Back in ’94, there were only a few methods most entrepreneurs could use to find the financial backing to get a new venture going.  They either dipped into their own savings, borrowed from friends or family, or dug a hole in their credit cards and prayed they could get their investment back before interest rates ate them alive. (Take it from me, since I self-funded my first Internet business. This latter method is not for the faint of heart.)

Today’s tinkerers, dreamers and entrepreneurs can secure startup funding at the click of a mouse by  looking at crowdfunding websites such as Kickstarter, Indiegogo and RocketHub, among others.  The best part about these sites is they not only offer to help you start your business, but they do so without requiring you to give up any equity in your firm, or in some cases, even require you to pay back the investors. What a deal!

This form of funding has become so popular that there are now books and online video tutorials that show you, step-by-step, how to get crowdfunding to work for you.  An article by “Entrepreneur Magazine” entitled, “10 Top Crowdfunding Websites,” details the variety and scope of the industry.

In her book Cash From the Crowd, Sally Outlaw, founder and CEO of crowdfunding website peerbackers, reveals the secrets of funding your business with help from colleagues, peers, family, friends and even perfect strangers through a crowdfunding campaign. 

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/228534#

2.     Starting a Business – Before the advent of the Internet, there were really only two viable business models from which to choose: Brick & Mortar or Mail Order.  Both of these models were expensive to instigate, own and operate. The Brick & Mortar model necessitated scouting a location, site build out, purchasing inventory, furnishing and stocking the shelves, etc.  And all of which could take months, not to mention tens of thousands of dollars, to accomplish.  Keep in mind all of this had to occur before you opened your doors for business.  Even today, this is a high-risk way to go into business.

The Mail-order model, while eliminating the overhead associated with a Brick & Mortar, wasn’t without its own perils.  Back then, this business model required an entrepreneur to purchase and warehouse inventory, and then print and snail mail tens or even hundreds of thousands of catalogs in the hopes of generating sales. While some businesses today still use this model, more and more mail order ventures rely on the Internet to showcase their wares and process orders electronically.  This not only saves time and money, but it saves a whole lot of trees as well.

3.      Promoting a Business  – In ’94 there were three primary methods to promote your venture: Print, Radio and TV.  None of these models were particularly user- friendly or cheap.  Usually, in most towns, there was only a single newspaper and a handful of broadcast stations. This gave the owners of the newspapers, magazines, radio and TV stations the ability to charge whatever the market would bear, thus pricing many would-be entrepreneurs out of the market before they could even get off the ground. 

Then along came the Internet and sites such as Craigslist, eBay and YouTube were born that gave startups a whole new lease on life.  Not only have these portals become a success, they’ve become so successful that they actually threaten the viability of their more traditional counterparts.  (Craigslist has been cited as one of the prime reasons the newspaper industry has been in sharp decline, since the site offers classified advertising at low or even no cost.)

For small businesses, the advent of these and other websites have not only meant the difference between life and death, it means entrepreneurs now have a way to cost-effectively test and refine their business models.  With the availability of blogs, social networking, podcasting and video portals, which offer much of the same things as traditional print and broadcasting venues — only for free — now small businesses have a much better chance of creating a sustainable revenue since promotional expenses are much less than they were 20 years ago.

4.      Staffing a Business  – Hiring personnel is still something that causes many business owners to wake up in a cold sweat in the dead of night.  The costs associated with hiring, training, supporting and creating/equipping workstations for employees can be a daunting task for any business, let alone a startup with limited resources.  Back in ’94, with the exception of temps, there was little a business owner could do to contain the costs associated with hiring new employees.  Then along came outsourcing and the world became a business owner’s oyster.  Today, most businesses take advantage to outsource many tasks, from HR, to customer service, to IT, to clerical services, to bookkeeping, and even editorial functions. 

In a recent article from “Business Week” entitled “The Future of Outsourcing,” the practice of outsourcing jobs offshore has become a political hot potato since it is seen as big business’ way of eliminating high paying jobs that would otherwise be given to Americans. However, when it comes to small businesses, their consensus is quite different:

Thus entrepreneurs see a chance to turn around dying businesses, speed up their pace of innovation, or fund development projects that otherwise would have been unaffordable. More aggressive outsourcers are aiming to create radical business models that can give them an edge and change the game in their industries. 

http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-01-29/the-future-of-outsourcing

Love it or hate it, outsourcing is a resource most small businesses could little afford to do without today. Besides, in our current business environment, it isn’t always necessary to take your outsourcing needs offshore.  In our current business, we use a number of US-based independent contractors for everything from web design, to writing and editorial tasks, to on-screen talent and more.  It’s been my experience that employing outsourced labor in the short term results in hiring a qualified full-time employee down the road. In many cases, this can mean hiring the same person that was employed as an indie. (Think of his/her outsourcing tenure as an “audition.”) Even better, it allows business owners the flexibility of generating occasional jobs for hire that can add to the bottom line without threatening the business’ viability.

5.      Sustaining a Business – Once you’ve started a business, you need to find a way to sustain and grow it. This meant the Small Business Administration (SBA) back in ’94.  While the SBA is still one resource that can be called upon to help fledgling businesses, it’s by no means the only one.  Today there are thousands of entities that are but a point-and-click away, which offer everything from business coaching, to business networking, to online marketing and more. 

There comes a time in every growing business when, as the owner, you "come to the end of your sleeve." Your business reaches capacity. Either your business has surpassed your skill set or your capacity, or both. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jackie-nagel/are-service-providers-slo_b_5326132.html

What happens when you realize you’ve taken your business to the point where your acumen is no longer sufficient to take it to the next level? It used to mean incurring the expense of hiring high-priced consultants or employees that were a drain on the business.  Today, that’s no longer an issue, since there are a number of business assets online that can provide the knowledge you seek. Or you can acquire outsourced technical experts on a per-hour or per-project basis.

6.     Selling a Business – The best reason to own a business is to be able to sell the business down the road.  In the past, this meant hiring a business broker and paying a percentage of the sale price to a third party.  While I’m not saying business brokers don’t have their place when it comes to selling a business, they’re no longer the only way to go.  Just as the real estate industry has spawned a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) craze, there are a number of web portals that have sprung up whose primary task is to help business owners sell their firms.

Many business owners looking to sell their business don't realize they can use the internet to make the selling process go more smoothly. Online business-for-sale marketplaces allow sellers to reach a large number of potential buyers and provide resources for owners considering putting their business up for sale.

http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/186692

Sporting names such as bizbuysell.com, BizQuest.com, businessforsale.com, globalbx.com and sellingyourbusiness.com, these sites can help you price, position, and sell your business, since they cater to business owners and buyers galore.  More importantly, even if you do end up dealing with a broker to sell your business, you’ll be a much savvier seller who better understands the process. That’s money in the bank.

The bottom line is that when it comes to starting, funding, promoting, staffing, sustaining or selling a business, the Internet is the American dream Machine.

Carl Weiss is CEO of Working the Web to Win, a digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, Florida.  You can interface with Carl every Tuesday at 4 p.m. Eastern when he airs his radio show on Blog Talk Radio.

Working the Web to Win in the 21st Century

by Carl Weiss

Before the 1990’s businesses were relegated to using print, TV and radio to advertise their wares. Then along came the Internet in the latter half of the 90’s and suddenly businesses had a whole new lease on life, along with a new set of skills to hone.  Because when it comes to promoting products and services online, there is no such thing as one size fits all.  Far from it. 

Before the turn of the century webvertising was a bit simpler, due to the fact that it all came down to two things: a website and a search engine.  Back then, there weren’t any such things as blogs and social networks.  Video was something that was worse than useless, due to bandwidth considerations.  Web designers back then had to selectively choose images due to the slow loading speeds that dial-ups provided.  Too many images could cause a site to load like molasses, or even freeze the screen solid. 

Then came the development of broadband and suddenly it was a whole new ballgame.  With that ballgame came an entirely new set of rules.  Instead of relying almost exclusively on text, many sites began experimenting with podcasts and video.  With the advent of YouTube, where anyone can post and host videos galore, multimedia went from being an anomaly to being practically a requirement. 

Search engines as well began to capitalize on the multimedia nature of the Internet, with many of them adapting their search algorithms to take into considerations all the latest online offerings.  Several, most notably Google, went one step farther by developing their own brand of blog, social network and video portal.  This meant that website owners and optimizers had their hands full feeding all these additional mouths.  As a result, many sites that previously dominated the search engines were relegated to its backwaters.  It also meant that SEO was no longer SOP (standard operating procedure.)  Whether you choose to administer your web presence yourself or outsource the task, there are a number of factors you need to take into consideration if you hope to succeed.

1.      Geo-Targeting – One of the things that has changed in a big way is the ability to geographically target online ads.   Unlike in the early days of the web where global advertising coverage was the norm, today online ads can be directed to targeted regionally, state-wide or locally for both pay-per-click and organic search. 

2.      What is SEO Today? – When I hear people conversion about search engine optimization, I ask them to define the term SEO.  Before the turn of the century everything a search engine needed to determine who ranked best resided exclusively on the website.  Today, only twenty five percent of the criteria used for ranking purposes is contained on-site.  The remainder consists of everything from blogs and social networks to videos and podcasts.

The other thing that has changed in a big way is the acumen of search engine spiders.  Not only 

can the spiders read, they can understand how well your website, blogs and social posts are constructed.  They are also programmed to look at how often you post as well as how much engagement this content generates.  The only things they can’t understand are your images and videos.  This is why it is so important to make sure your alt tags are filled in and the text and tags used to wrap your videos is complete.

3.      Blogging for Business – Blogs are without a doubt one of the least understood of all web assets.  Most people treat them as a bastard stepchild of the web, not realizing that blogs can not only achieve search engine ranking on their own, but you can also sell products directly on your blog.  Add to this the fact that well-written blogs can be far more engaging than websites since they change more often than your site.  (The average website is updated quarterly, whereas the average blog is updated weekly.)  I have known clients who literally generated more traffic and sales from their blog than they did on their site, even when their site had page-1 ranking on Google, Yahoo and Bing. 

4.      How Social is your Business? – There is a big difference between having a social presence and feeding your social presence.  If you hope to turn Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn and other social networks into a way to promote your business you need to understand a couple of things.  In the first place, social nets are all about telling as opposed to selling.  This means that for every attempt to display ad copy on your nets you need to deploy at least twenty pieces of information that would be of interest to your followers.  And by “information” I don’t mean ad copy.  The second factor is that social nets are all about your followers, not you.  If you provide them with useful information and prove that you are an authority in your area of expertise they will inevitably buy from you when they are ready.  However, if you rarely feed your nets or if you bombard your followers with ad copy then don’t complain that social networking doesn’t work.

5.       Do You YouTube? – YouTube is another area that most businesses do not really get.  Look at it this way; If your local TV station told you they were giving away space for free TV spots and that they were looking for programming to fill air time, you would probably bust a gut to provide them with as much video content as they would accept. Then why is it that the world’s largest superstation is not on every business owner’s radar in a big way?  Not only does YouTube stream more video than all the other TV stations on the planet combined (4 billion videos per day), but they provide free hosting and broadcast, plus they are owned by the world’s most popular search engine (Google). 

YouTube is much more than just a video portal.  It is a search engine, it is a social network and it is a free web TV station that can place your videos on page 1 of Google.  How cool is that?  Yet most businesses are not taking advantage of this free marketing powerhouse.  By taking advantage of it, I don’t mean having one or two videos on YouTube. What I am talking about is having dozens or even hundreds of videos on YouTube.  Better yet, why not start a channel that focuses on your business?  Don’t think that’s practical?  Think again.  We have shown all kinds of businesses from chiropractors to plumbers how 2-minute microcasts can be used to generate a following and turn their owners into rock stars.  Shooting 2-4 short videos each and every month isn’t all that complicated or costly.  All it takes is a little imagination to turn the world’s largest superstation into a business asset that’s hard to beat.

6.      Reputation Management – In years past it was all too easy for companies that produced slipshod       workmanship and poor customer service to remain below the radar to consumers.  As a result it was very difficult to judge a business’ reputation until after the fact, by which time it was too late.  With the advent of online reputation management all that has changed.  Today the emperor wears no clothes and it is simple for the public to find out how your customers perceive the quality of your company.  Whether they use Google Local, Yahoo, Angie’s List or any of the hundreds of sites dedicated to broadcasting reviews good and bad about a business, this is generally the first place that consumers go to check out a company with whom they have never done business.

That being said, many businesses have no system of encouraging satisfied customers to post positive reviews.  What this means is that for the vast majority of businesses, all there is to be found are negative reviews.  I don’t care how capable and courteous you are, as they say you can’t please everyone all the time.  So it’s a foregone conclusion that sooner or later you will rub someone the wrong way.  That someone (or even a wily competitor) can sully your reputation at the click of a mouse if you aren’t actively encouraging your best customers to submit positive reviews all the public will find are complaints.

One of the things we use to promote our business as well as those of our clients is to ask your best customers if they wouldn’t mind telling the public what they think of your services on video. By shooting a 2-3 minute interview and then cutting this down to 60-90 seconds not only will you have a powerful endorsement of your business, but while they are there you can then have them submit a positive review on Google+ that will go a long way toward helping you prove once and for all that you are the man or woman for the job.

7.      Who You Gonna Call? -  Obviously creating and distributing everything from daily social posts to weekly blogs and monthly videos takes time.  And time is something of which no business owner or manager has enough.  So outsourcing some or all of the above mentioned tasks is the path of least resistance for many businesses.  That being said, you need to be very careful who you allow to promote your business online.  While there are a number of legitimate digital marketing agencies, there are also thousands of shortcut artists that can do more harm than good. 

In past blogs, we have written about Black Hat tactics that can put your website 

between a rock and a hard place.  It isn’t at all unusual for a search engine to delist or even black ball anyone caught using black hat techniques.  While it would take more than a blog to cover them all, the biggest red flag to watch out for is anyone who claims they can get your site listed organically with Google or any other major search engine within 30 days or less.  Depending upon the competition involved with any keyword or phrase it can take anywhere from four to six months or more to produce enough compelling content to leverage page 1 on any of the major search engines.  However, the results can be well worth the effort.

In short, with the exception of pay-per-click advertising (which takes an entire skill set of its own to employ successfully), there is no shortcut to online success. The only way of leveraging the Internet in the 21^st century is to take the long view.  Just like your business, working the web to win takes time.  But it’s time well spent.

When he isn't surfing the web, Carl is Working the Web to Win, which is both a digital marketing agency in Jacksonville, Florida and a weekly online radio show on BlogTalkRadio.