How To Fashion an Effective Cybercampaign
Ilana DeBare, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Are you thinking about pay-per-click advertising for your business? Here are some
tips that could make the difference between success and failure:
-- Consider your target customers and whether they go online to make buying
decisions. For instance, pay per click often works better for consumer sales than
for business-to-business sales.
"If someone is an office manager looking to put a new phone system into their
high-rise building, they're not going to be looking on Google," said Lael Sturm, an
online marketing consultant with LPS Solutions in San Francisco. "They're more
likely to have a network they draw upon or someone who has come in and given
them a business card."
-- Design your Web site to include specific actions that customers can take. This
might be online shopping, signing up for a company newsletter, downloading a
coupon or filling out an electronic form asking for more information. But unless you
give visitors the opportunity to take specific actions, you won't have any way to
find out if you are getting a decent return on your investment.
"If you don't have a Web site with a 'call to action,' pay per click is not for you,"
said Jennifer Laycock, editor in chief of the Search Engine Guide Web site.
-- Send visitors to the right page. If an ad appears in response to a search for
"silver charm bracelet," the link should take viewers to a charm bracelet page, not
a page about jewelry in general. You may need different landing pages for
different ads.
-- Understand how many sales you must generate to make pay-per-click
advertising profitable, and how much you can afford to pay for each click.
Suppose you're paying $1 per click, and 1 click out of every 50 turns into a sale.
That means you're spending $50 for each sale. That could be worthwhile if you're
selling laptop computers for $1,000. But it's a recipe for disaster if you're selling
handcrafted note cards at $30 a box.
-- Start small. Begin with a handful of keywords so you can track which phrases
and ad wordings are more successful. "Start with 25 keywords, because until you
figure out what you're doing, you're going to be overwhelmed by more than that,"
Laycock said.
-- Choose narrow rather than broad keyword phrases -- "German chocolate cake"
rather than "cake." This will help you in two ways. There will probably be fewer
bidders for narrower phrases, so the cost-per-click may be less. And narrower
phrases will attract customers who are more likely to buy.
"It comes down not to how many clicks you get, but how did those clicks convert to
sales?" said Stephen Herz of Moonstone Interactive, an online marketing firm in
San Ramon. "The person who types in 'restaurant' is probably looking around and
not very hungry. But the person who types 'classic Mexican restaurant in Alameda,
California' is probably on their way out the door. They know what they want to eat
and, by God, they're hungry. They will probably convert (to a sale) better and cost
a lot less."
-- If your business has a local focus, avoid clicks from people elsewhere. For
instance, a San Francisco plumber who buys the keywords "licensed plumber"
could end up paying for useless clicks from homeowners with busted pipes in
Texas.
Some search engines allow you to specify the geographic area from which you
want to receive clicks. Another approach is to use geographical terms in the text of
your ad, such as "Expert plumbing service for Bay Area homeowners." That would
presumably stop some of those Texas homeowners from clicking on your ad and
eating up your ad budget.
-- Limit your ads to search-result pages, rather than content pages, at least when
you're starting out. Suppose you own a Thai restaurant. You'll get better results
from advertising on a search page where people are actively looking for "Thai
food Oakland," than from advertising on a page about the history and culture of
Thailand.
-- Aim for the top -- but not the very top. You'll get more clicks if your ad is one of
the top three listed on the page. But you don't need to be No. 1.
Sturm tells his clients that the best place to be is the No. 3 slot, which often costs a
lot less than the top two but still has high visibility.
-- Analyze your results -- and keep analyzing them. Google offers a free program
called Google Analytics that allows you to track which keywords and ads bring the
most visitors to your site, along with how many of your visitors convert to
customers. (There are paid programs to do that also.)
Use this information to refine your choice of keywords, headlines and ad text.
Keep tinkering and monitoring the results.
"One keyword might be losing money, one breaking even, and one might be
where all your profit comes in," said Laycock.
This article appeared on page E - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle on 5/20/2007
Ilana DeBare, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Are you thinking about pay-per-click advertising for your business? Here are some
tips that could make the difference between success and failure:
-- Consider your target customers and whether they go online to make buying
decisions. For instance, pay per click often works better for consumer sales than
for business-to-business sales.
"If someone is an office manager looking to put a new phone system into their
high-rise building, they're not going to be looking on Google," said Lael Sturm, an
online marketing consultant with LPS Solutions in San Francisco. "They're more
likely to have a network they draw upon or someone who has come in and given
them a business card."
-- Design your Web site to include specific actions that customers can take. This
might be online shopping, signing up for a company newsletter, downloading a
coupon or filling out an electronic form asking for more information. But unless you
give visitors the opportunity to take specific actions, you won't have any way to
find out if you are getting a decent return on your investment.
"If you don't have a Web site with a 'call to action,' pay per click is not for you,"
said Jennifer Laycock, editor in chief of the Search Engine Guide Web site.
-- Send visitors to the right page. If an ad appears in response to a search for
"silver charm bracelet," the link should take viewers to a charm bracelet page, not
a page about jewelry in general. You may need different landing pages for
different ads.
-- Understand how many sales you must generate to make pay-per-click
advertising profitable, and how much you can afford to pay for each click.
Suppose you're paying $1 per click, and 1 click out of every 50 turns into a sale.
That means you're spending $50 for each sale. That could be worthwhile if you're
selling laptop computers for $1,000. But it's a recipe for disaster if you're selling
handcrafted note cards at $30 a box.
-- Start small. Begin with a handful of keywords so you can track which phrases
and ad wordings are more successful. "Start with 25 keywords, because until you
figure out what you're doing, you're going to be overwhelmed by more than that,"
Laycock said.
-- Choose narrow rather than broad keyword phrases -- "German chocolate cake"
rather than "cake." This will help you in two ways. There will probably be fewer
bidders for narrower phrases, so the cost-per-click may be less. And narrower
phrases will attract customers who are more likely to buy.
"It comes down not to how many clicks you get, but how did those clicks convert to
sales?" said Stephen Herz of Moonstone Interactive, an online marketing firm in
San Ramon. "The person who types in 'restaurant' is probably looking around and
not very hungry. But the person who types 'classic Mexican restaurant in Alameda,
California' is probably on their way out the door. They know what they want to eat
and, by God, they're hungry. They will probably convert (to a sale) better and cost
a lot less."
-- If your business has a local focus, avoid clicks from people elsewhere. For
instance, a San Francisco plumber who buys the keywords "licensed plumber"
could end up paying for useless clicks from homeowners with busted pipes in
Texas.
Some search engines allow you to specify the geographic area from which you
want to receive clicks. Another approach is to use geographical terms in the text of
your ad, such as "Expert plumbing service for Bay Area homeowners." That would
presumably stop some of those Texas homeowners from clicking on your ad and
eating up your ad budget.
-- Limit your ads to search-result pages, rather than content pages, at least when
you're starting out. Suppose you own a Thai restaurant. You'll get better results
from advertising on a search page where people are actively looking for "Thai
food Oakland," than from advertising on a page about the history and culture of
Thailand.
-- Aim for the top -- but not the very top. You'll get more clicks if your ad is one of
the top three listed on the page. But you don't need to be No. 1.
Sturm tells his clients that the best place to be is the No. 3 slot, which often costs a
lot less than the top two but still has high visibility.
-- Analyze your results -- and keep analyzing them. Google offers a free program
called Google Analytics that allows you to track which keywords and ads bring the
most visitors to your site, along with how many of your visitors convert to
customers. (There are paid programs to do that also.)
Use this information to refine your choice of keywords, headlines and ad text.
Keep tinkering and monitoring the results.
"One keyword might be losing money, one breaking even, and one might be
where all your profit comes in," said Laycock.
This article appeared on page E - 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle on 5/20/2007
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