Small Biz Web Exposure Blog

It’s been a while, friends, since I last wrote an article.  No real excuses.  I just got lazy.  But, as March winds down, I’m making an effort to ignite the writing engine within and pick up the pace.

This will be a quick post, and it’s come to fruition after a recent experience with a client, and I think it should be addressed.  I’m not writing this post to vent, or to make light of anyone’s experience.  There is plenty of time for making fun of people, but this is a common problem in the PPC realm, and I just want to get my two cents out there.  If, by chance, said client reads this (who am I kidding, no one reads these), again, I’m not making light of your actions, and you should know that what you did was not uncommon.

One of my clients has a retail site, that sells widgets.  Over time, business has slowly dropped off.  This could be because of a number of factors, some completely visible, some likely not as visible.  Retail has taken a hit on all levels, from brick-and-mortar to internet sales, and this problem probably spans across all aspects of retail.  Anyway, said client is searching for ways to bring in more business through the internet, which is where they make all of their sales.  They try to do two things with the site, make sales and get potential customers to order samples.  The customer has assumed that if $1000 per day produces 10 conversion or sales, that $1500 per day would produce 15 conversion.  This, without considering that other issues could possibly at play that are hindering the performance of the campaign.  The general consensus is, if $1 makes you $1.01 or more, pour money into your campaigns, because you are not losing.

But, if you spend $1000 a day, and you really don’t know what that $1000 is actually getting you because your conversions are not tied to monetary figures, then you need to make sure your campaign is nailed down tight before you throw more money at it.  Things to consider before you bump that budget up:

1) Are you bidding on the right keywords?  Many businesses try and use the shotgun approach.  If you’re Amazon.com, and you sell everything from cds to the souls of the dead, shotgun away.  But, if you are a business that sells a very focused line of products, or at least that’s what you’re advertising for, then you really need to be careful how you approach your keyword selection.  If they are too broad, you’re going to get people coming to the site that you don’t want, and that is money spent.

2) Are you constantly checking the performance of your ads?  You should always have 2 ads running at the same time.  Periodically, you should check the performance, and if one ad is doing noticeably worse in whatever metric you decide to measure, then it’s time to write a new ad to compete with the “winner.”  And you keep doing this forever.

3)  When a potential customer goes to your site, do they know what to do when they get there?  If you’re selling widgets, is it clear enough that someone one the fence is compelled to make the purchase?  If not, you really need to consider the flow that a customer will go through to make the purchase.  Too many steps, or not enough/too much info, and the customer will abandon the site.  Make sure the customer can see exactly where to go to do whatever it is that they are supposed to do on that site.

I have an analogy that I think is fitting in this situation.  You have a car.  When it’s new, it’s getting 40 MPG, and doing it cheaply.  Over time, performance starts to dip, and the MPG drops to 30.  It costs the same to fill the gas tank, but you do it 5 times a month, instead of 4.  In time, the MPG has dropped to 20, and now you’re filling it up 10 times a month.  You keep throwing money at the car so that you get the same performance out of it over the course of a month.  But, what you don’t know is that the gas tank has a leak and you’re just wasting money by putting more gas in all the time.  And if that leak was fixed, the car would get closer to 40 MPG than 20MPG.  This is like upping your PPC spend, without making sure all the other potential problems are addressed.  You’re just wasting money…

Many people with websites get into the game thinking that they can be a player right away, just by using simple, or even advanced SEO techniques.  JoesDiscountCars.com certainly carries the same weight with the almighty Google as AutoTrader.com does, right?  Get some good meta tags in place, whether Google looks at them or not (depends on who you ask), get a few hundred words of meaningful content on your home page, get some depth on your site, and you, too, can compete with the big boys in your space, even though it’s crowded with big boys, your site is new and no one has heard of you, right?  Riiiiigggghhht…..  And monkeys will fly out of my butt.  And for the recored, I know that there is a lot more to SEO than what I just mentioned above.  So, no comments.

But, there are ways to play with the big boys, and do it quickly, if you have a little bit of an advertising budget.  In all the major search engines, you can purchase a search result and get right on the front page with the biggest players in the game.  And you can do it 20 minutes after you flip the switch.  Pay-per-click advertising is the easiest way to get seen by a large audience who is looking to find what you’re selling.  And you can very easily narrow your market to the exact group you’re looking to target, in many cases out-positioning the big boys in doing so.  AutoTrader.com sells all over the United States, and maybe in international markets, whereas JoesDiscoutnCars.com sells in good old Scranton, PA.  While AutoTrader.com can reap the benefits of people clicking in from California, Alaska and Florida, JoesDiscountCars.com would really benefit from clicks coming in from Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and maybe even as far away as Allentown.  And with just a few enhancements to his PPC campaign, Joe is playing first base on the National Used Car Sellers softball team.

While you will never really be able to eliminate the competition in PPC, you can out-maneuver them by targeting a specific geographic location and by bidding on geographically-specific keywords.  Want to sell used cars in Scranton?  Joe can certainly bid on “used cars”, but it’s gonna cost him about $20 per click, or maybe even more, to be seen in the top 5 positions, let alone #1.  And really, the potential to get clicks from all over the world is far too great, even if Joe puts his location in the ad.  And Joe doesn’t want that.  Joe just wants to get the word out to the local yokels who are looking to purchase his fine, previously-owned merchandise.  By bidding on “scranton used cars” and keywords like it, now Joe has the opportunity to rub elbows with AutoTrader.com.  They are still likely to be around, as it’s very possible they have lists upon lists of possible geographic locations to bid on,  and use dynamic keyword insertion to throw up a specific ad for each of those keywords.  But, you’re there.  And User X may see the AutoTrader ad right next to yours, but with some clever ad copy, you have just as good of a chance of getting that click as they do.  And for FAR less than if you just bid on “used cars.”  And over time, as SEO starts to really take off, you can lower that PPC spend so you don’t compete against yourself, and pay for clicks you might have gotten organically.

Now, how does this bridge the gap between obscurity and SEO success?  When a new website jumps into the mix, it has lots of things stacked against it.  First off it needs to be indexed.  While this can happen quickly, you’re at the mercy of the search engines as to when it will happen.  You can’t just call in and order up and indexing.  Once that’s done, you have prove your worth to the search engines.  If you don’t, you’ll remain in obscurity forever.  Once you start gaining some relevancy mojo, you need to show the search engines that not only are you relevant, but you are MORE relevant than every other site.  Besides obtaining links into your site, this is the most difficult task you have on your plate.  In the case of search engines, sites are irrelevant until proven otherwise.  Through hard work and determination, any site has a chance to rank very high, even in some very competitive markets.  But, it can take years for that kind of success, and while you’re waiting for that success, however you measure it, to come, you can fill in the gaps, get  seen and even help out your SEO efforts by potentially getting people to link to your site.

And if you have the budget to spend, why not start that walk across the bridge?