August 18, 2005

Synergies between Paid and Natural Search

Paid search offers a traditional, non-technical marketer or business owner greater control over their online advertising as compared to natural searcher's technically demanding requirements. This situation causes many marketers and business owners to forego a natural search program and instead place greater significance on their paid search campaigns for delivering leads and sales.

The problem with this approach is an "off-balance" reliance on paid that fails to capture the value of natural search. This “failure to leverage the strengths” upsets the "sum is greater than the parts" opportunity that exists between these search marketing strategies.

In my article this month titled, "Capture Greater Profits by Leveraging Paid and Natural Search Synergies" I discuss how to use the advantages and strengths of paid and natural search in a synergistic manner that drives greater profits then either one can independently of the other.

If you are a "non-technical" marketer or business owner and have placed greater reliance on paid search because of its convenient and non-technical requirements, you need to consider outsourcing your natural search program to a skilled team of experts. The advantages are significant and the result will be well worth your attention.

Posted by kevin at 08:11 AM | Comments (2139)

July 17, 2005

Improving Paid Search Profits

The concept of landing pages has existed for quite some time and expert marketers have been successfully using them for media campaigns and email marketing as well as some for paid search. However, for whatever reason, they have not become a widespread "best practice" for all paid search campaigns in spite of their powerful ability to convert paid search visitors into leads or sales.

The article I have written this month provides details on landing pages as well as a number of other "essential" strategies for improving your paid search campaigns.

I have spoken about landing pages multiple times before but because of their consistent performance and yet still apparently slow adoption rate among marketers (especially within small businesses) I felt it necessary to restate.

Through my vast client experience working with paid search and landing pages, I have always seen conversion increases - sometimes significant and other times minor - but nevertheless, the end result has been greater than sending paid search visitors to a client's home page. Obviously, it isn't the "landing page" per se that causes the website conversion improvement but the philosophy behind landing page development which you will learn if you read my article.

Until next time, convert some paid search traffic!

Posted by kevin at 09:16 PM | Comments (1295)

June 15, 2005

Beware the Clickthrough Without the Conversion

This is the title for a new article I wrote this month. The point is that with your paid search marketing, you need to focus on building a campaign that "converts" paid search visitors into value-oriented actions on your website liek sales, sales leads or opt-ins.

Too often marketers state, "I achieved a 10% click-through rate on my Google Adwords campaign." Great, so what? That tells a seasoned marketer that they spent a ton of money that allows Google to have an outrageous stock price!

What I want to know following this type of statement is "so what was the conversion rate on those visitors you paid for?" Ah...the truth emerges..."what do you mean "conversion"?

Don't get caught up in metrics that are secondary. Marketing is about generating results that grow your business. Now, we cannot forget that latent buyers exist so there isn't always a direct link between click-through and conversion. But a decent tracking system and some critical thinking can compensate for this behavior.

Think like an astute financial manager. When a company talks about growing revenue by 75% - it sounds amazing and we want to immediately congratulate the company on their superb performance. Yet an astute financial manager will dig deeper and ask about what really matters - the net earnings. A company can have a great top line but lose big-time on the bottom line. And in business - the bottom line keeps the doors open and the cash flowing.

If you disagree with me – let me know. Until next time, keep your eye on the “conversions”.

Posted by kevin at 09:17 AM | Comments (455)

May 13, 2005

Paid Search - A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing?

Recently I wrote a two-part article titled, "The Art of the PPC Start" which explained the common misperceptions among small business owners of the simplicity with setting up and managing a paid search campaign. The two major paid search engines, Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) have performed an honorable job with providing teaching materials to small business owners and marketers, but are they “pulling the wool over?”

Keep in mind, at the heart of the paid search engine model is the need to serve their search users with relevant ads that generate click-throughs which results in revenue for them. Under this premise, their primary objective is to “generate website traffic.”

However, as businesses, our primary objective is not "traffic generation" but "traffic conversion." We prefer not to receive click-throughs if the resulting website visitor elects not to perform some type of action on our website. IN essence, we want to avoid paying a click cost if we aren’t able to acquire a valued action in return – hence the importance of ROI marketing. So, our primary objective of turning website visitors into leads or sales – conflicts with the paid search engines’ objective off traffic generation.

The "art" of setting up a paid search campaign for "traffic conversion" is far more complicated than the teaching materials offered by the paid search engines. Certainly it is not "for professionals only" but don't be snared by the simplicity of paid search and its "self-serving" model. It has sharp teeth in the form of "click costs" that if used unwisely can tear a hole in your business' profitability in short time.

Beware of a wolf in sheep's clothing and approach paid search engines with a bit of caution and a pocketful of knowledge. If performed effectively, your results will definitely be superior to a simplistic point of view.

Posted by kevin at 02:20 PM | Comments (2256)

March 15, 2005

Escalating Cost per Click Warnings

In the past four months, I have come across a large number of articles talking about a strong increase in paid search costs for online marketers.

Most recently, a ClickZ.com article dated March 4, 2005 titled, "Will Click Prices Continue to Rise?" stated, that "At the Search Engine Strategies conference [in March 2005] in New York, there was a lot of buzz around the direction of pay-per-click (PPC) prices. The consensus is prices are high -- and will probably go higher."

Do we fear this upward trend or do we embrace it?

I say embrace it!

I have worked with clients in some of the most competitive markets including nutriceutical, mortgage leads and real estate and have achieved strong profit margins even against as high as $10 per click bidding.

The key is understanding the dynamics of your business. I have written a three part article on "What to do as PPC Costs Increase?" It explains three primary strategies for you to use to embrace the increasing paid search costs and profitably conquer your competition.

Don't fear increasing click prices. Adjust your strategies and use it as a competitive advantage.

Posted by kevin at 10:21 AM | Comments (373)