Whenever we are ready to actually buy or donate or join something, you probably do what I do – we Google, Yahoo, Bing or search it. That is because after all the talk, when we are ready to take action, we want it now! That is also why some of the most effective marketing dollars are spent on paid search. So what are you doing to reach people that are ready to take action? Hopefully you will tell me you are using paid search as part of your media mix. If not, why not?
Paid search campaigns are based on keywords and typically include either search campaigns alone (Paid Per Click-PPC) or a combination of PPC, Display Ads and Video Ads (remember that Google owns YouTube). In addition to that you may be advertising using social media ads (part of online display ads). Either way hopefully you will tell me you are tracking your bids, dollars, and your conversions or results. Why? Because if not, you are overpaying for those clicks and often you are getting ineffective results.
Online digital ads are often part of an action with the highest bidder getting the click. However there are many tricks to getting the best price on those clicks from buying phrases to making sure you are not using keywords that are competing with each other (so in fact you are bidding the price up between you and you). The many nuances of PPC advertising will make your head spin and remember that Google changed their algorithm for delivering those ads to searchers over 650 times in the last year. You also need to make sure that your keywords are updated to reflect any negative keywords which are those search terms you are paying or that are not giving you a good results because Google charges you more if you don’t. So how do you pay the best price and continue to get those great leads of folks looking to buy or join or donate today?
Basically you have a few options when it comes to paid search. 1). You become an expert in Google adwords and continue to educate yourself and manage your keywords with a regular improvement program working with Google’s constantly changing algorithm. 2). You hire a company to do that for you. 3). You use Google Adwords Express and let them determine your results.
What it really boils down to is what you have the time and money to do. The important thing is that you do check your results and see if you are getting better quality leads with your plan than you did last month and last year and see that your results are paying off. You can do this best by using your Google analytics account to evaluate your results on a regular basis. In fact you can tie it into your adwords account to be able to see results in real time.
But what about those folks that leave it all up to Google to determine when and where their adwords run using Google Adwords Express? Well suffice it to say that they are not in my opinion getting the results they could, however they are also not spending time on something they simply cannot learn to master while they are busy running a business. Contact us if you would like an evaluation of your Adwords campaigns at 310-791-6300 or email liz@adteamla.com.
Liz Harsch is a media planner and trainer for small business owners with Constant Contact, SCORE, SBDC, SBA, Cities and MWD and County outreach partners, APICS plus many Chambers of Commerce since 2008. She owns Tailor-Made Advertising in Torrance, California and provides marketing, training and consulting to identify marketing and media alternatives for business owners. She can be reached at 310-791-6300 or by email at liz@adteamla.com. You can also join her training at http://adteamla.com/facebook.
