Search Marketing

Google and Bing want you to believe PPC is easy. It ain't. Pay-per-Click Advertising Phone Call Conversion Tracking

 

We've been running pay-pay-click advertising (PPC) for clients since an independent company called Overture served PPC ads on the Yahoo! Network, prior to the existence of Google Ads.

We're adept at squeezing maximum value out of PPC programs.

We know the costly pitfalls, which are continuously being added to PPC programs as they become increasingly complex. We know how to set up programs that are flexible and get the coverage you want. We take the same hands-on approach to PPC as we do with organic SEO, looking at program data and often adjusting bids manually.

The major PPC program is Google Ads, because Google has something like an 85 percent share of Search. However, we look to maximize ROI by trying, comparing, and possibly integrating other web advertising vehicles—e.g., Bing, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Quora, LinkedIn, etc. If it makes sense, we'll use technologies and programs such remarketing. We create and analytical frameswork—using Google Analytics and possible other data sources—to quantify results to ensure your program delivers the best possible ROI or meets other goals in a cost-effective way, and continues to do so over time.

We like to track and measure as much as possible. To improve ROI, we may test different landing pages and run A/B testing. Many of our clients are not ecommerce where the sales on made in a shopping cart on the website, but via phone or some other way. The challenge is then to understand and measure leads that come through the web advertising program. Here we find phone call conversion tracking especially helpful.

You don't read about it in the trades, but promotions in PPC can be effective, as we've discovered. We've created innovative programs with time-sensitive promotions. We know how to set up campaigns that can be fairly easily updated to reflect different promotions, with different discounts and run dates.

Case Study

Google and Bing want businesses to believe that their programs are intuitive and easy to use. Not true. Here's a case study that is dramatic, but illustrates the point.

A long-time client we'll call TriathlonXYZ.com sells equipment and apparel for triathletes. The company's in-house marketing manager set-up and ran an AdWords program. After spending $41K, the program had generated 619 sales, yielding an average CPC spend of $66 per sale. The owner wasn't happy about that, and wanted to abandon PPC. We then set up an AdWords program, and after running it about four months, we had generated 722 sales at a cost of only $12.5K, for an average cost per sale of $17.41. (The average sale is over $200.)

Pricing

Our point of view is that the most rational compensation model for PPC is for you to pay us a direct fixed cost for our service. Any other approach creates an incentive that hurts the you, the client. If the agency takes a cut of the ad spend, for example, then there's an incentive to spend recklessly. If the agency is paid a fixed cost per clickthrough, you get bad clickthroughs.

We ask clients to pay Google and Bing directly with a credit card on file. We set up and run the programs from our account, but link to your Analytics so you get direct access to all data.