Fishing for customers!

I am a big fan of Google Advertising  used as part of marketing campaigns for our clients fishing for new customers – the Google Adwords platform is really valuable and I often refer to it as “Sniper” advertising.

Instead of your traditional “blanket” type advertising on newspapers or other media with your Google Adwords campaign you can target anyone that is searching for your products or services – effectively you can target the “low lying fruit” – those people who have already decided that they want what you have to offer.

If you are not found you are not in the game.

Google Adwords operates on a bidding basis whereby you “bid” on particular keywords or phrases – when someone searches for these your advert will display (if you are bidding competitively enough) and if the user clicks on your advert they will be directed to whatever page of your website you have specified. That’s powerful stuff – bringing them right to what they were looking for.

The great thing is that these campaigns operate on a Pay-per-click basis, which means you only pay when your advert is clicked on.

This sounds like an automatic recipe for success but there is no guarantee that the customer will order or enquire – once they arrive at your website you need to ensure that the content excites them sufficiently so that jump into some form of action.

To Google or not to Google?

Google Adwords Tips

There are many tips for making the most of your Google campaigns:

1. Avoid broad match – make your bids either “phrase match” or [exact match] (Google either of these phrases and you will find explanations)
2. Build up Bidding gradually – start low and nudge your campaigns up slowly, keyword by keyword
3. Quality Bidding – be careful with your adverts – split your campaigns into different groups, write separate adverts for each set of keywords and specify an appropriate landing page for each. Optimise your website ensuring that important keywords are catered for.
4. Variations – work on your keywords – spend some time working on all the different variations and add geographic variants of these (PR in Dublin etc)
5. Google Suggestions  – the Adwords software will help you with word variations (make sure you add these in “phrase” and [exact] match formats)
6. Know your Margins – don’t go beyond what is sensible for keyword bids (pause keywords that are too expensive)
7. Measure SEO – make sure that you are not bidding on keywords where you are performing well organically
8. Position First is not necessary – sometimes Position First can be a lot more expensive than 2nd or 3rd, which may make a lot more sense
9. Reporting – set up your reports and keep an eye on the keywords that are using up most of your budget – make sure it makes sense to spend money on these keywords
10. Be Patient – people might come to your website a few times before they purchase – would you buy 1st time you visit a website
11. Awareness – while orders and enquiries might be the ultimate goal other benefits could include awareness in the sector
12. Compare Value against Traditional Advertising – Google Adwords is another form of advertising – compare the effectiveness of your budget against what you are getting in other forms
13. Database – Once you get people to your website try to get them to sign up for any form of database (newsletter, Facebook or Twitter)
14. Content Placement – Avoid content placement adverts in most cases (where Google places your adverts on various websites on the net)
15. Professional – Get help from a professional when you are setting up your campaign but ask for training on how to use it (if you do not know what you are doing Google can be a hungry beast!)

(I’m sure you can add many more tips – I will gladly include other suggestions!)

While Google is a great form of online advertising it doesn’t always work and there are times when you should consider switching budget to either Facebook or LinkedIn advertising.

With both of these platforms you target a “fixed” advert(s) and pitch it to a certain demographic of people – these adverts operate on a pay per click basis in the same way as Google. (LinkedIn is the more expensive of these platforms).

The demographic options with both are quite different and as you would imagine LinkedIn is much more suitable for Business to Business advertising.

When advertising here it must be remembered that the person using the platform has not executed a “keyword search” – they are merely using the platform – this probably means that the “click” onto your website is probably less valuable or less immediate than with Google.

I would consider these platforms as an option when:

• Your keywords are just too competitive, and as a result too expensive on Google
• Your product or service is quite new and people do not yet know how or what to search for
• Your objective is more about awareness and branding and building a following (Facebook)
• You want to advertise to your prospects in a more social or specifically business environment (Facebook/LinkedIn)
• You want to target people with declared special interests (Facebook)
• You want to target people who work in particular industries and who hold particular job types (LinkedIn)
• Demographics are more important that search keywords

A superb feature of Facebook advertising (this is why Google are starting to target the social media space with Google +1 as it is a real threat to their revenue) is that you have the option of bringing users to your facebook business page – here you hope they will “like” the page when they get there and then you will enjoy a cumulative effect with all your advertising efforts.

Once you have an interested person on your page you can then excite them with your content, which should lead to plenty of business over time.

Summary – Pay Per Click

Pay per Click advertising is still growing and should be seriously considered as part of your marketing mix. Now there are even more options online and it is important that you understand each of these and explore how these could work for you.

Each of the platforms present unique opportunities, which if executed properly should bring extra business to you.

Pay per click? – It’s just a click away, what are you waiting for?

Google, Facebook or LinkedIn

Greg Canty is a partner of Fuzion and runs Pay Per Click campaigns for a wide range of clients