5 Rules For Small Businesses Considering Pay Per Click Advertising

In earlier posts we have talked about how pay per click advertising can make sense for many small businesses.  If  you have decided that it might make sense for your business there are some steps you can take to make sure that your campaign will be as successful as possible and won’t just be a money drain on your business.

1. Set a Cost per Conversion Maximum: This is a very important step that most small businesses skip.  A Cost per Conversion goal is the maximum amount a lead or sale can cost you and still be profitable. The first thing that you have to do is define what your “Goal” is.  For mot businesses online the goal is to make a sale at that time.  But for other businesses, more complicated sales process that involves at least one phone call or service industries, the goal might be the visitor filling out your lead form or making a phone call.  For retail businesses there is a relatively easy way to figure this out, just figure out your average profit per sale minus any shipping and handling costs; that is your Maximum Cost Per Conversion, or MCPC. It may seem like a zero sum number but if you provide a quality product and good service you should have repeat customers which won’t cost you anything next time.

For lead-based goals it is a more complicated process.  Basically businesses either figure out how many leads equal a sale or estimate how many it should take, take the average profit per sale and divide the two.  This will give you a good MCPC target that can be refined through the life of the campaign.

2. Choose Your Keywords Carefully: You know your business better than anyone so you know what the keywords in your business are.  But are these keywords actually bringing prospective clients to your business?  Many times small businesses choose keywords that are too general or that are industry words.  It is important to use tools like Google’s Keyword Tool to choose keywords that have a high search volume but are not too general or too competitive.  You are paying for every customer who walks through your virtual door, you want them to be as qualified as possible.  Narrow your keyword list down and then …

3. Refine Your Keywords by Using Phrase and Exact Match: All of the major paid search engines allow businesses to use different match types when they set up an account.  There are four different match types, broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match.  Broad Match means that if someone puts in any of the words in your keyword string your ad will come up.   Phrase Match keywords only show up if someone types the words into the Search Engine in the exact order that you entered them, but they can be part of a much larger string of words. Exact Match keywords only appear in the Search Engines if the visitor types in your phrase or string of keywords exactly, with no other terms.  Negative match keywords are words that businesses never want their ads to appear under.

The right match choice can make all the difference in your campaign.  When we work with small businesses we start with almost every word under exact match and track the impressions and click through rates.  If the account is not getting any traffic through exact match keywords we loosen up to phrase or broad match. This is the opposite of most agencies, which generally  deal with much larger budgets, who start with broad match and make decisions based on the results. That approach brings great results over a number of months but it is for businesses who can afford to lose money in the beginning for tracking purposes. Raise Interactive works with smaller businesses and we realize how important every dollar is to our clients so we keep our accounts pretty tight and we recommend that strategy to small businesses.

4. Install an Analytics Program and Track: If a small business is considering Paid Search they have to have a way to track results.  Your Adwords Account, or other search account, will only show you what page the visitor came to.  It won’t show you how they reacted to your site and how long they stayed on your site.  An Analytics program can track all of that and more.  It allows you to test your website and make changes based on user reaction, not guesses.

5. Make Changes Based on the Results: The real beauty of Pay Per Click Marketing is the ability to refine your campaign by watching user results.  You can test different keywords, landing pages and ads and focus on the most successful campaigns.  You can ease the restrictions on your keywords or tighten them based on results.  At this point you can revise your MCPC goals through the results.  There is also the matter of Quality Score, which makes your ads more cost effective over time, which we will address in a later post.

Pay Per Click Marketing might not be an effective strategy for some small businesses, but if handled correctly it can be a very effective and trackable part of most small businesses strategies. Contact Us Today with any questions.

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