February 5, 2012

Adwords Express looks like a safe bet for small business.

July 27, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Some time ago I wrote about my frustrations with AdWords resellers and the crazy CPC mark-ups, poor results and resulting High churn rate in the local space.

The economics and the business model are a challenge. Resellers have to pay sales teams who have to sign up as many advertisers as possible and account managers (if the business has any) have 100′s or 1000′s of accounts to look after.  The reseller than has to slap on a massively high mark-up on the Cost per click to drive any revenue at all.

I’ve seen 100% mark-ups ‘out in the wild’.

It’s a low quality, high volume business. and yes, the churn rate is massive because advertisers are not happy with results or service.

Honestly, It’s not a business model I’d touch with a 10 foot pole!

What I have begun to do is share my knowledge on this blog (via the ‘Mind your own PPC’ posts) in the hope that small business readers can start to wrestle control of their marketing back from dodgy resellers and actually get some value for money. Eg don’t pay a 100% mark-up on Click costs if you don’t have to.

 

However the reality of the situation is that many small business owners simply do not have the time (even a few minutes a day) to devote to managing their own local search campaign, nor the time to devote to learning what they need to learn to get things going properly.  Yet they also know that that they are potentially missing out on valuable traffic by not having a presence in the search results or map pages.  So they’re forced to find a supplier who can get them there, even if it means paying more than they should for mediocre campaigns…

Enter Google AdWords Express

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Local Search Marketing, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , ,

Targeting Your Geographic Region in AdWords (7 AdWords Mistakes – #4)

March 25, 2010 By 13 Comments

7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.geo_targeted_world_small

Mistake #4 – Not Targeting Your Geographic Region.

In the last post we talked about using Negative Keywords and how to best utilise these to cut out on unwanted and un-targeted AdWords traffic. Pretty neat huh?

But there’s another fatal mistake that I’ve see all too often and this one can be even more costly in the long run – Geo-Targeting.

The PPC engine such as AdWords allow the advertiser to be very selective in where they want to show their ads, eg. which countries, cities, regions or languages to target.

Most common targeting that an advertiser would use would be the country level, i.e. Australia, and for an online business that does indeed ship products country wide, this probably makes sense.

However I’ve also seen, time and time again, US merchants targeting Australian ‘eyeballs’ with their ads, and after investigating realise they only ship within the US and Canada! I’m sure there are a few Australian merchants that have done the same and accidentally targeted the US and other English language countries without realising. Can be costly!

I’d like to take this a step further however, think about the current targeting for your campaigns, then think about your target market, delivery constraints, serviceable regions, etc…

Does your product or service really cater to everyone in the region your are currently targeting who search using your keywords? If it does then great, keep your geo-targeting broad, but if it doesn’t think again.

If you’re a small business that only services a specific region, then this is especially important. Rather than target your PPC ads to the whole country or state, perhaps you would be better off targeting your city, or even a region within that city. Sure this will vastly cut down on the impressions and clicks that your ads will potentially receive, but we’re after quality, not quantity in cases such as this so there is not point in wasting hard earned dollars on visitors  who will never buy your product or service.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , ,

Sending All Clicks to Your Homepage (7 AdWords Mistakes – #3)

March 21, 2010 By 7 Comments

7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.man_on_arrow

Mistake #3 – Sending all Clicks to Your Home Page.

Let’s start this post with a question. What is one of the single most powerful features of search engine marketing? The key to why PPC and SEO work so well?

Quite simply, the user is actively broadcasting their needs and desires to the world every time they search for something.

‘Useful’ is an understatement… The ability for us to promote products and services in the targeted manner that Pay-Per-click allows is incredibly powerful and profitable when done right.

The key (excuse the pun) to being successful is choosing the right keywords in the first place (to be covered in separate posts) which will not only target the users when they’re ready to buy, but also target users when they are at other stages of the buying cycle – research, comparison etc.).

Once you have developed your master keyword list, you then need to break this up in to campaigns & ad groups, write your ad copy and select your targeted landing pages…
This is where many advertisers let themselves down and ultimately pay the price in the long run.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: ,

Are You Making These 7 Google AdWords Mistakes? (Mistake #2)

March 17, 2010 By 11 Comments

7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.

Mistake #2 – Not using negative keywords.

Google AdWords (Yahoo and Bing) allow advertisers to select words or phrases that you do not want your PPC ads to appear against. They call this adding ‘negative keywords’.

The idea is pretty simple, but often overlooked.

Let’s just assume you have added in your list of keywords to AdWords using the default ‘broad match’ match type. What this means is that Google will show your ad for not only the keyword you’ve chosen, but also for any other potential phrase combination that includes your original keyword.

Let me use a real world example.

My father is an owner of an organic olive oil business called Donkey Hill Organic Products. They’ve decided to run a small PPC campaign on Google to hopefully attract some wholesale enquiries and potentially a retail client or two. The main focus however remains B2B.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , ,

Are You Making These 7 Google AdWords Mistakes? (Mistake #1)

March 2, 2010 By 12 Comments

Series: 7 Common AdWords mistakes that will kill your Quality Score and increase your costs.AdWords mistakes

Mistake #1 – Too many keywords per ad group.

I see this mistake all the time and, as a new AdWords advertiser, it’s not exactly 100% your fault. I’ll explain why.

Google (and Yahoo and MSN) pretty much lead you down a path of adding way to many keywords per ad group right from the account set-up stage when they ask you to add your keywords. How many of you had a list of 100 or so and just added them into one ad group to get going? See what I’m getting at?

Well I’m here to tell you that it most definitely is a big mistake, but it is understandable given the way the account set-up process works.

While there is no single correct answer when it comes to the number of keywords per group, the aim of the game is simple – each ad group should only contain highly targeted, related keywords that focus on a specific product or service.

Take a look back at all your ad groups and ask yourself, “Are these groups individually targeting a single product, service, or action?” If not then you have some work to do.

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Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , , ,

The Anatomy of a Google Search Results Page (Mind Your Own PPC)

February 24, 2010 By 16 Comments

I thought it would be a good idea to briefly describe the various elements that make up a Google Search Engine Results Page or SERP as it will help later on if you clearly understand what each piece of real estate is all about.

I also decided that there’s no better way to show this than with pictures – so here we go! minimalistic but pretty self explanatory.

(Tip: click on any of the images to view the full size image).

As always, let me know if you have any questions.

The Anatomy of a Google Search Results Page

Below is the Google result page for the search phrase ‘florist melbourne’ – Fairly generic but with a local search / small business intent.  Lets see what we got….

Google Search Engine Results Page

(click image to enlarge)

Confused?

What ‘result’ would you click on first?  Keep the answer to that question in your head while I break out the various elements below:

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Filed Under: Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: ,

PPC – What is Pay-Per-Click Advertising? (Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click)

February 18, 2010 By 10 Comments

While it may seem obvious to some of you what pay-per-click advertising actually is, you are not alone in this world if you are still a bit confused.

I believe it is always good to take a step back and look at the big picture, so I wanted to define PPC and briefly explain where and how it relates to the many other online marketing channels you may have heard of.

Also as you may have noticed, another issue that we in the online marketing world are guilty of is acronyms, so if you are just starting out you’re probably completely and utterly confused by the sheer volume of 3 letter abbreviations we have in this space. From me, and hopefully I speak for other seasoned internet marketers, I’m sorry about these little things (acronyms) that make it harder to understand than it should be. We’re guilty as charged, but believe me, pretty soon you’ll be emailing your close ones using terms like “PPC”, “SEM”, “CPC”, “CPA”, “SEO”, etc. and do you know why? Well quite simply, because, like me, you will get tired of always typing out the full word! As simple as that!

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Filed Under: Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: ,

MYOPPC Basics – Defining Marketing Goals and Setting Targets.

February 11, 2010 By 3 Comments

Mind Your Own Pay-per-clickThis next topic in the MYOPPC Series deals with Defining Marketing Goals and Setting Realistic Targets.

Note that we’ve not even looked at AdWords, Yahoo, Campaign Structure, Set-up etc.  this will come, but as I mentioned it’s important to get the foundations right and have a clear picture of what you want to achieve.

I’m also assuming that you already have a web site and a product or service to take to market. If not, no problem – we can cover that stuff later. Additionally some of you may already have an Adwords account running and are keen to get onto the ‘good stuff’.  Great!…

Drop me a note in the comments section at the bottom of this post – Say Hi! – And if you like, let me know what the biggest challenges are that you are facing with your online marketing or PPC Campaign at the moment.

I can try and work some ideas into future updates that may help you!

Moving on to ‘Conversions’ and ‘Success Events’…

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MYOPPC Basics – Defining Your Business Goals

February 8, 2010 By 4 Comments

Mind Your Own Pay-per-clickDefining your business goals and understanding how search marketing may help achieve these.

As a business owner or marketing manager this post may be nothing new to you however I wanted to start this series with the fundamentals and work up from there as a strong foundation is the key to future success.

With a strong foundation come clear and precise goals and targets. So let’s get going!

Your Business Objectives

As I hinted at above, understanding your business objectives is a must if you hope to successfully implement and optimize a PPC marketing campaign. Without a clear focus, you will run into many hurdles along the way that would have otherwise not been an issue.

Defining Your Goals & Objectives

So, what is your business model? What pays the bills?
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Filed Under: Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , ,

New Series: Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click (MYOPPC)

February 7, 2010 By 6 Comments

myoppc-logo

If you are  a ‘Do it yourself’ kind of person then this new series is definitely for you. Each week I will be posting new articles on how to manage your PPC campaigns yourself.  It doesn’t matter if you are a small local business, large corporate, or online e-tailer, there is sure to be something here for everyone.

Why am I doing this? Well honestly, I’m pretty tired of all the small to medium business’ out there (quite possibly you!) who are getting ripped off by sub-standard service providers in the online marketing space who charge too much and deliver too little to their clients.

And by too little I mean in some instances only ~ 50% of the money the client spends goes in to actually buying ads on Google, Yahoo, or MSN.

This is certainly not the case across the board, and there are many PPC providers in the small business and Local search space who do a great job, and can justify the ~50% margins that they charge… After all, they too need to pay the bills.

But I’m here to tell you that with a little bit of time, maybe 30 minutes a day, you can actually manage your own Pay-Per-Click for your business and ensure that 100% of you money goes into buying search ads, not just 50%!

So, if you would like to learn PPC and keep up with all the latest and greatest techniques on running PPC campaigns for yourself then please sign up to my newsletter here!

See you on the other side!

Regards

Leigh Hanney

Filed Under: AdWords 101, Mind Your Own Pay-Per-Click Tagged With: , , ,