13 replies to this topic

[Vertster]

When you talk to a client about getting into PPC, how do you explain how it works? Most business people are pretty much clueless... but how much obligation do we have to explain where their money is going?

I always explain Overture first, because it is much easier to understand than Adwords. Then I tell them adwords works the same, but is much more complex.

[Mel]

Hi Vert:

here is an outline for a recent presentation to a group of marketing types:

1. PPC engines only include pages which are willing to pay for placement and click-thru charges.
2, Placement is base on bid price – highest payments rank first.
3. Each visitor who clicks thru to your site is charged to you at the bid rate.
4. Search terms you will appear for are chosen by you and can be varied on a minute by minute basis.
5. Bid prices can be varied on a minute by minute basis.
6. Effective use of PPC engines normally requires lots of research and dedicated maintenance, either using software or by people.

Each point needs a bit of explaination of course.

[Haystack]

Hi Verster, this is how I explain it to clients not familiar with it:

In case you’re not familiar with Pay Per Click advertising, here’s a quick summary: You can purchase online advertising by bidding on specific keywords and search terms through companies like Overture, Google, and Findwhat. The terms are purchased on a live auction basis with the top bidders getting the top results. This type of advertising appears on the Sponsored Results sections of most popular web sites such as Yahoo, MSN, AOL, and Google.

Another way that works is to say, "Ya know those Sponsored Search Results near the top of the page on Yahoo and those green boxes along the right column of the page on Google? That's Pay Per Click advertising. Businesses pay to be there and the companies that are willing to pay the most have their ads at the top. It doesn't cost them a thing for their ads to show up but they're charged each time someone clicks through to their site from one of their ads."

For businesses who are hesitant to use PPC because they don't like the idea of paying for traffic, I ususually say, "If for every dollar you spent you made two dollars . . . when exactly would this become a problem?"

[Vertster]

Another way that works is to say, "Ya know those Sponsored Search Results near the top of the page on Yahoo and those green boxes along the right column of the page on Google? That's Pay Per Click advertising. Businesses pay to be there and the companies that are willing to pay the most have their ads at the top.

I usually give them a print out of the results from a few different sites so they can see where the results are. It also helps for explaining syndication and how it works.

I usually spend the most time counseling on how to figure out what the most they can spend is, and what variables will affect this figure.

[Haystack]

I used to talk about the minimum bids and how cheap the traffic could be, but that's not sustainable and really irrelevant to whether it's a good business decision overall. Now I focus on whether they'll make more money than they put in, which is pretty much the key metric to any form of advertising.

[guidaro]

Hi, I'm subscribed here today and writing from Argentina (South America). First of all, I'm webmaster and develope any kind of websites since 1999. Now I discover ppc advertising but I don't get it at all.

I mean, how can I make sales paying people just "for visit and look" my site?

And how much money do I must to spend in making ppc ads of my clients?

Thanks

guidaro

[Jill]

Welcome, guidaro!

Jill

[Haystack]

Hi guidaro, and welcome to the forum.

The trick to justifying the money you spend on Pay Per Click advertising - like all advertising - is to track the effectiveness of your ad spend. In the case of PPC advertising, this is very measurable compared to many off-line forms of advertising. For example, how many companies can quantify the sales they've generated from a brochure, business cards, their yellow page ad, etc.?

Online, using fairly cheap tracking tools (you can find info on some popular ones in some statistics threads on this board) you can measure how many leads/sales/subscriptions you're generating for your money.

Even without a tracking tool you can track this. For example, if you spent $500 per month on PPC advertising, and sold an additional $3000 in products, you'd probably have a positive return on your ad spend.

Start from the assumption that a good business with a good web site has a good chance of doing business with prospects who are searching for a product or service the business carries or delivers. Bid on some of those terms and track the results to find out.

Hope this helps.

[AussieWebmaster]

Hi Verster, this is how I explain it to clients not familiar with it:



Another way that works is to say, "Ya know those Sponsored Search Results near the top of the page on Yahoo and those green boxes along the right column of the page on Google? That's Pay Per Click advertising. Businesses pay to be there and the companies that are willing to pay the most have their ads at the top. It doesn't cost them a thing for their ads to show up but they're charged each time someone clicks through to their site from one of their ads."

For businesses who are hesitant to use PPC because they don't like the idea of paying for traffic, I ususually say, "If for every dollar you spent you made two dollars . . . when exactly would this become a problem?"

Great response but they better have separate landing pages for each keyword and each engine if they want to be able to track the results. Plus they need cookies to track the entrance through to an action.
Many people see the increased traffic and aggregate it and as long as there is profit are happy. Imagine how happier they would be if they could actually know which engine and word got them the sale and how much it cost to do it.
With all the secondary search result providers and the mnethod used to send the visitor to the page and still track who has to be paid, the parsing of the tracking code has created an industry wide problem for accurate tracking of results.
Hell dishonest search result hosters can get paid for the click from you and pass the traffic somewhere else.... and how would the system know given the state of tracking right now!

[Haystack]

AussieWebmaster, there are more than a few tools on the market today which can track revenue down to the search phrase. And some of the higher end tools will let you upload your PPC bid costs which allows them to go as far as delivering something close to an ROI per term (gross revenues - ad spend doesn't equal ROI but it's going the right direction). Both can be done with tracking URLs and cookies at a fairly reasonable cost.

[guidaro]

Hi All, does any one know where can I find the highest keywords bids on Internet? Or keyword list?
thanks
Guidaro

[Haystack]

Hi Guidaro,

I haven't a good list, but generally terms like Data Recovery and Mesothelioma garner some extremely high bid prices. Credit card and loan related terms are high as well.

[guidaro]

Thanks Haystack I'll check it out!

About my last question, I've seen many people known as "clicks through" who works making false traffic to sites making searches, what do you think about it? I don't quite sure about offer cpc campaign marketing to my clients.

Thanks
Guidaro


p/s: Thanks for your welcome Jill!

[Haystack]

Guidaro, the top PPC companies are well aware of the problems with fraudulent clicks and have software in place to attempt to prevent this. However, it's tough to entirely prevent this because software doesn't know the intent of the clicker.

Before offering PPC marketing as an additional service, make sure you spend some time using the services yourself so you have some expertise to justify charging for the service.