Pay Per Call, The Other PPC Options

[qwerty]

An article on Search Engine Watch discusses Pay Per Call advertising.

When a prospect clicks on a pay-per-call ad, they are sent to a profile page about the business.

"The landing page provides a simple 'soundbyte' to try to engage the customer and get the call," says Ballister.

Merchants are charged on a CPA basis when someone calls the toll-free number—not when someone clicks-through from the ad. Call tracking information and call pattern statistics are available to the merchant so they can measure results.

I was just forwarded a message sent by the company discussed in the article to one of my clients, and I wonder if anyone here has any experience with this advertising model.

[vinnie2227]

We have not used the program, but have definitely looked into it. The only downside we could come up with is that the phone number the customer calls is NOT your phone number. Your customer calls an assigned number and is then redirected to your phone. That is not a big deal, but what if that same customer calls the PPC number in the future instead of your real number? You'd be paying twice for the same conversion. That being said, if you do a good job of after-call marketing, you can get YOUR number to the customer and hope they use it in the future.

Definitely an interesting prospect.

[Haystack]

This may have applications for businesses without web sites, or services that are easily defined and can be closed in a simple phone call. However, for businesses with longer sales cycles, it seems like the purpose of the web site is to educate and qualify a prospect before they call.

[Paul J]

I've used it for awhile. Haven't received any calls as I was outbidded pretty quickly and wasn't expecting much. It has pretty much been for curiosity.

I bet it does work well for companies like plumbers the article mentions that either do or do not have a site. You can hop around Bizjournals to see how the ads look. I wish they offered an option to visit your site as well, but that's just me.

The only thing that bugged me was selling the whole 'local' thing. You can set your ads to show only in a certain area, but you can also set it nationwide. If I remember right, there were quite a few national mortgage companies that bid high for all areas. The ad then reads something like 'serving your area'.

Just my (IMG:http://www.highrankings.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/penny.gif)

Paul

[DanThies]

The only thing that bugged me was selling the whole 'local' thing. You can set your ads to show only in a certain area, but you can also set it nationwide. If I remember right, there were quite a few national mortgage companies that bid high for all areas. The ad then reads something like 'serving your area'.

This happens with local PPC listings too. National companies run local campaigns in all markets, to gain the higher click-through and better response that comes from "appearing" local. Which stinks for the little guy, but that's not really a concern for the PPC service providers, as long as searchers find what they want.

[mfogel]

I have two clients signed-up for this. They have not received any calls yet (3 weeks), I was told not to expect many calls until the ads go live on AOL in the spring. Both clients have sites but both also have a higher conversion rate when they get to talk to the prospect thus making the 2.00 per call minimum make sense.

[DickLarkin]

PPCall is definitely a coming thing, and it's also definitely something that's not quite ready for prime time.

The benefit is that the advertiser only pays for leads that are delivered. The publisher bears the risk of not delivering leads.

The current issue is that there is not yet enough meaningful distribution to generate call volume. I have several campaigns that have yet to generate a call after a few months.

The upside is that I have not had to pay because the distribution model is just coming into play.

This is a great time to set up PPCall campaigns, because with very few exceptions, the price per call is far below the what the market bears in other media.

I wrote an article specifically about PPCall. You may check it out at www.ypcommando.com/articles/12-29-04.html

This post has been edited by qwerty: Feb 25 2005, 12:57 PM

[fredwat]

Other then Findwhat, what other companies are offering this type of sales models?

Thanks
Fred

[qwerty]

According to this article, AOL is partnering with the same company FindWhat has (Ingenio) to provide the service too.

[Paul J]

CitySearch rolled out a pay-per-call program a couple months ago as well.
Article

[laura]

Just found out that Search Marketing Tools ProfiTracker has a call-tracking ability too - a little different and much less expensive. Not sure if it is part of ProfiTracker now or will be in near future. You can call Search Marketing Tools to find out.

[dc cullinane]

One of the questions was whether other companies are offering this service. My company, thinkingVOICE is launching the beta of its leads by phone offering. After answering a few questions, we create a landing page where prospects can enter their phone number to get calls immediately. We deliver to the merchants not only the call, when the prospect has interest in the merchant's product/service, but we also deliver to the merchant valuable information like the prospects name, address and phone number.

We are very interested in this space and actually are feeding the ads directly into a major search engine to see what kind of response we get from the folks who click on this listings served up. Hope this post is not interpreted as a violation, we are interested in seign where the PPLead and call space goes. Let me know what you think.

<edit> Live links removed. Please see [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?act=boardrules]Forum Rules[/url]. </edit>

[Haystack: Removed advertising.]

This post has been edited by Haystack: Mar 18 2005, 03:49 PM

[HorseCove]

If anyone in the Dallas area is interested in learning more about Pay Per Call, the Dallas-Fort Worth Search Engine Marketing Association is actually discussing that subject in their upcoming meeting on Monday 21 March.

See http://www.dfwsem.org/agenda.html for details.

For those not in Dallas, we'll be putting the slides on the web site after the meeting.

Christine