Lights…Camera…ACTION! Or, in this case, Pay Per Action. In this last of our series on Pay per Click Local Advertising and variations thereof, I would like to discuss what is termed in the ‘biz as Pay per Action. Like other Pay per Click advertising, Pay per Action offers businesses a service that is paid for when a certain action is performed or obtained by a client or potential client. Pay per Action is used by many search engines. You, the advertiser, pays a specified amount upon completion of a particular action. Here are a few examples of some “actions”:Conversion or Conversion Rate. Conversion in marketing is when the perspective client takes the marketer’s intended action. Conversion rate is the amount or percentage of unique visitors who take a desired action on the business’ web site. For instance, Customer X visits your web site through an advertisement they saw on another site (an advertisement or referral to your site). You, as the business, pay a set fee for the Customer X clicking through (click-through rate) to your site. Customer X makes a purchase and tells Customer Y all about your site (word of mouth, another fantastic selling medium, though hardly predictable). Customer Y goes to your site, which costs you nothing, yet you perhaps make a sale. Pay per Action is the “meat and potatoes” of this whole process.Sales Lead. This is the “Customer X” of the sales world. The person who goes to your site intending to buy.

Sales. The ultimate goal in any business is to make a sale, whether retail or service, local or worldwide. The bottom line is sales. This is your final “action” as a marketing strategy. Pay per Action can generate these sales, but it is up to the business whether the conversion VS. the cost of each Action will end in profits. Look for ways to generate leads through referrals that can lead to word of mouth, and your Pay per Action will be well worth it in the long haul.

In today’s post we continue our series on pay-per-click for local advertising. In part 5 of the series, I would like to talk to you about another variation of pay-per-click; Pay-Per-Delivery, which is a variation on e-mail marketing.

E-mail marketing is a form of marketing using e-mail to send advertisements, specials, coupons and other information about your business or fund raiser to customers or potantial customers via e-mail rather than “snail mail.”

E-mail marketing in itself has many useful applications. For example; Send e-mails out to enhance already established relationships with current customers or potantial customers, using your target market and audience as your goal, and in establishing a relationship with new clients and customer loyalty through repeat business.

E-mail marketing can also be used to convince current clients to spread the name of your business (”word of mouth”) to others by offering a discount or other incentive if they “bring a client in.”

Adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers can also help spread the word.

Pay-Per-Delivery is a technique used by certain companies to expedite the e-mail marketing target. The company helps businesses set up and manage e-mail campaigns, send targeted e-mails and the company only pays for the successful e-mails that are sent out, instead of having to do everything “hands on” and possibly wasting a lot of corporate dollars in the process, as e-mails sent to defunk addresses and off-target audiences are useless and take a lot of time. Company time and dollars!

Pay-per-Delivery is out there, but not yet a common medium for local advertising. Like other advertising, it’s up to the company to determine if it’s easier to do it yourself or have someone do it for you.

I know, you think of telephone calls and paying for calls with annoying telemarketing sales pitches. “I don’t want my business’ reputation to be associated with telemarketers,” you say. But, fear not. Pay-Per-Call is not a telemarketing technique.

Pay-Per-Call is similar to PayPer Click (which, by the way is the most popular form of online advertising in the market today). It is different, however, in that advertisers use web forms to generate phone calls. As in a pay-per-click platform, merchants set up their campaigns by choosing relevant keyterms (rather than keywords), they choose their desired categories and then decide on their specific geographical location, or desired location. For local businesses, this is ideal. But it can also work nationally or even internationally.

From there, they create their ad, containing their company name, address, a short description and a trackable toll-free number which redirects to the advertiser’s actual phone number.

And Pay-Per-Call is a growing advertising medium. Ninety-eight percent of all U.S. businesses don’t buy PPC yet—but they all have phones,” said Dan Ballister, Vice President of Sales for FindWhat.

According to the Kelsey Group, the pay per call market is expected to reach US$3.7 billion by 2010. Perhaps this is the perfect marketing tool for your business.

Everyone knows what a search engine is. It’s a term we have been hearing since the computer age began, or at least since computers became a part of modern language. You type in a word and the most relevant terms come up.

In this series, I want to discuss how pay-per-click can help your business. But pay-per-click is not all “pay every time someone clicks,” and in this blog I would like to discuss the possibility of what is termed Service Engines as a possible way to advertise your business locally.

A Service Engine allows advertisers to provide feeds of their service databases. When someone searches for that service, the most relevant links to available services comes up. Like regular PPC (see previous posts for more on PPC), the advertiser pays whenever a potential client clicks on the relevant link. The difference is that Service Engines are mostly for services, rather than working only with keywords. Some pay per click product engines have expanded into the service space, while other service engines operate in specific vertical markets (a group of similar businesses and customers that engage in trade based on specific needs).

The following are notable PPC service engines:

• NexTag
• SideStep
• TripAdvisor

So, decide what is right for your business and choose one or more to advertise. Remember, the more you get your business out there, the better your customer base will be.

To Click or Not to Click Pt II

In part 2 of our look at local pay per click (or PPC as it is known in the biz) and how it is or is not right for your business, I’d like to take a look at what is called Product Engines, or better known as Product Comparison Engines or Price Comparison Engines.

The first question you have to ask yourself is, what kind of business are you running? If the business you are advertising is service only, this type of PPC model might not be for you. Product Comparison Engines use what is called Product Feeds, which is basically a summed up variety of listings that a business has to offer. Service only sites rarely have products they sell or offer and so rarely have a product feed to work with. In the event you have a service only site, site oriented PPC would probably be your best bet; site oriented PPCs show your ad only on certain target sites, usually those with similar content as yours. Later in this series I will be discussing more ideas that might suit your service only business.

If you have an e-commerce store or another business which offers content on your site, you might want to consider PCE (Product Comparison Engines) as part of your online marketing campaign.

The most common PCE sites include Shopping.com, which uses a PPC model and has a defined rate card, Google Product Search, NexTag, PriceGrabber, and Shopzilla.

Many of these sites you might have heard of or even come up with as you searched for products yourself. If your site offers items to the public, it migt behoove you to try one or more of these sites out, so you can get your name, your brand and your site noticed.

That is the question. Most people know the term Pay Per Click by now. Particularly those in national and global markets and large industries. But local Pay Per Click? Why not? I think the main reason a lot of local businesses don’t think to turn to Pay Per Click is because they fear it’s a waste of their money. Why pay for every click of a customers’ mouse when you can spend your hard earned dollars on business cards, local advertising and the good ol’ Yellow Pages?I will tell you why…because there is more to Pay Per Click than meets the eye. There are several types of Pay Per Click campaigns, and one or more might be right for your business besides the normal “build a campaign and pay every time anyone with a computer clicks on it.” As a matter of fact, there are six different kinds of Pay Per Clicks you can choose from: keyword based, product engines, service engines, pay per call, pay per delivery, and pay per action.How do you know which is right for your business? Over the next six posts we are going to discuss each PPC and see which one is right for your business, because like customers, every business is an individual and should advertise in the way that is most condusive to their particular agenda.The first, and most common, is the “keyword based” Pay Per Click. This is the most common and the one most people think of when they hear the term PPC (or Pay Per Click). In this medium, you as the business will bid on certain search terms. The more popular the term (or keyword) the higher the bid tends to be. Keywords consist of words or of phrases. If this is the brand of PPC you choose, be sure to choose keywords that suit only your business or the page in which you are advertising. When someone types in a certain keyword or phrase, and it matches one of yours and those of your competitor’s, searches come up based upon the bid price you are paying.

The problem with this is obvious.

Budget.

For some local businesses, this method can be unnecessary and costly. It’s up to each individual to determine their company’s eligibility and whether bidding on keywords and phrases is right for them.

David Szetela got my attention with a small blurb on PPC advertising.

Playing the PPC game without first taking the time to learn the fundamentals of advertising copywriting is like sitting down at the poker table with scant understanding of the rules, and proceeding to drop dollars into the pot while better-trained players scoop that money out.

Granted the gist of what he wrote is simple and those of us in the advertising business already know it, but I like the way he worded it. The reminder that businesses jumping into the PPC field without understanding it are throwing money away is an important factor. Yes, a correct PPC campaign can be financially rewarding, but if it is done without an understanding on of the process than you not only blow your advertising budget, you also throw away the time spent on that campaign. Time is something that no business really has, as each moment a competitor is striving to catch up to you and, chances are, they are doing it the right way. You can’t bluff your way through an Ad campaign.

Dave‘s article goes on to discuss both the art and the science of PPC advertising, saying that the science makes up to 90% of the PPC proficiency and financial efficiency.

This is an important item to remember because PPC is mostly about the analytics. Measurements, benchmarking, trends, algorithms, the correct PPC campaign uses it all to understand what your customers are searching for, how they are searching for it, and where they are buying it from..

If your company is going to spend the time and money to invest in a PPC advertising effort, make sure that you hire someone with expert knowledge in the field to avoid throwing your money away.

Pay per click analytics are the core base for understanding the effectiveness of your keywords and their playback value. Before analytics tools came on the market most companies bid top dollar for the broadest keywords that they could in the hope that using a bigger net would catch more fish. In time however, the analytics tools came on board and some businesses found that the broadest search terms were not the ones that were actually bringing in the traffic.

The PPC Analytics basics were as follows:
Your PPC campaign analytics showed you a direct response model. A customer clicked on your ad after searching on a particular keyword that you have bid on. But did they convert? And more importantly, did enough of those clicks convert to justify the expense paid for that keyword?

The PPC managers took note and started to narrow down their keywords to the ones that seemed to bring in the most conversions.

The results were not always as expected. As it turns out, research heavy online shoppers were often visting a site multiple times on broad, then narrower, then focused keywords, and only after the final focused keyword are they converting and actually purchasing the product. Does that mean that the first two visits were meaningless? Does it mean that the broader keyword bids were a waste of money? Of course not!

The first couple of visits bring site and business name recognition with the consumer who then narrows down the keyword to exactly what they want. The next search brings your site up again. The customer is already familiar with it, and your site encompasses everything that they’ve looked for. Company name recognition and site familiarity will encourage customers to buy.

Think ahead before you turn off the broad keyword campaign and deem it unnecessary. If you want more information, look to analytic tools that will track multiple user visits and see what’s working for you.

Local Pay Per Click campaigns can offer a business a fast return on their marketing budget bucks in comparison to waiting for an organic SEO campaign to build, but that doesn’t mean a business should jump in blind. Here are some of the basics about Pay Per Click advertising.

What’s the point of Pay Per Click?
Pay Per Click is an online marketing strategy that is used to increase site traffic and get your business’s name out in the market.

How Does PPC Work?
Basically, your business will bid on keywords that relate to your products or services. The amount of your bid is what determines the ranking of your ad on search engine pages. If you want to sell ‘Safety Scissors’ and your competitor currently holds the number 1 ranking spot for that keyword, with a bid of .10 per click, you can try to outbid them for the number 1 spot for that keyword.

How Can I stretch my PPC budget?
You can stretch your Local Pay Per Click budget by going after keywords the smart way. If you are selling Safety Scissors, but your competitor holds the number one spot on the search engines for that keyword at a price you aren’t willing to match, try a variation. Bid and use the phrase “Buy Safety Scissors.”

The logic is simple. Many people might type in Safety Scissors if they are doing research on the product, or looking for price comparisons, or just curious, but when they’re ready to buy, they will often type in ‘BUY Safety Scissors.”

If you are a local business looking to increase traffic to a website than pay per click could be your solution. While organic listings take time to grow and climb in the search engines Yahoo’s Pay Per Click is a fast convenient way to quickly get directly in front of your audience. Your local customers are no longer just looking in print and local yellow page books to find a place to shop. 

Your local audience has found that it is even easier to go directly to their computer and just look for whatever they need in a search engine rather than flipping through a book that only gets their fingers dirty. Yahoo offers an affordable solution to reaching out to your community. It is an avenue of advertising that many of your competitors are probably already using to generate revenues for their organization. Don’t think of pay per click advertising as a national campaign. You can very easily geo target your campaign and reach only the people you desire. If you are frustrated with your organic listings and waiting for your site to climb you should take advantage of a localized pay per click campaign because it could be crucial to the success of your company. Yahoo’s sponsored search website has made it very easy for you to come in and set up your campaign. Just create an account they will walk you through the rest of the process.  For more information please visit Yahoo’s sponsored search marketing site and take advantage of this traffic generating product.

In the Local Pay Per Click campaigns, some businesses are still set on quantity, not quality. The amount of potential customers brought into your site was the only thing focused on for so long that some companies are reluctant to bring those numbers down. Less clicks?!? Less traffic?!? That’s bad!

Actually, that can be good thing. Geographic Targeting can, and (if done properly) will decrease the traffic to your site, but you will end up with higher conversion rates and a higher audience share.

Why is geographic targeting important, and is less traffic a good thing, in your PPC campaign?

Geographic targeting is about excluding traffic from outside a specific geographic area that you designate. Geographic targeting is highly valuable to advertisers who serve customers regionally and also to advertisers who want to focus their budget on increasing brand/product awareness levels in specific geographic areas.

It doesn’t make sense to present your ads to people in the UK or China if you don’t ship outside of the US. Drilling down even more, if you sell only in a single state, a single city, or a single neighborhood, you shouldn’t waste your budget on clicks from outside of that area.

When you apply this strategy to your local PPC campaign, your traffic volume will go down, but the key point is that your profits won’t. The consumers who are clicking on your ads are the consumers that can use your product or services.

Don’t focus so much on traffic volume. Instead, keep your eye, and your advertising budget, on quality.

Jennifer Osborne at SearchEnginePeople wrote a good article on the 26 Mistakes That Cost You Money in a small business PPC campaign. The article is a little lengthy (26!) but some of the points she brings up are worth noting.

11. Using very Broad keywords. Broad keywords tend to be used by people early in the buying cycle. Think about the difference between “Vacation”, “All Inclusive Vacation” and “Bermuda All Inclusive Vacation”. Generally we find that people using very broad keyword queries are very early in the buying cycle, in the Learning Phase. As a result, conversion rates for these types of keywords are very low. Yet broad keywords tend to cost the most.
Narrower, more specific keywords tend to be used by people who know what they want and are closer to the Purchase Phase of the Buying Cycle.
I’ve seen Broad keywords eat 50% of a Small Business budget without any conversions. In this scenario, by not bidding on those expensive keywords the client reduced their spend by half while maintaining the same # of Conversions and Doubling their ROI.

I love that tip, and I’ll explain why. Too many businesses get wrapped up in their PPC strategy and focus on the broad keywords that will get the most attention, but as Jennifer points out above, the broadest keywords queries are often used when potential customers are researching a purchase. They are not ready to buy yet, so your conversion rates are rock bottom.

Bidding on the more specific keywords might seem like you are targeting a smaller audience, (because you are) but that smaller audience is the one that is ready to purchase.

Focus your PPC strategy. Sharpen it. And ultimately make it work for you.

Local pay per click offers a narrower field of competition simply because not everyone can advertise as being in your area. No matter what your product or service, you will benefit from local pay per click and narrow down the amount of competition you have to deal with.

If you aren´t already using it, local pay per click is also an excellent investment and will often end up being cheaper in the long run. The reason for this? People who see your ads will be looking for your products or services locally. That means they are more likely to be in a buying frame of mind, too.

Try local pay per click if you aren´t already using it. You can save money, while getting higher quality clicks! This is definitely a good deal for anyone involved in online business.

When bidding for local pay per click keywords, being the highest bidder isn´t always a good idea. In fact, it can cause you to run out of advertising money pretty darn fast! It´s often better to come in with a lower bid and here´s why.

• You´ll save a lot of money by bidding lower.

• A lower position won´t necessarily give you better results.

• Getting into a bidding war will just drive the price up and everyone loses.

It simply isn´t worth fighting for the first position in local pay per click, the majority of the time. If there is little competition, go for it, but otherwise you end up paying far too much for just a few clicks and it really isn´t worth it.

One of the big issues with local pay per click advertising is the high risk of click fraud. This is when people click on the ads displayed on their own website to earn money. Obviously, to the advertiser, these clicks are completely useless, but still being paid for.

No matter which local pay per click service you choose, make sure they offer the option of deciding which sites your ads should NOT appear on. That way, if you feel that some sites are promoting click fraud, you can ban them from displaying your local pay per click ads and save yourself some cash.

Local pay per click ads are somewhat more limited than those in other areas of advertising, since you will only be displayed on sites that show the local keywords. So do be careful that you aren´t banning all your available options!