Don't Let Pay-Per-Click Turn Into Pay-Per-Search

Last Updated: August 22, 2017

Curious about how your PPC ads look? Googling yourself to check on your pay-per-click campaigns is understandable. However, it’s also ill-advised.
That’s because frequently googling your company can sabotage your AdWords campaign.
Don’t believe us? Keep reading.

How Googling Yourself Tanks Your CTR

Your cost per click is substantially related to your ad’s click through rate (CTR). This is the ratio of passive ad views (impressions) to active ad clicks. If your ad gets lots of views but few clicks, you can end up with a low CTR—and paying a greater cost per click.
Why a greater cost? Because your CTR affects your AdWords Quality Score, and your Quality Score controls how much you pay per click. Google wants to show ads that are interesting to its users: otherwise users may get fed up and choose a different search engine altogether. To make certain ads are as high quality as possible, it relies on Quality Score.

Quality Score and Cost

Your Quality Score is heavily impacted by two factors: CTR and relevance. If either metric is low, it will drive down your Quality Score (and drive up your price per click). Relevance can be addressed by targeting ads using both keyword and location. Click through rate is a bit trickier to fix, though. Under normal circumstances, your marketing agency will test different ad versions to get your CTR as high as possible.
However, you work against your marketing agency’s efforts when you frequently google your company’s name or other search terms to check your ads. This is because frequent searches increase the number of impressions. And since you know that clicking on your ads raises costs, you probably never click. As a result, you’re driving up impressions but not clicks. This leads to a lower CTR for your ad. No amount of testing by your marketing agency can fix it as long as you continue to depress your CTR by googling yourself.
This is where the domino effect starts. Once CTRs are low, your Quality Score follows. As PPCHero explains, “If you have a lot of low CTR ads in your ad groups, they could be contributing to a low Quality Score since AdWords considers all of your ads when calculating your scores.”
Unfortunately, a low Quality Score ultimately results in higher costs for you. The short version of the story is that if you frequently google your company, you’re spiking your own PPC bill!
This isn’t just a theoretical problem. At Prospect Genius, we’ve seen it firsthand. In fact, we had one client snowball their cost per click from $22 to $31!
We don’t want the same thing to happen to you. So if you’re thinking about checking your PPC ads by googling yourself, just don’t!

Stop Tanking Successful Ads

This issue goes beyond cost. When you continually google yourself, it’s not just that you end up paying more money per click for no good reason. You also single-handedly undermine your own advertising. If that doesn’t frustrate you, it should!
You see, PPC, by nature, targets a motivated audience. The searcher is already looking for your product or services, so they are more likely to click when they see your ad. So, when you go the extra mile and actually target your ads to a specific service in a specific area, you get maximum results for minimum cost.
Except when you search for your own ads.
When you’re searching for your own products or services just to “check” on your ad, you can end up substantially warping your results. The more specific an ad, the smaller the number of impressions it’s going to get. Usually, this isn’t a problem because you’re offsetting the low impressions by reaching an audience that’s more likely to click.
But that’s what makes these types of ads especially vulnerable to sudden dips in CTR. Because impressions are already low, you’re relying on a high number of clicks to keep your CTR up. So when you google these ads, look at them, and don’t click, you’re preventing the CTR from growing.
And if an ad’s CTR is low because you’ve been looking at the ad and not clicking, it could spell major trouble. If you’re working with a reputable PPC provider, they monitor your ad performance regularly. So when they see a surprisingly low CTR, they will try tweaking the ad to improve performance. However, nothing is wrong with that ad: the CTR is just low because you’ve been googling without clicking. Ultimately, you’ll be spurring your PPC agency to change an ad that otherwise could have been successful for you!

Safe Ways to Monitor Your PPC Ads

Please note: we’re not saying don’t check on your PPC campaigns. On the contrary. It’s very important to stay updated on how your ads are doing, so you can make informed decisions about your return on investment. But unlike googling yourself, there are ways to check your AdWords campaign without also inflating your costs!
Your best bet is to work with a professional pay-per-click advertising agency that provides clear tracking features. At Prospect Genius, our clients have unlimited access to their account’s call logs, leads, and other reports right in the Client Portal—letting you see your campaign’s performance without having to resort to Google. If you’re not sure what metrics are the most relevant for assessing your campaign, check out this analysis.
Or, if you’re a staunch do-it-yourselfer, you can use the AdWords dashboard to look up your ads’ performance, preview appearance, and more.
At the end of the day, we hope you now recognize that googling yourself can be harmful to your PPC campaign. Do yourself a favor and opt for alternative methods of checking performance instead. Keep your costs down by NOT googling yourself.

Facebook Ads Are the Flexible, Affordable Tool You Need

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Are you thinking about layering some social media on top of your existing marketing program? Would you like to connect with customers beyond your campaign’s currently targeted location? No matter what’s driving you to consider expanding your reach or growing your audience, Facebook Ads are a great option.
A budget-friendly alternative to Google AdWords and other PPC options, Facebook Ads offer tremendous flexibility. You can use them for virtually anything: seasonal promotions, important company news, special coupons, and more! You can also use them to spread the word about your business, get more Facebook Page Likes, and draw people to your website.
We love recommending Facebook Ads to our clients when they’re looking to take their campaign to the next level. They’re easy, affordable, and effective. Here are the top four reasons you should bring Facebook Ads into the mix for your company.

1. Facebook Ads Are Less Expensive Than Google AdWords

One of the most enticing aspects of Facebook Ads is the cost. Compared to other paid advertising models—namely, Google AdWords—Facebook can be significantly more cost effective.
Yes, Facebook Ads do follow a different model from AdWords. On one hand, AdWords ads are only shown to users on a search results page after they’ve purposely searched for a related keyword or topic. On the other hand, Facebook’s ads are a form of what we call “interruption marketing.” They’re similar to billboards on the side of the highway and TV commercials that interrupt your favorite shows. You aren’t particularly motivated in that moment to learn about the products being advertised; regardless, these advertisements are tucked away somewhere in the back of your mind, increasing brand awareness. And if the commercial or ad is especially memorable, you may even seek to find out more on your own.
So, when comparing the costs of Facebook Ads and Google AdWords, remember to account for the difference in models and goals. With Google, your objective is to get motivated buyers to click on your ad and ultimately call you. Meanwhile, with Facebook, your objective (typically) is to spread the word about your products and/or services and attract new social media followers in the process.
That being said, Facebook’s ad costs are substantially lower than Google’s. While a keyword-targeted ad for your industry might cost you $12 per click on AdWords, an ad with similar messaging may cost you just $2 per click on Facebook. Your audience on Facebook may not be as motivated to make an immediate purchase, but that’s why Facebook is a great tool for when you just want to broaden your visibility.

2. Facebook Ads Help Build Up Your Brand-New Page

Speaking of broader visibility: Using Facebook Ads is a smart move when you’re first starting out on the social network. You can design your ads so they encourage users to engage with your post and like your Facebook page. Facebook Ads include a highly visible call-to-action button, which says “Like Page” in this case, that users can click without having to navigate to your page separately. Removing this extra step from the equation makes people much more likely to follow through.
Therefore, when you’re first establishing your Facebook page and don’t have many followers or likes yet, Facebook Ads can prove vital. You simply upload photos, videos, coupons, and other attention-grabbing content, select which demographics you want to target as your audience, and Facebook does the rest. Before you know it, you’ll have significantly increased your page’s likes and followers and laid the groundwork for an attractive, appealing page.

3. Facebook Ads Help You Reach a Broader Geographic Audience

For some business owners, their concern lies not with building a Facebook presence, but with reaching out to customers just outside their targeted location. You see, if you’re doing any type of SEO as a local service provider, the marketing process involves targeting a specific geographic area (so you’re visible on Google Maps). Most of your business listings and online content will emphasize this particular town, city, or county.
However, some businesses may want to let their online audience know they serve customers beyond certain zip codes. In these cases, businesses can use Facebook Ads to reach people in different locations. When selecting your audience details, you can easily pinpoint the states and/or cities where your audience members reside.
So, for example, let’s say your business’s online presence focuses on Salt Lake City, UT, but you want to do business beyond that one city. You can create ads on Facebook that will display in front of people in Ogden and Provo, which are both roughly 40 miles away from Salt Lake City in either direction. This way, you’re able to expand your geographic reach without messing with your SEO.

4. Facebook Ads Are Super Flexible

One of the most beneficial features of Facebook Ads is their versatility. You can use these ads for just about any purpose:

Promote awareness of your company.
Get more conversions (clicks, calls, newsletter signups).
Increase people’s engagement with your content (likes, shares, comments).
Reach people in a specific geographic area.
Encourage people to visit your storefront.
Bring more traffic to your website.
Get more photo and video views.
And more!

As long as you have high-quality photos, graphics, or videos, you can create stunning ads that will capture the eyes of any audience you wish to target. Plus, customizing your ads is super easy. Facebook even has a tool that makes video creation a breeze! With Facebook Ads, you can reap the benefits of professional-looking advertisements without the high production costs.
So if you’re looking for the next step in your online marketing campaign, you’ve found it. Facebook Ads are the low-risk, cost-effective, easy-to-use solution you’ve been searching for. If you’re not a DIYer, talk to your marketer today about adding Facebook Ads to your arsenal!

Are You Using the Best PPC Strategy for Your Marketing Goal?

Last Updated: May 18, 2017

What’s your goal for your small business’s online marketing? This is an essential question to ask yourself before you embark on any particular campaign. Why? Because, without establishing what you want out of it, you may end up going with the wrong strategy, and ultimately wasting your money. This is especially true for your PPC strategy, which generally involves a substantial investment.
So, what’s your goal? Is it:

To get lots of calls right now?
To have a steady stream of calls over time?
To capture motivated buyers in the moment?
To plant the seeds for future customers?

In this blog post, we’ll review each goal and explain which PPC strategy (or strategies) is best suited for it. When you match your overall goal with the correct PPC strategy, you’ll be unstoppable. So let’s begin!

Goal: To Get Lots of Calls Right Now

Is your goal to promote a special offer or to fill your schedule for your busy season? If you’re focused on a short, specific period of time, you’ll need an aggressive PPC strategy.
For example, if you run a landscaping business, you probably want to capture all those spring and summer projects every homeowner is undertaking. Therefore, you’ll want to run your AdWords campaign for 3-4 months, starting in April. You’ll target a specific service, like hardscape installation or tree removal. Then, with strategic bidding, you’ll try to get in front of as many eyeballs as possible so you can book as many jobs as you can.
You may also seek short-term lead generation in the wake of a recent event. For example, if you’re a water removal specialist and there’s been a disastrous storm in your area, you may want to run a special campaign for a week or two to help local homeowners with their flooded basements.

Fast Results Don’t Come Cheap

Bear in mind, getting these kinds of instantaneous results is not cheap. If you want to get your ads in front of as many eyeballs as possible in a small time frame, it will cost you. However, the good news is you’re free to stop your campaign whenever you want. In other words, as soon as you’ve reached your goal and booked all the jobs you want, you can shut off your campaign and stop paying for leads you no longer need.

Goal: To Have a Steady Stream of Calls Over Time

If you want to increase your overall call volume and conversion rates indefinitely, rather than for a short period of time, we suggest a much more tempered approach. You’ll need to be modest with your budget. We also strongly encourage you to have an optimized website before you begin any long-term AdWords campaign.
This goal requires investing in both SEO and PPC. By using SEO first, you’ll improve your AdWords Quality Score, which will ultimately keep your PPC costs more affordable while still placing your ads in coveted positions. If you’d like to learn more about how SEO is crucial for long-term PPC, check out our blog post, “Optimize Your Site Before You Bid on AdWords.”

Focus on ROI

While short, seasonal promotions don’t require as much of an investment, given their temporary state, long-term campaigns are different. They demand wise budgeting and an eye on ROI. So don’t shy away from the investment or price tag. If you consistently reach more customers and book more jobs, your ROI will prove to be well worth it.

Goal: To Capture Motivated Buyers in the Moment

Sometimes, a company wants to create brand awareness and simply spread the word about their business in general. Other times, you want to target prospective customers who are searching for your services. In the latter case, your paid advertising campaign should be on search engines like Google, where customer searches are taking place.
You see, PPC ads on search engines target users who have searched for the specific product or service highlighted in your ad. Therefore, you can safely assume these users are motivated buyers who want your service in the near future. PPC ads on search engines increase your chances of converting new customers on the spot.
Here’s a perfect example of how PPC ads can help you find motivated buyers. You’re an appliance repair company, and you run an ad for Whirlpool refrigerator repair. Now, as soon as a local homeowner’s Whirlpool fridge breaks down and they search for a repairman, they’ll see your ad and click on it. In all likelihood, they’ll give you a call because they need a fridge repair ASAP. This is the definition of a motivated buyer.

Are Motivated Buyers on Social Media?

Social media can be a mixed bag when it comes to motivated buyers. Typically, social media users are not motivated buyers because they haven’t searched for your service. This means you could be wasting money on an advertisement that users will largely forget about or ignore.

However, there’s one exception: you can target ads at Facebook users who have demonstrated an interest in your services. For example, let’s say someone’s dishwasher breaks and they turn to their Facebook friends for advice. Once they post about dishwasher repairs, they’ll start seeing your ads. If they see your ads soon enough, before they’ve hired a repairman, they’ll likely feel motivated to click on your ad and call you. It’s not a sure thing, however, so we don’t recommend making this the cornerstone of your quest to capture motivated buyers.

Goal: To Plant the Seeds for Future Customers

In a more general sense, though, social media ads are great for when you just want to promote awareness of your company so people remember you in the future.
Advertising on social media platforms, namely Facebook, is what we call “interruption marketing.” The audience doesn’t seek out this type of advertising; rather, it interrupts whatever they were doing. In the context of Facebook, this means ads appear in and around a user’s news feed while they’re scrolling through, forcing them to take notice.
Facebook Ads work the same as television commercials. You’re watching the NBA playoffs when you’re suddenly interrupted by a string of commercials for chain restaurants, cars, beer, and so on. You probably forget them as soon as they’re over, but they actually stay in the back of your mind. Then, the next time you’re craving a burger, you suddenly recall that 2-for-$20 deal you saw a commercial for. This is how you want your Facebook Ads to work.

Also Consider Remarketing

You may also choose to use remarketing, which is a form of interruption marketing that targets interested parties. After someone visits your website, they will start seeing your ads in various places online. Using remarketing ensures they don’t forget about you. This is useful for industries where customers often take their time to consider purchases beforehand. Home renovation and construction are prime examples.

Your Goal Determines Your PPC Strategy

Whatever you do, don’t go into a PPC campaign thinking you just want the cheapest option available. No matter how much you’re paying, if it’s the wrong strategy for your goal, it will be a waste of money. Use the information in this blog post and carefully consider what you want out of your paid advertising. When you do PPC right, the ROI is always worth it!

Harness PPC to Level-Up Your Dumpster Rental Marketing

Last Updated: December 28, 2016

There’s an easy trick to boosting your dumpster company’s online marketing success. Add PPC!
Adding PPC (pay-per-click) advertising to your dumpster service’s SEO campaign can help take it to the next level. SEO and PPC are distinct strategies that work in vastly different ways to promote your dumpster rental service online. Combining them after you’ve already established a healthy web presence via SEO can multiply your online exposure and increase your success.
Read on to find out how PPC can dramatically improve on your SEO results.

Traffic Vs. Conversion

SEO helps increase your website’s overall online visibility. Total traffic to your site should improve with a successful SEO campaign. But not 100% of the people who come to your site are going to be ready to buy.
This is the difference between traffic and conversion. Traffic is getting people to your site; conversion is transforming those site visitors into paying customers. Conversions are what you ultimately want in order to make a profit.
Your site traffic probably includes some motivated searchers who are looking to rent a dumpster right now. However, you also get lots of folks who are researching dumpster rental options for a job six months from now, some people who are price shopping, and some plain-old tire kickers, too.
So while some traffic may turn into actual dumpster rentals, the majority may never result in money in your pocket. That’s where pay-per-click advertising can fit into your overall online marketing plan. Because PPC specifically targets motivated buyers, it can better connect you with searchers who want to rent a dumpster now. This increases your chance of converting searchers into buyers.

Motivated Searchers = More Dumpster Rentals

Essentially, PPC is focused on searchers who need or want the specific service highlighted in the ad. Since your pay-per-click is zeroed in on a motivated audience, you get improved conversion and more dumpsters rented. Your overall conversion rate on PPC traffic is going to be much higher than with organic traffic, simply because of that motivated audience.
In technical speak, PPC is designed to target transactional searches (the searcher is looking to buy something or to find a provider for a specific service). SEO tends to target a mix of transactional searches and informational searches (the searcher is looking for info). In plain English, PPC is aimed at people who plan to buy now; meanwhile, SEO pulls in some people who plan to buy eventually and some people who just want a question answered. So when you add PPC into your online marketing mix, you get more site visitors who are ready to rent a dumpster.
If you want stronger conversion rates today and a long-term web presence tomorrow, add PPC to your SEO campaign. But don’t forget, PPC works better—and costs less—when you have an optimized site, so don’t think you can skip the SEO step and focus all your efforts on PPC.
Interested in learning more about your options for running dumpster rental pay-per-click ads? We’d love to answer any questions you may have. Call now for your free assessment, and our experts can help you decide if PPC is right for you!

How to Keep the Holidays From Ruining Your Online Marketing

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

It’s no secret that most of us stretch our budgets a little thin over the holiday season. With parties to host and gifts to buy, money disappears quickly. And for many small business owners, the slightly blurred line between personal and business finances means the holidays can impact some of your company’s operations—like online marketing.
If you’re feeling the squeeze of the holidays on your small business’s budget, it’s fine to tighten your belt—but don’t let it affect your online marketing. Canceling your marketing campaign temporarily or skipping a payment may reduce your expenses in the short term, but did you know there can be seriously negative consequences? The fallout will outlast the holiday season and your savings may turn into losses.
How can that be? Keep reading to find out.

Canceling Your Campaign Sets You Back for Months

Canceling an SEO-based campaign, even just for a month, can jeopardize your future profits. To explain how, we’ll use the way Prospect Genius works as an example.
When a client cancels their campaign with us, it’s our policy to immediately take down their website, pull down their listings, and halt all lead generation services. (Most advertisers have a similar cancellation policy.) Your business will stop receiving traffic and leads right away. So canceling your campaign for the holidays will likely cause you to stop getting new customers for at least a month, or however long it takes for you to restart your campaign.
There’s more. Now, whenever you decide to restart your online marketing, you’ll have to wait another few months for your web presence to ramp up again. Why? Because SEO is not something you can drop and pick up where you left off. As soon as you stop SEO, everything goes back to zero.
As Prospect Genius clients may recall, there’s typically a 90-day buildup period after you start a new campaign. This ramp-up window is unavoidable, regardless of how many times you’ve started and stopped your online marketing. So after all is said and done, you lose several months of business even though you only canceled for one month.

Skipping a Payment Is Hard to Bounce Back From

Another thing that some business owners do is let their marketing payments slide for a month. They think it’s the harmless alternative to canceling entirely. While it’s true that making a late payment is better than canceling, it’s far from harmless. For example, when you miss a payment with Prospect Genius, your account is partially disabled until payment is received, causing a dramatic decrease in leads received.
But the real kicker comes later: After delaying one payment, most business owners find it difficult to get back on track with their monthly billing cycle. This is because they now only have a couple of weeks, instead of a full month, to save up for the next payment. Often, this begins an unfortunate pattern of falling behind that’s difficult to stop.

What Can You Do?

We aren’t trying to scare you. We understand there are peaks and valleys in every fiscal year and that the holidays can be especially trying. If money is tight, here are some things you can do that won’t hurt you in the long run:

If you’re doing AdWords or any other PPC campaign, pause it. While you can’t turn SEO off and on again easily, PPC can be started and stopped with ease.
Budget wisely. Plan out all of your income and expenses for the month to see how much money you’ll realistically have for gifts, decorations, food, and, yes, marketing costs.
Pay in advance. If you think there’s a chance you’ll overspend on holiday goods and not have enough money at the end of the month to pay your bill, be safe and pay your bill ahead of time—before your money runs out.

Remember: You’ve invested a lot in your online marketing. Don’t let your web presence come crashing down by canceling your campaign or not paying your bills. You might save a monthly payment, but it will cost you much more down the road.
Questions or concerns? Please don’t hesitate to reach out for help.

Prospect Genius