TM
The Perils And The Payoffs Of Pay-Per-Click Advertising
By Jeremiah Desmarais
Vice President, Marketing, Norvax
It wasn’t all that long ago when small business marketers got to add a brand new lead generation tool to their arsenal. Pay-perclick (PPC) advertising promised a controlled way to zero in on all of that targeted traffic search engines generate. Lots of savvy insurance agents reaped the rewards. But with the rules changing all the time, is PPC still a smart strategy for agents today?
For those who haven’t been introduced, here’s a quick example of how PPC works. As an insurance agent, you’d like every person in your town who looks for insurance using the Internet to visit your website. But getting your website to rank naturally in a search engine’s free listings takes a lot of time and work, and it’s very hard to predict if you’ll ever get the results you want. Why Advertisers Love PPC With PPC, you can get higher rankings by paying to get ads listed for keywords you’ve determined your most serious prospects will use.
Whenever someone types that phrase into the search engine you’re advertising on, your ad may pop up in the “Sponsored Links” section. If a web surfer clicks on your ad, you pay a price determined by the search engine you’re using — which is never more than a limit you have pre-set. If your ad doesn’t get clicked on, you don’t have to pay a penny. This concept is what has made PPC so wildly popular with advertisers. Compare it to paying for a big billboard to get exposure to thousands of drivers — only a fraction of whom are qualified prospects. With PPC, you’re advertising to people that are looking for information related to insurance — and you only pay when they take action and click on your ad. Sounds perfect, right? Well, without carefully planned campaigns, you could quickly lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars fast on PPC. Here are a few guidelines to keep in mind if you choose to go this route. PPC Can Add Up Fast There is a LOT of competition in the health insurance space. Generic terms like “[your city] health insurance quotes” attract high rolling bidders able to afford to pay between $5 to $20 a click to be listed on the first page. Again, that’s not price per lead. You’re shelling out just to get one little click. And all a click guarantees is the person will be sent to your website.
And that person might not be qualified, or they take one look at your website and click the “Back” button. Suddenly you’re out your click cost with nothing to show for it. That’s why a lot of small business marketers steer clear of those generic terms that drive a broad audience of searchers. Instead, they try to get placement for highly targeted terms that are more likely to bring them qualified prospects they can actually write. Your Quality Score Google and Yahoo! have always tried to give consumers the best experience. And the best experience isn’t clicking on an ad and getting a big, bare-bones form that demands private information without providing any relevant information on the search term. So the search engines created a “Quality Score.” A better Quality Score means you rank higher in those sponsored results. And a better Quality Score can drastically reduce your cost for each click. Not a bad deal, huh? How does it work? No one knows — Google’s secrets are guarded more closely than the formula for Coca-Cola. But many advertisers have found that Google seems to take kindly to offering consumers targeted, informative copy and links to related information. Think about it this way: if you could choose between a website that just offers to sell you a book, or a site that offers book reviews, book excerpts, and the author’s other books, which would you prefer? Which one would you feel like a more positive consumer experience? The idea is to provide a better experience for your customers than the other sites bidding on the same keywords. That’s why having a professional website with lots of informative content is so important before jumping into PPC. To get the best shot at a high Quality Score, your site it has to educate and motivate your visitors. Web marketers have a saying: “if it’s good for the customer, it’s good for Google.” Give people lots of insurance-related content they can browse through before they fill out a form, and Google is likely to reward you with a higher score.
The bad news is if you can’t get a good Quality Score, you could stay at the bottom of the results, and wind up paying more than advertisers above you who are offering quality information about those keywords. Match Your Landing Page With Your Ad I’ve talked about this strategy before, but with Quality Scores to consider, it’s more important than ever. Search engine prospects are on a hunt for information. Tests show over and over again that the advertiser that does the best job of keeping the searcher moving directly towards their desired information or product will reap the best conversions. Not only should your ad speak to the search terms the prospect is using, your landing page MUST do the same. Your landing page is the page on your website you’ve selected or created to drive your ad’s traffic to. Whatever you do, DON’T send people responding to a targeted ad to your one-sizefits-all homepage. And don’t send them to a generic “Contact Us” page that you’d send anybody to. Your prospect has told you very specifically what they’re interested in. Now deliver it! Your landing page can immediately deliver on the promise of your ad by using the same language your prospect entered into the search engine. Otherwise you’ll stall them in their tracks. And they’ll go back to the search results to try again. Once you’ve earned their click, that doesn’t guarantee their loyalty to your page. If they don’t find what they’re looking for, they’re out. Here’s a theoretical scenario that illustrates a good match of ad to landing page: You haven’t picked up a tennis racket in years and want some professional help getting back into the game. You type “chicago tennis trainer” into a search engine. The top paid ad says:
Chicago Tennis Trainers
Train with Grand Slam Pros Improve Serve in 6 Weeks Guaranteed www.ChicagoRacketPros.com
Sounds promising. You click on the ad and BAM — you’re on a targeted landing page that offers information about the company’s tennis training program and all the convenient Chicago locations you can train at. Now what if you’d been sent to a generic page that had info and links to every single training option the company offered — from racket ball to badminton? And what if instead of seeing those Chicago locations, you’ve got to select your region from a drop down list of all the Midwest states the company serves? Bottom line: don’t frustrate visitors who are qualified and ready to do business with you by serving them generic content that does not help them get straight to what they’re searching for. Not only is it confusing, it can lower your Quality Score. Keep An Eye On What Works Automated bid programs make it easy to just set up a PPC campaign and walk away. But successful PPC advertisers take full advantage of the medium’s tracking features to continuously adjust their campaigns. They tweak and they test. They change a word in the ad headline, or they switch the offer. That’s because unlike a Yellow Pages ad, PPC allows for unlimited updates and changes during a campaign run. And that means you can always find new ways to improve your results. One thing’s almost certain with PPC: you’re not going to hit pay dirt on the very first ad you create. Testing your ads and landing pages regularly makes sure you keep seeing the best return for your ad spend.
Pay-per-Click Resources: Google Adwords Support http://adwords.google.com/support/ Yahoo! Search Marketing Help http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/faqs/presignup/ PayPerClickAnalyst.com http://www.payperclickanalyst.com/ Check out reviews of the big pay-per-click search engines, plus the news on their latest updates. PayPerClickSearchEngines.com http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/ Your guide to paid placement search engines, including helpful articles and resources.
Silverback Strategy
Make sure you're getting the most from your PPC campaigns with some simple split testing. Google lets you run up to 4 versions of the same ad — which is extremely helpful when you're trying to figure out which ad gets the best results. 1. Start with two ads. Take two ads you think have a shot of doing well and run them at the same time. 2. Test the better performer. Now that you have one ad that is proven to work (at least, better than the one you tested it against), begin running different versions of it. Test everything, even down to where you place commas. 3. Test your landing page. Once you think you've hit the best click-through possible for your ad, it's time to test the landing page. You can run the same ad copy with two different URLs. Remember to keep your Display URL the same, so that the ads are completely identical to the public. This way you are limiting the variables to the landing page as much as possible. What should you test on your landing page? Try the headline, the required fields on your Web form, the amount and type of content, the pictures and even the background colors. It's worth testing anything to see if it will boost results. Just make sure you only test one thing at a time so you can accurately determine what's driving a lift in conversions.
Jeremiah Desmarais oversees the marketing efforts at Norvax, a company whose webbased tools help insurance agents consistently increase sales and cut admin time by 2500%. He and his team are the recipients of 3 awards from the Web Marketing Association and the Interactive Marketing Association for marketing and design initiatives online. He is also editor of the Norvax Newsletter that delivers helpful sales articles, tips and marketing strategies to 15,000+ subscribers monthly. He is author of several white papers as well as a guest speaker at various carrier events and workshops. He is a member of the Society of Industry Leaders. You can reach him at jdesmarais@norvax.com or 1-866-NORVAX.
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