If you are thinking about using pay-per-click or PPC marketing like Google Adwords to promote your Lancaster PA business then you need to read this.
Most people that are using Google Adwords are paying way too much. The one hard lesson most people make when they first start using pay-per-click is that you can blow through a lot of money without even realizing it. Most business owners will sign up for an account. Write one ad and fill that ad group with every keyword they can think of that relates to their business. There are only 2 outcomes to this type of campaign management.
You will pay 25-500% more per click than you need to.
Your click through rate will go so low that Google will stop showing your ads.
Google was built on and remains focused on one thing. Relevance. In Google’s mind when a person does a search query they want the most relevant results for the keyword or keyword phrase the user types in. That goes for the organic search results as well as the Adwords ads, so the more relevant your website and ads are the higher you will be ranked in the organic search results and the less you will pay per click.
There are lots of ways to lower what you are paying for your Google Adwords advertising.
One client of ours was using Google Adwords to market their packaging and were targeting the US. We were able to cut their costs by 70% and also raise their clickthrough rate from about 1% to 3-5% just by tweaking their ads and making them more focused.
The one thing you need to be doing if nothing else is split testing. You need to be running 2 ads per ad group and see which one gets more clicks. Then once you are sure one is better than the other you get rid of the loser and write another one to compete with the winner and run them again.
The best thing about advertising on Google Adwords is that everything you do can be tested, and the data speaks for itself. There is no guesswork involved. Your prospects will tell you by their actions what works and what doesn’t.
For more information or for an analysis of your current Google Adwords campaigns you can contact us at lancasterpamarketing@gmail.com
Here is a video that will explain some very basic but important steps to help your website get higher rankings on Google. Chances are that your website designer may have left these out. Not good.
Here is a video I did that shows how you can add a retweet button to all your blog posts to make it simple for your readers to retweet your cool blog posts on Twitter. Don’t forget to retweet this for me
Today I want to talk about using Twitter in your marketing efforts for your local Lancaster PA business. Twitter is a great tool when used properly but if you don’t know what you’re doing you can have little to no results. Some people join Twitter and start sending out nothing but sales pitches on every tweet. This is not a good idea. Twitter is more of a very soft sell, it’s a tool you can use to build a relationship in your local area, so in effect it’s an awesome networking tool, just leave the sales pitch at the door.
The reason why Twitter is so popular is because people are nosy. That’s why the tabloids and Oprah make so much money. We love to hear about what everybody else is doing. That’s why when you log into Twitter is you always see that same simple question. What are you doing?
When you build a profile in your twitter account you have an opportunity to add a url for your website. This is the opportunity to promote your main site or blog there, once that’s done just answer the question. What are you doing? you’ll start to get people “following” you. That means they have added you to their list of people who’s updates are listed on their own Twitter homepage. You can also “follow” that person back. That’s where the relationship begins.
It’s really a very simple concept. Add value to people’s lives and they will be interested in getting to know more about you. That will lead them to learning about what you do and once there is a relationship there that’s when you’ll be able to add them to your sales process if they are in need of whatever type of product or service you offer or they could be a valuable source of referrals. I like to build my own network locally but you can make friends all over the world.
Using Google Adwords for your local business is not something the average business owner should try on their own. While using this online advertising medium can be very effective, you can loose your shirt if you have no idea how to build and run a successful campaign. Here are the top 3 ways to use Google Adwords ineffectively.
1. Set up an Adwords campaign and send them to your website without having a way to capture your prospects contact info. This is a HUGE mistake that almost every local business owner makes, especially realtors. 95% of the people who visit your website for the first time will not buy on the initial visit. You need to capture your leads name and email address and market to them through an email marketing campaign and you can increase the number of conversions dramatically.
2. Create 1 Ad Group and 1 text Ad and stuff a whole bunch of keywords into the ad group. If you do this you will have a very low quality score due to the fact that your ad will probably not be very compelling and once your quality score goes below a certain point, your ad will stop showing. A low quality score also means higher costs per click. Google rewards those who know what they are doing.
3. Not testing or tracking anything. This is not a good idea. Google Adwords is very flexible in that you can test and track everything you do. The results don’t lie. You can run one text ad against another and see which one is better. You can test 2 different landing pages and see which one gets more opt-ins. The data doesn’t lie. There is no other advertising medium that is more targeted than this one.
Those are just a few mistakes you can make that will cost you hundreds, even thousands of dollars. Here at Lancaster PA Marketing we are Adwords experts. We can get you up and running instantly and maintain your campaigns better than anyone else out there. If you are currently using Google Adwords, give us a call and we will analyze your campaigns for free and tell you how you can spend less money and get more results. If you are not using Adwords but think it might be a good advertising medium for you, give us a call and we will analyze your business model for free and tell you weather or not it may be a good idea to set up a campaign and do some testing.
If you are thinking about doing it yourself, DON”T. Instead take your money and take the family out for dinner and a movie. It will be more rewarding and a lot less expensive.
