Return on Intention

With the American economy ( and much of the worlds ) slowing down, advertisers are most likely going to look for alternative and hopefully cheaper ways of attracting customers. One possible method for doing so is through Pay-Per-Click search marketing.

In general, Pay-Per-Click advertising has been considered a cheaper, or at least more measurable means of advertising compared to traditional media. In many respects this is true; however, a fully integrated campaign utilizing multiple media channels always produces the best results. Given the slowing of the market, I expect that we will see companies move to more measurable means of advertising as a way to try and get the most bang for their buck. 

As more companies move into the Pay-Per-Click model and more keywords are receiving bids, it should be safe to say that the cost for bids will go up to get the same results that current advertisers do. This could have some big impacts on smaller fixed budget adervertisers, but there are some ways to combat the rising prices.

1. Make sure your site is coded to help your page score. Having good markup and well written copy will increase your page score with the large search engines. Page rankings play into the cost of your adwords showing up. If two companies bid approximately the same amount for a keyword, the one with the highest page rank will get the higher position.

2. Geo-Target your ads. By reducing the size of the market you could reduce the size of your competition. Geo target your campaigns so you can lower some of the areas bid prices and save some money.

3. Bid on more specific phrases and words. If you are bidding on keywords for computer repair, it might make more sense to split your campaign into “MAC computer repair” and “PC computer repair”. The more specific your words and phrases, the less competition you will have for those words and phrases so you can bid lower.

Remember to keep and eye on your analytics, and if you don’t have any analytics installed on your site, whether you are advertising online or not, contact me immediately.  Watch closely how your ads are performing and pull what ever isn’t working and throw the money into what is.