Pay Per Click – Page 11 – Chris Schweppe | (877) 638-0827

Call-Only Campaigns Will Soon Lose Their Value

August 23, 2015

Call-Only Campaigns Will Soon Lose Their Value

The idea of call-only campaigns is wonderful. Only paying when someone pushes on the call button on their cell that causes the phone to start dialing your number.

But the value will soon (and for a lot of industries has already) started to drop drastically.

If you’re familiar with pay per click advertising aka Google Adwords and Bing Ads, you’ll know the biggest factor in cost per click is what the competition is willing to bid per click.

Sadly, it’s inevitable that the cost per call in call-only campaigns skyrockets.

The reason will be because it’s pretty easy to execute.

Marketers that lack experience or don’t know what they’re doing will much rather pay for calls than clicks. So will small business owners that try and do pay per click advertising themselves.

Way easier to get calls from a call-only campaign to pay for clicks to a website.

Therefore, the future of search engine advertising is still with the website clicks.

Why? Because all the competition is going to be going to the call-only campaign route. Meaning the cost per call will go up and up.

And with the competition of website clicks going down, the price per website click will go down as well.

Ironically, old school website clicks will have the highest upside.

August 23, 2015

Google Wants More Of Your Money

Make no mistake about it. Google is in the business of making money.

There have been 2 developments lately that show they’re getting more aggressive to do that.

For years and years, Google would display 7 businesses on it’s front page when someone was looking for local services or products.

But now, Google has shrunk the real estate from 7 businesses to 3. They’ve done this for all local searches.

Also, I’ve been noticing more and more national directories popping up in the regular organic section instead of local small businesses.

For instance, if I do a search for “wedding limousine service sherman oaks”, the following is what I get

-3 businesses from Google maps

-Yelp listing

-limos.com (big national limousine directory)

-limos.com

-weddingwire.com (big national wedding directory)

-local business

Why is Google doing this? It’s really simple. Google doesn’t want local small businesses to get their phone calls and sales leads for free. Google wants small businesses to pay for advertising.

I predict that Google will continue to be more and more purposeful about decreasing real estate and making it more difficult to rank organically through search engine optimization.

July 26, 2015

Coming Soon: SEO for Apps

For the last 10 years, the most important job for internet marketing companies working with local small businesses has been getting them real estate on the search engines so they can get calls.

But I predict that in the next few years, as more small businesses develop apps, that search engine optimization in iTunes and Google Play where apps are discovered and found will be crucial.

Especially for limo companies and taxi companies trying to compete with Uber.

If someone is looking for a “town car service” app on their phone, it’d be valuable to get your company’s app listed next to Uber’s.

Is Your Website Slow To Load? Google Could Soon Punish You

July 26, 2015

Is Your Website Slow To Load? Google Could Soon Punish You

*This is only, currently for people accessing the internet with cell phones and other mobile devices.

Google is now testing putting a “slow to load” icon next to websites that will be slow to load on cell phones.

Obviously this would be bad for companies with slow websites, but you should be redesigning your websites so they’re responsive or mobile friendly anyway.

Over half of all people now access the internet from mobile devices. So really, it should be a no-brainer to make sure you have some sort of mobile website.

But now, if you don’t conform, Google is going to punish you for it.

“Custom Audiences” Could Be The Next Big Thing

June 21, 2015

“Custom Audiences” Could Be The Next Big Thing

What is a “custom audience”? It’s advertising to people who are already familiar to you.

In other words, a custom audience is made up of a list of email addresses, or phone numbers, or physical addresses, etc.

Facebook first tested a custom audience product back in 2013. Recently, it’s been opened to the general public.

The way the Facebook custom audience advertising works is you give Facebook a list of your contacts, and then instead of advertising banner ads to random people on Facebook, your banner ads will instead be advertised only to people on your contact list.

Currently Google and Bing are experimenting on a similar product where your search engine ad is only seen by people on your contact list.

So obviously a lot of people in the marketing industry are excited by this.

It’s no secret that one of the reasons email marketing can be the most effective marketing technique in 2015 is because advertising is always more effective when your audience knows who you are.

For those thinking that you don’t want to stalk your customers by doing email marketing with them, advertising to them on Google, Facebook and everywhere, there’s a way to tone down the stalking ; )

With almost every custom audience product, there is something called a “cap frequency” that limits how many times a day each person sees your ad. So you can limit each place you advertise to people only seeing your ad once a day to blend in with the other ads.

Collecting and organizing customers contact info has never been more important!

Promoting Coupons Could Be A Difference Maker

October 26, 2014

Promoting Coupons Could Be A Difference Maker

After digging through lots of data and consumer studies I think I’m starting to see an opportunity for clients to help them make more money.

One of those studies recently put out by research firm Forrester shows that 68% of consumers say coupons make it more likely someone becomes a first time customer and is likely to become a repeat customer.

It’s no secret in this economy, people love deals.

As a business, no one likes to give anything away for free decreasing the profit margin.

But if you need a ride to the airport. And you have no clue who to call. You go on Google and see a whole bunch of companies you’ve never heard of before. Then you see one of the companies has a special deal going on.

I’m convinced doing something like this will not only make the business stand out in a crowded search engine, but also make it more likely the customer comes back and does business with you again.

This area of promoting deals on ads in Google and on websites I think is one of the biggest opportunities for businesses to make more money off their advertising dollars.

Small Businesses Not Branding Themselves Are Missing Out

October 26, 2014

Small Businesses Not Branding Themselves Are Missing Out

It’s much easier to land new customers when they already know who you are.

Why do referrals work so well? Because people know who you are.

Customwave is much more likely to land a new client when the client is already familiar with our name and who we are.

Statistically speaking, when you’re advertising on Google and people have never heard of your company’s name, you’re going to get less new customers per click.

People literally ask me all the time, “What can we do to get more customers”?

The answer is building awareness for your brand. It’ll make ALL of your advertising and marketing more effective.

I know it’s a dull, boring, takes-forever answer. But it’s also the most effective.

Breaking News: People Do Not Like Being Tricked!

September 4, 2014

Breaking News: People Do Not Like Being Tricked!

Contently has done a study asking if people prefer traditional “banner ads” versus the trendy “native ads”.

For those that don’t know the industry terminology, “banner ads” are regular website advertisements. It’s a square or rectangle that’s clearly an ad.

“Native ads” are advertisements that are supposed to be similar to content on the page to trick more people to click on the ads ….errrrr…. i mean more people will click on the ads because people will be more interested in ads close to the content they’re already looking at on the page haha.

Yeah, survey says no. The study I mean, it says people don’t like clicking on ads they think are a part of the website only to find out they’ve been tricked and it’s an ad.

Study also shows that when people realized they’ve been tricked, they have less trust in the brand advertising. Yikes. Companies paying for people getting a bad impression of them.

Sorry marketers. The native ads were a cute idea, but it seems they do more harm than good. Back to the drawing board.

Google Links To Apps Instead Of Websites On Android For Musicians. Will This Happen For Other Industries?

July 6, 2014

Google Links To Apps Instead Of Websites On Android For Musicians. Will This Happen For Other Industries?

Google’s latest tinkering of their ecosystem is particularly noteworthy.

Recent studies have shown that close to 90% of people access the internet on their cell phones with apps rather than actual browsers. So like, if someone wanted to go to Google.com, they’re more likely to just tap on the Google app than open up their browser and go to google.com.

That being said, Google is experimenting on when someone searches for a musician like Katy Perry. So when someone searches Katy Perry, instead of getting a list of websites with content of Katy Perry, the user gets a list of apps with content of Katy Perry.

In theory, you could say that getting a list of apps is a better UX (user experience) than getting a list of websites.

So, will Google expand this experiment?

What happens if someone looking for airport transportation in Los Angeles gets a list of apps instead of a list of websites?

Does your small business have an app for your company? Are you ready for this??

In other words, if Google does expand this to other verticals, other industries, those businesses that have apps where most of the industry doesn’t, will benefit greatly.