Pay Per Click – Page 15 – Chris Schweppe | (877) 638-0827

Does Display Advertising Work For Small Businesses?

Display advertising is very different than advertising on a search engine like Google.

All the big websites like espn.com or foxnews.com have display advertising or picture ads on the website.

For right now, I don’t believe display advertising works for small businesses. And on the whole, display advertising should be a lot more effective right now than it is.

Why is it not better?

Publishers (or people who create the websites and try and make money off the clicks) will set up the ads on the website to increase the likelihood of clicks as much as possible. Why? Because the more clicks that happen, the more money they make. But the problem is that the vast majority of people that click on these ads do so by accident.

Like, you’re on a website, the arrow of your mouse goes over an ad and you try and click something but before you know it, the ad expands and you accidently click on an ad. This especially happens on cell phones just by inaccurate touch screens.

So because of this, advertisers (the people who are paying for clicks and trying to generate sales leads or some other action) will pay for lots of clicks but get no results they’re hoping for. Because of this, they don’t make money off the advertising.

Bigger companies can absorb these losses and still be happy because their brand is still advertised and shown. But for small businesses that can’t afford to spend money and not make anything back, it’s very bad.

Display advertising will truly hit the big time once publishers stop taking short cuts and not collect accidental clicks. They need to not trick people in clicking on the ads. Just let whoever is interested click on the ads. Then the advertisers will make money and want to increase their click budget with the publishers. Once this starts happening, display advertising will become a very viable marketing option for small businesses. Until then, don’t waster your money.

People Who Say They Can Get You On The 1st Page Of Google Guaranteed With SEO Are Lying

Search Engine Optimization is The New Pyramid Scheme.

I am so sick and tired of search engine optimization. Mostly because I’m sick of clients coming to me saying that someone solicited their business and told them all these wonderful tales that if they do x, y, and z, they’ll be on the first page of Google for sure without having to pay for any of the clicks. Below is an email that a client sent to me this afternoon:

———————————————

Hi,

My name is Deborah and I am an Online Marketing Representative.

The reason for my email is I have come across your site and decided to run an analysis on your competition and your current search rankings. I also tried to look for your business on various social media sites and really couldn’t find much else about you.

Over the last 12 months GOOGLE has placed so much importance on Content Creation & Social Media Performance that if your business isn’t creating valuable content or even visible across social media platforms you have basically no chance of being seen on any search engine for keywords your customers are using to find businesses like you.

With a solid plan and strategy I honestly believe I can help get your website ranking higher on GOOGLE and getting customers to interact with your business on Social Media to really build your brand.

Can I call you and run some ideas I have to help your business grow?

———————————————–

Let Me break this down:

There is no such thing as a blueprint to have success in search engine optimization. If you apply the same practuces to 10 websites, you will have at least half of them fail to get on the 1st page. At least. Probably more than half will fail. Deborah is making guesses and selling them as a guaranteed result.

Google makes sure that there’s no one size fits all approach to getting any one website on the 1st page. Google is in the business of making money and they make ranking on the 1st page difficult because they want you to pay for website visitors. They don’t want you to get all these clicks for free.

Small businesses don’t need their brand built by social media. They need new customers and increased sales. Period. Next.

All this search engine gobbledygook to small businesses is a pure waste of time. It’s been proven over and over by companies like mine at Customwave and others, that the best approach is to pay Google to be on the 1st page. Then skip over this whole giant “getting on the 1st page of Google without paying for clicks” mess.

You skip that whole entire thing and move onto more important steps like, are the website visitors converting into phone calls and sales leads. Are the phone calls equaling new customers? Do I need to target different keywords to get better quality sales leads? Those are the things a small business needs to concentrate on.

But someone like Deborah won’t talk about making sure that the website traffic or “social media” presence turns into phone calls. Or if the phone calls will equal new customers. She only talks about getting you on Google. Why? Because I bet most of the time, she never gets to the phone call part. Probably because she can’t even deliver on getting someone on the 1st page of Google.

And if you’ve already seen my client on the 1st page of Google, than I have obviously already done something that you can only claim you can do.

I’m so sick of people like Deborah because they get my client’s hopes up and then waste my time because I have to bring the client back to reality and inform them that people like Deborah are a fraud and scam.

I wish these people would just go away back to the pyramid scheme they came from.

NY Times Gets Innovative With Their Online Advertising

The New York Times recently has come out with a new platform for it’s online advertisers that has a few people buzzing. The way it works, is that if a story from it’s website is trending on Twitter, that’s where your ad would pop up. Only on trending stories.

The problem though is that display advertising is display advertising is display advertising. Whether it’s on Facebook, nytimes.com, or joesrandomthoughts.com. If a company generates 100 clicks from a story that’s trending on Twitter, those 100 clicks are not going to have any more value than 100 clicks from any other website.

If people purposefully went to the nytimes.com to look for something locally like people do on Google, that’d be different. Then those clicks would be worth a little more. But with display advertising, they’re spontaneous clicks. People clicking and looking at some company’s website they weren’t planning on looking. The ad made them curious and on the spur of the moment, they clicked. It doesn’t really matter what website they did the clicking on.

If I were the New York Times, I’d focus on figuring out ways to increase online website traffic as much as possible. Because more website visitors will drive the cost of the clicks down. If they can lower the cost of the click to below what the competition charges, now then there’s something valuable they can offer advertisers that other publishers can’t.

With display advertising, it’s all about the cost of the clicks and making sure those clicks are taking place in a relevant geo-targeted area. That’s it.

Dish Network Chairman Admits “Cord Cutting” Is Real

Ask yourself this question: How many channels are there on my TV that i never watch? Probably lots. Probably hundreds. And guess what? You’re paying for all those channels you never watch in your dish or cable bundle.

For those new to the conversation, “cord cutting” is the term industry wonks like me have put on the process of consumers canceling their dish TV or cable TV and watching their TV content off the internet.

And it will happen once the majority of Americans learn to connect their TV to the internet and companies start offering channels “a la carte”. Pay only for the channels you want to watch.

So cord cutting would obviously be a big deal to dish and cable companies putting their business models in real peril similar to the record music industry. All of the heavy hitters in the industry thus far have been defiant saying cord cutting is exaggerated and won’t happen. People are set in their ways. They’re used to paying for TV and paying for a whole bunch of channels they never watch. Right. Just like people were used to paying for music CD’s. Just like people were used to paying for newspapers.

Then out of nowhere Chairman and CEO Charlie Ergen of Dish Network has broken from the rest of the dish and cable industry in finally admitting that “cord cutting” is real. Interesting. Why all of a sudden publicly admit what you have previously denied?

My guess is that he realizes that if his company continues to bury it’s head in the sand, they’ll go extinct. The dish companies and cable companies need to reinvent themselves.

Video Ads On Facebook The Solution For Advertisers?

The short answer: Nope. All Facebook is doing here is putting lipstick on a pig.

I’ve said this many times. Facebook’s problem is that it’s website is not a destination for where people go when they’re looking for things. Google is one of them. Even yellowpages.com is one of them.

Facebook’s main problem is that the clicks cost way too much money. People advertise on Facebook paying for the clicks because they’re told they need to. That Facebook is the next big thing. But the clicks to calls conversion is too low for advertisers to make money.

In reality, Facebook is no different than any other display advertising network that charges $0.05 for a click when Facebook charges $1.00. Google can get away with charging $2.00 to as high as $10.00 a click because the clicks to calls conversion rate is way higher. Why? Because people purposefully go to Google to get something done. People click on the Facebook ads out of happenstance.

Now Facebook wants to bring video in the mix thinking that this may be the next big thing, but the same problem remains. People will watch the video and may click the ad out of curiousity, but it doesn’t mean they have a need for what the advertiser is selling.

If you’re a small business, don’t give your money to Facebook. Please. Let the bigger companies figure out how to use Facebook to increase sales. You might as well flush your money down the toilet! At least using the toilet won’t waste your time like Facebook will.

Chris Schweppe
February 7, 2013
1 Comment
Email Marketing, Pay Per Click, Reputation Management, SEO, Shopping Carts, Social Media Marketing

I wanted to make a quick summary on what internet marketing techniques are perfect to invest in right now. Which ones are too experimental and would be better to invest in the future. And which marketing techniques you’ve missed the boat on and you’re too late.

It’s Too Late

-SEO: People had gangbuster success with SEO in the 2000’s. If you got in early, you not only got loads of free website traffic that generated sales leads, but you also got very valuable real estate on the 1st page of Google. In 2013, the people that are currently on the 1st page of Google usually don’t go anywhere. So if you want to crack the 1st page for keywords that are very competitive, maybe after a lot of hard work, maybe you can reach the 1st page after a year or so. Maybe. No guarantees. To spend a bunch of money in SEO these days with the hope of getting 2005-like results is like spending money on going to California because you think the gold rush is still going on.

-Shopping Carts: For small businesses that have shopping carts, they live and die off organic, seo traffic. They can’t afford to pay what large companies pay per click because the large company will almost always have a higher conversion rate. Why? It will take a large company less clicks to produce a sale on average because consumers are already familiar and will be more likely to trust the big company than some small company they’ve never heard of before. And because brand new SEO campaigns are almost impossible to be successful, the ship has sailed on shopping carts. The only exception would be if you’ve found a niche market and there’s no competition. Then the possibility for seo success and shopping cart success is out there.

Maybe Later

-Social Media: The past 5 years have shown that Facebook doesn’t drive up referral and word of mouth business. People just don’t do it. They use Facebook and other social media sites to socialize. Paying for clicks on Facebook is no different than any other form of display advertising, it’s just more expensive. If you’re a small business, you’re way better off letting someone else figure out the social media puzzle.

-Display Advertising: It’s on the rise and looks more appealing, but affiliate networks like Google need to do a better job localizing and properly segmenting the traffic. The conversion rates from clicks to sales leads is still ridiculously low because the location net is too wide and the segmenting isn’t specific enough. But I think Google will eventually get to where they need to be and that display will be a viable form of internet marketing by maybe 2015.

Internet Radio Advertising: I almost put this in the do it now category, but here at Customwave, we’re probably going to wait another year before completely jumping in and recommending it to clients. Too experimental right now, but it definitely has a future. I wrote a separate blog on it here.

Do It Now

-Pay Per Click: This is our bread and butter at Customwave. If you know what you’re doing, it works like gangbusters! You should have to know how to make sure the clicks you’re paying for convert into calls.

-Reputation Management: Lots of demand, not enough competent supply. Business owners are starting to pick up on the importance of their reputation online and it’s very do-able to help people with it.

-Email Marketing: An old school approach that still works as long as the people that are receiving your emails are familiar with you and interested in what you’re selling.

Internet Marketing Grows 15.9% In Q4 2010 Compared To Q4 2009

Just wanted to pass along these numbers not to brag that our industry is doing OK during the recession. It’s informative because in this economy, if people are increasing their internet marketing budgets, it means they’re getting value out of it. I really believe that we’ve only scratched the surface of what the internet can do marketing wise. It’s easy to forget that websites really became mainstream back in 1995 and marketers have been trying to figure out best practices since.

The yellow pages wasn’t created overnight after the telephone was invented. The best of internet marketing is probably still a ways away.