As we near year’s end, this is a good opportunity to highlight some mistakes I see all the time when it comes to search advertising. Avoid these top three mistakes and you’ll have better results in 2012. This list goes in reverse order with the biggest offender appearing last.
Search advertising mistake #3 – Shooting for spot one page one
If you do any research at all, you will find that the top spots on a search engine results page (SERP) always receive the most amount of clicks. The very top spot gets almost 40% of all clicks. So that should be a goal of every advertiser, right? Wrong. With everyone competing for that top spot the cost per click is often way out of line with the expected return. I’ve seen some number one spots go for as high as $27 a click. That’s ridiculous, especially when you consider that even a good conversion rate is only around 5%. So let’s say that you spend $2,500 for 100 clicks to your website, if you’re doing everything right then 5 of those clicks will turn into customers. If you can’t make more than $2,500 from those five customers, then you just lost money.
In the same scenario above, if you’re smart about how you bid, you could easily take the number three position or the number one position on the side for a fraction of the cost of that top spot. So instead of $25 a click you might get away with just $5 a click. You’ll still get your 100 clicks. It might take a little longer, but you’ll spend a lot less.
Search advertising mistake #2 – Placing adds everywhere on every device
First time search advertisers make this mistake all the time. They spend a few days researching search advertising and before you know it they think they’re experts. So as they set up their campaigns they click every conceivable device and network. Search network – check. Display network – check. Youtube – check. Handheld devices – check. Let’s just throw our ads out there and see what sticks.
There are a number of problems with this approach. The most glaring problem with an ad frenzy approach is that search advertising is effective only as it compares to relevance. If I’m looking for a dog groomer, that’s when I want to see an ad for dog groomers. If I’m listening to Pandora on my mobile phone, I could care less about seeing a dog groomer ad. In fact, in my rush to delete the offending ad I sometimes accidentally click on the ad. Sorry about that.
Youtube is an excellent place to advertise, but if you don’t take control of where your ads appear, your ads are likely to appear almost anywhere, and more than likely it will be next to totally irrelevant content. Same is true with mobile devices. Same is true with social medial.
Search advertising mistake # 1 – Running on autopilot
This is without a doubt the biggest single mistake you can make with a search advertising campaign. And it happens all the time. Business owners are smart people. They figure they can figure this search advertising thing out themselves. So they spend some time educating themselves and they get their campaign up and running. Then they have no clue what’s going on after that. They don’t review the numerous reports available either because they don’t have the time or they don’t understand them. They don’t have any analytics installed so they don’t know what kind of traffic they’re generating. All they see is money going out the door.
The truth is that if you actively manage your campaign you will see better results. You will definitely avoid mistakes one and two. Managing a campaign takes time and effort. If you’re advertising on the display network, someone has to go through and check what sites your ads are appearing on. There’s no way around it. If you don’t know which sites to exclude, then you can be throwing hundreds if not thousands of dollars away.
So this all leads me once again for the need to have a professional setup and manage your campaign. Will it cost more? Yes. Will you save money in the long run? Yes. If after six to twelve months you have a better grasp on how things work, and you think you can handle your campaign going forward, then go that route. You can always go back to the professional when you have questions or need something specific.
This is going to be my last post for a while as I return to the cockpit and put this company on hold for a few months.
Today I am officially announcing the death of the HTML website. In its place will be websites developed using content management systems like WordPress. The HTML website has been the driving force on the web since the Internet’s inception. But they are simply impractical and too limiting for today’s multi-device users.
There’s no question that QR codes lack visual appeal. They’re uglier than regular bar codes. And all attempts I’ve seen to make them more graphically appealing have met with mixed results. Some require that you download a specific reader. Some require several attempts to get to work. And some won’t work regardless of how many pictures you snap.
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