Three Ways To Improve Your Pay Per Click Ads

Pay per click are the evil you can't live without to many business owners.  Using SEO techniques to make it to page one can be very costly, and the more your competition spends, the more you have to spend to keep up.  Let's face it, only three listings make it to page one, and only one is number one no matter what those emails promise you for $150 a month.

Pay Per click ads are the fastest and easiest way to reach potential new customers and stay in front of existing customers, so why do so many business owner hate pay per click ads?  The reality is very simple.  Most of the time the pay per click or PPC campaigns are so generic that when people "click" they don't connect.  The simple fact of marketing is "no connection, no sale."  It doesn't matter if your ads run on Google, Bing, Yahoo, Facebook or Beach Street News.

So how do you fix it?  There are three main areas I look at for clients and you should look at for your own ads.

The first is the primary theme of your business.  What is your "unique selling proposition" or USP?  If you can't define it, then why would your customers come to you instead of your competitor.  If you answer is price, I have to pull a Dr. Phil and ask "How is that working for you?"

Your business solves a problem, and you need to do it in a way that no one else does.  If you don't, pay per click won't get you more long term business.  In fact it might not get you any business.  Your USP is what you will use for your headline to attract new clients and remind old ones who you are and why they should do business with you.

The second area we look at is your customers.  What is it that they connect with when they choose your business over the competition?   When you figure this out, you have some keywords to use with your PPC campaign.

Finally, the connection between you and your customers.  When someone clicks your ad because the headline attracted their attention, and the keywords that displayed the ad is something they were seeking, they still need to see something that resonates with them.  The place your ad forwards them to is called a "landing page".  Where they land is just as important as the keywords they used, and the headline you hooked them with.

Their keyword choices and your USP need to bring them to a page on your website or an ad page that says to them.  "These are my guys".

If you can't do that, your PPC campaign is a waste of money.

When you line up these three areas, your PPC ads target the right customers, and the "landing page" gets them to call or come in, and isn't that the real goal of a PPC campaign?

What Does Hummingbird Really Mean To You?

Google is always making changes.  So are Yahoo, Bing and every other search engine out there.  These days the growth of the internet has spawned social and local search engines as well.

The big three don't want to lose market share so they have jumped on the local bandwagon too.

So what does that mean for your business.  Essentially the world of B2C has been divided into three main categories.  Local, National and Virtual.

So which are you? And what do you do to reach more potential new clients and keep connected with your existing clients?

Keeping connected with your existing clients means connecting with them in the way they want to be connected with.  As hard as I have tried to automate my business, our clients still want phone calls and personal visits.  E-mail newsletters do ok, but don't get referrals or upgrades done.

Getting new clients however is an open game with no rules.  You can go after clients in any number of ways, the big question is which methods to use?

Trying more than two or three methods at once will spread any small to medium business way to thin.   If you are in marketing at GM or Coke, this is the wrong blog, sorry.

If your business is local, the one method I am taking to all of my clients right now is referral management.  This is a two part method.  First you need to contact ALL of your existing clients and find out if they would be willing to sign a positive referral for you.  Some businesses even let customers sign in to Yelp! or Foursquare using an iPad at the door.

The idea here is to get as many referrals and reviews online as possible.  The reason is simple.  The big three want to know your business exists and that it is good.  Google doesn't want to send customers to a lousy Pizza place with flat beer and no parking when a great place is just two blocks over and has a great parking lot.  Yes, even online you must earn business.

For local businesses, part of the changes at Google reflect favorably on businesses with a real location and great reviews.  For a real estate agent that shares an office with 200 other agents, this can be a challenge.  For a "virtual" or home based business, even more of a challenge.  For a Pizza place at a great location serving great pies and cold beer, it could be the launchpad for a second location.

How are your reviews?

If your business has hit a wall and you are interested in getting it growing again, call The Bourquin Group for a free consultation.

Headlines Matter

Yes, headlines matter.  People are attracted to and will read a horrible story if it has a great headline.  The same is true for online marketing and Pay Per Click or PPC ads.

The headlines matter.  The reason to test ads on a regular basis and measure the outcome is to see what kind of headlines bring people to your business.  A great headline will get their interest, not just their attention.

While I don't like being held hostage by PPC ads, they are the best and most cost effective headline testing tool ever invented.  For under $100, you can find out if an ad works.  If you were to print $100 in postcards and mail them out, you would never know.

For our clients we use rotating ad campaigns and use the Jack Welch method.  The bottom performers are cut each month and new ads generated.  We are always measuring and testing.

Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Bing and Linked In all have simple interfaces where you can see how often an add is shown and how often it is clicked and then how long the person stays on the site.

We like to see numbers above .5%  Meaning for every 1000 views, 5 clicks happen.  Our best campaign to date topped 4% for over six months and had a 24% call rate.  At the same time it didn't yield enough high revenue customers for our client so we dropped the ad.

Advertising is about customer interest, increasing gross revenue, increasing profits and ideally increasing the profit ratio.  What good is it to work twice as hard to make half as much per customer?

Great headlines peak the interest - Good landing pages get the calls or buys - Good followup increases the profit.  If you measure two out of the three you might be wasting your time.

Should You Buy Followers?

To buy or not to buy followers? That was the question last night that became the topic of debate.  In a room full of people whose income depends on fans and followers, the question is do you buy or not buy followers.  Since several others have regular businesses, they too were interested.

When YouTube, Facebook and Twitter were first seen as legitimate marketing tools to stay connected to customers, big media bought in, and bought in big.  Within a very short period of time small overseas companies and automated systems created millions of profiles online so they could sell "fans", "likes" and followers to these eager buyers.

The theory was if a music video had a lot of fans right away others would not want to be left out and tell their friends to like it too.  In marketing this is using the "fear of loss" method.  Fear of loss can be triggered with things as simple as the appearance of losing cool points for not liking a popular band quick enough.  My niece is a case study in teenage markets.  

Today every business is trying to get that edge on the other business.  Sadly this is taking the focus away from what the celebrity or business owner should be looking at.  Simply put they are ignoring the customer to get customers.   If you buy followers it doesn't help.  

Many times when you see people who are concerned with "followers" and "friends" and "likes", you see someone with some other big insecurity.  Buying followers won't fix it, and if you are discovered, you might get called out on it.

At the end of the day, why do you even want "followers"?  Does buying them fill that insecurity?  For a twelve year old, it can be a competition simply to see who has the most fans or likes.  For adults, the last competition was won by Ashton Kutcher, and the game is over.  

You want followers to build your business and generate income.  Nothing more.  If you blog, you want more real followers to click on ads on your page to make you money.  Fake followers don't click.  If you are a writer, you want followers to buy your books, bought followers don't buy books.  

Do you see where I am going with this?  For SEO purposes some sites have a minimum number of connections before you can set your page name to something easy.  If you aren't spending a lot of money and time on Search Engine Optimization (that is what SEO stands for just in case you didn't know), then you don't need to ever buy followers unless you want to spend money to stroke your own ego.  Just a tad narcissistic don't you think?

My personal take is go deep, for the size of my business, a few hundred followers is just fine as long as the followers grow at a measly 10% per month or so.  

10% a month might not sound like a lot, but remember the million dollar question.  Would you rather have a million dollars today or one penny today that doubles daily for 30 days?  The answer unless inflation is 100% of course is the penny.  At the end of thirty days you will be far richer.

The same is true with followers.  If you know who your market is, and what value you give them, you know why they value you, and what you should be feeding them.

For kids taking that photobomb picture and getting 10,000 likes for the sake of likes might be cool.  For your new restaurant, if not one of those likes ever comes in to buy a meal, then it was 5 minutes of your life wasted posting "stuff".

Time is the one thing we can't get back, so know what your customers wants from you and give it to them, they will bring you followers and you won't have to buy them.

Do You Hate Twitter? Is Social Media Making You Crazy?

"I hate Twitter" or "I hate Facebook" are flying out of peoples mouths just about every day now.  I get it.  Trying to run a real business is hard enough without having to worry about being a pseudo celebrity in the social media world too.

Recently I started taking a "hosting" class which is geared for people who want to be a host on TV.  I don't know why my friend Blair thought I would be interested in the class but he was right.  I got hooked after the free seminar, bought in after the two day boot camp where we were told you have to be "invited" to the regular class.  When I got the invitation, I said yes and plopped down the credit card.  Looking back I should have seen it as great marketing, but as the saying goes, it is easy to sell a salesman.

The class has been fascinating for a whole range of reasons.  Tonight I sat next to Luke who said "I hate Twitter."  The guy from "The Schmoes Know" teaching the class simply told him to "just do it".  The irony being that the girl right in front of him worked at social media for Nike.

The truth is you can run a business today without any social media.  It is also true that social media can be a huge multiplier when it comes to growing your business.  The decision is up to you.  When you realize the power of social media, you will understand why companies like Nike have a "department" not just a person for this.

Of course most small businesses can't afford a "department" or even a "person" and that is why the Bourquin Group exists.  Even as low priced as we are many small businesses can't afford the service and are forced to do the job themselves.

For those businesses, I wrote a book, "The Easy Guide To Internet Marketing".  You'll notice there isn't a link.  That is because I am working on an update to be released in the next couple of months, but here are some highlights for you for now.

1. Be consistent.  Stephen Covey gave us the seven habits and then came back with the eight which he said was to "find your voice".  When you do, your website and social media will all be coming from that voice.  You will become consistent automatically.  In some ways you need a voice that is like a robot. Your decisions should be grounded in some very solid beliefs and opinions so your voice doesn't waiver.  Our world is in a state of constant change.  What your customers want is a constant they can depend on without change.  Your "voice" is that representation of you that your customers seek out as a constant.

2. Make it easy.  You really only need to post once every other week.  I'll admit right now that I don't type anymore.  A $10 lapel microphone on eBay and Apple dictation works really good and cuts my posting times by at least half.

3. Repurpose.  One of the great tricks of online marketers is to create an event and repurpose it.  For example, I could do a live event and charge $400 per person. I could record it and sell the DVD for $100, then I could post it on my website and sell access with an update bonus for $50, then I can cut out a few three minute long gems and post them on my website, YouTube and Facebook.  Finally I could tweet out that I did that so my twitter fans would hopefully visit my site, like the three minute freebie and buy the $50 access.

Don't worry, all of this and more will be in the second version of "The Easy Guide To Internet Marketing.". For now start working on your voice.  Who are you to your customer?

Do You Change Cell Carriers Every Two Years?

While not direct marketing advice, here is the letter I sent out today.

January 4, 2014

Terry Stenzel

AT&T Wireless

PO BOX 3597
San Ramon, CA 94583-8597

Dear Mr. Stenzel,

I recently received your computer generated letter and got a good laugh.  After spending years in the tech industry including contracting to Apple, AirTouch (Now Vopadhone-Verizon) and Stanford, your letter was so far off base I couldn’t ignore it.

Your letter closes with “I am glad you’ve chosen AT&T”, and I received it 54 days after I switched to Verizon. 

The third paragraph has “best value in wireless” highlighted, with your convoluted plans how would anyone really know.  $40 unlimited sounds like a pretty good value to me, and an easy plan to understand.

No one ever once called or asked why I left, or what it would take to switch back.  

When a customer switches carriers away from AT&T, you know.  You also know they have a 15 day or 30 day trial period.  Day 13, 14 and 15 are the key days to recover the client.  Breaking my contract now would cost over $700.  

Day 13, a femto cell for my house would have had me switch back even though AT&T was $35 a month more.  I really doesn’t matter what JD Power says about your customer service, if your marketing doesn’t understand your customer cycles and people churn away.

If I were running AT&T Wireless, I would have a very different mission than the one you are on.  My mission statement for AT&T would be “Make it easy.” 

Sincerely yours,

Scott Bourquin

How Do You Bill Your Customers? Is There A Better Way?

Do you have trouble when you bill your customers around the holidays?  Do all of your clients pay on time?  Does holiday collections make you stressed?

As a business owner that services other businesses, we never pick up new customers around the holidays, and have stopped marketing all together during that time.  The owners are either too busy, or on vacation depending on what kind of business they have.

You would think after 20 years of owning my own business, I would be used to this and the lack of income wouldn't bother me.

This year I didn’t even go over my gift budget, so I should be feeling better.  If I didn’t spend all of the money I planned to spend on gifts why would I be stressed about money.  The simple answer is “annual bills”, and a 40 foot palm tree that snapped and landed on my neighbors roof.  That was a dozen or so Benjamin's I didn't plan on spending this week.

This time of year, many major organizations send out invoices, I have an entire list.  For example, as an investor I have a Real Estate License simply because the good and experienced realtors don't have the time to dig for the deals I want and the new ones don't have the experience to get it done.   Every week for the last three weeks, I have been sent a gentle reminder that I owe my Realtor "board dues", local association dues, computer access dues, Supra Key dues and oh by the way, they would like another $80 for the political action fund.  

Note to the National Association of Realtors.  You might save a ton of money on the reminders if you didn’t have January 1st as your due date and made it more sensible like June 1st. Why?  April 1st, everyone is worried about taxes, that is out, May they are booking vacations, that is out, October, the holiday plans start, November and December the holiday spending begins.

The Realtor associations aren’t the only ones.  Every group I belong to wants money on January 1st.  It feels like the day after Christmas I have to clean out my accounts and send checks to everyone at once, never mind every charity I ever donated too has also sent a request for money.   In fact, I am going to write more checks this week then I wrote the rest of the year because I won’t let any of these groups “auto bill”.  

The one that got it right was the Vail Corp.  In order to get the best guaranteed price on Ski Passes, I am on auto renewal with them.  They took the deposit in June, good, and then charged me for the rest in late October, pretty good. By the time the slopes opened, my annual pass was paid for and I wasn’t having to stand in a long line to pay nearly twice as much for my new pass.

I think at our board meeting we are going to try and figure out how to change our customers plans so that January 1st, there isn’t an invoice, Maybe even May 1st to let them recover from their tax bill.  

What do you think.  Would you rather get billed 10% more each month and not have an invoice in December that is due January 1st?