Pay per click campaigns

Advertising your services or products on the Internet is both extremely effective and extremely competitive.

There are several ways to go about attracting traffic to your website. Pay-Per-Click is one of the options you can choose from, along with developing an SEO, or search engine optimization campaign.

Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. One of the differences is that it takes minutes to get results from a pay-per-click campaign Pay-Per-Click is a simple type of paid advertising that most search engines, offer. It requires a bid for a "click"; i.e. you pay the bid amount every time the search engine directs a visitor to your site when the visitor clicks on your advert.As with all marketing campaigns, there are advantages and disadvantages. If you understand the process and monitor your pay-per-click campaign frequently, it can be very effective. One of the greatest advantages is that you never have to tweak your web pages to change your position in search engine results, as you must do in a typical SEO campaign.

Another advantage is the simplicity of the pay-per-click process. You just bid and you're up and running. It doesn't demand any specific technical knowledge, though the more you know about search engines and keywords, the better the results will be.The downside is that pay-per-click is essentially a bidding war. A higher bid than yours will lower your position in the paid listings. This means that you will have to raise your bid to regain your position - which can obviously become quite expensive, especially if you are bidding on a popular keyword.In order to determine if pay-per-click is a cost effective form of marketing for your business, you must work out how much each visitor to your site is worth. You can do this, simplistically, by dividing the profit you make on your website by the total number of visitors over a given period of time.

For example, if your site made £5,000 in profits and there were 10,000 unique visitors, each visitor would be, theoretically, worth 50p.The figure of 50p per visitor is the point at which your business breaks even. The idea, of course, is to show a profit, not to merely cover your costs. Therefore, you are aiming at a figure less than 50p per click.However, the most popular keywords often cost considerably more than 50p a click. The only way around this is to bid less for these phrases or you will be paying too much for each individual visitor.

The key to success is to learn everything you can about search engine keywords. There is no limit to the number of keywords and phrases you can use and some cost very little for good levels of traffic.Of the popular search engines that offer pay-per-click, Yahoo's Overture provides an online tool that will give data on how often particular keywords are entered into their search engine. Google offers synonym suggestions for keywords.In pay-per-click, your advert is crucial.

The objective is not to just attract visitors, but specific visitors who are likely to buy your service or product. You must write the adverts in very few words - - typically a couple of hundred characters - so to guarantee that your description is both precise and enticing to attract the most ideal candidates to your site you must be a good copywriter.Another essential element of pay-per-click advertising is that you constantly monitor your bid.

It is very important that you bear in mind that the results of the top search engines providing pay-per-click advertising, which are Yahoo Overture and Google Adwords, usually appear on other popular search engines. Because of this, the competition for top ranking is intense, and very often you will find that the bidding price balloons too high for pay-per-click to yield a profit.If this happens, it is advisable to withdraw your bid on that particular keyword and try another one.

Remember: when you pay too much per click to make a profit, you are in essence losing the bidding war, so you must have a plan in place to closely track the effectiveness of your keywords. It is advisable to monitor your keywords on at least a weekly basis. Not only is careful monitoring important, but analysis of visitor behaviour can produce invaluable knowledge about customer motivation, habits, and trends and how to make your website more effective.

SELECTING A CRM SOLUTION

There are many ways to make a bad CRM technology decision, but only a few ways to make a good one. Sales pitches and slick product packaging can persuade people to buy a software product but falling for vendor hype isn't the only way to mess up CRM technology selection.

Some other real situations are:

• "The M.D. plays golf with the software company's Sales Director."

• "Our main competitor uses it."

• "The guy who’s in charge of CRM here worked used it at his last company.”

• "They told us the whole thing could be done in three months."

• "We already had their database product'"

These reasons range from understandable to dangerous.

But are they as dangerous as an individual manager, who decides to go it alone, allowing a CRM software tool or a specific functional goal to define the CRM deliverable. The risks are far more serious than the rewards.

They include:

• Money being spent on low-priority capabilities.

• Subjective interpretation creating rework and wasting resources.

• Lack of integration with other technologies.

Most companies haven't worked what they need from CRM, how it will impact their business processes or what organizational changes it will create. Requirements-driven CRM establishes structured requirements to dictate your technology decision. Yes, it takes longer than “knee-jerk development” but that is so much riskier. While requirements-driven technology selection is definitely a CRM best practice, the way to go about it differs depending on the type of CRM you're planning to do. After all, simply deploying sales force automation to your salespeople may be all you presently require.

However, having a vision for everything you will need in your eventual CRM functionality is also important. Have a CRM strategy, and you'll know likely times, costs, impacts, benefits etc.

But simply having a list of business requirements is not enough information to begin evaluating CRM technologies. Business requirements must drive a series of functional requirements. The difference between the two is that while a business requirement describes the customer-focused "need, pain, or problem" that CRM must solve, a functional requirement describes how to solve it.

Once the functionality is clear and documented, you can map a list of your candidate CRM products to each specific function, making CRM selection a breeze.

ARE YOU “THEY”?

Customer Relationship Management - putting customers at the centre of the organisation.How does your organization plan its CRM?

Does it get some senior people together to play golf one day?

Or is it just the owner with a best mate ‘down the pub’?

Do "they" then come back with “strategies” based on customers behaving precisely as "they" believe customers should to meet cash flow and profit needs?

And how have "they" formulated these "strategies”? PowerPoint, Excel or alcohol as the planning tools, with the brain in neutral?

Loyalty.

Let's face it, if you're a manager worth your salt, you know the truth: customers just get in the way!

Customers want service offered at their convenience; customers always want discounts, notice every single price change, want you to remember their name and to deal with the same person every time. What a cheek! If only those customers would just pay and be done with it!

Top 10 signs that "they" don't understand CRM

1. "They" say "customers come first" publicly but privately call them a "pain in the backside."

2. "They" hardly ever visit the factory, shop floor or customer service centre.

3. "They" don't think that customer satisfaction needs to be researched / measured.

4. "They" call customers "units" and talk about churn rather than customer retention.

5. "They" are happy that the factory, shop or office are only open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.

6. "They" see nothing wrong with mailings asking customers to reply with their name and address.

7. "They" can't name your 10 most valuable customers.

8. "They" say "customer-first" but staff are judged on “most throughput / productivity”.

9. "They" run an advertising campaign without knowing if the company can deliver what's promised.

10. "They" equate success with the size of their office is or what model of car "they" drive.

So how should "they" go about getting more new customers that stay longer?

• Focus on understanding customer's problems, needs and preferences and how to meet them, not on advertising or 'marketing' to pull in more customers than you lose.

• Listen to what customers are saying.

• Then identify everything that can be done to solve customer problems, create customer convenience, cut customer costs and add value for customers.

• Then evaluate the business potential of each opportunity and prioritise.

• Only now set quantitative goals and allow them to emerge naturally from the process.

• Don’t think that price is the other “answer to everything”.

Customer Relationship Management - putting customers at the centre of the organisation.

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2010

Feb: Internet marketing trends

2009

Dec: The Kitschmas Card

Nov: Where is Google going?

Oct: 2020 vision for the web

Sept: Social Media Marketing 3

Aug: Making incentives work

July: Social Media Marketing 2

June: Social Media Marketing 1

May: More about AdWords

Apr: Internet Marketing

Mar: Is your website boring?

Feb: Integrated marketing

Jan: Viral marketing

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