(Newswire.net — July 10, 2013) Dallas, TX — There was a time when getting your business found simply meant taking out an ad in the local phone book and then waiting for the phone to ring – but over the last decade business owners have found the return on their investment for phonebook advertizing sharply declining. This decline has been brought about in a large part by the rise of “pay per click” or “ppc” marketing, which allows businesses to pay to be on the first page of search engines when customers type in relevant search queries. The simple fact is, customers turn far more often to the internet than they do to the phone book when looking for a local business.
“With the yellow pages, the business owner would simply share basic information about their business, and leave it up to the type-setter to make the ad. With services like Google’s Adwords, those business owners now often find themselves having to write their own ad copy – and this can be tougher than you think,” says Justin West, the CEO and Founder of Hundreds of Customers, LLC., a local marketing agency serving the Dallas/Fort Worth area that specializes in pay-per-click management. “Having a poorly structured ad can cost you hundreds of dollars more than competitors ads for a similar product that are structured well, because pay-per-click sites, like Google, want to reward the best performing ads, since better performance means more money for them. 96% of Google’s billions of dollars come exclusively from such advertising,” says Mr. West. To that end, he’s prepared a short list of 5 crucial points that must be in an ad to ensure it performs well, but that many businesses completely overlook.
- Have a “Call To Action” – Tell your prospective customers to “Click” or “Call” or “Go” or “Do”. Some sort of verb that points to a clear next step is important, because it subconsciously prompts people to action.
- Have a Relevant Landing Page – If you’re a chiropractor advertising about “backpain,” when the person clicks on your link, don’t just dump them on your main website, especially if your contact information is hard to find. Have a unique landing page for each keyword set.
- Have Call Extensions – Here’s a unique fact: If you have your company’s phone number built into the ad, people who call rather than click are essentially FREE! We’ve found that, for some industries, 2 out of 3 customers prefer to just call, rather than click on the ad. That’s huge, and can essentially increase traffic by 2 to 3 times, while cutting the cost of advertising.
- Use Negative Key Words – If you’re an attorney who specializes in personal injury, you probably don’t want to show up for people looking for criminal defense attorneys. At the very least, you won’t get clicks, which makes sites like Google view you as far less important and profitable, meaning that they’ll charge you more. Worse than that, some customers will still click, and see nothing relevant, but you still have to pay for that click (and many attorneys can pay $30 to $100 per click!).
- Split-Test – This isn’t “sexy” advice, but it’s sound. A small change in an advertisement can mean a .3% increase in “click through rate” or “CTR”, which is how many people click, and a sign of your relevancy to Google. You should always be split testing. It may be merely changing a word, or capitalization, but over time these can add up, doubling or more the CTR of an ad, increasing its effectiveness, and decreasing its cost.
Of course, many Dallas PPC-using business owners don’t have the time or knowledge to do all of this. Mr. West recommends hiring an agency that does Pay Per Click Management, particularly over hiring a full time, in-house person to do the work. “Outsourcing to an agency means they have to perform or you can let them go. It’s a lot harder to get rid of someone in-house, not to mention the other expenses, like insurance, etc., that come along with hiring a such an individual.” Hundreds of Customers’s main website is http://www.HundredsOfCustomers.com.