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Marketing -
PPC
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The other day I was speaking to a client that I had done some software and website work for in the past. The business is an Italian restaurant in a small town in New Jersey. They have 4 other Italian restaurants in the town. My client, the owner of the restaurant tells me that he gets customers from New York city are all the time.
So I suggested him about giving Google PPC a shot. Obviously, he asked me how much it would cost. I wasn't thinking straight (it was all those free Heinikens they offerd Mr. Web Designer). So I logged into my KeyWordSpy account and started checking how much related keyword terms were going for.
Los Angeles restaurants - $0.79
San Francisco restaurants - $0.89
New York City restaurants - $1.09
etc....
My client looks at it and goes that's it? Only $1 to advertise on Google ?
OK...if you are new to PPC you are probably wondering also.
NO, that's around $1 to get one potential customer to your website.
That means, if someone searches for "New York City restaurants" on Google and they see you advertisement and click on it to come to your site....you pay that $1 to Google.
If a 2nd person click on the ad and comes to your site you pay another $1 to Google.
If 100 people click your ad and come to your site, you pay Google $100.
OK, now my client got scared.
"$1 for every person who comes to the site ? That's a lot of money.", said my client.
Then I showed him how much some lawyers were paying per click (btw the amount you pay per customer who comes to your site is called CPC or Cost Per Click).
"$23 per click? These lawers are crazy.", exclaimed my client again.
Not really. Some of these lawyers are actually very smart (I meant with internet marketing). You see...these $23 per potential customer (potential - because they might not become real customer) still make sense.
My client was/is very new to the idea of internet marketing even though they have a site already. Now there is an interesting fact. A lot of businesses might have a site but might not know much about how to advertise it on the net. In fact, most people just suppose that having a site is enough. Of course, it's not enough. "Build it and they will come" as seen on Kevin Kostner's field of dreams is not true on the internet. Just having a site is not of much use. Having a site is like a man winking at a woman in the dark. The man knows what he did but the woman does not. Having a site is no good if no one knows about the site.
So how do people know about your site?
Many different ways. Being found through search engines is the best way. It's not random like a TV or newpaper ad. On search engines people actually find your site when they search for something relevant to your business. If you are a lawyer your ad does not show up when someone searches for an auto mechanic or a computer technician.
Then I told my client to figure out how much he thinks each of his customers are worth.
Check out my article on how much are your customers worth.
I told him, I wasn't going to charge him anything for setting up a small campaign, but that he would have to pay Goolge. I told him he could start with $10 to $30 per day and try it for a week or two. I also told him that only people in his locality will see the ad and that he won't need to worry about paying for clicks from people outside his locality who are most likey not going to be his client.
There you go. This is a story that applies to several other customers I have. They all have websites but have very little interest of advertising online. I think most are under the impression that it's too expensive. Some just don't think about it. I have tried to educate my clients about it at times, but I am too busy with various projects and have not taken an active role in servicing my clients in SEO or SEM or SMO.
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