Pay-per-click/performance studies?

From: Brendon Macaraeg <brendonm_at_mindspring.com>
Date: Thu 03 Jul 2003 11:38:47 -0500

Folks:

I've been lurking the past month or so and I'm very impressed with the
quality of info./discussion here. I've especially enjoyed the affiliate
marketing info.

I need to get up to speed fairly quickly on pay-per-click/performance
advertising.
Aside from Overture and Google's sites, are there other sites/URLs you can
recommend to get an overview of how these systems work? I would love to read
some case studies from a web publisher's point of view.

TIA,
-Brendon Macaraeg
(P.S. is the list archived? I apologize if this info. has been gone over
before.....)

[Note from Moderator: The list is archived, and the archives are
accessible from the list's web site, http://www.o-a.com/ ]




From nobody
From mary_at_trafficmentorseo.com
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From: "Mary O'Brien" <mary_at_trafficmentorseo.com>
To: <online-ads_at_o-a.com>
Subject: Subject: Getting the position right of Overture
Date: Thu 03 Jul 2003 11:41:35 -0500

In reply to Matthews question "is there a difference in click thru's
rates from position one, two or three?"
 
Click through rates are somewhat determined by position, but it varies
by channel. Obviously, using Overture there is a significant drop off in
click throughs between positions 3 and 4 as the first three results are
the most highly syndicated across the network. This is somewhat true of
Google as the first three positions get syndication across Ask Jeeves
and AOL.
 
Some people find that being in the #1 spot exposes them to lookers
rather than buyers, so position #2 and #3 can be more cost effective,
and better converting. After that the biggest determinant of click
through is the way you write your title and description.
 
Writing T's and D's is very different for most PPC engines and Google.
Because of the short nature of Google Ad's your title and description
needs to be much more like advertising copy to achieve results. Overture
ads on the other hand get a much better results when the copy is much
more factual and less salesy. In both case however, ads perform better
when they include the keyword, and are not generic in nature. Don't try
to write one title and description for all your keywords and expect them
to perform well.
 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------------------------------------------
In reply to Clare's question "I have been using Overture for the past 4
months with fantastic results
and would like to extend our online advertising. What would be the next
step - Fast Click or Google Adwords? Our product is fairly niche."
 
Google Adwords can be very expensive and somewhat intimidating to the
unaware. A limited test would work well, preferably using the keywords
that have performed for you thus far on Overture. Adwords requires
constant management and careful campaign setup to achieve results,
especially at the start.
 
I have heard people say that B2B sites tend to do better than B2C sites
on Google, but with our clients we haven't found that to be true. I
think it depends where your product is focused.
 
You may also want to try some of the smaller engines, as your CPC will
be much lower and you can more easily test and see which keywords
perform. The amount of searches is substantially lower, but you can
easily place thousands of keywords with them and test performance.
 
Obviously, to do this correctly requires significant tracking ability,
so if you don't already own one, invest in a good tracking solution.
 
Cheers, Mary
 
Mary O'Brien
Partner | TrafficMentor
Search Engine Positioning Redefined
3500 West Olive Avenue, Third Floor
Burbank, California 91505
Internet: TrafficMentorSEO.com
e-mail: mary_at_trafficmentorseo.com
phone: 818-973-2777 fax: 818-973-2707
cell: 626-533-0491

 



From nobody
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From: "Mary O'Brien" <mary_at_trafficmentorseo.com>
To: <online-ads_at_o-a.com>
Subject: Re: Website Promotion Services
Date: Thu 03 Jul 2003 11:44:43 -0500

Hi Steve,
 
As I didn't see anyone respond to your question, I though I would jump
in. I have no familiarity with the company you are looking at, but their
approach is not unusual. It can be helpful to create a "themed" web site
using a specific domain name and use that to try and gain higher ranking
in search engines. In order for the web site to get better placement
however that site needs to have significantly different substantial
content. One page with a redirect is not the best approach, as most
search engines won't fall for that tactic.
 
You can very easily try this yourself. Buy a domain name for a specific
theme you want to use. "Dog Products" might be a good example, i.e.
www.dogproducts.co.uk <http://www.dogproducts.co.uk/> . Then create a
mini site of several pages with specific content around dog products.
Not salesy, just informative. Create links in those pages to specific
pages within your current site. Then submit the mini site to the
engines. You could actually create several mini sites, with specific
themed content, around dogs, cats, rats, etc.,
 
This has the benefit of providing your users with specific information
they may be searching for, and also improves your link popularity as
these page are linking to your site. In general, you need to improve
your link popularity to increase your page rank. Google is only showing
that you have 25 links. I would suggest at least 100 links, preferably
from sites with a page rank of 4 or higher, and stick with sites that
are directly complementary to yours.
 
Cheers,
 
Mary O'Brien
Partner | TrafficMentor
Search Engine Positioning Redefined
3500 West Olive Avenue, Third Floor
Burbank, California 91505
Internet: TrafficMentorSEO.com
e-mail: mary_at_trafficmentorseo.com
phone: 818-973-2777 fax: 818-973-2707
cell: 626-533-0491




From nobody
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From: "Mary O'Brien" <mary_at_trafficmentorseo.com>
To: <online-ads_at_o-a.com>
Subject: Re: Online ad campaign on a small budget
Date: Thu 03 Jul 2003 11:46:40 -0500

In response to Diane's question: "I am very new to the online
advertising section.
 
I have a VERY small budget of about $200 per month. All the terminology
is a bit beyond me and overwhelming. Where do I start and who do I
trust?"
 
Diane,
 
With this small a budget you need to be very careful in buying
advertising if you want to achieve results.
 
A PPC campaign will give you the most immediate, targeted advertising,
with potentially the best conversions.
 
Choosing one of the PPC engines is going to be based on your profit
margin and how much you can afford your cost per acquisition to be. You
need to be able to figure out how much you can afford to pay for
visitors and the best way to do this is to look at your cost per
acquisition, the conversion rate of your site and your profit margin and
set bids accordingly.
 
Doing this will help you to determine which engine is right for you. For
example, say you have a site with a 1% conversion rate. In other words
1% of the folks who visit the site buy something. Your profit margin per
item is $10 and you decide you want to spend 10% ($1) of that on getting
a paying customer. So, with a 1% conversion rate you need to get 100
visitors to the site before 1 person buys. If you want your cost per
acquisition (CPA) to be $1, then you can only afford to spend 1 cent per
click to achieve 1 customer.
 
In this case Overture and Google would be too expensive for you as the
minimum bid on Overture is 10 cents and on Google it's 5 cents. You
could afford to advertise on the smaller search engines, as they will
still get you clicks for 1 cent.
 
This is a very simplified way of calculating what your cost per click
(CPC) should be as it doesn't take into account latency (how many times
a visitor comes back and buys something), but it should serve you well
starting out.
 
Obviously, if your conversion rate and profit margin are higher then you
can afford to spend much more to attract a buyer and you will achieve
better results.
 
Once you have decide what you can afford to bid, then look for as many
niche keywords as you can find, and try them out across different
engines. Track your results, and see what performs best for you.
 
There are some good tutorials on tracking, bidding, choosing keywords
and writing titles and descriptions that go into much more depth than
space allows here on the Overture site in the Advertiser Center at
http://www.content.overture.com/d/USm/adcenter/strategies/
 
Cheers, Mary :-)

Mary O'Brien
Partner | TrafficMentor
Search Engine Positioning Redefined
3500 West Olive Avenue, Third Floor
Burbank, California 91505
Internet: TrafficMentorSEO.com
e-mail: mary_at_trafficmentorseo.com
phone: 818-973-2777 fax: 818-973-2707
cell: 626-533-0491




Received on Thu Jul 03 2003 - 11:38:47 CDT