Our team lives and breathes keyword analysis— – picking apart which search terms result in the highest gains for your business.
We apply years of experience and focus on PPC instead of treating it as secondary to SEO like most other companies. As a result, we can beat nearly any cost per action you have come to expect from your business— – and we do it quickly.
Digital vs. Print Advertising
Back in the days of Mad Men, agencies sold advertisements based on impression count. This essentially means how many people “saw” the ad – weather it’s the number of cars that drive past a billboard on any given day, or how many average readers a magazine had. This has become obsolete, as digital marketing can now show the actual reaction of the user. It doesn’t matter of millions of people see an advertisement, if nobody clicked on it, right? Digital advertising has become a more highly realized format of advertising when compared to traditional print advertising.
Recognizing the powerful opportunity of tracking user conversions, things in the advertising world began to change. In the days of advertising before social media, when you would purchase a billboard on the Long Island Expressway, you would be told how many people drove past that particular segment of the LIE on any given day. Multiply that by the number of days your billboard will be up, and this was the “reach” you were paying for.
The biggest obstacle to overcome with more traditional marketing strategies like billboards is the inability to assess advertisement results. With billboards, you’re flying blind. You hope that people notice your business enough to reach out. However, there are so many “hoops” to jump through. They have to remember the phone number. They have to be driving past your billboard at the precise time in their life where they need your product or services. For example, if you’re a divorce attorney in Baldwin, I need to be driving in your area and going through a particularly trying time. Then, I need to remember your phone number (which I drove past at 40-60 mph, at least), and call you when I get home.
There are far too many hurdles to consider this an effective advertisement.
Think about it — when was the last time somebody came into your store and said, “I saw the billboard and just had to come by?”
Probably never (even if it actually worked)!
Over time, more targeted and efficient advertising methods have evolved, like Google Ads AdWords campaigns, which fall under the umbrella of PPC (pay-per -click). PPC is a form of programmatic ad buying in which media buyers pay per action. For example, an action is considered a user clicking on your search ad. It can also be a phone call or form fill attributed to the ad (we call this a “conversion”), which is why digital has risen to the forefront of marketing activities. Measurable, scalable results is driving the engine now.
The advantage of PPC is that you get clear, transparent results. You know not just how many times the advertisement was seen, but how many people were intrigued enough to click on the advertisement and view your offer on a landing page. From there, you’re able to see the phone calls and form fills (“leads”) generated as a result of this process. If you maintain a CRM, you will even go back to see which customers came from which advertisements. A business dedicated to data management can determine the average lifetime value (LTV) of a customer based on this information, the average purchase of each specific ad, and leverage this data to market even more efficiently.
Leveraging Conversion Data
Modern Digital Marketing takes these concepts even further.
All of this information allows you to get a clear picture of “dollars out vs. dollars in.” In short, you know exactly what you’re paying for and where that money is better spent. This allows for pivoting earlier in the campaign, before costly mistakes are made. Such data allows you to pivot budget far earlier in a campaign, and steer your dollars towards what is truly driving the most revenue. In all cases with print media, if you have 3 ‘working’ ads, it’s impossible to tell which one is driving the most results. Having this analysis can allow for greater increases in profits, with greater accuracy.
Perhaps even more importantly, it shows you where you’re losing the prospect. If your audience is clicking on your ads, but not filling out the contact form, you can diagnose the issue is with something on the landing page. Perhaps you can try a different image, alternative ad copy, or a different page format to inspire a higher number of purchases.
On the flip side, if users are not clicking enough on the ad, we can diagnose the issue is likely with the advertisement’s copy or image structure itself (not the website the user is directed towards). Without tracking these metrics, you wouldn’t be able to tell what was going on, and it would be “billboard blindness” all over again. This makes digital opportunities more cost-effective across the board, and generating a return that much easier.
The advantage of this all occurring in the digital space is that you, as the business owner, learn what style of messaging influences your customers. You have the opportunity to test various images or advertising messages in real-time, and see exactly what those different results are after the fact. Gauging the impact on various changes will give you a more “dialed in” perspective on what messaging pushes your audience to purchase, and allow you to spend efforts to further capitalize on developing similar assets.
It’s one thing to have inklings about “what sells,” and know that a certain pain point seems to “do well.” It’s another to know which particular pain point causes an increased purchase value of $23 per customer. That’s the power of conversion tracking and PPC.
How KPIs Can Determine Success
Key Performance Indicators, or KPI’s, are how we determine the success of its results. The most talked-about KPI for PPC campaigns without question is ROI, short for “Return On Investment.” It makes sense, too, because ROI is a great buzzword. Who doesn’t want ROI? Isn’t that the whole point of marketing?
Unfortunately, many agencies oversimplify or do not fully understand the logistics behind the business owner’s pipeline. Without knowing the specific cost of your overhead, materials, and other factors, there’s no realistic way for them to determine a definitive return on your investment. ROI is an aim, but it’s challenging to track without hands-on participation and data sharing from the business owner. Most of the time, this data sync takes too much time, or is uncomfortable for the owner of the business. The result is that true ROI is never established.
This misunderstanding means ROI, when used by agencies, is actually a misnomer. When agencies attempt to calculate their ROI, they are often truly referencing their ROAS or “Return On Ad Spend.” ROAS is a more pragmatic, transparent way of calculating the results of your PPC agency. In this instance, we’re talking about what the agency spent vs. what revenue (or potential revenue) was yielded for the agency. The goal for ROAS is that for every $1 out, you would like to see $2 or more come in. Then, the business owner can run further calculations to determine true profit. This allows the owner to determine how much data they share with the agency, while still having a firm grasp on what gains were amassed from their marketing campaigns.
ROAS doesn’t factor in the internal business costs, which would be used to establish your ROI. It would be unrealistic of your local Long Island agency to claim to know that — even if they worked with clients in your niche before. Every business is different, and has their own deals in place structured for profit. Without a fully integrated data sharing system, determining true ROI is impossible for an agency. Be sure to clarify what your marketing solution means when it talks to you about your return on investment.
ROAS is a measurable and an authentic way of demonstrating the success of your pay-per-click campaign results. As the business owner, you’ll know how to subtract the cost of your materials and determine the true profit more realistically than the agency can estimate.
The Human Memory Is Fallible
Although some customers will tell you how they find out about your business, the human mind makes mistakes. In almost every courtroom drama where a witness is asked if they remember something, it’s rarely completely accurate – because our memories are not foolproof. The mind is not a machine. If we are partially inaccurate remembering things this serious, wouldn’t the same be true of how we remember everyday business transactions?
As a matter of fact, according to one study, the recall of information from working memory consistently produces longer pauses and a faulty recall as more time passes. Further confirming the lack of consistent memory recall, it has been proven that consumers can’t usually remember how they know a brand — just that they know about a brand’s associations. The same goes for a business owner remembering “what worked last year” for a key season. They may be partially correct, but their perspective is colored by time. It’s possible that other contributing factors are being forgotten, and underutilized the next time around.
Consumers may remember a certain line of advertisement copy, but the one they clicked on may be ultimately different from what they recount in a survey or friendly conversation with the business owner. It’s also possible that your customers have seen your ads several times, with different variations. It’s challenging to know which one finally sealed the deal— conversion tracking and the associated data allow for a much clearer picture, showing us what truly drove the user’s actions.
When you crack that code and know where to advertise effectively, you can double down on what’s working to best leverage your advertising dollars. This is precisely where the strengths of PPC shine through.
With paid ads, you can target prospects looking for your EXACT business offerings with laser-like precision. From there, you can discover what marketing messages make them tick, and learn to incorporate those for a compounding return on your advertising efforts over time.
Impact On Your Online Presence
75% of all people that click on search ads confirm they feel the ads helped them find the information they’re actually looking to find. This makes PPC (pay per click) one of the most “spam-free” advertising opportunities on the net.
Our PPC experts are some of the best-in-class in NYC, with expertise in highly competitive verticals including:
- Plastic Surgery
- Chiropractors
- E-Commerce
- Lawyers
- SAAS Products
- Real Estate (Commercial and Residential)
- Automotive (Commercial and Used)
- Financial Services (Tax Planning, Accountants)
- and many more
Each industry requires specific strategies due to the nuances of their particular clients, which is something we understand.
An e-commerce search query, for example, requires a a different approach when compared to a plastic surgeon.
Plastic Surgery can involve a lengthy research process, where buyer education and research-related terms drive key results. Winning the prospect’s trust and holding their hand through the buyer education process is instrumental in securing a regular stream of inquiries.
E-commerce, on the other hand, can be an “impulse buy.” The price tag is smaller, and the research phase is not as strenuous.
In either case, carefully selecting keywords based on the buyer’s intent can yield higher profit margins for your business. The difference is mainly in which phrases indicate the buyer is ready, or right on the edge of commitment.
Final Thoughts on PPC
While traditional advertising has its place, digital advertising is where businesses need to focus for better use of ad spend.
PPC proves to be effective for every business we’ve had the opportunity to work with. We take this approach because not only can every behavior be tracked, but we can also develop and recognize KPIs that can define your ultimate success. Seeing what paid search results drive customers allows you to orient all of your other objectives towards this. If we know a certain phrasing is driving sales, we can incorporate it’s use into blog articles, email marketing campaigns, and sales scripts.
While SEO is more of a long game, launching a new business often requires getting in front of your market quickly. If your business keywords are competitive, it likely won’t be possible to outrank your competitors overnight. With PPC, you are able to bid your way to the top of the search results, and instantly begin to earn consideration.
If you’d like to learn more about what PPC can do for you, contact Target Points to make your goals a reality.
