Adwords, that massive revenue generator for Google. You know, those ads on the right side of the search page and scattered everywhere else on the Internet as text “ads by Google”. Most of the time these are PPC (pay-per-click) ads that the advertiser only pays for if someone clicks on the link.
Google chooses when and where to place these ads based on keywords – they try to match up what a visitor is looking for or a website is presenting with keywords the advertiser has assigned to the ad. Prices for clicks are set in an auction and vary all over the place based on the quality of the keywords and the number of advertisers vying for that market.
We decided to try out Adwords for two reasons; one, everyone else is doing it and two, as the “competition” we’re curious to see how effective they really are. Now this is where it gets interesting. We’ve been running an Adwords campaign for a couple weeks now that displays our ad to Internet visitors from the Denver metro area based on a half dozen keywords or so describing our market. Keywords like “small business advertising” and “local online advertising” – sensible but not too narrow. We did a little adjusting early on to what we were willing to pay so that our ad would show up on the “first page” of Google search. To date this is what we’ve accomplished:
- 10,000 Impressions – This is the number of times our ad displayed on Google or another website. In the case of other websites; one, we have no idea which ones and two, we have no idea where they showed up (such as below the scroll).
- 5 Clicks – yes, 5. and i would bet that a couple of us count for 2 of them.
- $2.56 CPC – this is the average cost-per-click we paid for the 5 clicks.
What all this means is that the text ad was actually clicked on after seeing it 0.05% of the time – one five hundredth of a percent.
Now there are hundreds of blogs, books, consulting services, shaman, you name it, that will tell you how you can improve on that number and we have no doubt that, with a little effort, we can double our results – to a whopping one tenth of a percent. But here’s the bottom line as a small business – we are paying $2.50 for the privilege of having someone visit our site. No interaction, no engagement, no knowledge of who they are, no opportunity for followup, nothing.
- So we pay good money for little if any value
- Because the clickthru rate of these types of ads are so low we are one of a gazillion ads lost in the din of the Internet
- We have no idea where our ads display
- And they are just pretty damn ugly
Small businesses have such little recourse on how to advertise on the Internet. Display advertising is another option but it is also fraught with low effectiveness, little control, and little to engage the visitor with. Google is making a ton of money and granted, there are small businesses that have some success with Adwords, but Bob’s Ice Cream Shop at the end of the block has little opportunity to participate in a meaningful way. And when he tries, he’s bombarded with Internet buzzwords and e-snakeoil sales that makes it all just too daunting.
Thankfully we are starting to see companies pop up to help the local small business. It’s become a darling of the blogosphere and e-snakeoil will show up but there are good, high quality, highly effective ways to make it work. So instead of paying $2.50 for a click, pay less than $2.00 for a real connection – facebook fan, print a coupon, send me more info, where are you on the map. Getting the customer to the proverbial front door of the business.
As we say at Layer Dynamics – “Local Viewers, Local Advertisers, Local Deals”.
