It has been interesting to observe changing trends on the Internet, particularly in Marketing and especially with search engines. To maintain my business and my clients businesses in competitive mode, it’s been necessary to keep one step ahead of changing technologies, keeping up with the Jones’s doesn’t seem to work well on the Internet.
Of everything that I’ve seen over the last 5 years, Pay-Per-Click search engines have had the most impact on the way we do business on the web. One thing that PPC’s have taught me is to forget everything I learned about search engines and to start over. The days of celebration when a new ‘optimized page’ pops into the top 5 on Google are pretty much over, now that those ‘top spots’ may simply go to the highest bidder.
I’m happy to say however that it’s much easier to make money online now than it’s ever been. For me and for the clients that I represent, it just needs a fresh look at things and to cast-off all of those old ‘search engine optimization’ misconceptions.
Take the ‘ego bidder’ for example. You know, the idiot that bids $2.00 per click to sit at the top of the pile on Overture, when a 50 cent bid would have done. He’s the guy that forces you to pay three times more than you need to pay to get into the top three listings across the Overture network. Come on folks, Overture are laughing all the way to the bank.
So get sensible about the way you use Overture and other PPC’s and you can start to make good use of a potentially lucrative marketing tool. It’s all about ‘yield’ and balancing your customer acquisition costs with the true cost of your product or service. It’s simple math, but how many of you really know whether your search engine listings on Overture are actually making you money?
When I said to my last client, ‘avoid the top position on Overture at all costs’, she looked at me like I had two heads or something. She’d paid for my services in the past when it was all about ‘optimization’ and thousands of businesses fighting over that top spot on Google, now I’m saying ‘forget the top spot’ and she thinks I’ve taken leave of my senses.
The simple truth is that you can play the game on Overture and make a good return, but you have to drop some of the old baggage and rethink most of what you’ve come to understand about search engines. That top spot for example will get you twice the clicks, at a higher cost per click, but only the same number of orders, in fact, quite often I’ve seen the orders go up when your position comes down. There’s a simple reason behind this but too much to explain here.
The really great thing about Overture is that if you learn how to utilize Overture to maximum benefit, you will learn that you don’t even need Overture!
What I mean is this: to reap the maximum benefit from Overture you will be bidding on high yield, lower traffic terms with a cost-per-click of less than 60% of the cost of the most trafficked listing in your business category. When you do this, your marketing costs will account for a smaller percentage of your total sales and you will be more profitable. You will also see that there are ways of acquiring this type of traffic without the need for Overture. With some creative thinking you can quickly reduce your dependency on Overture, replacing your Overture traffic with sources that are much more affordable and thus increasing your bottom line.
So get smart, get help, and get profitable.
Carl has operated the business ‘Connect On Line Services’ since 1999 and
works through many websites including http://www.topwebpromotion.com Contact Carl
at carl@topwebpromotion.com
