Category: News & Trends

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The Economic Down Turn and Petroleum Costs Hurt Everyone!

Several months ago our Realtor clients and mortgage broker clients were really hurting and unfortunately for many, that situation has simply not changed.  What I am seeing is that this slow down and cut back of expenses is now migrating out of the real estate and mortgage industry into broader market sectors.

We are seeing many clients in many types of businesses tightening their belts, stopping peripheral services, and actively working to trim the expenses that they can control. You can’t easily control what you spend for gas, for electricity, or for food, but you can trim, or bring in-house, certain services that you typically outsource. This is what I am seeing finally in our my service industry.

Many clients who have employed our blogging services are tasking a junior team member to start blogging. Some are moving to Indian firms, and some are stopping blogging altogether.

As the cost of petroleum and mortgage crisis impacts more businesses and causes commodity prices to rise, I expect to see more cut backs and more do-it-yourselfers trying to take over webmastering their website, cutting back on their website updates, and bring their blogging services and pay per click management services in house.

My firm has been in business for nearly eight years and we are in this for the long haul. We will continue to offer value and practical solutions to all clients. Trust me, we’ll be ready to help you when you have the need and desire to outsource these areas that you may have had to pull closer to yourself for the time being.

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Google Drops Pay Per Action Program

On the Google AdWords blog this past week, Google announced that it was dropping its pay per action program.  If you never used pay per action, here it is in a nutshell.

With pay per action, you decide what you will pay, amount and action – you cannot do an action for a sale if you do not have access to your shopping cart code. Then publishers can pick up your code to show ads on their sites and can get paid when the action happens.

I found from using the program for a client, that pay per action was just not embraced by the publishing network. If you were only offering under 1 dollar or so for the action, publishers did not pick you up. Publisher came and went and so the ads were on and off again.

Although it sounded like a good idea, publishers really want to be paid for clicks as it simply was easier money.

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Are You Leaving Cash on the Table For Google AdWords to Take?

Are you leaving cash on the table?Are you spending more than you should on Google AdWords? You may be doing just that. Since September I have seen around a 20 to 30% increase in the cost per click on Google AdWords.

I have just finished doing 25 account optimizations for dentists and doctors for one of my clients. What I found was that by dropping the cost per click and moving the advertiser to an average setting of 4 to 7, we were able to nearly double the number of clicks and nearly triple the number of impressions.

Everyone wants more clicks, but are you willing to trade a bit of page placement to get them. Ego can force many advertisers to overpay Google AdWords in the effort to own the top spot on the results page. What I have found is that conversions are not typically ad position sensitive on AdWords. This is not the case on Yahoo where position does seem to impact conversions.

It is very important to note that on all of the optimizations we did for the doctors and dentists not every account reacted favorably to the changes, but over one half of the accounts and more likely closer to two thirds did experience improved results.

So don’t leave cash on the table for Google to take and pocket, make a careful and thoughtful review of your account and then review again periodically. Advertiser come and go on AdWords so the price that you pay is dynamic and will change over time and based on the season.