How To Promote Your Website Through PPC Bid Management

Pay per click (PPC) is a means to advertise business through the use of keywords/phrases in the search engines. The advertiser is required to only pay for each click that sends a visitor to his website. Search engines such as Overture, Google Adwords, Search Yahoo and Miva are just some examples of search engines. They offer top positions among the sponsored listings for particular keywords/phrases you choose.

The idea for bidding is you have to buy/bid on keywords/phrases relevant to your business. The highest bidder gets to be on the top of the search result listing and the second highest bidder, of course, gets the next top listing and so on. Every time a visitor clicks on your website, you will have to pay the same amount that you bid on that particular keyword. PPC can be very costly, time consuming and sometimes not worthy. But if you know how to go about the step by step procedures, PPC is a welcome change to traditional advertising.

If you do your searches for products, articles and auctions in the net, you usually type in a keyword or a set of phrase to guide you in your search. Either you use Google or Yahoo Search depending on where you are most comfortable at and where you usually get the best results. As soon as you key in the search button, immediately a long list of keywords or phrase will be displayed containing the keywords you key in. The first or the top link that you saw is most likely the one who bids the highest for that keyword you type. In this way, businessmen will produce the desired results; they get to be advertised, at the same time, saving and spending only for the clicks they need that might translate to potential sales.

The way to start PPC bid management is to identify first the maximum cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay for a given keyword or phrase. CPC varies from time and even search engine to search engine too. Maximum CPC can be measured by averaging the current costs of bids (bids range from $0.25 to $5). Average of these bids is to be used as the maximum CPC to begin with. As your ad campaign progresses, the actual conversion rate (visitors turning to potential buyers/sales) will be determined and you may have to adjust your CPC (bidding rate) accordingly.

When you start to bid, see to it that you adopt different bidding strategies for various search engines. Search engines have their own PPC systems that require different approaches. It is also worthy to identify different bids for the same keyword phrases in various search engines. Another thing, it is wiser not to bid for the top spot for two reasons:

1) It is very expensive and impractical, and

2) Surfers usually try different search queries in various search engines before they settle on the right one that fits to what they are looking for. This hardly results to conversion. Try to bid for the fifth spot instead and work your way up.

If you are now going steady on your PPC biddings, it is time for you to develop your own bidding strategy accordingly. It is important for you to track down which sites bring the bulk of your traffic and identify the ranking of your paid ads. This will help your bidding strategy to be effective and you should also decide where you want your ad to be positioned. Usually your maximum CPC will limit your choices.

Bid gaps (e.g. $ 0.40, 0.39, bid gap, 0.20, 0.19, 0.18) occur when there is a significant price increase to move up one spot in the PPC rankings.
It is best if you take advantage of the bid gaps by filling them in so you can save up your cents to other bidding opportunities. Often there are keywords worthy of lesser bids to get the appropriate ranking on the list and produce a good number of clicks and higher conversion rate rather than bidding higher but having a poor conversion rate.
You have to put in mind that overbidding too is not good but rather the best position for the most effective bid.

Using pay-per-click bid management in promoting your website will only be successful if you take time building many lists across many engines and studying the performance of every listing. In this way, you can make the most value from what you spend in the bidding process. The key is to use the necessary precautions to stay ahead of the competition.

Bid Management Tools

In ensuring best results, you may use bid management tools. There are accepted and approved management tools that will help you in your bidding. They are categorized in two different types:

Web based (services by monthly subscription) or,
PC based (a purchased software)

Monitoring tools too may help in the tracking down of your keywords/phrases and search engines as to which among them often generate sales, overall and in relation to your cost per click. This is what you call return of investment (ROI) monitoring.

These bid management tools may include additional functions that may not get from online marketing tools that are readily available. Other tools can monitor competitor's bids, produce reports for different parties and offer the ability to interface with multiple PPC engines. This is particularly helpful to those who manage more than a hundred keywords across several PPC engines to boost productivity and save time.

Pay-per-click bid management is ideal for the effective promotion of your business online without the hassles of draining your financial keeping too much. It is now fast catching up as a means used in marketing your goods and services to reach to as many consumers as possible.

Google Adwords. The Secret Art of Writing Great Ads

What is it that makes an ad a great ad that attracts a lot of clicks?

Many Google Adwords users will spend a lot of time, energy and money trying to get their ads to the top position as they believe this will increase their click through rate. Generally they are right. The more prominent your ad the more likely it will get looked at.

However it is not unusual for ads with lower positions to get more clicks than the ad in the top position. The secret for this is all in the words used in the ad itself.

Writing a clickable ad is not an exact science but there are some tips and techniques that can really help improve the clicks you ads are getting. They will also save you money as you shouldn't need to chase the top position to get a good click through rate.

1) Get you keyword in the title.

The first line of your ad (the title) is the one that people scan first. It's almost subconscious because they take in the whole page almost at once. So if they see their keywords in the title of you ad their subconscious mind makes a positive connection with your ad.

2) State the benefits in your second line.

Now that your first line has made a positive connection, you need to reinforce that by stating the benefit they will get if they click on your ad. If your benefit matches their need then you are almost home and dry. A click is almost certainly going to happen now!

3) Include a Call to Action.

Make your third line the call to action and also introduce a sense of urgency so that they will take immediate action. A good example of a third line is something like. Act Now. Offer ends Today.

4) Never forget the purpose of the ad

The purpose of an ad is to get a click. It is NOT to sell your product. Your website should do that once you have got them to click on the ad. It's amazing how easy it is to start writing a sales pitch for your product in the ad rather than concentrate on the benefits of clicking on the ad.

For example: If you were selling a new back pain relief drug then you might start to write about how good the drug was, how cheap etc. So you may write an ad something like this. Back Ache? Try our new drug. Cheapest Drug Available. Whilst this might sound okay, it's too product focused. You prospective clicker is looking for benefits. A better ad would be. Back Ache. Wave GoodBye To Back Ache. Relief Guaranteed.

5) Keep it Relevant

This actually isn't about getting more clicks. It is actually about making sure that the clicks you are getting are worth getting. You need to make sure that your ad will attract people that will want what you have to offer. Read you ad and ask yourself this question. If I clicked on my ad what would I expect to see on the website I am taken to. If it isn't what your website is offering then you need to rethink the ad.

If you find you are getting a lot of clicks but very few conversions then it is very likely that you ads are setting a false expectation of what you website is offering.

How to Use Yahoo! Search Marketing Analytics to Improve Your Campaign Performance

If you are going to be successful running Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns for your business, then you must use analytics to measure the performance of various elements of your campaigns. For instance, you need to know which keywords generate the most conversions. This will allow you to allocate your budget to those keywords that generate the highest return on investment.
To turn analytics on:

1. Log into your Yahoo! Search Marketing account.
2. Click the Administration tab.
3. Click the “Analytics” link on the sub-menu.
4. Click the blue “Enable Analytics” button.

It will serve you well to have some kind of well-defined conversion event on your web site. This gives you something to measure. If you sell products, it's easy. You just pass the amount of the sale to the analytics, and Yahoo! will calculate how much profit you are making on your campaign. If you sell services, it's a little more difficult. In that instance, what you need to do is assign some kind of value for having a visitor complete some action on your web site.

Conversion tracking like we are talking about here, where you can actually determine with precision the profitability of every keyword in your campaign, is accomplished by placing a snippet of JavaScript code on the page of your web site that signifies the completion of a conversion event. Examples are an order confirmation page for a web site that sells products, and a mailing list signup thank you page. Into the JavaScript code you pass the value of the transaction. So if you sell products, you would pass through the actual amount of money you made on the product. If you sell services, you might pass through a static value like $1 every time someone signs up for your mailing list.

If you have enough data, you can more accurately assign a value to an event like a newsletter signup. For example, if you know that your average customer is worth $100 in profit, and you know that 5% of the people who sign up for your newsletter eventually become customers, then you can assign a newsletter signup a value of $5 ($100 X 5%). This means that every newsletter signup is worth $5 in revenue, because for every 20 you will make $100 in profit. You should be able to come up with a reasonable guess about how much profit you earn on the average customer. After you have generated a few hundred newsletter signups, you will have a good idea what your average conversion rate is for newsletter subscribers.

To start tracking your campaign financially, you need to enable “Conversion Only” analytics.

To enable Conversion Only analytics, tags that record conversion events and revenue:

1. Click the radio button next to “Conversion Only Analytics”.

2. Click the blue “Activate” button.

You will see a section of the page that contains a snippet of code something like:

window.ysm_customData = new Object();
window.ysm_customData.conversion = “transId=,currency=,amount=”;
etc…

As the instructions say, you need to place the code snippet in the header section of the page on your site that represents your converting event.

If you sell items that can be different prices, such as items in an ecommerce shopping cart, you will need to have your web site administrator or programmer place some code that will dynamically insert the price. It should be appended to “,amount=” in the appropriate line of the JavaScript code snippet.

For example, if the sale is for an item that costs $24.95, line 4 of the code snippet above would end:

…conversion = “transid=,currency=,amount=24.95″;

If you only sale a single-priced item, or if you are a service business that is going to assume some dollar value for the converting event, you can always pass the same dollar amount through by setting the “Revenue Value:” dropdown on the Analytics Settings page to “Constant Average Value”, typing the amount in the textbox, and clicking the “Save” button. If you do this, you don't have to worry about modifying the JavaScript code to pass the amount of the sale through.

When you activate analytics, some new columns of data are added to your campaign summary, campaign detail, and ad group detail charts: conversions, revenue, CPA (cost per acquisition), and ROAS (return on ad spend). This will show you at a glance how well your campaigns, ad groups, and even keywords are doing financially.

If you need some more detailed information about setting up analytics, such as configuring your ecommerce platform to pass revenue data to the tracking code, refer to the Yahoo! Search Marketing Analytics Setup Guide, which is a PDF file that can be downloaded from Yahoo! at help.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com.

How To Make Money Online With Pay-Per-Click Advertising

A good way to make steady money online is through pay-per-click advertising. Every click on a link or banner earns you income based on a fixed amount for each click. There are steps you should follow in order to make money online through pay-per-click. These are:

* Offer ad space to advertisers * Display the highest bidders on your Web site * Be sure your bidding steadily improves over time * Customize your ad layouts * Block unwanted ads from appearing on your site * Create detailed reports that monitor ad performance on your site

Offer Space to Advertisers

Making money online through pay-per-click requires you to build a Web site that individuals and businesses can advertise on. Basically, the ad space gets awarded to the bidders who offer you the most money per click to post a link on your site. Most advertisers will pay monthly once you have generated a minimum number of people clicking on their advertisement link.

Display the Highest Bidders

Always be sure you are displaying the highest bidders on your site at any given time. This will allow them maximum exposure. It also guarantees that you will earn the most revenue possible for allowing these advertisers to post links on your site.

Be Sure Your Bidding Improves

As advertisers gain exposure from posting their links on your site, you will see them return. You also will see a rise in the number of advertisers bidding against each other to get space on your web site as the site becomes more popular.

Visitors to your site will help improve bidding. The more people are able to find what they are looking for through the links posted on your site, the more likely they are to return in the future. Regular users of your site will tell others that your site is the place to find links.

Customize Your Ad Layouts

The best way for you to maintain a fresh and inviting look and feel for your Website, and attract more advertisers and visitors, is to customize the layout. There are simple point-and-click tools that you can use to optimize the appearance of your Web site and ensure the ads are all positioned in a manner that is inviting. As you learn what works and what doesn't, try different techniques and research what is working for other entrepreneurs who are using pay-per-click on their own sites.

Block Unwanted Ads

Keep a close watch on your site for the appearance of unwanted ads. A large part of making money online is customer service. Advertisers will not want to place their ads on your site if there are other intrusive ads that will annoy and drive away their potential customers. By the same token, visitors will leave and not return if they have to deal with these annoying ads. You can be sure that they will pass the word that your site allows them to be bombarded by these types of cheap, in-your-face sales tactics.

Create Detailed Reports

Another important part of making money online is to generate detailed reports so that you can keep track of ad performance on your site. Track what is and is not working well or generating revenue for you. This report should include information detailing:

* Number of page impressions * Number of clicks for each link * The click-through rate * Amount you have earned for each ad * Total amount you have earned

If you are looking to make money online, you should consider pay-per-click advertising. The amount of work involved on your part is minimal when compared to the potential amount of revenue your web site can generate for you.

Using ROAS Calculations to Set Your Pay Per Click Marketing Bids

When preparing to begin a pay per click marketing campaign, it really helps to go into the situation with an idea of what the numbers look like. By “the numbers”, I mean what kind of return on your investment you can expect assuming different bid levels and different conversion rates. It's really all just conjecture because you don't know what your click-through rate will be, what your bids will have to be to generate adequate traffic, or what your conversion rate will be. But you don't want to go into the situation blind. So the following technique is a way for you to at least apply some logic to the situation, rather than just guessing.

ROAS (”Return on Ad Spend”) is defined as the total dollars generated by the advertising divided by the cost of the advertising. The following discussion and data illustrate an ROAS-based approach to setting a baseline bid level for your campaign. Every ad group and possibly every keyword will have its own bid once you actually set the ad groups up. But this type of analysis will give you an idea of what your average click price needs to be in order to generate a positive return on investment, assuming various conversion rates.

Below are two examples of the kind of analysis we often do when beginning a new campaign to give the client and ourselves an idea of what he might expect his return on ad spend to be. It also helps us establish a benchmark average bid.

The first thing you're going to need is some data to plug into your spreadsheet. So log into your Google, Yahoo!, or MSN account and create a new campaign or ad group. When you get to the keywords section, add a large group of keywords related to your industry. You are not going to actually use this campaign; you just want to get an idea of how much traffic there is for the keywords and how much you might have to pay for clicks. Going through the process of setting up a campaign lets you generate some data to work with.

The data for the examples below was generated in the Yahoo! Search Marketing interface. Yahoo! is convenient for this kind of analysis because of its sliding scale bid tool that gives immediate feedback about expected traffic and costs at different bid levels by just moving the slider around. We used a single broad set of related keywords to generate the necessary data. In reality, your keywords will be divided up into logical groupings, or ad groups, but for analytical purposes a single ad group was sufficient.

For our first analysis, we are going to assume a bid level of $.75, which Yahoo! estimated would result in 21,993 monthly clicks at a cost per click of $.50. For illustration purposes (and to make the math easier), we assume average revenue per sale of $100.

We know that our total cost is going to be $10,997 (21,993 clicks X $.50), so we can use this information to estimate what our total sales, and thus return on ad spend, will be at different conversion rates:

Bid: $.75
Est. Monthly Clicks: 21,993
Avg. Cost per Click: $.50
Total Cost: $10,997
Avg. Revenue per Sale: $100.00

Performance per Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate: 0.25%
Estimated Sales: 55
Revenue: $5,498.25
Return on Ad Spend: 50%

Conversion Rate: 0.50%
Estimated Sales: 110
Revenue: $10,996.50
Return on Ad Spend: 100%

Conversion Rate: 1.0%
Estimated Sales: 219.9
Revenue: $21,993.00
Return on Ad Spend: 200%

Conversion Rate: 2.0%
Estimated Sales: 439.9
Revenue: $43,986.00
Return on Ad Spend: 400%

Conversion Rate: 3.0%
Estimated Sales: 659.8
Revenue: $65,979.00
Return on Ad Spend: 600%

As you can see, if we convert at 0.25% (1 in every 400), we are going to generate a return on ad spend of 50%, meaning we are bringing in fifty cents for every dollar we spend. That is not very good. We probably need to convert at a rate between 1% and 2% to show a reasonable return on our investment.

Now we might want to see what the numbers look like if we lower our bid. If we bring our bid down to $.50, Yahoo! estimates our estimated monthly clicks to be 14,948 at a cost per click of $.38. So now the return on ad spend analysis looks like this:

Bid: $.50
Est. Monthly Clicks: 14,948
Avg. Cost per Click: $.38
Total Cost: $5,680
Avg. Revenue per Sale: $100.00

Performance per Conversion Rate

Conversion Rate: 0.25%
Estimated Sales: 37.4
Revenue: $3,737.00
Return on Ad Spend: 66%

Conversion Rate: 0.50%
Estimated Sales: 74.7
Revenue: $7,474.00
Return on Ad Spend: 132%

Conversion Rate: 1.0%
Estimated Sales: 149.5
Revenue: $14,948.00
Return on Ad Spend: 263%

Conversion Rate: 2.0%
Estimated Sales: 299.0
Revenue: $29,896.00
Return on Ad Spend: 526%

Conversion Rate: 3.0%
Estimated Sales: 448.4
Revenue: $44,844.00
Return on Ad Spend: 789%

We can generate a higher return on ad spend at the lower bid. However, we will generate less total revenue, and may convert at a lower rate. In addition, we have found that the accuracy of Yahoo!'s estimated traffic lessens as bids decline. But if you are on a very limited budget in an industry with plenty of keyword inventory, as in our example, then you can probably get away with bidding low and still generating a lot of clicks.

You could take the analysis a step further and look at it in terms of profit, rather than revenue. For instance, if the above estimated revenue per sale of $100 translated into $50 profit per sale, you could estimate your return on investment at different conversion rates by dividing the return on ad spend in half. If you substitute profit per sale for revenue per sale in the above analyses, then you will generate your ROI rather than ROAS.

One caveat about setting your initial bid this way: due to the quality scores that both Yahoo! and Google apply to keywords and ads, it may be necessary to begin the campaign at a considerably higher bid than your research indicates in order to generate a higher click-through ratio, which plays a part in determining the quality score. Once the ads are generating clicks, you can back off the bids more in-line with your desired ROI.

Another caveat is that oftentimes a search engine's estimated traffic at different bid levels is not very accurate. It's hard to fault the search engines for this, when there are so many variables that can affect how much traffic a campaign will generate. So your actual performance and required bids will probably vary quite a bit from what the chart shows. But the above described method for setting an initial bid at least gives you a logical starting point. Once the campaign is running, you can make adjustments as necessary.

The question of how much to bid may also be determined by your budget for the campaign. At higher bids, you are going to burn through your budget quicker. If there is so much keyword inventory related to your business that you are able to use up your entire budget almost regardless of what you bid, then it might make sense to bid lower…if ROAS is your main consideration.

If there is a branding component to your online marketing, then you may want to bid higher for higher positioning on the page. Another consideration is that not all sales are made immediately. If you position yourself as the leader in your category (high on the page), you generate more immediate traffic and more potential future business from prospects who visit your page but don't immediately do business with you. This branding component is not reflected in the kind of analysis we displayed above.

An analysis like this can easily be prepared using a spreadsheet, and we highly advise you to do something similar to get a feel for your own numbers.

Effectively Using Overture/Yahoo Search Marketing To Get Website Visitors

Overture or now known as Yahoo because of Yahoos takeover, was the original inventor of the use of the P4P or Pay for Performance. Overture saw that the internet was fast becoming the easiest and most convenient way to shop, and advertising was going to hit at an all time high because of the many businesses in the arena.

To get a person to go to a site than others, it needs to be very visible. Providing ads that could direct potential consumers and costumers to their site would allow them to have an increase in traffic as well as sales. Yahoo provides a service that can put a site or company ad in their sites that can be shown when certain keywords are inputted.

Yahoo offers a chance for any company to increase their traffic by using their services. With more people being aware of your site, there would be more traffic and visitors to your site given the chance to view your pages as well as your products. With even a small percentage of successful sales, with a high traffic volume this could still be a substantial figure for your company.

Getting a consistent substantial flow of website visitors is every companys goal. Many methods are devised and utilized to ensure that there would be more people to boost the sales and to be aware of the existence of such a product or service. Website visitors are potentially the life blood of your internet based business.

Yahoo/Overture utilizes the same principle as Googles Adwords. In fact, they are very similar to each other that they use keyword and keyword phrase searches and to determine which ads to show per search. When a person types in a keyword or keyword phrase to search for anything, the search engines gives out the results in a page. Then at the right side of the page, you will see selected ads that have paid for their ads to be viewed with certain keywords and keyword phrases searched.

For example, Lets say you run a car parts retail/wholesale site. You choose keywords that can prompt or trigger your ads to be shown in the page when a keyword is searched. When a search engine user types in Honda Accord, your ad may come up if you have designated that as one of your keywords. You don't need to fully optimize your site with Search Engine Optimization methods and techniques.

While some labor so hard to make their site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search, you get the chance to be on the top of the list or at least in the first page of a search result increasing your chance to be clicked on. With that, you drive traffic and website visitors to your site a lot faster.

You will have to pony up some cash when using this service though. There are different ways Yahoo/Overture will charge you. It may be in the number of Keywords or Keyword phrases your ad uses or in the many times your ad is clicked on. Others offer many other services like having your ad show up not only in the search engine pages but also with some third party sites.

Third party sites support ads that have the same theme or niche as them. With more areas your ad is shown, you increase the chances of people knowing about your site or product. With more website visitors you increase the sales of your site which makes your investment with your ads a wise one.

With so many competitions in the internet based businesses, it is necessary to take a huge leap forward from the pack by advertising. Yahoo/Overture will be a great place to start. Many have utilized their services and have reaped the rewards of this decision. It's a marketing strategy that will increase your website visitors as well as increase your sales resulting to profit.

It takes money to make money, while there are some methods that are basically low cost or free, using a marketing service such as what Yahoo/Overture offers will provide results faster and on a larger scale. Many businesses have learned this the hard way, don't be counted with them.

What to Look for When Hiring a PPC Specialist

So, you've decided that you need to find a PPC specialist to help with your online marketing efforts. Maybe you tried AdWords with little or no success or maybe you've just figured it out early that your business will benefit from a PPC specialist.

Companies specializing in search engine marketing (SEM) and PPC are becoming very prevalent. How do you tell if you're dealing with someone that has the expertise or someone who is just faking it?

First of all, give the person or company a phone call. Don't just sign up without talking to them. Ask questions, see if it is easy to get a live person on the phone. Check to see if they call you back and how fast. Good customer service can be an indicator that you're dealing with a professional.

Next, you can check on their certification status. Ask if they've been certified by Google, Yahoo, MSN, SEMPO, or any other organization and follow up on their answer. Trust, but verify. Just because someone says they're certified doesn't mean they're being completely honest. All the certification programs offer a special link to a page on their server with details of the individual or company's certification.

Ask the PPC specialist what will be done to each campaign. They may not want to give you their “secrets,” but they should be able to give you a general outline of what will be done. This ensures you're not paying them to relax at the beach.

Here's an example of what you might want to expect from a PPC specialist:

First of all, the specialist should do some brainstorming as well as a in-depth phone call with the business owner or marketing director.

You should hear that Ad Groups will be setup for each product or service offered with multiple variations. You should end up with a lot of Ad Groups. (If the specialist says you'll get one Ad Group, this may be an indication of lack of PPC knowledge.)

Keywords will be entered into the campaign, including various match types such as broad match, phrase match, exact match, and negative match. Using multiple match types will help you to achieve a lower average cost per click as well as eliminate keywords that are unrelated to what you're selling.

At least 2 ads should be generated for each Ad Group and will be tested daily or at least a few times per week. Constantly testing ads will put your campaigns light years ahead of most advertisers out there. Most people simply do not have the knowledge or they are too lazy to do it.

Bi monthly or monthly reports should be generated and sent to the business owner or marketing director with a summary of what has been done and what is planned for the next few weeks.

Keyword or ad group tracking is an important part of what a PPC specialist should be offering you. This may require you placing certain snippets of code on a few pages of your website.

This is just a general outline of what you should expect from a PPC specialist. If you take some time to do a little bit of research, it will pay off when you hire the right person for your PPC management.

Fun With Pay Per Click Math - How Much Can You Afford to Pay?

You really need to understand the goals of your pay per click campaigns. You need to know how many customers you want to try to gain and how much you can afford to pay to acquire each new customer. If you don't know what a new customer is worth, then that is something you really need to find out. Otherwise, you're shooting in the dark.

As professional search engine marketers, we have clients asking us to generate X sales per day or per month while spending Y dollars. This is a difficult situation because it often means we need to get clicks as cheaply as possible while maintaining a certain level of conversions. The thing that makes this a difficult situation is that as click bids go down, often conversion rates go down as well. One reason is that to generate low cost traffic, you often have to use content networks as well as search results, which are less targeted and convert at lower rates.

Nonetheless, to even tackle the problem we need to understand the numbers. Here is a very simple formula to calculate how much you can spend per click on your paid search campaign:

Cost Per Click = Amount You Can Afford to Pay Per Customer * Conversion Rate

OR

Cost Per Click = Average Sale * Profit Margin * Conversion Rate

For example, if you generate $50 revenue per customer, on average, with a 50% profit margin, then you can afford to pay up to $25 to acquire a new customer. You would only break even at that rate, but at least you would gain a new customer and would have the opportunity to sell more products or services to that customer in the future. Assuming a conversion rate of 1%, then the numbers work out like this:

Cost Per Click = $25.00 * .01 = $.25

OR

Cost Per Click = $50.00 * .50 * .01 = $.25

So you now know that you can afford to pay a quarter per click. If you can double your conversion rate, then you can double your profit or double your bids.

As you watch your pay per click campaign, you might find that certain products sell much better on-line than others. If this is the case, then you might want to re-work your numbers to emphasize the products that are selling. For example, let's say you have the following products, which are selling via Yahoo! in the following proportions:

Product A - $25 profit per sale - 50%
Product B - $10 profit per sale - 10%
Product C - $40 profit per sale - 40%

Then your average profit per sale is as follows:
($25 * .50) + ($10 * .10) + ($40 * .40) = $12.50 + $1 + $16 = $29.50

Based on these numbers, you know that you can now pay up to about $.30 for clicks.
Or if there is enough traffic related to Product C, you might want to start allocating more of your budget for it and less for the other products, since it generates the most profit per sale.

As mentioned earlier, it may even be worth taking a loss on the first sale just to get the customer. If you know the lifetime value of your customers, then you can make this call. If you generally only do business with your customers a single time, then that is another area of your business you need to investigate - how to sell more to people who have already done business with you. This is where you should use vehicles like email, newsletters, blogs, etc. to create a community of customers who come to rely on you for information. It all comes down to creating a holistic, integrated marketing plan, and it starts with knowing your numbers.

Tips on Creating Home Internet Marketing Business Opportunities

You've started a home Internet marketing business because you know you have the requisite skills and talents for it. But here's one problem: you don't have any clients. It's hard to operate a business when there's no demand for your services. But don't despair. With Internet marketing, you don't need to wait for opportunities to come by but you create them yourself!

Tips on Creating Home Internet Marketing Business Opportunities

Here are a few things you can do to tap into your target market and finally start earning your first service fee.

Identify businesses in your area without any online experience.

If you don't live in the city, there are sure to be many businesses in your area, even the large and reasonably successful ones, that haven't yet fully explored their potential online. You might even encounter a few that don't have any websites or email addresses to speak of!

As an Internet marketing business, it is your job to make them realize what they're missing out on. The best way to convince them of course is by citing examples. Think of the companies you've helped in the past and which are now doing quite well thanks to their entry to e-commerce.

Identify businesses with antiquated understanding of Internet marketing.

Businesses that do have websites of their own and are already active in the Internet may still need the services of your company. Why? It could be because their understanding of Internet marketing is sadly obsolete. It's up to your home based Internet marketing business to drag these companies to the 21st century. Let them know that pay-per-click advertisements are no longer as profitable as they were before and that they might do better with Adsense instead.

Use Internet marketing strategies for your own business.

Practice what you preach. It would be pretty embarrassing if you're selling your expertise without being able to benefit from it, don't you think?

Start advertising about your business. Create a blog. Your news must always be related to Internet marketing. It must always be relevant and interesting for your readers. And most importantly of all, it must always allow you to advertise about your business. Use the blog as a way of keeping in touch with your customers and prospects. Encourage them to participate so you can have an inkling as well of how your target market thinks.

Encourage people to bookmark your website. Of course, it's best that you make it easy for them by placing the appropriate buttons below every post you make for your blog. End your entries as well with an invitation to bookmark your website if they like what you've written.

Don't neglect to make full use of RSS. RSS feeds may have been around for a long time already, but there are still a lot of people who aren't aware of it, much less understand how it works. But you're an Internet marketing company and it would be a huge embarrassment if you fail to make use of this excellent tool.

Experiment with making online videos. In the era of information and technology, video marketing has become steadily popular with the public. Use it to gain more exposure for your business!

As you can see, your home Internet marketing business has no chance of failing because the opportunities are right there within your reach, just waiting for you to make people realize that they need you. Good luck!

IFTPS: The Five Major Advantages of Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay per click marketing has five major advantages that set it apart from other forms of advertising. These are immediacy, flexibility, transparency, portability, and scalability. Each of these advantages is discussed in more detail below.

Immediacy. With paid search, once you identify keywords for which you would like your site to be listed in a search engine results page, or a relevant non-search site for which you would like your ad to appear, you can have your ad appearing in a matter of hours, if not minutes. To get your site listed as a natural result on a search results page will likely require months of time and a considerable amount of work. Most other forms of advertising also require considerable production time.

Flexibility. Imagine that your company has just spent a large sum of money producing a TV ad. One night, you see your TV ad and decide that you just don't like it and want to change it immediately. That would be a very expensive nightmare. By contrast, a pay per click ad can be changed at any time, with the new ad running in place of the old with no delay. Pay per click gives you incredible flexibility to make real-time changes to your campaign based on data or personal preference.

Transparency. With paid search, you have complete clarity regarding the performance of your advertising. Unlike traditional advertising, such as print, radio, or TV ads, with paid search you will know exactly how many leads or sales resulted from your promotions. Not only will you know in a broad sense, you will know down to the level of exactly what keyword and what ads generated the most clicks or conversions. This makes it much easier to tweak your ad campaign for maximum profitability.

Portability. You will learn much from your pay per click campaign that can be ported to other advertising media. For example, if you discover a particular keyword that converts at a very high rate, then you might be well-served to engage in a search engine optimization campaign so that your site appears in the natural search listings for that same keyword. Or you might discover that one of your ads with a particular headline does very well, indicating that it might be a headline or slogan that would work well for your off-line marketing.

Scalability. If you want to advertise on TV, you have to have the budget to produce the TV commercial. If you want to run a print ad, you may find the expense prohibitive. By contrast, with a pay per click campaign, you can begin advertising immediately regardless of how small your budget is. If you are running standard search engine results page text link ads, there is no production cost other than the time it takes you to write your ads. And even if your budget is only $10 per day, you can still get in the game (unless you are in one of the extremely expensive categories such as mortgage loans or accident attorneys). Once you have a larger budget, it is very easy to scale your campaign up.

The above list represents the five major advantages of pay per click compared to other forms of advertising. It is a medium available to even the smallest advertiser that offers great flexibility and affordability. If you are currently spending money on traditional advertising, I highly recommend that you give paid search a try.

The Top 5 Copywriters to Study

Copywriting may be the single most valuable business skill you can possess. If you can write an effective, compelling sales letter, you can sell your product or service, regardless of what it is. Lucky for you, some of the best copywriters / marketers in history have written on the subject of writing good sales copy. There can be no definitive list of top copywriters, but what follows is my list of the top copywriters whose work you should seek to learn from.

Dan Kennedy. Dan is probably my favorite. He is a marketing genius who has a straightforward style and is very entertaining to read and listen to. He also has lots of products for sale. I am a big fan of his No B.S. line of marketing books - they're cheap and filled with powerful nuggets of marketing wisdom. His free marketing newsletter is excellent as well. www[dot]dankennedy[dot]com

Brian Keith Voiles. Brian wrote what is possibly the single best book on copywriting, “Advertising Magic”. It is for sell on lots of web sites. I couldn't figure out the official web site for the book. Brian doesn't really seem to work very hard to promote it. But there are lots of places to buy Advertising Magic online if you search for it.

Claude Hopkins. In the 1920's, Hopkins wrote a book called Scientific Advertising. It is a brilliant, ageless book that boils advertising down to a set of principles that will greatly increase your chances of success. This book is available for free on many different web sites. Just search.

Jay Abraham. Possibly the most revered and expensive marketing expert in the world. Jay has a way of breaking complex marketing concepts down into easier-to-swallow chunks of information. He also has lots of products for sale at www[dot]abraham[dot]com.

Joe Vitale. Vitale is a very interesting character who is a master of many disciplines, including hypnosis, magic, and marketing. Vitale has authored numerous books, some focused on marketing, some of a more ethereal nature. But all of his writing is very enjoyable. His work most focused specifically on copywriting is probably Hypnotic Copywriting (How to Seduce and Persuade Customers with Only Your Words). You can learn more about Joe at his web site, www[dot]mrfire[dot]com.

One common piece of advice from the master copywriters is to physically write down all of the copy from successful sales letters, word-for-word. There are recurring themes that are contained in top sales letters - sort-of pieces of a mental puzzle that you need to absorb. Writing down successful copy verbatim helps lock those themes in.

The top tool in the copywriter's toolbox is the split-test, or a/b test. Run two different versions of the ad and see which one generates more business. The modern copywriter has an advantage over those in previous generations - the Internet. Pay per click marketing lets the marketer quickly test multiple versions of ad or sales letter copy. A paid search campaign has the advantage of creating almost immediate data. Whatever testing method is used, a professional copywriter knows that the only way to guarantee success is to test different versions and focus your total efforts on the version that performs the best.

There are many more fine copywriters than discussed in this article. If you look into the work of the writers mentioned above, it will set you on the road to copywriting mastery.

Bringing Your Message to the Masses with Google Radio Ads

The Audio Ads option in the Google AdWords interface lets you run a radio ad campaign in a very similar fashion as a paid search ad campaign. When you click the tab, you have the option to “Create an audio ad campaign”. Sound familiar?

There are probably a lot of marketing theorists and business school professors who would argue that it is not good for a single company, Google, to dominate so much of the advertising market on so many different platforms. But as business pragmatists, our view is “Who cares?” If it helps us make more money for our clients, and it makes life easier, then we're all for it.

The first thing you do when setting up a campaign is to set your weekly budget. There are several pre-set options, ranging from $500 to $2,000, but you can set your own budget at whatever amount you want, as long as it is at least $25. The second step is to select your geographic market. The third step is to select your option for specific stations. You have the choice of either running your ads on whatever stations reach the most listeners at the lowest cost, or you can pick stations in particular formats. If you have a definable target market, then your best bet is to select stations that best cater to your market.

Now, this is still a pretty new program, so the number of stations on which you can run your ads at the present is fairly limited. For instance, when we were playing around with setting up a radio campaign, there were no sports stations available in our preferred target markets. But hey, this is cutting edge stuff, so you can't really expect everything to be perfect yet.

The next step is to set a bid per thousand impressions. Same old auction format - tried and true.

After selecting the days and time blocks in which you would like your ads to run, Google will show you an estimate of how much you will spend and how much your cost per thousand impressions will be.

The next step is to either upload your audio ad or use Google's ad marketplace to find a company to create your ad for you. Either way, the end result is that you will be running audio ads on multiple targeted radio stations without the hassles of having to deal with radio sales people. Beautiful!

Currently, all radio ads purchased through the Google system must be 30 seconds in length. There is a slight bit of flexibility - if your ad is within 2% of 30 seconds, Google will compress or stretch the ad. We suggest you just go ahead and make it exactly 30 seconds.

As far as the content of the ads, Google states that the ads must adhere to their AdWords' content policy (nothing promoting violence or discrimination, no academic aids, no anti-drug testing devices, no auto-clicking products, etc.) as well as a set of editorial guidelines specifically created for audio ads, which basically state that the ad should accurately represent your business and emphasize the unique qualities of your product or service. In addition, content promoting sexual content is not allowed, as well as political election or fundraising ads. Ads of a non-commercial nature are also not allowed.

With regards to the technical specifications of the ads, it may be in MP3 or WAV format. If MP3 format is used, the maximum file size of the ad is 1.5 MB. For WAV files, the maximum size is 11 MB. You may get slightly better sound quality from using WAV format, but it could take a lot longer to upload the ad. You're probably just fine going with MP3.

Given the cheap cost and high quality of today's audio recording/mixing equipment and software, you can easily create your own ad or hire a professional to do it. If choosing between spending your time on production or writing compelling ad content, we would advise you to spend the most time crafting your message. If the message is strong and audio quality acceptable, then the ad will be successful if it is heard by the right people.

Should You Use Google Pay Per Click For Search Or Content?

When you advertise with pay per click, Google gives you as the advertiser two options. You can have your advertising in search results, advertising in website content, or both. If you advertise in search, the results are displayed in Google under searches, and also in distributors' search results. Google content advertising is for those who want to incorporate AdSense into their websites. As AdSense rapidly grows, it now exists on millions of webpages throughout the Internet. However, many advertisers do not use AdSense and simply use advertising in search results instead.

There are several reasons for this, the first of which is trust. Because many smaller websites have chosen to embark on what is called “click fraud,” those who choose AdSense options in webpages are far more vulnerable to click fraud than are those who choose search only. Click fraud does exist in search, but it is far less common. If one chooses to commit click fraud in search, they want to negatively impact a competitor's return on investment. This is also true in that sense, and website owners may want to increase revenues using tactics that are similar.

Website owners are also choosing to market out with content because they are utilizing a buyer's motivation when he or she is on a website. If someone is on a different website, he or she might be there for different reasons. For example, if a website discusses what the disadvantages of AdSense are, the search results might actually return results on “AdSense websites,” or those selling them, for example. Even though people might click on this particular advertisement, they won't buy after they read a negative review. It can also be true that someone on the AdSense website was looking for what best color palette they should use for their setup. For this reason, the person would not find that particular advertisement relevant, but might still click on the advertisement just to see what it's about.

The advertiser also often rejects AdSense websites because oftentimes, it's thought that these websites require more administrative care. This is because websites need to be checked through to see how relevant they are, and bids must be edited to ensure that they still appear on a page. Some words have a network of over 500 websites, so it must be time consuming and expensive to keep up with them. This is the case, but there are many who find that AdWords accounts return websites that don't even seem to be supporting their particular keywords. For example, of particular concern are the phrases “terms and conditions” or “privacy policy.”

Many are rejecting content advertising, but many still feel it provides a similar return on investment as the search does. One of the reasons this is true is because more and more advertisers only choose search. As this continues to occur, the advertiser will have less competition, so that the word price itself reduces. Advertises also find a good return on investment from a publisher's website if they decide to actively promote advertiser services within content. For example, if someone is discussing printing services, he or she can also recommend the advertiser's services.

This can be positive for both the publisher and advertiser, and can be a good way for publishers to move toward. In spite of this, publishers have to keep in mind that they can't be too obvious when they do this, or buyers will definitely understand what's going on and will avoid it.

Advertisers are also opting for content because it increases their scale, but this can be done across other search engines as well. Still, those who wish to utilize content advertisement should choose Google AdSense's network. It is far and away the best as compared to Yahoo or other competitors so far. In addition, its network of publishers is superior, which means advertisers will benefit from being able to spread their message through many different types of websites.

AdSense is the best pay for click content distributor, but it doesn't compare to search for the advertiser. With the search, leads are more qualified, are usually less fraudulent, and are more regulated. Advertisers therefore consistently choose search versus content. In spite of this, advertisers should still check out AdSense and see if you can provide the return on investment they want. Some advertisers say that content provides a better return for their particular business than search does. This does vary somewhat, but overall, search remains tops for pay per click advertisers.

A Quick Way To Make A Profit - Pay Per Click Advertising

If it is your intention to get your business and website up and running successfully as fast as you can, one of the best ways to advertise is by pay per click. You will find that this is the quickest way forward in drawing targeted traffic to what you have on offer. However, there is a right way to be involved with pay per click advertising and if not carried out properly you stand to lose quite a bit of money. This article is going to explain how pay per click works and hopefully it will help you to decide whether or not it is for you.

Pay per click advertising is quite easy. Google or Yahoo search engines will let you buy advertising on a pay per bid basis. You are given a choice of how much you are willing to pay for a specific keyword and the more this amount is, the higher your advertisement will appear on the pages of the search engine.

Your particular ad will be displayed at the right hand side of the search results page. For example, if you place a bid of 15 cents in order for your ad to appear, every time someone clicks on it, you pay 15 cents because the viewer is directed to your webpage. If everything looks interesting on your webpage then hopefully sales will be generated from the people who are viewing it. Now, don't you feel that this is a fair deal?

Unfortunately, there would have to be a downside and in this particular instance that downside is that pay per click advertisements can end up costing you a packet if no leads are generated from them. If, for example you have a specific keyword for 15 cents per click with a hundred people clicking on your advertisement this would mean you have to pay $15.00. If you do well and achieve 50 sales from these clicks then it is clear that your campaign is turning out to be a good investment.

However if from the hundred clicks you make only a few if any sales you have ended up spending $15.00 for very little or maybe even absolutely nothing. The more clicks you receive on your ad the more money you will owe so there has to be some sales being achieved from these clicks to make it a profitable proposition for you.

A really good thing about pay per click advertising is the speed at which you can see the results. It's true, you can have your ad on the first page of the search engine results and be generating traffic and potential sales to your webpage in a matter of minutes after the initial set up and posting of your ad. The best way to do this is to find keywords with a low bid price which are likely to generate a sizable number of clicks. You will need to test, track and practice your pay per click campaign to ensure you are getting the very best results possible.

Tutorials containing detailed instructions are provided by many of the large pay per click advertising companies such as Google and Yahoo and this will help you to get the most from your campaign. They also have forums for users to be able to ask and answer questions and taking part on these forums can save you loads of time and money in the long run. It's vital for you to learn how to use pay per click advertising and it should be mentioned that it's best not to hurry, take the time to learn about what you are going into and your results are going to be much better.

So, if it's a fast and inexpensive way to generate traffic to your website that you are looking for you may want to think about pay per click advertising. You need to be making more money than you are spending so be careful, keep an eye on your conversion rates and be prepared to make any necessary changes to your campaign as you go along.

Using Google Adwords To Drive Traffic To Your EDC Site

Making money with EDC is directly proportional to the amount of good traffic you drive to your site. The biggest well known secret in generating wealth in the internet based business or e-commerce is Traffic. Everybody knows it; every site wants it and every site needs it. The point of websites is to be visited and viewed. Many elaborate designs, money and countless hours of developing a site to make them beautiful and attractive are utilized. Without traffic, it is for naught.

With traffic comes a potential customer which basically means sales which in turn means profit. While many sites have collapsed in the past with the downturn of many internet based business, many smaller sites have generated good money by concentrating on a certain niche and some subniches.

This is a reason why e-commerce sites laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site to showcase their sites and products. Precision marketing is essential to your success with EDC so that you could count on all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

Using Money to Make Money

It is a common business notion that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. One good way of spending money for business gain is through advertising. Advertising brings in the people because through advertising, they know that there is such a company or product in existence. With the right type of advertising, you can see the spurt of traffic growth to your EDC site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small portion or percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, there is no other advertising scheme that would be worth every cent than using Google Adwords. The surge in popularity of GoogleAdwords is very evident as you can see so many sites sporting this ad scheme.

In using Google Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword or keywords use generate ads in the side of Google which are generated by the keywords they have assigned for their ads. For example a key word for EDC might simply be EDC or a phrase would be: edc opportunity.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. This also ensures that you are readily visible in the first page of a search result. Paying Google for this ad scheme ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You drive your laser targeted traffic to your EDC site which provides for their needs and wants. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

There are also content networks, non-search engine sites that feature Google Adwords, which will also carry your ads. But this is subjected to the niche the site features. Your chosen keywords will determine which content network shall feature your ad. The frequency of your ad shall also be determined by your allowed budget.

Laser Targeting your Traffic

To get a good number or estimate of the traffic to buying customer ratio it is good to laser target your traffic. Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your EDC products and business provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Drive laser targeted traffic to your EDC site by using keywords or keyword phrases for your Goggle Adwords that pertains to your company and to your products. There are many online internet tools that can help you in choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are currently in demand that could help drive laser targeted traffic to your site.

With your Google Adwords ad, you are ensured that every click to your ad is a potential customer that is precisely looking at and is interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your Google Adwords ad has the right keywords so that you can drive you're laser targeted traffic to your EDC site.

Beginners should approach Google Adwords cautiously. Poor execution will result in lost money, and it can add up fast. Slow methodical trial and error is suggested.

Using Google Adwords to help boost the drive to increase laser targeted traffic will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable. Using Google Adwords is an essential part of your EDC media marketing mix.

Using Targeting to Maximize Your Pay Per Click Performance

Targeting is the process of displaying your marketing message in front of groups of people who are the most likely to want to do business with you. The most obvious targeting decision for paid search is in what geographic markets to run your ads. Sometimes this is an easier decision than others.

If you operate at a local level, and all of your customers are within your local market, then it makes no sense to advertise nationally. You will just waste your money. In this instance, it makes much more sense to concentrate your budget on your home market. The major search engines each have a way for you to specify that your ads should only be shown on Web browsers that are located within specific markets.

If you operate on a regional basis, then you should specify only geographic markets that are within the region you service. One decision is if you should combine all of your markets into the same campaign or run a separate campaign for each one. The single campaign option is quicker, but you have more control and will generate better data with separate campaigns.

For instance, it might turn out that there are certain geographic markets that are much more profitable than others. In this case, you would generate a higher ROI by focusing your budget on the more profitable markets. The only way to do that is to have separate campaigns running for each market.

The same holds true for those marketing on a nationwide basis. The problem here is that maintaining a separate campaign for each market could result in an unrealistically high number of campaigns. A better option here might be to set up larger geographic markets that encompass several cities or even states. This will still allow you to generate geographic performance data. You just might have to work harder to extrapolate that data.

In Google, there is another advantage to geographic targeting, and that is that Google paid search listings display the market name if an ad has been specifically targeted for that market. For instance, if I run ads in a campaign targeted to Tennessee, Google users in Tennessee who see my ad will see the word “Tennessee” beneath the ad copy. This points out that I am an advertiser specifically advertising to people in Tennessee, rather than a nationwide advertiser. This could help with clicks and conversions.

Another way to target your campaigns is by day of week or time of day. If you are in an industry with abundant keyword inventory, then this might be an excellent targeting strategy for you. It may be the case that during business hours you are competing against many other advertisers, which is driving click costs up past the point of profitability. In this instance, it might be a good move to try only running your ads during non-peak hours. You may find that you can still buy plenty of traffic, but that traffic may cost much less on a per-click basis.

Or maybe there are certain days of the week that are more profitable. If you can generate reports showing your account performance at different times and on different days, then this might give you the data you need to make these kinds of decisions. Otherwise, you will have to test your ads at different times to compare performance.

Targeting can help make your pay per click campaigns much more effective. Although it takes some time generate and analyze the data you need, it is an important part of the process of maximizing your paid search return on investment.

Is Your Telephone Crippling Your B2B Marketing ROI?

I was shocked at how such a simple oversight could be sabotaging my client's sales efforts. Not only were they losing sales, they were actually paying hundreds of dollars to alienate EACH hot prospect.

The CEO of an enterprise software company asked me to work directly with the VP of Marketing and take over their Google Adwords campaign management. They were routinely paying $35 to $65 per click in their highly-competitive niche. The objective was to optimize the campaign so as to get more sales opportunities for each dollar spent.

In order to begin quantifying the value of their AdWords investment and identify measurable results, the company acquired tools like traceable inquiry forms, Google Analytics, measurable conversion goals, and a special toll-free number that allows the company to actually listen back to the inbound calls that are initiated by a website visitor.

Now it Gets Ugly

After I set up the toll-free number, my routine is to test it a couple of times to make sure it works and is forwarding the call to the right number at the company. This also gives me the opportunity to “mystery shop” the company's phone call answering and routing process, as though I am a prospect who just found the company's website and is calling the phone number on the screen in front of them.

When I made my call to the company's toll-free number, here's what I was treated to:

“…this call may be monitored for quality control and customer service… ring… ring… ring… ring… thank you for calling [company name] please wait while we transfer your call to the next available representative… ring… ring…”

Half laughing and half grimacing, I hit '0' to try to get a human on the phone, only to hear:

“…the option you have selected is invalid, please select again…”

At that point, I hung up… just like a prospect would. I couldn't help but wonder how many potential customers had hung up in frustration and how many potential sales opportunities had been squandered.

How to Measure Ugly

This company was paying $65 per click to get roughly 1 out of 10 visitors to actually pick up the phone and dial a call to the sales team. This amounts to $650 per call (actually much more, when indirect marketing costs are factored in) and that $650 call was immediately flushed down the abyss of their automated phone system. Any chance of a positive impression was immediately turned into a lost sale.

Sadly, this sales prevention system is not at all unusual among businesses today. Too often companies get lost in the day-to-day minutia of increasing their web traffic and rankings. They overlook the simple yet vitally important things such as making sure sales calls get answered and emails are handled in a timely manner. The result is lost sales opportunities and a poor impression of the company, which can lead to much larger problems that ultimately sabotage business growth.

A Sound Solution

Luckily, I had set up the toll-free number recording system.

I called the VP of Marketing and enabled her to hear what I had just experienced. “Horrified!” inadequately describes her reaction. The next day she called back, saying she had replayed the call for the CEO, who was also sickened.

The company made an immediate decision to engage a live answering service to handle the calls, at least for the short term. A team was quickly trained to ensure that every inbound call was adequately and professionally handled.

From Ring-Ring to Ka-Ching

Is your company guilty of throwing dollars at campaigns to increase web traffic, only to turn around and squander sales opportunities due to poor telephone and email handling?

Quick… better make sure your telephone system isn't preventing prospects from reaching out and touching someone at your company. As soon as you finish reading this, pick up the phone and call your company's sales lines and test the process for yourself.

Is your experience exactly what you'd like your perfect prospect to encounter?

If so, congratulations. If not, take some action to remedy the situation, such as implementing a professional answering system or training your sales team to handle the calls in a timely and professional manner. These little common-sense things are often unnoticed and unresolved because no one thinks to test ALL the components in the process. Getting each one right will make a big difference to your top line.

Also, implement a system to record incoming phone calls for quality review and to mine/transcribe details for the sales team.

Make time to honestly assess your telephone and email sales processes. Your sales efforts depend on them to operate with friendly flawlessness.

A Beautiful Ending

Recently, my client called and was excited to share with me the recording of an inbound phone call:

“…this is [one of the executives] at [a $3 billion dollar] company. We're currently using your competitor and not real happy with the results we're getting. We'd like you to come out and meet with us…”

I was as thrilled as she was with the good news. We both agreed that this call came as a direct result of:
a) installing the traceable, recordable 800 line, and
b) directing the call to the professional, human answering service.

As my client put it, not only would that call have likely never happened under their old system, but there would be no way they could go back and play the entire call to provide the sales team with precious and timely details that may have been lost in translation on a memo pad or in a database field.

Don't let your telephone system sabotage sales any longer. I guarantee that making these few simple changes will bring you more sales opportunities for each precious marketing dollar.