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AdWords Doesn’t Have to Be a Dirty Word

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Inevitably, when someone tells me that a particular type of marketing “sucked” or “didn’t generate any leads,” I tend to want to look for reasons why and how we can improve their result. This has never been truer than with advertising online using Google AdWords.

There are just so many things that can go wrong!

Creating a solid ad campaign with AdWords is a lot more involved than creating an ad for the local yokel. Things like CTR, Quality Score and CPC tend to scare off the uninitiated. And for those of you who soldier on and lose a couple hundred bucks before retreating back into the loving arms of free Craigslist ads will tell others to stay away. [Read more…] about AdWords Doesn’t Have to Be a Dirty Word

Easier Online Advertising is Just a Phone Call Away

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While many of you have punched the ticket to online advertising for your contracting businesses, there are a lot of tricks from old media that translate just as well online. And one of the best is tracking numbers.

Use tracking numbers in your online ads

If you run any type of ads online (Google, MSN, Yahoo, or Facebook) then you should insert a call tracking number in each campaign to easily track your results. That way, you can move budgeted dollars from a campaign that isn’t working into one that is doing better. [Read more…] about Easier Online Advertising is Just a Phone Call Away

Targeting Buyers With PPC Advertising

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PPC advertising, done correctly, allows you to reach a valuable, ready-to-buy set of customers at a point-in-time when they are actively seeking information about your product or service. And since they are fully engaged, and looking for help in selecting products and services and businesses to meet their needs, you must have your business front and center when they go looking.

Targeting buyers with PPC advertising

Targeting the RIGHT keywords gives you access to people who have already “kicked the tires” and are looking for a contracting company to hire. Keyword phrases like “Home remodeling companies Philadelphia, Pa” are much closer to the buying phase than people searching “remodel my kitchen” probably are, and you are not even sure what the searcher’s intent is with such a vague search term like that as they may be looking to do the work themselves. But someone looking for a company to do the work is exactly the type of searcher you want to find your page. [Read more…] about Targeting Buyers With PPC Advertising

Why Search Marketing Works Best For Contractors

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Having a website is great, but not doing any marketing pointing people to your site is like having a billboard up in the woods. Sure its there, but no one sees it. The same holds true for your website, which is why you need some type of search engine marketing.

The advantage to online advertising for contractors

Search marketing is a huge market these days. While other marketing platforms are experiencing double-digit erosion in market share, online advertising will grow by 14% this year, even in a fragile economy. Here are some key points to marketing online: [Read more…] about Why Search Marketing Works Best For Contractors

How to Create Compelling Ads With Google Adwords

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There isn’t much difference between one hammer from another. They are both going to get the job done the same way. And yet, there are many different prices for hammers. Have you ever considered why? Sure some may have a special hook here or thinga-ma-jiggy there, but for the most part it’s a friggin’ hammer.

Well, clients or customers say the same thing about YOU!

When considering who to hire, most people will look at price as a primary deciding factor. Others may go off of a recommendation from a friend or family member. But what if this potential client is looking online to find you? [Read more…] about How to Create Compelling Ads With Google Adwords

Don’t Be Evil My Ass – Why Contractors Should Be Afraid of Google

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So many contractors I talk to today have cut or reduced most of their marketing and now rely heavily on their free listing in Google Places to generate new business. But something keeps gnawing at me and I can’t help but wonder if Google isn’t setting them up for the big kill someday soon.

Here’s what I think may happen

If you too rely heavily on the 7-Pack for your current crop of leads, I am betting you are a guinea pig for Google and you don’t even know it. You see, I think your current success using the free service is a beta test for the all-seeing Google, and right now they are calculating and tabulating and measuring exactly how much traffic you are generating from their love, only to one day turn around and use it to crush you into a fine powdery dust. Think I’m crazy? Just check out how spiteful Google is when you tell them to F-off here and here. And watch what happens to Groupon‘s search results if they don’t soon come around and take the payday offered by the all-powerful Oz.

You see, Google speaks out of both sides of their PR mouths

Google has always claimed to be nothing more than a search provider, then they got into advertising with Adwords. And they continued to say they would never be content providers, only to introduce us to Knol, may it rest in peace. Finally, we all know Google has every intention of becoming more and more involved in our lives, regardless what they say in press clippings.

But how does this impact you?

Let me paint the doomsday scenario for you. Google has $33 billion in CASH sitting around doing nothing. Now, most companies spend excess cash in one of four ways:

1. Pair down debt – Google has none to speak of.
2. Buy back stock – The price isn’t low enough yet.
3. Acquire competitors – Who else is there?
4. Acquire companies in vertical markets – Here’s where the fun begins.

Let’s say Google goes on a spending spree and decides to buy Sears for their home improvement division. Now Google has a home services provider with a nationwide footprint to service YOUR clients or customers. All of a sudden, your Google Places page is 300 pages deep, never to be heard from again. In its place you now see ads for your local Sears location. Sounds crazy? Wal-Mart has been trying to win approval to start a bank in order to reduce their credit card processing fees, and they will eventually get it. So nothing is too out there.

But let’s say I am being too forward thinking. Let’s say instead, Google offers exclusive advertising arrangements with large regional home improvement companies to get all the leads for a particular vertical for a fixed price. Still sound far-fetched? It’s not, and it is coming to a theater near you. It may not be exactly as I described, but there will be something like it soon I promise you.

How to fight the fight?

You still have to market your business. You have to know that advertising (even in a down economy) is still the best way to assure your company’s survival. And by not marketing  your contracting company falls further and further out of sight, leaving you to depend more and more on a shrinking market of referrals while previous customers move on to other contractors – not a good place to be.

Photo Credit: Tangi_Bertin

Saturday Coffee Talk – Long-Tail Keyword Use for Construction Marketing

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The Saturday Coffee Talk question this week comes from Karl in Dallas. Karl asks what are long-tail keywords and how can contractors use them in their marketing online. So Karl, this is going to be hard, but I am going to try to talk about long-tail keyword use in less than 500 words. So here we go.

In short

In studies on long-tail keyword use, research has found that long-tail searches have a higher conversion compared to the more generic (and shorter) keywords. This means that long-tail keywords can be extremely profitable for contractors through a lower cost per action coupled with a higher return on investment.

The Long Tail History

The Long Tail was popularized by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying this strategy. Anderson elaborated the concept in his book The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.

The distribution and inventory costs of businesses successfully applying this strategy allow them to realize significant profit out of selling small volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. The total sales of this large number of “non-hit items” is called the Long Tail.

Given a large enough availability of choice, a large population of customers, and negligible stocking and distribution costs, the selection and buying pattern of the population results in a power law distribution curve, or Pareto distribution. This suggests that a market with a high freedom of choice will create a certain degree of inequality by favoring the upper 20% of the items (“hits” or “head”) against the other 80% (“non-hits” or “long tail”). This is known as the Pareto principle or 80–20 rule.

The long tail in keyword research is basically an expansion of a core, generic, high volume keyword phrase to include numerous combinations and permutations of the keywords and their associated or relevant phrases. These phrases individually are unlikely to account for a great deal of searches, but when taken as a whole, can provide significant targeted traffic that convert well.

In other words, most people search for the keyword “plumber” to get info, but search for “24 hour emergency plumber in Miami Florida” when they are ready to buy. The nice part about using long-tail keywords in a PPC campaign is that you can generally pay much less on a per click basis for long-tail keywords than you would for shorter, more generic keywords, but get a better conversion ratio.

Long-Tail Examples

Using the Google Keyword Tool, let’s take a look at some common searches:

Keyword Cost per Click & Monthly Searches

Plumber has 450,000 searches and costs $3.91 a click

Emergency Plumber has 14,800 searches and costs $5.30 a click

Plumber Miami has 1,900 searches and costs $4.92 a click

24 Hour emergency plumber in Miami Florida shows unknown searches but costs $.05 a click

Notice all the keywords have significant traffic (at a significant cost) except the “24 hour emergency plumber in Miami Florida” keyword. Trouble is, you also don’t know the search volume for that keyword either. But here’s the catch.

How contractors win using long-tail keywords

Don’t worry about how much traffic a keyword generates because you only pay when someone clicks on your ad! And since your cost is only going to be a nickel, then you might as well bid on it since the next closest keyword is 78 times more expensive than your long-tail keyword. Build yourself a solid list of quality long-tail keywords and you can generate enough cheap traffic every month to be a very happy plumber.

One word of caution

Don’t set up a campaign based solely on long-tail keywords. The reason is Google is evaluating you as a marketer just as much as you are evaluating them as a marketing platform. If your conversion ratios aren’t high enough, your overall quality score for the campaign can suffer as well as the quality score for your entire Adwords account, so be careful!  And by the way, I missed 500 words by about 146!