Your SEO Guide starts here:
Issue 1 – The first step – Choosing your keywords
Issue 2 – Planning your site – Making the structure
Issue 3 – Social Media – Building your brand
Issue 4 – Tell search engines where you are
Issue 5 – Link building – Get your votes
Issue 6 – Write your articles – Blogging
Issue 7 – Building your network – The social kind
Issue 8 – Spending money – Paid advertising
How do you decide when to spend money on search? Well, the first step in this decision is reading issues 1 through 7 of this series.
Once you’ve done that, you can make your decision.
Your decision will decide a lot on your budget. You can spend near limitless amounts on Search Engine Marketing, Pay Per Click, Retargeting, Banner rolls and so on and so forth, but the most important thing is to ask yourself is the following questions:
- How many leads do I want/can I handle?
- How much do I want to spend per lead?
- How much can I spend in total?
- How much return on my investment do I want?
You see, it is very important to be tracking not only how much you are spending, but how much return you are getting. It is a pit that so many people fall into. They hear that they need to be using AdWords. They hear they need to spend money on Google, and so they do. But, all they are doing is spending. They aren’t making money. And even if they are making money, they aren’t making enough to warrant the time spent.
Actually, PPC advertising is a very intense thing that needs a lot of concentration. DigiGround does PPC management at a minimum of $2,000 spend per month with a 10% management fee. This means, for every $2,000 that a client spends, they need to pay us $200. What do you get for your $200?
Our SEM/PPC expert will create ads for you, they’ll monitor the effectiveness of those ads, and they’ll adjust the ads on an almost daily basis for you.
That’s right, you heard me, almost daily basis. People will tell you that they can do AdWords easy and only need to check it a little bit. But, honestly, they’re not doing enough if they say that. PPC should never be set and forget. PPC should always be monitored, updated, checked and balanced. When you are spending a small amount, every cent counts. When you are spending a large amount, every cent SHOULD count.
The second thing you need to know is PPC can be used really for a few reasons.
- Promote your actual page and drive consumers to it. This is to build activity on your site which builds your ranking.
- Drive conversions direct to your site. This is where you drive people to your shop or website.
- Generate leads. You would normally make a specific, high converting lead generation page for this and the lead goes to your salesperson to convert.
You need to decide which one will give you the best return. You can spend money on SEO Management for your site, but every single SEO expert worth their salt will suggest you drop some money into AdWords, and they’ll use the small amount they want, to drive traffic to your site.
Any lead generator worth their weight in gold will suggest you drop money into SEM so you can drive traffic to lead pages.
And any good business development specialist will suggest you drop cash into SEM to drive conversions to your site to grow your business.
In the end, everyone needs to spend on PPC.
They just need to know:
- How many leads they want/can handle?
- How much they want to spend per lead?
- How much they can spend in total?
- How much return on investment they want?