It's All Geek To Me - July 13th 2005

CPC Management – Not as Easy as you Might Think by Ross Lasley You probably are aware of the new trend in Internet Marketing – just buy the traffic you need. Here's how this works . . . . you specify how much you are willing to pay for a particular word/phrase (like “cape cod real estate”) and when someone types that into a search, you show up at the very top as part of the 'sponsor results'.

If the searcher doesn't click on your listing, it costs you nothing; if they do, you pay the search engine what you agreed to pay per click. Typically, the words are priced through an auction system (you compete with other buyers) and you make a deposit with the engine. Your fees, then, are collected against that deposit.

Sounds pretty simple – right?

Sounds sort of magical, in fact – this is something web site owners have been wanting for many years – and what could be easier? If you figure out how much you can afford to pay for clicks, it is a simple money machine.

But there is a major catch – the tracking and management of your CPC campaigns. This gets even more important as your spending increases from a few hundred to a few thousand, or even to tens of thousands per month – the sales are being made and it is more than paying for itself, but the quality of management becomes a major issue very quickly.

The first major problem is tracking.

The engines selling CPC marketing offer systems to track your click-through rates, bid management, and other goodies. Your site has some sort of tracking system in place that might even support landing pages. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as an off-the-shelf tracking system that will give you what is needed. What you need to know is which paid words from which engines converted to sales, and which words didn't.

KISS has developed a system to solve this problem called KISSclicks – and while it is a good system, we'd be the first to admit that the technology it uses is a bit of a pain to deal with. The reports we produce for clients provide simply answers and don't talk about the technology problems but, truth be told, the “best” technology available to track CPC through to sales is quite geeky and difficult to use.

The next major problem is the math.

Since good tracking technology is a pain and not cheap, everyone starts without it – they live in the land of crude math. This is effective at first, but it always presents a problem later. An example of crude math: you know the sales at your site last month were $1000, you spent $200 on CPC this month, and the sales this month are $1400 – leaving you with the impression you made $2 in sales for every $1 you spent on CPC. It is always good to do this sort of crude math on any Internet Advertising, and it is the quick “back of the napkin” way to make sure things are working. The problem comes when the advertising works well – and you start worrying less about the tracking. When you know you are starting with crude math you need to commit to stop using crude math – when your spending reaches $5,000 per month you need to have a system in place. Setting this standard before you begin will save you lots of time and trouble in the long run.

The big problem everyone faces is scale.

Most web site owners give CPC a reluctant try to start – and this initial attitude becomes a serious problem for them in the future. The thing about CPC is it works – managed correctly, it completely works every single time. You might find you have already bought all the inventory that exists at the price you can afford, or you might find that a return of 175% is not enough to support what you have for sale – but, it fundamentally works every single time. You need to anticipate the success of this technique and make a plan for when it happens, like: “When CPC is 50% of all the online Advertising dollars, you'll...,” or “When CPC is the source of 40% of all sales, you'll.....”

More than Ten Billion Dollars – yes that's billion with a B – will be spent in 2005 on CPC campaigns. Your plan to spend $15,000 a month to generate $75,000 a month in new online sales is really just a tiny drop in that bucket. Plan to succeed.

Frank Recommendation – don't build your own house.

The numbers above – 15K spent to generate 75K in online sales – might put a bit of a lump in your throat. You need to determine the amount of spending that can occur before you'll need a professional involved. Good pros more than pay for themselves – if that 15K campaign was run 20% more effectively and the professional wanted $2,500 a month to do that – it'd be a good deal.

Serious CPC pros are not easy to find – and lots of marketers are not especially honest about their experience. Make sure you ask what experience the firm has had in full management of campaigns, what sort of reports you are going to get, and be sure to check the references. It will only take a month or two before you know for sure how well your CPC person is doing – it is all just simple math on the sales side.

Remember that 1970's classified newspaper ad get rich idea? Build one profitable classified ad and then place it all over the country? For those who followed the instructions, this was a foolproof method - lots of information reports were sold via classifieds nationally. (By the way, the Internet kind of killed this model, so it really doesn't work anymore).

CPC is a proved method today. If you have a reasonably profitable product for sale online and you follow the instructions exactly – it can be a foolproof money making method.

American Search Engine User
by Josiah Cole

Yahoo! and Google put out lists of their top Internet search phrases, and in the case of WordTracker, all of the other major search engine lists. Those lists show the most common search terms and phrases over the last 24 hours to 60 days. It's always fascinating to read and analyze those lists, as they contain a glimpse into the world of your average Internet user. Lately the lists have been lead by headline news terms such as “London Bombings” followed closely by terms like “London News” and “The Secret Organization of Al-qaida In Europe.” Often you'll see breaking news topping the 24 hour lists. However, the long term 60 day lists show a much different picture. Dominating this list are categories of search terms that remain constant throughout the years.

By a substantial margin, the top Internet search term over the last 60 days has been “Paris Hilton.” Yes, the queen of self promotion has garnered most of the Internet's attention and dominates the top spot by over 55,000 instances (WordTracker). Are the Paris searchers checking on her latest movie appearance, or are they simply looking for a snapshot from her infamous “home video”? . . . we'll probably never know. Next on the list is “google”, an obvious entry, and simply backs up the fact that Google is #1 for Internet search online (more on this below). Number 5 is “poetry”, and quite frankly that surprised me, especially after reading #1 and, well, . . . most of the top 200 list. With many entries like, “Brittany Spears”, “Pamela Anderson”, and “Jenna Jameson,” one would not expect poetry fans to fit the common demographic. The term “games” makes a strong appearance at #2 with “yahoo,” “funny jokes,” “ebay,” “playstation 2 cheats,” “tatoos” and “Carmen Electra” rounding out the top 10.

You might be asking yourself why someone would search for “google” or “yahoo” in a search engine when they could simply type “google.com” or “yahoo.com” in their address bar for direct access. I don't have an answer, because frankly, it doesn't make sense. One could hypothesize that people don't understand the address bar and how to use it (seems kind of silly, I know). Now, I don't want to go so far as to say these people are doing something a little dumb, but lets just say they prefer to search for their search engine before searching for a search term.

With similar terms appearing in spots 11-20, you start to have a picture of what your common Internet user is like and what they search for.

Of course, this is the censored version of the list, and excludes blatant adult terms that I won't mention here. Even with these filtered out, the top 200 list contains many references to adult movie stars, women's body parts and clothing you put on those women's body parts. It seems porn still rules online, followed closely by entertainment in the form of pop music, games and . . . poetry (still doesn't sit right with me).

After reading the list you might conclude that all American Search Engine Users are 14-18 year old teenagers, and you may be right. However, you may be wrong and are simply viewing the scattered and multi faceted minds of the general public.