Some Common Questions on Pay Per Click and the GM Simmons Co management programs
Question: "Who Uses Pay Per Click?"
Answer: "Pay Per Click is designed so just about any business can use it, and successfully drive targeted traffic to their website and/or landing pages (a page designed specifically revolving around one keyword/concept/product/offer). Really the more important answer is who Pay Per Click is NOT for. If your advertising budget is less than $500 per month, then Pay Per Click in our opinion is not for you. There are other avenues that you can use to maximize your ROI on small amounts that will work in a more positive way. Pay Per Click will however be your best bet at testing new ideas, gathering marketing intelligence and increasing your companies profile on the Internet."
Question: "What does Pay Per Click Cost?"
Answer: "While our management fees are a set cost (see specific package pages for costs) the fees paid to the search engines for clicks are set by you in your budget. Part of our service is to maximize your bids effectiveness as well as minimize the cost. But how much you spend per month is totally up to you.
Another good thing is that usually after several months of running campaigns and gathering data, we can start to weed out ineffective keywords and concentrate on the keywords that are producing results, thus lowering your cost per conversion. Our goal is always to lower your client acquisition costs"
Question: "What if I change things, like my website, will I be penalized or have to start over?"
Answer: "Not at all! The very nature of Pay Per Click almost demands constant testing and refining so that your constantly moving toward higher conversions and lesser costs. Our service provides recommended changes based on data analysis to websites, offers, and target markets. The fact is that search engines like Google love positive, visitor driven changes that make your web presence a more useful experience for their customers (i.e. searchers). When you constantly do that, they reward you both with lower costs/more traffic on the paid side and higher search results on the free side."
Question: "I keep hearing about 'search' and 'content' networks, can you tell me what the difference is?"
Answer: "The Search Network are results you see on the search engine that run vertically along the right hand side of the page and horizontally on the top of the page (on AdWords, these results are placed there by Google due to consistently high results for the keyword) shaded in light orange. These ads are always text ads, and have 'Sponsored Listings' placed beside them. They are driven by specific searches (keywords) that are bid upon by advertisers. You pay only when someone clicks on your ad and goes to your website/landing page.
The Content Network are blogs, forums, websites, individual pages and any other web based medium that has opted in to the Search Engines Advertising program (with Google this is called Adsense) to run targeted advertising on their sites. Google in turn shares the ad revenue with the site owner. These ads can be a number of formats (text, video, display ads, banners) and sizes. These ads are placed due to content that matches your offer/product/service. On the content network you have more control on where your ad shows and doesn't show, and also can chose between paying by click or by 1000 impressions."
Question: "Can I target geographical areas like cities and states and also different times of day and specific days?"
Answer: "You can target down to very small geographic areas, effectively showing ads in a 10 mile radius around an address up to the entire world (and everything in between). If you have a business that lends itself to 'geo targeting', then Pay Per Click is a fantastic medium to target your message. You also can target you ads to show up only during specified times each day and different days of the week (many companies pause the ads on the weekends if they target B2B)."
Question: "Is there a way to track sales/conversions from my campaigns?"
Answer: "Yes. Built in to every account we manage is an Analytics account (if you don't have one we will set one up for you) and that will track all the conversions off of your campaigns-where they came from, what keywords that person used, what days/times that person came to your site, etc. The very nature of Pay Per Click lends itself to extremely detailed reporting which only enhances it's value over and above just getting you that initial conversion. We provide automatic email reports detailing data on a schedule that suits your situation and needs"
Question: "What happens to my Pay Per Click account if for some reason I decide in the future to leave your management program?"
Answer: "Everything we do with our Pay Per Click Management is done in your individual account with the search engines. If you should ever decide to not renew our management, your account stays intact and any and all work we have done stays with you. Likewise all reporting through the search engines will continue to be sent to you on the same schedule you set up."
Question: "How does the billing from the Search Engines work?"
Answer: "You have two options for billing from the search engines; prepay and post pay. With prepay, you deposit a fixed amount into your account and the search engine runs your ads until that account is depleted. They inform you when the account is running low, so that there is no interruption in the ads showing because the account ran out of funds. With post pay, the search engine bills a credit/debit card every 30 days OR when your account has reached a pre determined limit (usually around $500). Sometimes this is confusing because you may be billed more than once in a 30 day period. Many of our clients open a separate credit card account specifically for paying Pay Per Click ads, as this makes it much more easy to track costs.
Our management fees are deducted via PayPal subscription service on the 1st of every month. We invoice you monthly on or around the 20th to advise you that a payment will be deducted. You can also pay by check quarterly, semi annually and annually with a discount applied.
Question: "Can I have more than one website on one account?"
Answer: "While you can have multiple websites in your accounts with the search engines, our management service is specific to one website. Any additional websites that you wish for us to manage will incur additional management and setup charges (however we do offer a discount for existing clients)."
Is there a question you have that is not addressed here or anywhere else on our site? No problem, simply ask it in the form below and send it to me-I'll be glad to give you an answer!
