Geo Targeting
Submitted by Barry_G on Wed, 05/14/2008 - 13:11.
I am looking into the possibilities of working with a local company, that has a site (a bit lame) and does everything related to office furniture installation and complete office relocation.
I am trying to get some rough estimates of what geo targeted kw's will cost me.
If I enter a basic phrase into Google, and get an estimated result of say, .25cents to be in position 1-4, if I have chosen my ppc ads to be limited to only 1 city, should I expect to pay less, or more for my relevant kw's, being that I am not bidding against the nation wide platform?
This co. is not only loaded, but seems to be a bit old school, meaning they seem to be more concerned about sales reps. than the Internet as a means to get and bid on jobs. I have a friend that works there and know this to be true.
Has anyone else done of thought of this?
Meaning, found a successful local company that offers a highly searched for service or product, yet no web presence, or if they have a company site, it never comes up in any search results relevant to their offered prod. or services, so isn't driving any new customers to that company.
Make sense?
Thanks
Barry
I would say go for it.
I've read MANY things about helping local companies build a web presence,
and about how profitable it can be.
It's a business model Perry Marshall practices.
But as far as the geo targeting part of your question, I'm clueless.
Honestly, learning ppc is why I'm here.
So I don't have any experience to share in that area.
But someone else should be able to provide some perspective here.
I hope ;-)
Sorry I can't be of more help Barry.
Brad.
Hey Brad
Thanks for the motivational comment!
While I'm no Perry Marshall -lol -, when I asked this one local company why their site never came up when I searched for ANY service they offered, they were clueless, and really didn't seem to care.
They say people will visit their site because the url is on the business cards their sales reps hand out.
The conversation then led to how much do you pay your sales reps, and in this case, they were paying them commission, on top of a base salary.
At this point I began pulling numbers out my a** and asked if paying me half their sales rep base rate/week, in exchange for 500 new leads /mo. would be cost effective.
They told me it would be very cost effective, but not be possible, as their experienced sales team is lucky to generate 500 leads/year.
At this point I decided to change the subject, realizing I needed to investigate this further in order to come back with a great proposition, not wanting to get shot down, or best case, leave money on the table.
I really don't know how to price a service like this. Any ideas?
Barry
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Go'in Deep This Time Up!!
Barry,
I have been trying to work through this issue as well. I have a customer that I designed the site for and built some lead generation tools into the site. (offer access to more info, pdf's & video in exchange for them filling out a form)
They are getting leads from the site from people filling out the form but the traffic to the site is from organic search results.
What I have been thinking is to set something up where I get paid for each lead I generate from PPC marketing campaigns that I would set up.
They sell a high end product so qualified leads would be valuable.
I just need to determine how valuable. If we can come to an agreement on what a qualified lead is worth (say $10 - $20) then I would get paid on the amount of leads I send to the site that fill out the follow-up form.
We could start out with a weekly amount cap to the PPC budget that they were comfortable with and expand from there.
...anyway that is what I have been thinking lately. Let me know what you think.
Jack Ball
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JackBall - I'll follow you!
Hi Jack
I don't see why they wouldn't give it a try at least. Maybe Fields will chime in here as I think he has done this before.
Jack, It seems the web is still the wild, untamed West if you stumble upon the right opportunity!
Thanks for your input!
Good Luck
Barry
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Go'in Deep This Time Up!!
Barry,
Kirt Christensen is an AdWords expert that does a lot of PPC consulting. I remember him saying that trying to get the business of a company that's not already doing PPC is a really hard sell. Even if you do get their business, they can be hard to work with because they don't have any idea of how hard it is to manage a good PPC campaign.
Rather than go after businesses that are not doing PPC, he searches for local businesses to see if they are doing PPC. If so, he will print out the Google search screen, circle their ad, and mail it to them with a post it that says "I can help, call me." 1 out of 10 businesses actually call back. The reason for working with businesses that are doing PPC is because they are experiencing the headaches and frustration of running a PPC campaign. They usually don't know how to track keywords, create effective ad copy, or make landing pages. This give you the opportunity to present yourself as the professional who can take away the pain they are feeling by managing their campaign for them and improving their ROI.
Cheers,
Jason Woods
Follow me on Twitter
Hey Guys,
Thats a great idea Jason ..
Barry, regarding click prices -- I dont know for sure .. Ask me in a month as I helping a south florida company doing geotargeting for south florida.. But I dont think if you geotarget (within the USA) that your bids will be lower than the average .. INternational traffic is another matter tho ..
Your click thru rates will probably be a bit higher as you have an additional line below showing the location - so that might help ..
I kind of honestly would prefer doing what Jason said and going to help people with existing campaigns ..
I have a contract now -- for metal parts company - and I dont mind getting paid but Its hard to educate people = It was been tough to get them to install conversion tracking ..
Another contract I am looking at in south florida .. and they get the general ideas of landing pages, and buying traffic but there is a lot of optimization that can be done ..
anyways to be honest ... I would rather build my own affiliate sites than someone else business - so as income grows I will probably drop the consulting ... anyways thats the plan ..
but I can be hard negotiating and educating people about the value of a lead = when I have done this I negotiated the price and paid for the traffic myself so they know Im serious
my advice is make a presentation to them but if they dont get it .. move on to something else .. your time and knowledge is valuable
Thanks guys!
Jason - Good stuff there. This has given me a few ideas, and enlightened me to probs. I hadn't considered, that already are rearing their head, so to speak.
As I had mentioned previously, the one fellow I ran this buy, already knew better, telling me their was no way I could send him 500 leads a month at half the base rate of a sales rep. Hmm, maybe I need to find the guy who's pocket this sales rep base pay comes out of and have a little chat. - LMAO
I can already see how this could turn into a time consuming process with companies that aren't open to change, and have no on-line marketing in place (effective or not).
Fields - I see where you are coming from when you say " I would rather build my own affiliate sites than someone else business ". Makes lots of sense!
Since I am looking for some cash flow that can be converted to ppc traffic for my future campaigns, and be scaled up if done properly, for now, the extra effort may be worth it.
Since I have no ppc management portfolio, or track record doing this, I have thought about sending experimental traffic out of pocket to prove I am serious also. Will be very cautious with this idea.
Anyway, thanks for the help.
Barry
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Go'in Deep This Time Up!!