What Badly Managed PPC Ads & Bad Publicity Have in Common

The saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” came to mind when I saw video of a minor

league baseball manager going berserk after a bad umpire’s call. After berating the umpire and

getting ejected, he turned his frustration toward inanimate objects. Pulling each base out of the

ground and flinging them into the outfield. And on his way to the showers he tossed all of his

team’s bats onto the field.

The incident made all the sports news shows and the video went viral overnight. So, a previously

unknown manager in a one traffic light town

in Texas is famous far and wide. And it will

be for more than 15 minutes since the video

will recycle on sports blooper shows as well

as be replayed every time a manager has an

epic meltdown.

Some believe that any publicity, even bad

publicity, is a good thing. That the manager

now has “name recognition” that he wouldn’t

have otherwise. But is it really good or is

there too high of a cost? When teams are

seeking managers at higher levels, will they

consider him? Or will they be concerned that he won’t be able to control his emotions on a

bigger stage?

Getting traffic to your small business website via pay per click (“PPC”) advertising has similar

cost/benefit issues. In this post we’ll review several of the potential downsides of PPC when it is

not managed properly.

What is PPC advertising? At its simplest, its paying Search Engines (Google, Bing et al.) to have

your business listed on the search engine results page (“SERP”) along with “organic” results for

certain keywords (“KW”). You bid an amount for the KW in an “auction” for a chance to be near

the top of the PPC list on the SERP (the concept of “quality score” also is a factor for rankings).

When somebody clicks on your PPC ad, for each click you pay the amount that you had bid. If

you bid 10 cents for the KW “perambulators”, each time your PPC ad is clicked the Search

Engine or PPC service charges you 10 cents. 100 clicks equals 10 dollars.

Sounds like a bargain, huh? 10 dollars to get 100 visitors to your website is a great investment,

correct? But that’s assuming that any visit to your website must be a good thing. And like any

other investment, the amount you invest is only part of the equation. Finance 101 tells us that

your return on investment (“ROI”) is critical as well.

Staying with the investment side for a moment, the drive to be the top ranked PPC listing can be

a pitfall. Envision the company president or head marketer at your baby carriage company

believing that you just have to be number one for the perambulator KW. It can result in ego

based bidding that gets out of hand and inflates what you’re paying beyond the actual market

value for the KW.

And only fixating on the KW that your business would like to have a top ranking for on the PPC

list ignores an important PPC management tool: “Negative” keywords. They’re used to identify

variations of the KW you’re bidding on so that searches for those variations don’t trigger your

PPC ad appearing on the list. If you only sell new baby carriages you wouldn’t want your PPC

ad to appear if somebody searches for “used” baby carriages. Their click on your ad would be a

waste of your PPC budget.

On the ROI side there’s the issue of “junk traffic” to your site. This is especially of concern

when doing PPC through a PPC service. It may place part of your PPC ads with lesser search

engines or content networks. Such “Partner Network Campaigns” can result in your getting

visitors from the far reaches of the world wide web that really have no relation to your business.

Great for pumping up your traffic statistics, but not so great for your ROI.

Unlike traffic from search engine optimization (SEO) efforts, PPC doesn’t “scale”. For every

additional PPC visitor to your site from a PPC ad, you pay. Compare such to the time (also a

cost, but a fixed one) that it takes to post a blog article and promote it via social media. When

effective, there will come a point when the benefit equals your fixed cost and each visitor

thereafter costs you less and less.

Those are some of the potential downsides to PPC ads when not managed properly. There can be

great risk as a result of the amount of money your business can spend to generate website traffic

regardless of its quality or potential for return on investment. PPC advertising can be a good

online marketing tool for your business just like your SEO efforts. However, properly managing

your PPC is the key.

LAD Solutions is a professional Pay-Per-Click Management company based out of Los Angeles

that specializes in managing and optimizing Google Adwords Campaigns. Our PPC experts are

waiting to help you.

To learn more about our pay per click management services, please call (888) 523-2926, or

click the www.LADSolutions.com to submit your request, and one of our representatives

will be in touch with you shortly!