April 11, 2006

Case Study: Cost Per Click Works

I've recently posted an interview with Emily White, Google's Ad Words director where she shares with us about doing cost per click and how to improve your results. I've just read Business Week's nice case study of a small business' success with cost per click as well.

The Business Week article reads So in August, 2004, Zenorini signed up for Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search, which lets you target ads to a specific state, city, or even neighborhood. Now her ad pops up only when someone within 75 miles of San Francisco searches using the keywords she has chosen. She pays 10 cents to 99 cents per click, spending a total of about $3,000 a year.

The local approach is working. Absolute Adventure's revenues doubled, to $400,000, in the 12 months ended in August, 2005. "Online advertising is the single most important contributing factor to our success," says Zenorini. "We ask every client how they found us, and apart from repeat business, about 97% found us online."

You'll find that two strategies are important a) it's more difficult to obtain keywords that are not targeted locally. Bidding on "dog food" is most likely going to have you going head to head with national brands like Purina. But bidding on "dog food gourmet New York" is something that will give you LOCAL customers for your local NY business. b) you also must ensure you analyze your search results and refine more and more and more.

As you invest more money into cost per click advertising, it's best to hire a company who can manage the advertising for you for a reasonable fee.

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