The agency-based pay per click solution: Could it work for you?

David Steinberg of AdPearance in Portland, OR, invited me to his company’s regular Thursday free Webinar on Internet marketing for the construction equipment and supply industry.  Yesterday, I attended and heard a message worthy of repeating.  Steinberg advocates that AEC equipment and supply marketers use keyword advertising but test intensively and make sure that the landing page(s) used are carefully designed to be specific and have the right call to action.

Steinberg described how when he was in the lumber business in the mid part of the last decade, visiting architects and pitching his products one by one in face-to-face meetings, he discovered the power of Google keyword advertising.  Initially, this advertising produced incredible results.  But, he acknowledges, if he tried the same thing today he would be disappointed.  The cost per click has risen astronomically and (worse) the resistance to clicking and converting from Internet advertising has greatly increased.  In other words, without a focused marketing strategy and lots of testing, you can easily spend thousands of dollars on your advertising and end up with nothing but bad losses to show for your experience.

The right approach, he says, is to select your keywords carefully and then draw them to a specific site/landing page which is geared to the message you wish to connect to the people who respond to those specific keywords.  You cannot be generic and soft here, you need to be specific.  So if you are selling a variety of widgets, make sure that you pick the widget carefully and then send the potential customer to the widget page which has the correct call to action.  Then, measure the results — carefully.

The good news is that the sample size and speed of measurement with Internet advertising is much lower than conventional advertising.  Steinberg says you will know if your campaign is on the right track if you receive, say 100 clicks and if these are turning into profitable conversions, probably within a couple of weeks.  Sooner than later, you will discover a profitable campaign:  That is, one that generates enough inquiries which convert correctly by either requests for further information online or by phone to actual sales, that you know that you have a viable strategy.  Then you test alternatives against the base strategy — you can run the tests simultaneously with your primary campaign — until you get something better.  Direct calls to action seem to work well, as do videos, but these advantages may vary depending on the circumstances.

Steinberg’s business of course collects management fees charged monthly for the account management service.  Clearly, this can be a lucrative business because his staff can apply concepts for one business to another — and even excluding direct competitors, there are many different AEC service and supply businesses.  He can of course use free media like me to draw traffic to his site, but he can also practice what he preaches, with selected advertising placements drawing potential clients to the regular Webinars and then, through a conversion process, to actual clients of his service.  He shares my opinion that the AEC industry is certainly not leading the pack in marketing practices and technologies — this gives a real advantage to anyone who keeps apace of trends in other industries and applies them here.

While this model is valid, it works primarily for businesses with the resources for significant cash paid advertising budgets.  Smaller businesses with plenty of self-discipline (and cheap web designers) probably can implement AdPearance  strategy with 80 per cent effectiveness on a do-it-yourself basis.  (Another option, if your budgets are low, is to bite the bullet, use Steinberg’s services for a few months, and then move on — of course in those few months with his company your results may be so impressive that you would be nuts to stop using the service!)

The management fees of several hundred dollars a month (before you place any AdWords or other paid advertising) would blow the budgets of most of the smaller readers of this blog, and i’m not sure how well the model would work for professional firms and others who must work with extremely long lead times on very large projects.  But Steinberg isn’t targeting these markets.  Steinberg doesn’t discount the potential advantages of Search Engine Optimization strategies (SEO), but he rightfully points out that these take time and probably work best in conjunction and after you get your paid keyword strategies in place.

(I note that in the last year I saw a similar data-driven agency type of agency service promoting itself as an alternative to the Yellow Pages.  I won’t name the business here because of my policy not to describe by name any business negatively.  Unfortunately, clients within Internet forums I monitor who initially expressed enthusiasm for this business’s concept — similar to AdPearance — ultimately were disappointed by that business’s service and value. They felt they were pouring money into a black hole.  I obviously haven’t used AdPearance’s services myself but sense you are on much safer ground here in part because the company is quite up-front about its fees and target markets, and I’m confident wouldn’t just take your money and run.)

Steinberg also shows how you can build a great systematized conversion strategy into your processes.  Set up a regular Webinar, then drive traffic through paid keyword advertising, social media, SEO, and other resources.  Because the Webinar is at a set time, your staff is not strained and you can give it your fullest attention.  Then measure the conversion rates and success.  It is a good model for a variety of services.

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