How to Lower Your Cost Per Acquisition

Posted on February 4, 2010
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing Tips, Google AdWords, Landing Page Optimization, PPC Keyword Tools, Pay Per Click, Toronto SEM Consulting | Leave a Comment

How to Lower Your Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) advertising, or Cost Per Action advertising, is a method of paying for advertising that allows the advertiser to pay for each conversion such as a download, transaction, and lead instead of paying each time someone clicks on the ad. In other words, the advertiser only pays when the user completes a transaction. When differentiating CPA vs. CPC (Cost Per Click), with CPC, the advertiser pays each time someone clicks on the ad.

The best way to lower your CPA is to maximize your keywords so that you are using keywords that people use when searching for your product and service.  You must be able to turn your keywords into a sale. This involves constantly looking for quality keywords so you gain a competitive edge and that the researched keywords result in a profit. One important step you should take is setting a maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA). This is the bid you are willing to pay for a conversion such as a transaction. For instance, if your maximum CPA bid is $5.00, you will not pay more than that price. You may also end up paying less depending on what others are bidding. You have the option to increase or decrease your maximum bid, depending on your marketing strategy. Google’s recommended maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) is the ad group bid that they suggest to help an advertiser keep costs steady.

Other than Google’s free conversion optimizing service, there are also cost per action paid service companies that specialize in finding the right keywords and setting the price. There are keyword research services available that provide advertisers with the ability to continually research keywords and create a relevant and effective list of keywords that will help them increase site traffic and lower their cost per acquisition. It is an effective method of controlling advertising spending and reducing advertising waste. People can also manually set keywords and bids themselves. Cost Per Acquisition Optimizing is an important tool if you are looking to optimize the number of conversions to maximize your advertising dollars.

Quality Score is another way to lower your CPA. Quality score is a grade search engines apply to your advertising campaigns. The higher a search engine grades your campaign, the less you will be charged. As well, you ads will become better established in the ‘Sponsored Links’ column. Quality score is affected by ad text relevancy, keyword relevancy to its particular ad group, landing page quality, and the click through rate. By producing search engine friendly ad campaigns, you will reduce your advertising costs by permitting the search engine to generate reduced minimum bids and first page bid for your advertising account. With better CPA management, businesses can drastically improve conversions while lowering their CPA.

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Landing Page Optimization Google Adwords

Posted on October 28, 2009
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing Tips, Google AdWords, Google Quality Score, Landing Page Optimization, Pay Per Click, Toronto SEM Consulting | Leave a Comment

Understanding Landing Page Optimization for Google AdWords

Your quality score in the AdWords system is the way Google indicates how effectively the keywords and content work together in your ads and landing pages. A wise choice of keywords connecting your ad to the relevant content of a quick-loading landing page will be rewarded with a lower cost per click and better ad position, not to forget more click-throughs. Google wants to help you increase your quality score since doing so results in increased overall trust searchers will have in Google AdWords.

Google is in the business of uniting its search clients with the exact item, service or information they are looking for with as little effort as possible. If your landing page is doing its job, not only will searchers see that you are a good match; they will also find it effortless and compelling to commit to a purchase and refer others to your site.

It is no easy task to create the perfect landing page that will draw in droves of traffic and flood your servers with orders. Testing various versions of your landing page and noting the response of your visitors is critical to developing a successful campaign. The number of issues a landing page needs to resolve; loads in seconds, is absolutely relevant to the searcher, establishes immediate trust, and presents a clear and compelling call to action, will clearly take more than one try. Multiple version of your landing page, varying a single feature, such as the call to action, will lead you to a version that visitors will prefer.

In order to take advantage of the many different ways people search the web, e-commerce sites should diversify their marketing efforts. An effective e-commerce marketing strategy would include individual product landing pages for long-tail, and review and comparison pages allowing dispersal across a wider spectrum of search criteria to address the bulk of search queries.

Learning the strategies to effective ad and landing page optimization yields a double reward. You have chosen the most relevant keyword phrases to attract the right traffic. You have done the testing to come up with a landing page that is relevant to your AdWords ad. On the one hand, fine-tuning your landing pages will net you higher numbers of quality visitors buying your products. To add to that, Google will reward you with a lower cost per click for your AdWords campaign, since the success of the Google AdWords system is dependent on your success.

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Developing an Effective Marketing Plan for the Law Vertical

Posted on October 27, 2009
Filed Under Google AdWords, Pay Per Click, Ranking reports, Social Media Marketing, Toronto Marketing Consultant, Toronto SEM Consulting, Toronto SEO Consulting | Leave a Comment

SEO - SEM Advice For Law Firms

Search engine optimization and search engine marketing within the vertical of law and lawyers is one of the most competitive areas within Google, Yahoo and Bing today.

Understanding what proper approach needs to be undertaken when utilizing online marketing is crucial to gaining the most exposure in a defined amount of time. Search engine optimization (SEO) for rankings to achieve free traffic does take time for organic growth and should be targeted at a 6-12 month plan. Search engine marketing through Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing Ad Center can start the flow of traffic happening at a quick pace but you will pay a premium price to get the top positioning that is needed.

SEO Advice – Organic Traffic for Law Firms

Undertaking an SEO campaign for the law firm vertical is by no means a short-term play. It involves a constant on page and off page factor that needs to be built out over a 6-12 month engagement. This time frame allows the search engine crawlers to see growth develop for the law firms web site and is the correct path for deeming any web site an authority within the targeted law firm vertical. Proper steps to research a search engine optimization plan involves the following:

1. Determine a minimum of ten long tail terms the firm wants to target. Each page within the web site should only have a one long tail term focus. This list will quickly broaden as content is developed

2. Determine your competition based upon the original ten long tail terms. Quickly doing search queries through Google will indicate which competition is scoring well. Target your findings to listing on the second and third page search results, since these sites are the most “in play”.

3. Determine your top three competitors the run those web sites through Yahoo to see what back link count they have achieve. Simply go to Yahoo and type in : site: http://sitename.com. Once the page returns, click “inlinks” to see the full count.

4. Start targeting all law firm directories, for a start some can be found here: Law Directories

5. Develop and manage a social platform that is publishing new content daily

6. Managed your expectations. Understand nowadays that the law firm promotion and new client acquisitions through organic SEO is not a easy task and typically calls for time and good budget. A five hundred-dollar solution offered by off shore SEO firms will not work, it has been proven

SEM Advice  – Paid Traffic for Law Firms and Lawyers

Since Google owns the most market share of all the search engines, the Ad Words approach has been the choice of most law firms and lawyers to execute a  large pay per click exposure campaign. However, Bing and Yahoo should not be overlooked, once you see certain areas of Google’s pricing (remember your paying full retail pricing), for example:

los angeles dwi lawyer $47.00 a click

dui lawyer in los angeles $37.00 a click

defense lawyer los angeles $30.00 a click

mesothelioma lawyer $ 27.00 a click

personal injury lawyer attorney $ 25.00 a click

As you can see, without applying a serious budget for those target terms no law firm can get market share on Ad Words. Thus, Yahoo and Bing might allow for lower prices with average demographics. Proper steps to research a search engine marketing plan with Ad Words involves the following:

1. Campaign set-up – Determine the first campaign base on the overall term focus

2. Create Ad Groups based on individual themes ( you can create more then fifty ad groups at any given time)

3. Create a minimum of four  ads per ad group – Test various ad copy

4. Create specific landing pages for ad groups. One landing page will not be enough in testing so remember to generate a few landing pages for split testing

5. Test, revise and test again. With Ad Words you can’t “set it and forget it”, you will end up with more cost then expected. Reducing cost works hand in hand with quality score.

6. Plan to manage your account daily. Daily revisions and competition tracking will only lead to successful pay per click campaign.

The bottom line for marketing a law firm or a lawyer online, is understanding that this vertical is in the top five most competitive verticals online today and simply dabbling in SEO and SEM will not work.

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