Many business owners find Paid Search a scary beast. A place where they can easily drop tens of thousands of dollars without knowing what they’re getting in return. Well, it can be like that if you start with an unlimited budget and set the Content Network to fire at will (I’ve seen it happen and it ain’t pretty).

Success comes from knowing what the heck you’re doing. If I were to collaborate with some of my peers, together we could write a book about responsible Paid Search management. However, that’s not what I’m looking to do. Today I want to discuss budget strategies.

Money, Money, Money… How much to spend and when?

One of the biggest dilemmas that decisions makers face when they are ready to take their business to a reliable Internet Marketing Firm, is the thought that brews inside their heads: “I don’t know what I don’t know.”

Some of them may be thinking that they know exactly what they want the campaign to look like, but deep down inside they understand that they just don’t understand how this technology works.

Hopefully they have found someone who actually knows what they are doing, such as this guy over here.

Let’s say that they found me through my contact form, and after a few phone calls, I bring the eVisibility rock star PPC management team over to discuss how we work, and nail down some details before we start working together.

Now, pretend that we already took care of all of the other stuff pertaining to discussing goal metrics, business metrics, etc. Now we are going to discuss a budget spending strategy (since that’s what this blog post is about). There are a couple of roads that we could take:

1. The Safe, but sometimes more expensive road.
2. The Risky, but often times more cost effective road.

There may be more “roads” one can take to start a campaign with, but those are the main ones I want to focus on for this post.

Say the client tells me that they have $50,000 to spend over the next 6 months, and they just don’t know how much, and at what frequency, they should spend that money.

The Safe, but sometimes costly…

It costs money to be safe, duh! The safe way of going about engaging Google Adwords looks like this:

• The campaign build out is very conservative, we would look for long tail keywords that are very relevant terms
• We wouldn’t use a whole lot of broad matching at first, and really focus on the core business
• Our budget spend would be somewhat this:
  • Month 1: $5,000
  • Month 2: $6,000
  • Month 3: $8,000
  • Month 4: $15,000
  • Month 5: $12,000
  • Month 6: $4,000

In the scenario above, Months 1, 2 and 3 would be the “discovery” months. It could take that long for us to really find a niche that works, and it’s quite possible that during that time the campaign under performs. There’s nothing wrong with the “safe” way, the only downside is that although you would spend less up front, it might take a longer period of time for your management team to really hone into what’s working and what isn’t working. Right around Month 4 they start to find what brings the best, most qualified traffic, and then the campaign really starts to flourish. But by then you’re also starting to run dry on campaign budget, so you would have to make the most with the time left.

Risky, often faster and cost effective…

It can cost you more than anticipated to be risky, and at the same time the results of taking some measurable and intelligent risks can be very rewarding. Here are some things you may expect to see in this scenario:

• The campaign build out is very aggressive, we would look for different terms, competitors, branded and non-branded terms. We would have many ads, many keywords, broad matches, etc.
• Our budget schedule would look more or less like this:
  • Month 1: $5,000
  • Month 2: $15,000
  • Month 3: $13,000
  • Month 4: $ 7,500
  • Month 5: $7,500
  • Month 6: $7,500

The first month would have a lower budget since we are spending a considerable amount of time building the campaign. Then, Months 2 and 3 would be big testing months. We wouldn’t be just tossing the budget away, and we would also be aggressively pursuing our target market. The goal is that you would find your ideal sweet spot somewhere in the end of Month 2 and the beginning of Month 3. Then, the rest of the campaign would be very efficient. Sure we would go a bit over the budget, but as long as the ROI is there why shouldn’t we?

Conclusion

Always consider the end goal when making a decision regarding which path you should take. I know, I know, this sounds very basic. But sometimes it’s the basic stuff that is missing in very important business decisions.

You have to know where you’re going. Then decide how you want to get there: are you going to play safe to take some risks?

If you are reading this and find yourself asking that very questions right now, shoot me a message and let me help you make that decision.

As always, don’t be shy to comment

Images Credit:
Toilet Paper Money: UK2.net
I Has A Money: I Can Has Cheezburger
Piggie Bank (with a slight edit by me): Industrial Clicks

This post has been syndicated from the SEO Survivor Blog. Please visit http://www.seosurvivor.com/ for more! Thank you :)

Budget Strategy for PPC Campaigns

I have just finished upgrading my Wordpress to the new 2.7! OOOoooohh. So far so good. After so many upgrades (c’mon Wordpress, give us a little break) I’ve managed to be good enough at it that I don’t pull my entire site down anymore. It was actually pretty smooth, and I must say, ’tis a good looking dashboard!

Also, in addition to keeping up with the Search Engine Optimization community, I’m trying to expand my horizons into the world of Paid Search as well. I already work in that realm, and have a basic strategic knowledge of running decent campaigns, but I would like to dive a little deeper in there as well, just to broaden my capacity as an SEM project manager. So in addition to picking up some new feeds from good Paid Search resources and blogs, I’m also getting certified with the Adwords program, just so I can flash that little badge. I know all you get is a jpeg that says “Google Adwords Qualified Professional”, but I didn’t see anywhere in their policies stating that I can’t print that image, cut it out and make it into a real badge!

Last but not least, I will make an effort to keep my blog updated more often than I have. I went over one month without posting anything and the theory I had talked about before — that my list of subscribers tends to increase when I don’t write anything — was debunked!

Enjoy this awesome little video that Videogum put together, I grabbed it from Boing Boing! The Most Awesome Viral Videos of 2008!!

This post has been syndicated from the SEO Survivor Blog. Please visit http://www.seosurvivor.com/ for more! Thank you :)

Wordpress 2.7, SEM, and a Viral Video

I have noticed several phishing attempts along with a colleague, Alex Rothaus, from some Google impostors. After contacting our Google representatives this morning, they confirmed that those emails were not authentic. If you receive ANY emails from “Google AdWords” or any a similar source, claiming a payment was not processed and asking you to click on a link to resolve the issue, do not click on that link. Just forward the email to Google help through your webmasters account if you have one.

The emails look legit, but Google will never ask you to click on a link, they will just give you instructions to go to Adwords.

Here are some screenshots from phishing emails we received this morning:

If you noticed the same, get the word out and let us know.

Happy Thursday

This post has been syndicated from the SEO Survivor Blog. Please visit http://www.seosurvivor.com/ for more! Thank you :)

Google Impostors Phishing Adwords

We have been watching the Google / DoubleClick acquisition process, and it has come to an end. I’m personally surprised at how fast this deal came together, though the talk has been around for a while.

What does this mean?

Read Google’s Announcement about the purchase to get your questions and doubts answered, or at least somewhat humored.

Meanwhile we wait to see DART tags implemented into the Google Content Network, among other new features that will certainly pop up in the near future.

I feel for any layoff victims, since there may be some DoubleClick layoff soon. Google will probably opt to reduce DoubleClick’s headcount to match its current business structure. The word on the street is that this is supposed to be done by sometime in April.

This post has been syndicated from the SEO Survivor Blog. Please visit http://www.seosurvivor.com/ for more! Thank you :)

Google makes the DoubleClick purchase official

Ohh yea! The CPC Rap, now available to all of you SEM fiends! We’ll soon be able to have different genres for SEO/SEM songs. Enjoy the CPC Rap below!

This post has been syndicated from the SEO Survivor Blog. Please visit http://www.seosurvivor.com/ for more! Thank you :)

Paid Search Sonnet – The CPC Rap