Sep
28
Managing your PPC Campaign: Step 1
Filed Under Advertising | Comments Off
In 2008 I conducted a study of attorney PPC campaigns managed by a third party at Yahoo and Google for the year current year. Granted, it’s nearly 2 years later, but I don’t get the impression the results have changed; at the time, PPC leads were cheaper than SEO leads in only 1 of 8 chases. This was not including the campaign management fees (The third party service provider charged $1 for every $1 spent by the client), which made PPC leads more than twice as expensive as SEO leads in many cases.
However, PPC leads CAN work, and can in some cases be cheaper than SEO leads. First, lets look at how we calculate cost per lead. Call tracking must be implemented for both SEO and PPC campaigns. A different call tracking phone number is displayed for yahoo, google and natural / SEO search results, and SEO leads should be sorted to remove a percent of the total leads that corresponds to the percentage of unique direct website visits or referrals not related to SEO efforts and also to account for searched performed for the clients name; these are leads that would have occurred without SEO.
SEO cost/ Total SEO leads = cost per SEO lead
PPC cost / Total PPC leads = cost per PPC lead
On average, the 2008 study revealed an average SEO lead cost around $20/lead and PPC leads (with management costs figured in) at nearly $45/lead. If an attorney were to perform his own PPC maintenance and management, this figure would be much closer to SEO lead cost at $25/lead, which could be further reduced if the attorney find tuned his campaigns.
This is the first article of many that will help you manage your own PPC campaigns in Bing and Google (note; Yahoo is in the process of transitioning their PPC ad service to Bing.com and will serve Bing’s ads on its search platform).
Setting up your PPC accounts
Coming shortly!