Is PPC worth it for Offline businesses like Plumbers, Hairdressers etc?

Absolutely... Of course you would want to get them ranking organically, but PPC is instant. Optimizing the campaign can get them pretty low cost clicks... Obviously anyone that clicks is in need of the service so you may need to make the website be better optimized to have a call to action.

I think PPC is great.

When I did it for myself I made sure to have a firm grip on three things:
1. How many eyeballs would land on the page per day (you estimate as first and refine this number with a bit of date)
2. How many calls / form submissions I would get (conversions)
3. How many of those conversions I could turn into sales, on average.

I was spending about $200-$300 a day on an $11 cpc keyword and needed to make two sales to come out in the black. I would do that regularly, and on many days have three or for sales.

At that point it was profitable and time to start split testing landing pages more heavily, but I ended up outsourcing it to yodle, who made some huge mistakes and burned through about $10k in 12 days, leaving me with a bad taste in my mouth and no more desire to play around with that business.

Yes it is extremely valuable. You can deliver instant clients to them.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

I just checked my own suburb "plumber sunnyvale" and you will see bidding on keywords around that is at $16-17+. Thats because serious bank is made off the backend when they get a new client. Each job is worth at least a few hundred. Plumbers are some of the highest paid tradespeople around.

Plumbers, lawyers and highly paid service people have high Cost Per Click because offliners target them and they have good budgets. If you are helping a business like a hairdresser (who normally do not invest much in this kind of thing) competition will be much lower.

e.g. hair salon sunnyvale looking at about $2.60 per click. Keep in mind a hair salon can charge women a few hundred for services as well and they convert a lot to recurring customers.

If you are interested you can sign up for Google Engage (free)

Google Engage gives you:
Twenty $100 AdWords coupons for your new customer accounts
Trainings to build and enhance your AdWords skills
Exclusive slides, templates and other tools to market your services

The free coupons make it easy to send new customers to your clients. Then you call them and ask how much money you made them. From there it is easy to convince them to begin paying for PPC on an ongoing basis.

Let me know if you need any help.

This is a handy resource for setting up your adwords account to seperate personal and client adwords accounts http://webguru-co.com/blog/51-set-up...ent-center-mcc

Also running a PPC is the single best way to find search terms that have the most traffic (Google Keyword Tool Estimates are bad, PPC gives you actual impressions) and find the terms that convert the most into customers without spending months on link building and ranking the site.

To summarize definitely worth it, there is no doubt what people searching "professional suburb" is looking for, not being there means your clients competitors are taking all the moola.

I think PPC is only applicable for big business because it requires money to pay for the services which I think is not necessary for small time businesses.

PPC is an immediate solution for businesses to appear in front of searchers searching for their service.

However, in order to ensure it is a profitable option for your clients you must optimize and test your campaigns.

Also, PPC will only be good to get visitors to your clients sites. If your clients site has a poor conversion rate then they will suffer. Therefore, it becomes our jobs as consultants to advise the client into the right direction.

If you are carrying out SEO for a client and know that it will take some time to rank well you can offer PPC whilst optimizing their site for natural search. Running PPC will also give you a good idea of the best keywords to target.

We have run many successful PPC campaigns for clients.

Riz

Hi there!

I am doing PPC for one of my clients in food catering field. And it is quite profitable.

So, yes you should consider PPC. Just be careful in the beginning with you daily spendings.

Good luck.

PPC can help local businesses just like getting them ranked using SEO. The customer will most likely not have a clue the difference between the results that show up organically or the results that show up in the beige area (PPC).

The get thing about PPC too is the fact that it can provide almost immediate results that SEO just can't hold a candle to. I think that if explained in full detail to the customer they might like PPC better than they would like SEO.

Sean

It's not necessary for small time businesses that want to stay small.

I've talked to a few business owners that tried it and it "didn't work". Like any system you need to work it. It's like people that try a health diet, do absolutely everything wrong and then say the diet doesn't work. Adwords is complicated especially in competitive markets but the results are well worth it.

Have a read of the Google Adwords forums, getting started guides and Redfly Online Marketing, SEO, Web Design & Internet Marketing Company, Dublin, Ireland., as well as Perry Marshalls stuff and you have more than enough tricks up your sleeve to produce some major cash for your clients.

Oh yeah if you need more clients just look for people performing badly on Adwords. The fact they are on Adwords lets you know they have an ongoing marketing budget, you can use keywordspy.com to find out their daily spend.

You definitely want to look into PPC, in fact you'll probably do a whole let better with PPC for your offline business because there is less competition. Anyone can find an affiliate offer and start promoting it. Very few people own offline businesses, and most of those businesses do not have affiliate programs. So your competition is a lot less, your bids are cheap, and you can make a much higher ROI.

The following statement always holds true: to be successful online, you need impressions.

PPC, as mentioned, gives instant results. So does social media if done correctly. SEO takes anywhere from 5 minutes to 5 years to take effect, depending on the myriad of factors.

For some businesses it seems risky. I don't know for someone like a plumber I guess if you're getting low cost per click then it might work. I think a good plan for those types of businesses with low profit margins would be local seo, social presence, and then the majority offline marketing. Just my opinion

Mobile PPC is hot right now especially when you combine it with SMS lead capture campaigns. Someone on the go looking for a place to eat will respond to a mobile coupon offer for a free hors d'oeuvre or dessert, 2 for 1 special or other discount.

PPC is awesome for defining and testing your message (headline, offer, call to action). It is your entire business getting machine wrapped up in a small ad. If your clients cant get that down, how will throwing thousands into newspaper ads and tv do any better.

Hardsell to a business owner but well worth their dollars.

I usually use the line that google makes more on those "tiny-ads" than all other forms of advertising combined, so they must be doing something right.

I was reading through here and had to go back up to see what the original question was. I was going to advise that the best use for PPC IS lead generation. And when I saw that that was the actual question, then the answer is yes. or I should say, "YES!!!"

PPC for local service lead generation is phenomenal. The speed of testing is unmatched with anything else. If you optimize your ad and landing page and keywords properly, it is dirt cheap and uber-effective. I have had almost 50% opt-in conversions with really half-assed ads and pages. You also want to ( I am assuming local business) restrict the geographical area the ads "play" in. This MASSIVELY drops cost. And increases effectiveness.

And everything I just said is google. if you go to other search engines and ppc platforms it just gets so cheap it's disgusting.

Bottom line... Lead generation is the best model I have ever used for PPC. I often start there for clients, Get them instant results and grow a fast list then start working the list. It's a thing of beauty.

Without a doubt. Almost all offline businesses can benefit from PPC. Gather a ton of keywords that makes sense for the businesses that you're helping, and watch your costs everyday.

If you're breaking even from your PPC ads, good. If you make a profit, even better. If you lose money on each customer you acquire, make sure you follow up with an aggressive backend marketing strategy so that you can recoup that loss, and continue to offer your products at higher prices after each sale made.

With all of the advice given, have you tested out PPC for your offline clients yet?

I found PPC to be invaluable. You get instant results and can test a huge amount of keywords to see what works and what doesn't. Then once you've found the ones that are most profitable and have the highest converstion ratio, you can then develop the SEO around them.

I currently have stopped using PPC advertising, my campaign focuses on social media advertising, very cheap, if not free and I am building a more loyal customer base. It is definitely a long term plan though.

I found relevant information on Google regarding Adwords set-up.

AdWords Beginner's Guide - AdWords Help

It covers a lot, and after reading and playing around for an hour or so, my feeling towards this tool has gotten better and better.

I have a question though : WHat daily limit would you put for a small business owner, like a hairdresser or a beautician i.e. ?

I could not figure that out. So if an experienced offline marketer could give me some idea, it would be greatly appreciated !

PPC works great for offline clients, but you have to make sure your geographical boundaries are set on the campaign (as someone else has mentioned on this thread).

HERE IS AN EXAMPLE: when you do a local search like "Denver Plumber" and have set your location to Denver (or live in Denver) and then you see ads from Houston for plumber - they are totally wasting their money.

As with all PPC advertising, there is this equation: sales minus cost of ads equal revenue. If you can make decent revenue then it is a good choice. I know of local business clients and even some of mine who make a ton from PPC locally. But other people lose money. It has to be tested, and you have to split test your ads by creating a bunch of ads and letting the winners rise to the top. So what is a "winner" ad? One that is connected to Google analytics and has a conversion, or some method to track the sales and you can verify that the PPC produced a sale.

It's been such a long time I haven't done PPC.

Is there a good tool specifically designed for local searches?

Is putting "restaurant Dallas" (without the quotes) a good way to get the number of searches people in Dallas would get while they just type "restaurant"?

What is the name of the free (and probaly Google) software that linked to our PPC account and we could tweak massive amounts of keywords in a click?

Thanks

yup many doctors an professionals use it too. works in many different industries.