At our company, we often get questions from customers about which search engines
would be best to run their search ads on. What search engines, they
often ask, present the road most likely to get them to advertising
success? While in most instances the answer is “optimize across all
three major search engines to get at the best possible resultsâ€, for
some businesses it may make sense to focus on alternative strategies.
But how?
In order to answer this question, let’s think about what you are
looking for in a search engine and what pay-per-click (PPC) advertising
objectives you’re trying to reach. The answer usually includes some
variation of the following:
You want…
exposure and results – leads, sales,
strong word-of-mouth, etc.
at an…
affordable cost-per-click and a
profitable return on investment.
I’m sure it’s not breaking news, but this scenario can often be quite
a challenge for many businesses — particularly small businesses — to
achieve. Most businesses just starting out on PPC advertising try out
Google because it’s well-known and because, let’s face it, it generates
about 65 percent of the total search traffic on the Web. But there are
some alternatives out there that may produce results as good as or
better than Google at a lower overall cost per acquisition. Sometimes,
in other words, it’s best to consider the road less traveled. Try
thinking about your options like this:
1) The Interstate – Google
What’s
possible: huge exposure and profitable campaigns.
What’s
required: bigger budgets (i.e., $1,000 per month for less
competitive keywords; tens of thousands of dollars or more per month for
very competitive keywords) and hard work.
For exposure and volume of visitors, this
is the place to be seen. And Google is more than capable of bringing
in very good results. However, it is also the winner in the categories
of highest cost per click and budget you’ll need for
exposure. Because there is such high traffic and competition on
Google, they’ve had to institute some very stringent measures in the
form of a quality score system, which can be tough to
understand and navigate if you are not an expert.
So, although it’s a big wide road with
lots of traffic, Google isn’t a casual Sunday drive. This search engine
requires a detailed map with lots of turn-by-turn instructions to
actually achieve real results.
2) The Side Road – Bing
What’s
possible: decent exposure and profitable campaigns.
What’s
required: a medium-size budget (i.e., starting at $750 per month
for less competitive keywords in less competitive markets).
Though a side road, Bing is no bumpy
byway you use only to avoid heavy traffic – in fact, we’ve found Bing
can be a shortcut to great online advertising results. Our recent
experience with PPC ad campaign results from Bing is, quite simply,
“Wow!†If you haven’t tried it yet, it would be well worth your while
to give it a shot.
Bing very often provides a lower
cost-per-click than Google, which means a lower budget is required for
full exposure. Bing also offers a much easier on-ramp since its quality
guidelines are much less opaque than Google’s. With Bing, you can just
turn on something basic and get good results without all the hassle of
divining what your quality score is and why. We’ve also seen very
impressive traffic quality and conversion results from Bing over the
last couple months. It looks like Bing is certainly on the rise as a
search engine and should not be underestimated.
3) Well Off the Beaten Path –
Business.com
What’s
possible: modest exposure and profitable campaigns.
What’s
required: smaller budgets can suffice (i.e. $250 per month for
less competitive keywords).
While everyone has heard of Google and
Bing, not everyone has considered Business.com. Many businesses just
don’t have the budget to compete for the keywords in their space and
markets on Google and Bing. Many of these advertisers, however, have
found PPC advertising success with Business.com. It’s the exact same
style of advertising as conducted on Google and Bing, but for much lower
costs, while still delivering results. So if your budget is too
limited for Google and your space is too crowded on Bing, try out
Business.com.
4) Off-Road – Facebook
What’s
possible: targeted exposure and profitable campaigns.
What’s
required: small-to-medium size budgets.
Though not exactly the same sort of PPC
advertising as the others, the ad platform on Facebook is similar in
many ways to what you will find on Google, Bing and Business.com. On
the Facebook platform, you specify keywords that folks you’re targeting
use in their profiles and updates, and you can also specify demographic,
psychographic and geographic characteristics to further target your
ad. While mostly text, Facebook ads can also include a single graphical
element, which its easy-to-use system helps you to incorporate into
your ads step-by-step.
Facebook is vying with Google to be the
most-visited website in the world (it may have already surpassed Google,
in fact), and it’s a traffic source that should not be overlooked.
Because it’s not exactly the same kind of thoroughfare as the search
engines listed above, you do need to spend some time understanding the
differences and nuances involved. But don’t let that deter you from
experimenting with this potentially rich source of traffic to your
website.
5) Uncharted Territory – Yahoo!
Search
What’s
possible: good exposure and profitable campaigns.
What’s
required: larger budgets.
Later this year, Bing and Yahoo! will
integrate search engine operations, and Bing will begin providing
results for searches completed on Yahoo! Currently one of the top three
most visited sites in the world, with an enormously popular email
system and some of the best-trafficked content portals on the Web (think
Yahoo! Finance, Yahoo! Personals or Yahoo! Autos), Yahoo! Search should
not be overlooked. Still, it’s clear this search engine is in a state
of massive transition. It can be tough to optimize campaigns on Yahoo!
and its rules are in many ways quite dissimilar to those in use on
Google and Bing, which means you need to bring a whole different
intuitive sense to using the system. And costs-per-click for your
keywords are often similar (or identical) to Google’s, though you can
get some bargains on Yahoo! Finally, in our experience traffic and
conversions from Yahoo! have fallen behind Bing’s performance of late,
so while there are still opportunities on Yahoo!, it’s probably best not
to use Yahoo! as a primary search advertising conduit until the
Bing-Yahoo! integration is completed late this year and early next year.
Still, with all this having been said, let’s face it: in
most cases, the best road map for acquiring traffic at the lowest
possible cost is optimizing your PPC campaigns across the three
best-known, most-used engines: Google, Yahoo and Bing. A road less traveled can make sense, just be sure it’s right for your business.
