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Want to Cut Back on Advertising Costs This Winter?

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Each year, we hear from a handful of clients who wish to decrease their spending during the winter. Most often, it’s due to the overwhelming costs of the holiday season. We want to make sure small business owners are able to enjoy the holidays with their families without stressing about their online advertising, so we’ve put together a guide for cutting back on advertising costs without doing long-term damage.
Here’s what you should, and shouldn’t, do when you want to temporarily minimize your Internet marketing expenses.

Definitely…

Create a budgeting plan in advance. If you anticipate difficulty paying for advertising during the winter months—whether it’s due to holidays or your company’s slow season—you can actually plan ahead. Prospect Genius offers flexible financing, so if you’re expecting heavier cash flow during the spring and summer than in the winter, you can pay extra ahead of time. Instead of paying the same amount every month, regardless of your company’s fluctuating profits, you can choose to pay more while you have a surplus and pay less while you’re tightening your belt.
For example, if you’re signed up for our $299/month Core program, you could pay $50 extra per month from March through November while you have increased profits, and then you would only have to pay $75 in December and $75 in January. This allows you to keep your online presence strong, prepare for the seasonal increase in demand, and beat out your competition that didn’t made such a wise decision.

Feel Free To…

Pause your pay-per-click campaign (if you have one). This type of advertising program is designed to turn on and off very easily without causing damage to your overall web presence. Because you pay for clicks as they come in, you can choose to stop the campaign, and all that will happen is that you will stop seeing PPC leads and site visits until you resume payment.
If you’re serious about decreasing your spending and you don’t mind your business’s leads taking a hit, this measure could really help. We recommend it especially if you provide seasonal services like landscaping or junk hauling, which are naturally slow during the winter. You can save the PPC costs and campaign management fees while only missing out on a small amount of traffic.

Do NOT…

Stop your SEO campaign, under any circumstances. SEO is a lifestyle. Since search engine optimization is an ongoing, strategically tiered and integrated process, it must be kept consistently intact. There is no “pause” button. As SEO providers, we must create, update, and maintain many listings for your business. If we have to take all of your listings down because you stopped your campaign, then your web presence will take an enormous hit.
In fact, if you do toy around with your online presence by stopping and starting your SEO, you run the risk of Google perceiving your actions as spam. If that happens, you could be looking at a very long delay before you recover. For example, some people affected by Google’s algorithm update nicknamed “Penguin” took action to rectify their infractions and were left waiting 12 months to find out whether those changes actually worked! All those people just had to sit and wait, hoping that they would recover, because it took Google 12 months to roll out an update to Penguin’s accompanying filter. You don’t want to be like those unfortunate people and put your entire web presence in limbo for a full year just to save money for two or three months.

We’re Here to Help

As our mission statement says, we exist to help small businesses thrive. Our bottom line is your success. We want you to enjoy the holidays without stressing about your company’s advertising budget or compromising your company’s well-being. Please don’t hesitate to call or e-mail us if you’d like to discuss your options for decreasing advertising costs this winter.

Questions to Ask When You're Vetting a New Online Advertiser

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

woman thinking about questions to ask online advertiserLast month, we reviewed the differences between various online advertising programs and showed you how to choose which one best fits your company’s marketing needs. Now that you’ve selected the right online advertising approach for your company, we want to show you how to find the new online advertiser that will bring you the best results and most satisfaction.
When it comes to choosing a new advertising provider, there are inherent risks involved. You have no way of being 100% certain that any given provider is going to deliver on its promises. That’s why the best thing you can do is to manage and minimize those risks by asking all the right questions before you sign up. Here are a few things you should ask your new online advertiser, broken down by type.

Questions for SEO Providers

“Do you offer references from other clients?”
Because SEO is difficult to measure with hard data, it’s important for you to get firsthand opinions from a company’s current and former clients. Any company worth its salt will have no problem providing you with references that will validate its reputation. 
“Do you build a second website, or do you perform all SEO on my existing one?”
If you’re keeping an eye on your budget, this could be a very important question. Traditionally, SEO only used to be performed on a client’s existing website. Many business owners found this strategy too cost-prohibitive, so a more affordable SEO method was created, which involves the construction of a second, smaller site. This method is typically used in lead generation programs instead of traditional SEO projects. Essentially, in asking this question, you’re finding out what the company is focused on and how much you’re going to pay.
“What kind of content do you provide?”
If an advertiser does produce websites from scratch, this question determines whether they provide you with fresh, original content or they reuse a generic template with your company’s details filled in. Generic templates require less overhead, but fresh content will give your site a more personalized touch and help ensure you won’t face duplicate content penalties.
“What kind of campaign tracking do you offer?”
Does their program come with a way to track your campaign’s performance? Performance tracking is important so you can know whether you’re getting the highest ROI. For example, many providers offer metered phone numbers and e-mail addresses that keep track of incoming calls and messages. They may also offer reports that show your site traffic, search engine ranking, and monthly leads. The more tracking features available, the better grasp you’ll have on your campaign’s performance.
“What is your process for dealing with a difficult Google Maps listing?”
This question is more of a test. A common issue with certain black-hat SEO providers is their willingness to create duplicate listings when original listings prove difficult to claim. They may or may not admit to doing this, but if they give a vague or indirect answer, you can bet that they’re doing something they shouldn’t be. Unfortunately, their laziness or lack of scruples could cause you to get penalized down the road, so you need to be extra careful about this.
“What is your policy about returning access to Google listings and/or metered phone numbers?”
Again, this is a test. If you were to end your partnership with this advertiser, would they give you access to your Google listings and metered phone numbers? Their answer should be yes, so you can have ownership of all your accounts and experience as few headaches as possible.

Questions for Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Providers

“Is there transparency in how you handle PPC accounts?”
In other words, can you see where exactly your money is going? Some advertisers just send you a bill for your PPC; they don’t tell you how much of that money is going toward their paychecks and how much is going into your actual bids.
“How much input is welcome in the setup of my new PPC campaign?”
Often, business owners don’t have much of a say in the configuration of their PPC campaigns. Ask this question to see if you’ll have a say as to which ad groups you’re included in.
“What kind of campaign tracking do you offer?”
This is the same as for SEO: Performance tracking is important so you can know whether you’re getting the highest ROI. The more tracking features, the better.

Questions for Local Directory Providers

“How do you select the directories you use?”
In other words, does this provider have a vetting process they use to decide which directories they list clients on? Hopefully, the answer is yes. You need to make sure you’ll only be listed on high-quality, popular, valuable directories; meanwhile, you want to avoid the bad directories that will get you penalized by Google and other search engines.
“Do you use paid directories or only free ones?”
You want to be aware of any extra fees you’ll need to pay for local directory listings. Plus, if you’re paying a significant amount for these services, you want at least some of that money to be spent on getting you into directories that you can only get access to if you pay.
“Do you offshore your directory work?”
Does the advertiser shoulder the extra money to complete all of the directory work in-house by native English speakers, or do they send it overseas for cheap labor? While offshore directory work is less expensive, its quality rarely compares to that of an in-house team.
“What would happen to my directory accounts if our partnership were to end?”
Once you’ve had accounts all across the web created on your behalf, you’ll want to make sure you can access as many of them as possible if your partnership with the advertiser ends. You don’t want to have countless business listings out there with no way to control them. You’ll want to be sure that the listings created for you are not left with (potentially erroneous) information you have no ability to change. You’ll want to know whether the provider leaves everything as-is at the time of cancellation, pulls down your listings, hands over log-in information, or does some combination of those three. That knowledge may help you make better choices as the relationship winds down.

Questions for Pay-Per-Lead (PPL) Providers

“How many accounts do you share leads with?”
Many pay-per-lead sites share leads with multiple businesses at once. As a result, the job usually goes to the first business that responds. You have a better shot at closing leads if they aren’t being shared with lots of businesses, so you’ll want to know what that number is.
“If you send me a lead that doesn’t match my service offerings, will you credit my account?”
Sometimes, a lead comes in, you pay for it, and it turns out that the prospective customer is asking for something you don’t provide. In many cases, the provider will refund you for that lead if this happens. You’ll want to make sure they do offer credits or refunds for these scenarios because these kinds of mix-ups are bound to happen on occasion. You’ll also want to ask how these refunds arrive (i.e. whether they reimburse you or if they credit your account for another lead).
“Do I have to pay extra for prominent visibility?”
Some pay-per-lead services tell you that they’re free to join, but they don’t tell you that you have to pay for a premium option if you actually want to receive good leads. Make sure you know the real cost of doing business before you sign up.
The next time you find yourself talking to a prospective advertiser, remember to keep this guide handy. By asking these questions, you’ll be able to decide if they’re actually worthy of your business. Good luck!

How to Find the Online Advertising Program That's Best for Your Business

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

You’re a savvy business owner, and you know that becoming more visible on the Internet is vital to your company’s success. But the number of online advertising buzzwords is completely overwhelming. You’re supremely skilled in your own trade, but how are you supposed to figure out the best strategy for online advertising when your Internet skills don’t extend much past e-mail, Google, and Facebook?
We hear you. The world of online advertising is vast and confusing. That’s why we’ve put together a buying guide to help you choose the best online advertising program for your small business. We broke it down by the most common marketing concerns.

First, the Options

Before you can choose a strategy, you need to know what your options are. These are the most popular online advertising categories. Keep in mind that the most effective advertising campaigns will combine two or more of these:

  • SEO: Search engine optimization means designing a website that is deemed valuable and relevant by search engines, and then getting other websites to link to it. Optimized websites are more likely to rank higher in search engine results, and a higher ranking typically means you reach more potential customers. Prospect Genius’s Core program is centered on SEO.
  • PPC (pay-per-click): This is a paid advertising strategy wherein business owners pay search engines to promote their ads, which link to their website.
  • Local directory listings: Local directories are the Internet version of the yellow pages. Most will allow you to add your business information to their directory for free. As a result, one marketing strategy is to leverage all the possible local directories to drive traffic to your own website. Prospective customers visit these directories when searching for specific types of businesses, and hopefully they find and contact you.
  • Pay-per-lead: Pay-per-lead is a type of paid advertising provided by many directory listing sites. Most commonly, the directory sites make money by charging you for better positioning on the page, inclusion of bolded text, highlighted information, more screen real estate, etc. If a prospective customer contacts you, you are then charged for that call or e-mail.

Need for Speed

If you need to promote services quickly—whether it’s because you need an immediate boost in sales or you have a seasonal offering that’s only available for a short time—here are your best options:

  1. Pay-per-lead: Business owners can turn a pay-per-lead campaign on and off instantly, so it’s well suited for smaller time frames. Plus, this is the best solution for getting a large volume of leads in a short amount of time because the structure requires prospective customers to have higher purchasing intent, since they are actively making phone calls or sending e-mails. With a higher purchasing intent comes a higher conversion rate.
  2. PPC: Similar to pay-per-lead, PPC (pay-per-click) is an advertising campaign that can be turned on and off in an instant. Each visitor comes at a much higher price than SEO, but the ability to start and stop can be highly valuable in certain circumstances.

Limited Advertising Budget

In 2014, every business owner should be carving out room in their budget for an online advertising program. But the reality is that small businesses tend to have a little less wiggle room. So if you’re trying to keep your belt tight, here are some of the more budget-friendly options that will still get you results:

  1. SEO: Because SEO is an organic, systematic approach to online advertising, the overhead costs are fairly low. The majority of the costs are associated with the labor involved in building the website and promoting it on countless platforms across the Internet. Although SEO does require some patience to gain traction and momentum, the number of leads that comes in after a few months makes it all worth it.
  2. Directory listings: While directories are mostly free to use, your visibility is limited to just the directories on which you’ve listed your business. It’s a very low-cost advertising strategy, but it hinges on prospective customers coming to your directory of choice. However, if you do enough of them, the number of links directed at your website will increase and help your site rank better in the search engines.

Craving More Ownership

Do you feel like you’ve been burned by online advertisers before? There are a lot of disingenuous advertising companies out there, unfortunately, and they give the rest of us a bad rap. But we very much understand the desire to have ownership over your online advertising program as a result of a poor experience, so here are some options for you:

  1. SEO: Not every detail of SEO has to be dictated by the advertiser. If you want to hold on to your business’s existing website but still want the benefits of a professional SEO campaign, ask your advertiser about programs that keep your existing website in the middle of the campaign. As an example, Prospect Genius  offers a Bring Your Own Site (B.Y.O.S.) option for its Core program. This allows you to invest in your current site while our content specialists promote it as if it were one of our own design.
  2. PPC: While you can’t control the cost per click or the parameters set by the search engines, you can control your spending limit and the length of your campaign. If you do this independently, you can control which keywords are used. Even if you outsource this job to an advertiser, you have very little residual risk of long-term damage if they turn out to be dishonest. This makes switching from one advertiser to the next relatively easy and painless.
  3. Directory listings: The categories on local directories are typically preset and you’re only given a certain amount of space for your information, but you can create your own listings without necessarily even needing a website or advertiser. Be careful, though: Some directories are labeled “bad neighborhoods,” and they can actually hurt your rankings. Beyond the manpower required to type in all of your information hundreds of times, knowing which directories are helpful, which are hurtful, and which just don’t matter is where companies like Prospect Genius can really be worth the investment.

Proportionate Cost per Lead

If you feel like some forms of online advertising are costing too much per lead, then it’s time to do some math.
On the surface, PPC and pay-per-lead seem like smart investments because you’re only paying for the leads that you actually get. But how much do those leads really cost?
Let’s say you spend $50 per lead on a directory site. If you get 9 calls per month, that’s $450 you’re paying out of pocket. If you only book jobs from 33% of those leads, it actually costs you $150 per job booked. And if you’re only booking jobs that net you $100 profit, you are actually upside down by $50 per job!
The same goes for PPC, but you’ll get an even lower ROI because the conversion rate for clicks is significantly lower than the conversion rate for calls/e-mails. For PPC, getting 1 call from every 20 clicks is a very good ratio; then when you consider that something like only 33% of those calls result in jobs booked, you could be looking at a real cost of $300 per job (when you’re paying a seemingly low $5-per-click rate). When you pay for each lead, you will only ever make a fixed margin on each. There’s no opportunity for you to drive your per-lead cost down and your margins up.
On the other hand, if you pay a monthly fee of $300 for SEO (like our Core program) and wait patiently for a few months, you could wind up getting 20+ calls per month and saving lots of money. It’s just like buying a house versus renting one: It stinks to have to pay $40,000 up front on that down payment, but then you have the ability to earn a profit on that investment over time. If you rent, avoid the initial pain of the down payment, but you’ll pay more over time.

Getting Decent Results, but Want More?

Many business owners encounter a plateau in their online advertising. They’re getting a solid volume of leads per month, but they want more. This often has no reflection on the quality of services that their online advertising company is providing; rather, it just means that the particular service they’re using has been maxed out.
If this is something you’re dealing with, do some investigating. Find out if your advertiser offers other services that may complement the one you’re currently using. For instance, if you’re currently using SEO and finding that your volume of monthly leads has stagnated, then you might be interested in trying out a short PPC campaign to give your sales a boost.
Conversely, if you’ve been relying on paid advertising to bring links to your website or calls to your metered phone, you can try adding directory listings to the mix or even optimizing your site for search engines. Covering all of your bases and adding algorithmic value wherever you can is never a bad idea.

Effective, Fast, Cheap: Pick Two

Unfortunately, when choosing an online advertising program, you can’t have it all. If you want something that’s fast and effective, it won’t be cheap. If you want something cheap and fast, it won’t be very effective in the long run. That’s why you have to think long and hard about your company’s marketing goals before diving headfirst into a campaign. Do your research, and know that the specialists at Prospect Genius can guide you through the decision-making process should you need any help.

When Pay-Per-Click Becomes Pay-Per-Search

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

We have a lot of clients who like to periodically search for their business on Google. Understandably, they’re curious as to how their campaign is performing and, if they’re pay-per-click clients, they want to see how their sponsored ads look on the search results page. But here’s the thing: Frequently googling your company can actually sabotage your campaign.
This is especially true for companies enrolled in any type of pay-per-click advertising, particularly one using Google AdWords. Here’s why.

Impressions, Clicks, and Quality Scores

The performance of your ad largely depends on the ratio of passive views to active clicks. An inflated number of views means an inflated cost per click. But why?
As we’ve discussed previously, AdWords uses a Quality Score system to ultimately determine the cost that a given account will have to pay per click of ads and keywords. Since Google only wants to endorse “quality” content, a low Quality Score means you’ll have to pay a much higher cost per click if you want your ads to be displayed.
An account’s overall Quality Score is highly influenced by click-through rate (CTR) and relevance. A low CTR or lack of relevance will significantly decrease your overall Quality Score. While it’s easy to achieve relevance—simply target ads by keyword and location—it’s a little more challenging to boost an ad’s CTR.
CTR is calculated by comparing the number of “impressions” (how many times the ad appears) versus the number of “clicks” (how many times a viewer actually clicks on the ad). So when you’re continually googling your company’s name and search terms to check out your sponsored advertisement, you’re spiking the number of impressions without adding to the number of clicks. In effect, you’re lowering the CTR of your own ad.
Unfortunately, this effect doesn’t stay exclusive to the particular ad or ad group in question. If you have multiple cases of low CTRs, then your whole AdWords account will ultimately be downgraded. As PPCHero explains, “If you have a lot of low CTR ads in your ad groups, they could be contributing to a low Quality Score since AdWords considers all of your ads when calculating your scores.”
And, as we’ve covered, a low overall Quality Score means higher costs for you. In a nutshell: By frequently googling your company, you’re driving up your own PPC costs.

Don’t Learn the Hard Way

Case in point: We’ve had numerous clients in the past who did serious damage to their PPC campaigns just by searching Google for their company’s ads too frequently. One client in particular actually spiked their cost per click from $22 to $31!
We understand the temptation to see how your campaign is performing, but you’re actively holding it back by constantly turning to Google’s search bar. Don’t make the same mistake that our client made. Don’t be an active participant in the downfall of your own PPC campaign.

Seek an Alternative to Googling

We wouldn’t tell you to stop googling yourself without having a viable solution for you.
If the reason that you’re always typing your name into Google’s search bar is that you want to track your campaign’s performance, the solution is simple: Find an online advertising company that offers tracking features as part of their program. At Prospect Genius, all of our clients have unfettered access to all of their account’s call logs, leads, and other reports so they can view their campaign’s progress right from the Client Portal—without having to resort to Google.
If you already have access to these types of features but can’t seem to kick the habit in moments of weakness, just remind yourself of all the damage you’re doing with every search. It won’t be easy at first, especially when boredom or curiosity takes over, but it will be well worth the sacrifice.
For further guidance, call Prospect Genius today!

Kick-Start Your Campaign With Our Boost Package

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

Why the Boost Package?

At Prospect Genius, we like to do things the right way. We like to give clients the results they deserve, but we also believe in playing by the rules and earning results that will actually last. In the past, this meant our clients would have to wait three months or longer to start seeing a consistent increase in leads. Although this waiting period is standard for the majority of professional SEO providers, some of our clients were understandably concerned.
That’s why we’ve devised a remedy: our Boost package. Designed as a temporary pay-per-click (PPC) program, Boost will fortify your advertising efforts and add extra oomph to your campaign during this crucial waiting period. Here’s why it’s important.

The Waiting Game

Like we said, a three-month waiting period is standard for legitimate SEO. If a marketer uses black-hat tactics or spam, then you may be able to see more immediate results—but that comes with a high likelihood of getting caught and penalized by Google. That’s why we refuse to sink to dishonest tactics. It simply wouldn’t be in your best interest.
So that leaves one question: Why does SEO take three months to kick in? It’s a topic we’ve covered before, but it always bears repeating. To borrow from a previous post on the same subject:

Effective SEO requires repetition. Social media listings must be routinely populated with fresh content, press releases have to be syndicated, and directories must be updated as needed. However, not all of these tasks can be done at once. There’s a strategically tiered system of steps to be completed by your SEO specialist for optimal results, and proper spacing and timing of these tasks is essential. Once this foundation has been completely set, a few months have gone by.

Furthermore, there’s a lot of waiting on our end, as well. This happens whenever we make a change to your listing on a given directory or third-party website. We have to wait for the website to update its own pages and then wait for Google to re-index that website with the new info. Eventually, Google will compile and release the new, live index. Only at this point will the changes we made several steps ago finally take effect.
This process gets even further complicated if you’ve had any previous problems with your web presence, particularly any penalties or suspensions from Google. If you’ve engaged in any spam-like behavior in the past, we’ll first have to resolve those issues before we can begin the SEO process, which could make your waiting period even longer.

Get a Head Start With Boost

Although it’s impossible to circumvent the complex procedure of SEO, there’s a way to supplement it so that you aren’t stuck waiting without seeing any results. The Boost package is a short-term PPC push that gives your campaign a temporary shot in the arm. Basically, it’s a more targeted version of our standard PPC package.
While you may not receive leads from organic search results when your campaign is first launched, you’ll make up for that with calls rolling in from your sponsored PPC ads. Plus, Boost is known to improve rankings in Google+ Places and organic results as well, simply by making sites quickly appear more valuable.
Lasting only a few weeks, Boost is exactly what you need as a stop-gap until your long-lasting, organic leads take over.

Promote Seasonally With Boost, Too

Don’t forget: Boost is also great for businesses that offer season-specific services. HVAC technicians, landscapers, and appliance repairmen all provide services that vary in popularity depending on what time of year it is. If you offer furnace repair, for example, you can use Boost at the end of autumn to get the word out about time-sensitive maintenance. Many of our clients have used Boost in this capacity to great advantage.

Proof Is in the Pudding

When we say that our Boost package really works, we aren’t kidding. We took a sample set of our Boost success stories and found that, on average, we increased their calls by 413%! One client went from an average of 10.3 calls per month to 23 (a 223% increase), while another went from 3.7 calls per month to 29—a whopping 791% increase!
When Boost is added to a campaign, the difference can be staggering.
Whether you’re brand new to the Prospect Genius program or you’re an old pro, there’s always a way to utilize our Boost package for a burst of fresh leads. Call your campaign coordinator or account manager to learn how!

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