Hearst-Argyle Television and Google Strike Reseller Agreement
This deal as of yet hasn’t caught a lot of peoples attention. It did catch mine though and I expect to see a lot more deals in 2008. In order for Google to expand it’s reach as fast as the predicted local search spending is expected to grow then it is going to have to rely on resellers to connect local companies that do not have the manpower, skills or time required to advertise online.
The press release points out:
“Boston, MA-based research firm Yankee Group recently projected that local search and Internet ad spending will grow from $1.9 billion this year to $9.3 billion in 2010. According to research by New York-based Access Markets International (AMI) Partners, Inc., more than 50% of U.S. small businesses believe they can use the Internet for sales, marketing and customer support.”
And to think I am busy now… 9.3 billion in two years is mind boggling considering the amount of work that is required to reach your market effectively using PPC advertising. Running a PPC campaign is not a set it and forget process. You have to do just as much leg work as you do with any other type of advertising sometimes more. But the payoff (ROI) can be huge if you do it correctly.
A lot of accounts that I see waste a lot of ad spend by not managing the accounts correctly. Bidding on terms that they think are relevant when there in fact they hardly ever bring in a conversion. I always take the position of let’s see what is working now and improve upon it. That gives me an idea of the campaign is performing and what should or shouldn’t be looked at in the clients other campaigns.
Back to the press release. Of the 2010 projected spending over 25% of that will be wasted. Yes you read correctly, WASTED. Why ? Simply too fast of growth to keep up with the learning process in order to stay competitive. Especially when you take Google’s ad quality score algorithms that seem to be changing on a monthly basis now. Example, one client I have just witnessed his campaign minimum bids increase and his conversion rates drop drastically. Why? It seems Google didn’t like the landing page we were using. Even though it had a good CTR ratio, and excellent conversion ratio. We used this page for several months after having the exact same problems just a couple of months earlier. We are now faced with having to make new landing pages again for the third time in six months. The saddest part is every time we abide and make the necessary changes we are forced to do it again.
To get back to my point, do you think that all these new small businesses that are not web savvy (remember I have been online marketing for 10 years) are going to be able to keep up? That is why I know a VERY LARGE percentage of that projected growth will be wasted. It simply isn’t feasible.
There is a silver lining though. Those that do not have their campaigns fine tuned will still see a better ROI than what they get with traditional advertising. I just hate to see all that money go down the drain on poor performing campaigns.
