Why Bad Campaigns Spend More Money
The reason that bad AdWords campaigns spend more money is due to one simple standard. Quality Score is the determining factor when it comes to the cost of putting an ad on Google.com or any other Google search partner. Here’s how the numbers work:

Advertiser A
500 keywords
Average Quality Score of 3.5
2,000 total clicks
Average cost per click $2.44
Monthly spend $4,880

Advertiser B
500 keywords
Average Quality Score of 8.3
2,000 total clicks
Average cost per click $1.03
Monthly spend $2,060

Using advertisers A and B as examples, you can easily see that quality score drives the total monthly spend due to the total cost per click. Quality score is not only related to your cost per click, but also your ad’s rank (where it is shown on the search page).

Managing an AdWords campaign on your own might seem like a great way to save money, but it has been proven many times over that bad AdWords campaigns will spend more money than optimized campaigns. Contact us at sales@secondlawmedia.com or 800-792-9584 to begin the optimization process on your campaign.

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A quote directly from their blog post states, “If you don’t want the potential for more clicks and prefer to maintain the current matching behavior in your campaign, you’ll still have that option.”

What they mean is that your campaign is automatically opted-in for these new changes. You have to actually go into your account and tell Google that you don’t want these changes to take place on your campaign.

While some campaigns may get better results from this change, it is far from a universal benefit. Google has historically been focused on clicks as a campaign goal, but as we emphatically state on our website, our primary goal is to increase your campaign’s ROI.

Never let Google run your campaign on full auto. As this latest update demonstrates, Google will always choose settings that will increase your clicks and require you to pay more for visitors. It is up to you to make sure your campaign is focused on getting conversions, and not acting as a drain on your company’s wallet.

Talk to us about how you can put the focus of your campaign back on ROI and away from clicks and impressions. It’s about sales, not visits. Contact us at sales@secondlawmedia.com or 800-792-9584.

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The four keyword matching options are used to determine which Google searches can trigger your ads to appear. Broad match is the least refined type of matching option while exact match keywords are very restrictive. A campaign often fails because the keyword matching is focused mainly on broad keywords, with very few exact or phrase match keywords.

When a campaign is first launched it is very common to have some broad keywords included in your keyword matching options, but as time goes by these options become less and less necessary as exact matches replace the broad keywords. A well-optimized campaign will have more exact and phrase keywords as their user search data continues month after month.

Take a look at your campaign and note the percentage of broad keywords to exact and phrase keywords. The ratio should greatly change over time and if it isn’t, then we’d encourage you to seek some professional help for your PPC campaign. Contact us at sales@secondlawmedia.com or 800-792-9584 to learn more today!

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1. Low or Negative Return on Investment
   Whether you are advertising on the radio, TV, or online, each decision you make should be based on the returns from your investment. A low ROI does not mean that online marketing is a poor channel through which to advertise. Rather, is it warning sign that you are communicating the wrong message to your audience. Think of it this way: a low ROI campaign is actually a success because you’ve discovered what NOT to do.
2. Not Tracking Return on Investment
   There is no bright side to this situation. If you are not tracking the emails, calls, or leads you drive from your PPC campaign, then you are wasting your money. Tracking the success or failure of your online ads is the first priority because without data, you can’t learn how to make a better marketing message.
3. Not Optimizing or Making Changes
   Each AdWords campaign in Google has a Change History tool. If your Change History doesn’t show any tweaks, tests, or changes in the recent past then you are in need of some professional help. As the click, impression, and sales data starts to roll in you should be making changes that will encourage growth, rather than letting the campaign stay the same year after year.

At 2ndLAW Media, we offer PPC management services based on results. Our success is invested in your ROI. Contact us at sales@secondlawmedia.com or 800-792-9584 to find out more!

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For years, paid search advertisers have been able to target areas as large as a country or as small as a city, but ads can now be refined even further with Google’s new location insertion feature. When someone searches on Google using a platform that shares their location (mobile device, laptop, desktop, etc.) advertisers can now use that location information to insert the name of the city directly into the ad.

For example, let’s say someone in Dallas is searching for a hotel in Santa Monica. As they are looking for hotels to stay in, an ad could show on Google stating “New Steakhouse Now Open in Santa Monica.” That ad would be triggered because they were viewing a page that was referencing a specific location which was within that ad’s targeted zip code!

As the location targeting technology improves, businesses will enjoy more and more refined marketing that is unparalleled by any other type of media. 2ndLAW Media is proud to offer a team of proven PPC professionals dedicated to giving your business an edge over the competition and generating a strong ROI. Contact us at sales@secondlawmedia.com or 800-792-9584 to learn more today!

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In a follow-up analysis, which was just released by Google, more questions about that original study were addressed. The meta-analysis highlights the limited opportunity for clicks from organic search results to substitute for ad clicks when search ads are turned off.

Question #1:
How often is an ad impression accompanied by an associated organic result?

Answer:
81% of ad impressions and 66% of ad clicks occur in the absence of an associated organic result on the first page of search results.

Question #2:
How does the incrementality of the ad clicks vary with the rank of advertiser’s organic results?

Answer:
- 50% of the ad clicks that occur with a top rank organic result are incremental.
- 82% of the ad clicks are incremental when the associated organic search result is between ranks 2 and 4.
- 96% of the ad clicks are incremental when the advertiser’s organic result ranked lower than 4 (i.e., 5 and below).

In laymen’s terms, the lower your organic ranking, the higher chance that the searcher’s click will be replaced by a paid ad. The large majority of websites do not enjoy a top organic ranking for their website, so for those businesses the best solution to acquire traffic is to focus on a strong pay per click campaign.

2ndLAW Media is a premier interactive agency that specializes in Google AdWords as well as other pay per click platforms. Contact us at sales@secondlawmedia.com or 800-792-9584 to learn more about how we use PPC campaigns to drive traffic directly to your company.

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1. Buy more fans. Basically, you pay a service to recruit more fans to your page. The problem is that these people are not targeted fans. They are random people that are not likely to comment or read any posts on your Page. This is not recommended, but it is available.
2. Offer exclusive discounts for fans. There are applications that will only allow fans to gain access to a promo code. However, this promo code must be significant. Something like free shipping or 5% discount is not likely to bring in much of a result.
3. Recruit bloggers to host a contest for you. Give bloggers prizes or gift certificates to your site and tell them the winner must be a fan of your Facebook Page. Just one blog contest wouldn’t be enough, you’d need to do it for several blogs. There are plenty of blogs out there that have a large amount of traffic and are willing to host the contest for you.
4. Fans only giveaway. This could be once a month. There are apps that can be purchased to help you with the giveaway. This is a great way to gather more fans, but it requires people to actually know about the giveaway, so the percent increase of fans may take time to build.

There are more ways to get more fans, but before we list any more let’s take a step back. Why do you want more Facebook fans? So you can get more traffic? Have you tested and determined that a large percentage of your sales come from Facebook? If not, please allow us to caution you against putting too much time into social media in an effort to drive up sales. What many will find is that most people don’t use social media to look for something to purchase. It is a very low percentage of returns (on average).

We are convinced that the best method to get more sales is to use Google AdWords. The paid search ad has been proven time after time to be the more reliable method to get the best returns on your investment. Give us a call at 800-792-9584 or email us at sales@secondlawmedia.com to get more information on how we manage and optimize your business’s social media and paid search campaigns.

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A popular link building network was recently cut from Google’s ranking, causing panic among SEO companies that had relied heavily upon the service to get their websites ranked at the top of organic search results. As the bottom drops out of many SEO strategies, PPC companies continue to work in a world where results are more predictable and manageable.

Did you know that Google changes its ranking algorithm up to 500 times a year? Search engine optimization must constantly change to avoid being hurt by these changes. At times Google releases a major named update that brings about huge changes, but the issue we described previously was merely a minor change, so you can imagine the instability of making claims and guarantees in SEO.

At 2ndLAW Media, we work in advertising networks that offer stability amid the constantly changing world of organic search engine results. Our tested and proven strategy has ensured thousands of leads, sales, and profits for businesses all around the United States. Traffic is a secondary goal for us. Our first priority is to provide a return on your investment. Give us a call today at 800-792-9584 or email us at sales@secondlawmedia.com to learn how our lead generation engine can provide real results.

While the purpose of the video is to bring focus to Joseph Kony, marketers all over the world have taken note of what makes this video so successful. In today’s blog post, we’ll list three obvious aspects of the Kony 2012 video that contribute to its viral status.

1. The vast majority of videos are only slightly interesting or flat out boring. People don’t share something that has mild interest, thus the reason very few videos don’t reach viral success.
2. Videos that bring about a physiological response (laughter, anger, shock, or crying) are more likely to be shared. Ads during the Superbowl are well aware of this, thus the highly entertaining nature of the ads.
3. Videos that evoke positive emotions are more likely to be shared than those videos that evoke negative emotions. Kony 2012 talks about a very emotional topic, but is able to focus on exhilarating emotions rather than an angry rant against Kony.

But don’t take our word for it. Dr. Karen Nelson-Field, Dr. Erica Riebe, and Dr. Kellie Newstead at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, based in the University of South Australia, identified these emotions in a study about what triggers users to share media across the Internet.

Perhaps you aren’t interested in creating the next viral video sensation, but these lessons can always be applied to a marketing campaign. Make sure your message is easy to understand and evokes the right kind of emotions. When you appeal to a viewer’s positive emotions, you are more likely to make a bigger impact. Give us a call at 800-792-9584 or email us at sales@secondlawmedia.com to learn more today.

In the “interest” phase of the buying cycle, shoppers are not only uneducated about the segment of interest, they don’t know yet which brands are the leaders. In this phase, a PPC campaign should focus on broad keywords and topics. It is a great time to brand your company name or product, because later in the sales cycle it can make a huge difference in conversion rates.

The “research” phase of the buying cycle will have searches focusing on questions, broad topics, or problems looking for solutions. If you aren’t a large, well-known brand this can be a key point in the sales cycle to try and pitch your product. The shopper is looking for a solution and they are not fully committed to a particular brand or product.

Finally, we get to the “purchasing” phase, which is the lowest point in the sales funnel. This is where the rubber meets the road and PPC can really crank out some great conversion and sales percentages. Here you need keywords that resonate with buyers. On the other hand, there are some great opportunities for competitors to make some very specific ads using a negative campaign to draw clicks to their own website by using the product names and brands within their own ads.

At 2ndLAW Media, we work with our customers to determine the most successful strategy for attaining leads. Click volume, impressions, and click through rate are all metrics that have value in a paid search marketing campaign, but our primary focus is to generate leads that turn into clients. Give us a call at 800-792-9584 or email us at sales@secondlawmedia.com to get started today.