Digital Marketing – tesseramarketing.com

Direct Affiliate Program or Purchasing Leads from Marketing Aggregator

NickNap — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 18:34:57 +0000

Features and Benefits of Buying Leads from a Lead Aggregator, or Building Your Own Direct to Consumer Marketing Program.

More and more professional service providers, such as lawyers and financial advisors, are taking advantage of the lead generation services provided by internet marketing. There are numerous ways of advertising on the internet; Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media, Email, Blogs, Inbound Marketing, Paid Search (PPC), etc. just to name few. None of these are mutually exclusive, and any solid marketing plan should include a combination of these efforts.

Since most professionals have already concluded that some sort of internet advertising for new customers or client acquisition is a good idea, the next biggest question facing them is whether they should just buy leads from one or more third party marketers, or develop a direct-to-consumer program on their own. Let’s review the two options.

It is no surprise that the number one determining factor when considering options for lead acquisition is based on needs and means. A smaller company, such as an independent lawyer or financial advisor, may only wish to acquire a handful of new clients in any given month. To do this, they may only require a couple dozen leads with a very specific type of targeted customer.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are the super large, billion-dollar companies with established brand recognition and the ability to spend millions in multi-faceted advertising including television, print, and radio. They operate large call centers and likely also dominate the paid search advertising for the most profitable keyword terms, making it cost prohibitive for smaller and localized providers to compete.

What about everyone in-between? Online advertising is often a numbers game. The larger you can go, the less expensive it can become on a per-lead basis. This is primarily due to the ability to simultaneously tap into multiple online advertising sources – Paid Search, Email, Display, etc. The larger the media buy, and the more leads you can process, the less you will typically pay on the individual acquisition costs.

Buying leads from an outsourced provider allows for greater volume control and overall simplicity.

The smaller, independent, and regionally focused service providers such as local lawyers and financial advisors often cannot leverage these online advertising mediums in a cost effective or productive manner. Many of the media buys are priced on a cost-per-click (CPC), or cost-per-impression (CPM) model, which does not guarantee results and may only produce a limited number of qualified leads. Regardless of the results, the traffic still must be paid for.

Option: Outsourced Lead Aggregation
Buying leads from an independent internet advertising company.

Third party advertising companies, by combining the purchasing power of multiple, smaller, regional buyers are able to take advantage of larger scale national advertising in a more cost effective manner. Additionally, they can then often deliver to the buyer the specified number of leads requested, pre-qualified by definition, and at the times desired.

Your lead seller should be able to deliver the data and the qualifiers specified by you, at the times and in the amounts as requested.

Benefits of Outsourced Lead Aggregation

Benefit 1: Cost Effective – In most cases, an outsourced lead aggregator can provide leads for a lower cost than smaller, individual efforts can produce. Most importantly, you’re only paying for leads, and not just the traffic which generates the leads.

Benefit 2: Volume Management – As a lead buyer, your provider should deliver to you only the agreed upon number of leads you have ordered based on what you can effectively process. Also, they should be able to provide consistency with the lead volume, so you don’t end up with more than you can process at any given time, or worse, not enough and you have staff sitting around being unproductive.

Benefit 3: Simplicity – Servicing your clients and running your business keeps you busy enough. No need to learn the ins and outs of internet marketing, managing advertising campaigns, or testing new channels.

As you can see, the benefits of outsourcing your lead acquisition are fairly compelling, and even larger companies can get these same benefits if they choose to pay a third party for their leads. However, not all lead aggregators are equal, and the benefits listed above should be considered a best-case scenario. Building a direct program offers all these benefits as well, plus quite a few more.

Option: Direct to Consumer Lead Generation
Building your own branded lead-acquisition marketing program with affiliate marketers.

Should you go direct? If considering a direct marketing program for your own lead acquisition, consider these questions:

Are you currently outsourcing your lead acquisition marketing to a third party?
Have you found many of the leads you’ve been sold are completely bogus?
Is it difficult to identify and separate the leads which were completely bogus, from those which were not truly qualified, or those that you just weren’t able to successfully close?
Would you like to increase the lead quality and contact percentages?
Is your industry uniquely regulated by marketing compliance laws?

If you’ve answered yes to these questions, you may very well benefit from developing your own Direct to Consumer Marketing Channel, leveraging the advertising power and distribution of an Affiliate Program. With a proper affiliate program, you work directly with the internet marketers who drive traffic to your site and your lead form. They use your pre-approved advertising content and you control the qualifying filters and only pay for the leads you’ve defined as valuable. You don’t pay for traffic, only the resulting leads. In many cases, these are the same advertising channels and affiliates used by the lead aggregators, and all of the good ones always prefer to work directly with the advertiser. You can remove the overhead of the middle-man, and gain valuable insight and competitive advantages.

Automated validation and verification tools will increase the number of qualified leads contacted.

By developing your own direct channel, you can:

Improve Contact and Conversion percentages
Reduce the amount of bogus leads you pay for
Increase brand awareness and referral business
Attain transparency for marketing oversight and compliance monitoring

Benefit 1: Increase in Contact-to-Lead ratio.
Save time and money from purchasing bogus or non-qualified leads, or not being able to contact the person. Generating a lead is only part of the process. From there, the lead needs to contacted, in many cases further qualified, and ultimately converted to a revenue-generating client or customer. The levels and methods of lead validation and verification done by an outsourced lead generator will vary, and there are additional benefits delivered by a direct program.

Automated Filtering and Validation, including Fraud Detection and Prevention: Use technology to assist with your qualification and filtering process. There are a number of service providers who can analyze and validate and verify the data being entered in real-time at the point of entry. This means, while the user is filling out your contact form and questionnaire, that information is bounced against various databases to confirm that not only is the information accurate, but it is also legitimate. By starting with genuine and accurate data, the follow-up efforts and closing ratios will increase.

Some forms use no validation whatsoever, which allows whatever garbage is entered to make it through to your system. If you have staff being paid to then contact this person, they are wasting their time and your money.

Some forms use only basic data validation, such as requiring a ten-digit phone number, or an email entry to include both an ‘@’ and a ‘dot’, such as ‘emailaddress@network.com’. This does not prevent fake or incorrect data from being entered. (i.e. mickeymouse@disneyland.com).

Slightly better systems will check to make sure the data entered actually exists. So ‘Mickey Mouse’ at 123 Disneyland Street, is immediately flagged as not being legitimate. They may even go a bit farther and verify that both the phone number and email address are live and active.

Not all lead validation and verification services are the same. The best setup for you will depend on the data you are collecting, your sales funnel, and your internal resources.

The best systems can do all of the above. Not only do they check to make sure the information is complete and accurate, but all of it is live and active. Better yet, they check to verify that all of the information entered is related. This helps defeat the most competent fraudsters who will enter valid, but disassociated data such as one person’s name, another person’s street address, and yet even another person’s email and phone number information. This type of data entry would pass through the simpler systems, but are obviously still worthless to you for contacting purposes.

Additionally, there are systems and services available to help monitor and defeat fraudulent sources of data. These systems complement the data validation by checking for patterns of fraudulent activity, so even if all the information entered is accurate, complete, and related, if it is created by a known source of bogus data it can either be denied, or at the very least flagged for additional review before a member of your sales team wastes any additional time trying to follow-up and convert the lead.

Not all third party lead aggregators bother to implement these systems. After all, their goal is to deliver you what look like legitimate and qualified leads, and they know you don’t have an expectation of being able to contact all of them. If you can’t contact them because they don’t answer their phone or reply to your email, or because it’s a false phone number and bogus email address, you’ll never know.

Some of the lead aggregators also know that if they only bought and sold legitimate leads to you, they would likely be unable to fill the volume expectations you’ve ordered, and they would lose their sources for leads due to the drop in what is considered performance. In other words, they are comfortable with knowingly buying 20-30% of garbage leads and passing them along to you in order to deliver the other 70-80%.

Follow-up awareness. By advertising your own site and services, you immediately establish awareness and recognition with the end user. After they submit their information and request to be contacted by you, they are much more likely to pick up the phone or respond to your email since they now know who you are and are expecting to hear from you based on the messaging from your confirmation or Thank You page after filling out your form, on your site.

Automation processes. If applicable, you always have the option to completely automate the process and establish communication using completely automated services such as auto-responders, or pre-recorded phone messages. This can be especially useful if your sales cycle is a bit longer, or you know that providing additional information and qualifying steps are in the best interest of both your sales team, as well as the consumer. For example, you may wish to first send them a ‘Getting Started’ guide, or a questionnaire to better understand their situation and how you can be of assistance.

Direct advertising strengthens your brand’s awareness, even for those that do not initially convert.

Benefit 2: Brand Awareness vs. Competitor Creation.

Brand Awareness: As mentioned above, by driving traffic directly to your site you increase brand awareness and referral business. When traffic comes from a third party site, the visitors who may just visit the first time or whose information gets sold to another buyer, will never have the opportunity to learn about you and the services you offer. There is no way for them to return to you since they don’t know you exist. They also cannot share their discovery about you with anyone else they may wish to refer.

Competitor Creation: Even worse, it is not uncommon for some lead aggregators to actively work to support your competition by delivering leads to them as well. In some cases, they are even reaching out and creating your competition by educating those in similar services as to how they can work with your type of client. A common example would be a lawyer or financial advisor who may specialize in one practice area or vertical, is encouraged and even trained to assist customers looking for complementary assistance, such as a personal injury attorney being instructed on how to process workers compensation or social security disability claims. If you are a workers compensation or social security disability attorney and have been buying leads, your lead provider not only increased your competition, but may also now raise rates due to supply and demand.

Be wary of third-party aggregators using your money to increase your competition.

Benefit 3: Revenue generation from extraneous data.
While still only paying for the leads you’ve defined as qualified, and filtering out any bogus data, you will still end up collecting additional lead data. This data may be valuable for either continued education efforts of your own services, or possibly complementary services you offer. Additionally, you could broker this data to marketers of other services for a revenue-share opportunity.

Benefit 4: Transparency, Optimization, and Compliance

Transparency: Do you know where your current leads are coming from, who is promoting them, and how they are driving the traffic? Have you seen the ads? Do you review the content on the web pages hosting the forms? By developing your own channel, you will establish direct relationships with the affiliates providing the internet marketing and traffic generation.

Optimization: Do you know which sources are creating the best leads? Do you have insight into which ads provided the best type of client or customer? By matching the final disposition data to the original advertising, the best ad-campaigns, based on not just initial conversion but ultimately the highest yielding return can be optimized to increase your bottom line. This means you can intelligently and strategically invest more of your marketing dollars into the channels and promotions working the best for you.

Compliance: Most professional trades and services have rules and regulations regarding the advertising and marketing they’re allowed, and required, to follow. Failure to do so can lead to fines, lawsuits, and even loss of licensing. Hiding behind a third party you’ve paid to handle the advertising and lead aggregation is typically not a free pass. As mentioned earlier on, not all lead aggregators are the same. Some are very good and committed to best practices. Others may not know they are unwittingly allowing violations, and the worse are knowingly doing whatever it takes to generate what looks like a lead to sell to you.

Conclusion

Determining which model is best for you and your business needs to take into consideration many factors, but primarily boils down to the number of leads you’d like to acquire. As mentioned earlier, a well-rounded marketing plan should include multiple channels and models for you to find new customers, and for them to find you. Neither of the two options reviewed here are mutually exclusive. You may benefit from doing both simultaneously, especially when first starting.

Who We Are

We’re an online marketing agency specializing in search engine marketing and affiliate program development. We work very closely with our clients to build unique and branded programs with complete transparency and insight with a strict adherence to any and all marketing guidelines and compliance regulations as required per industry. Our clients completely own their programs at all times, and whenever requested, we offer a seamless transition and training services back to in-house teams. If you have any questions, and would like to discuss whether a direct program might be a good fit for your company, please give us a call at 303-379-9501, or visit us at www.tesseramarketing.com. All consultations are free with no obligation. We look forward to speaking with you.

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Affiliate Programs for the Pet Industry

NickNap — Tue, 04 Aug 2015 17:50:00 +0000

Are you in the Pet Industry? Ready to increase traffic and sales with an Affiliate Program?

Affiliates come in many variations and can drive all types of traffic to your website. No more paying for clicks or impressions that don’t convert. With affiliates, you only pay performance – i.e., SALES! But is an Affiliate Program a good fit for your business at this time?

5 Quick Yes/No Questions Below…

First, a short review.

What is an Affiliate Program?

Real simply, you can think of an Affiliate Program as an outside sales force you pay only when they make a sale. You give your affiliates banners and links to use on their site or social media to send their traffic to your website to complete an action (CPA). It’s usually to buy something, but you can also use affiliates to help you build an email list, fill out surveys, distribute documents like white papers or generate a lead list. Whatever it is, you decide what that action is worth to you, and pay your affiliates not for their traffic but for only when that action is successfully completed to your satisfaction. (Yes, you can also pay affiliates for clicks (CPC) or impressions (CPM) if you prefer, but most programs are performance-based on the action, not for just visiting your site or seeing your banner.)

Why an Affiliate Program?

An Affiliate Program is a great way to partner with other websites which share your targeted customer. Since they are also attracting pet owners, and those pet owners could benefit from your products or services, giving that site owner an affiliate link gives them an incentive to promote your site to their audience. They send you a customer and you both earn revenue.

Are Affiliate Programs Popular in the Pet Industry?

Yes. Lots of companies have Affiliate Programs. There are of course the big guys, like Petco and Chewy/PetSmart. They both use affiliate programs to drive traffic for their online sales.

But you don’t have to be a mega retailer to have a program. Specialty Retailers with a limited number of products, as well as Services and even Information Products like training guides offer affiliate products.

So, what about your company? Would an Affiliate Program be a good idea? Here are the first five questions we ask when anyone comes to us for a program. There are always variations and exceptions to every rule, but these answers should quickly help you decide if you wish to explore further or not.

1. Are you currently promoting or selling your product or service online?

❏ Yes Great. By already being online and successfully (hopefully) driving traffic to your site you’re off to a great start. You may not see a positive ROI if you’re buying the traffic, and maybe the traffic is low if you’re relying on only Social or SEO traffic, but that’s okay.

❏ No This isn’t a deal breaker, but it does beg the question as to why not. There may be a very good reason and it is something which can be easily addressed and fixed, but affiliates are going to ask you about how the offer performs. If you can’t answer that question, they will be less likely to want to spend their time and money promoting your offer.

2. Do you own your product?

❏ Yes Excellent. This means you should have total control of how it is promoted and you likely have the margins necessary to offer an affiliate a good deal for sending you more sales, customers, clients, etc.

❏ No This doesn’t mean you can’t have an affiliate program, but there are usually other circumstances you’ll need to review before moving forward. For example, does the actual creator/owner have an affiliate program? Do they allow you to use affiliate marketing for the promotion of the product or service? Do you have enough margin to build a competitive and attractive program?

3. Do you know your targeted acquisition cost?

❏ Yes Fantastic. This is a fundamental component of any marketing channel. Knowing how much you can spend to make a sale, or get a new customer or client will help you make all media buying decisions down the road.

❏ No That’s okay, this is something you can pretty easily figure out and is related to question #4.

4. Do you know the average lifetime value of your customer?

❏ Yes Perfect. Knowing this number is a huge advantage for all your business decisions.

❏ No You may actually already have a number. Remember, this isn’t just about them buying one thing from you only one time. Maybe you offer a monthly subscription and they stay for 5 or 6 months. Maybe they need to renew or buy multiples of your product. Maybe, now that they’ve purchased one thing from you one time, you can sell them other complementary products and services.

5. Do your competitors have an Affiliate Program?

❏ Yes Outstanding. This really gives you a boost as well as an easy model to see what is or isn’t working. If you offer a better product or a better program, you can get those affiliates to switch over and start sending their traffic to your site instead of your competition. This is a double win.

❏ No Not a problem. Maybe your competition just hasn’t figured it out or you don’t have competitors because you offer something truly unique and exclusive. This is more often a good thing than any sort of drawback.

If you’ve already answered Yes to all these, we very much recommend you consider adding an Affiliate Program to your marketing mix. If you have a mixture of Yes and No answers, or most likely have some unique variables which need to be considered, give us a call and we can help you sort through it.

Everyone’s business in unique, and we build custom in-house programs specifically for you and your business. If it’s not a good idea for you at this time, we’ll tell you so. We don’t build programs to fail. More importantly, we should be able to tell you what steps you’ll want to take next to turn any of those No’s into a Yes so you are ready in the near future.

Interested in exploring a bit more? You can find more information about starting your Affiliate Program with papers such as:

Affiliates & Offer Structure – How to best match your offers to different types of affiliates.
Affiliate Program Management Options – Lots of options available. Which is best for you?
Before You Begin Developing Your Affiliate Program – Getting all the pieces together beforehand to make the launch that much easier for you.
How to Promote Your Affiliate Program – How to ‘speak affiliate’ so your program gets noticed.

Send us a note or give us a call. Prefer to chat or ready to ask questions? Great! We’d love to hear from you. Consultations are always free and we really do like learning about your business and helping decide if a program is a good idea or not for you at this time.

Who We Are

Tessera Marketing is an internet marketing agency specializing in Affiliate Program Development. We build and manage direct affiliate programs for our clients. If you are interested in learning more about affiliate marketing and whether or not an affiliate program could help your business, please give us a call at 303-379-9501 or send a note by visiting tesseramarketing.com. We love learning more about your business and helping to determine if any of our services can be of any assistance. Consultations are always free, and introductory packages are available.

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How to Promote your Affiliate Program

NickNap — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:33:00 +0000

Promoting your Affiliate Program…

Whether you are building an affiliate network or a program as an individual merchant, promoting your affiliate program is best done by promoting your offers and campaigns. Sure, you can go ahead and claim to have the “Best Offers” and “Top Payouts” like everyone else, but just what those offers are will make the real difference.

Networks and Affiliates are always looking for new, unique, and exclusive offers. They know what types of offers work best for their traffic, and regularly review and evaluate dozens of potential offers on any given day. To get your offer noticed and get the network or affiliate interested in setting up the offer for promotion, you need to share the necessary information they’ll need to quickly recognize the opportunity of running the campaign.

Be Clear and Direct. Promoting an affiliate program is like any other ad copy. You have limited time and space to get the reader’s attention. If they don’t even know what you’re selling, they’re not very likely to take any desirable action. Follow the old 5 W’s and H of journalism.

Keep your affiliate offer information clear, direct, and complete. Follow the 5 W’s and H of Journalism to help organize.

What? What is the offer? Start with the name and follow with a brief description, including the payout. Have both copy and graphic collateral available. If it’s an email offer, have your list of approved From and Subject lines already drafted, and be open to working with your affiliates to create their own as long as you review and pre-approve any new creative.
Who? Who is the offer for? Name both the target audience as well as the type of affiliate or traffic you know will perform well with the offer. Does it do well with coupon traffic? Email? Reg-path? Social? Display? Is there an age target or other qualifiers? Does it perform better for men or women? (And don’t be fooled just because it’s an offer for a woman or for a man, when it may be the husband or wife who actually purchases it as a gift.)
When? In this case, the ‘when’ is when the offer converts. In other words, where do you place the pixel and what is the desired action to conclude it as a successful action? Is it real time? Is it a one-page zip-submit? Do you require personally identifiable information or a credit card to purchase? Be specific and honest about what is required by the end user before your conversion pixel will fire.
Where? Do you have any geographic targets or restrictions? Do you take traffic in all 50 states or even internationally? In what countries do you accept traffic? Do you have restrictions such as specific zip codes or general metro areas?
Why? Again, answer this for both sides of the equation. Why does someone want to buy this offer, what are the features and benefits, and why does someone want to promote it? How does it perform? What’s the payout?
How? How does someone sign up? By all means include a link to your program and your contact information so anyone interested can learn more and register as an affiliate

Affiliates review multiple offers on any given day. If the opportunity with your offer is not immediately clear or understood, it is not likely they will choose to promote the campaign.

With your sales copy in order, now you can begin promoting the offer.

Post on affiliate forums and boards. There are many out there and there is no harm in posting on all of them. There are groups on Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as promotion sites like Offer Vault and ABestWeb.
Recruit from the competition. Who is promoting your competitor’s product or program? Contact those affiliates and share with them your opportunity.
Once you’ve identified the affiliates having success with your offer or your competitor’s, go get more like them that aren’t yet promoting either. Also, find the affiliates with complementary traffic. For example, a health-based site with traffic of folks looking for information regarding illness could very well also benefit from financial assistance. The assumption is they are sick, they are likely not working, and their medical bills may be adding up. Look for cross-promotional opportunities like this and you’ll find dozens of potential new affiliates.
Make your offer available to other affiliate networks. Networks are always looking for good new offers. If possible, structure your offer type to best match the affiliates and traffic available through the network. This way, each network you partner with has the opportunity to promote the offer as exclusive and you’ll get the maximum return for the effort.

If you have more than one product to promote, go back to step one and start over. And since you should now already have some affiliates promoting the first offer, make sure to start with them. If it is only the one offer, figure out if you can offer different types of promotion. For example, can you offer a higher payout for a successful purchase with a credit card, but maybe also offer a lower payout for anyone who only requests more information with just an email address? Affiliates will prefer different types of offers depending upon their traffic and ad placement.

Frequent communication with your affiliates is key to a successful program. Make sure to keep it two-way and always be available to support your affiliates.

Now that you have affiliates promoting your offers, be sure to keep the communication open and two-way. Emails and Instant Messages are fine, but nothing is better than phone calls or in-person meetings when possible. Get on the phone and speak with your affiliates on a regular basis. Any excuse will do. This is why gimmicks like affiliate contests and promotions work. It’s not about the prize at the end, but about a reason to start a conversation with your affiliate to help develop the relationship. Other good reasons to start a conversation include:

Change in performance. If you notice your affiliate’s conversion or quality rates are changing, and it is unique to them, give them a call to discuss. Either figure out how you can increase the volume if things are going well, or correct any issues causing the drop. Also, if optimization efforts have increased the conversion rates for your affiliate, definitely make sure they know and learn if they can increase traffic to take advantage of the new performance.
New Creative. If your design team has new banners, or a landing page to test, let your affiliates know and give them the option to test. If it is performing better on in-house tests, you’ll definitely want to share the opportunity.
New budgets or caps. If the offer has been capped, and there is room or need to increase the overall volume, give your affiliates a heads-up with time to react. This is especially true with your email affiliates, who may have their drop calendar scheduled weeks in advance. And, of course, if you can increase the payouts, discuss with your affiliates if an increase in rate will result in an increase in traffic.
Optimization feedback. If your affiliate is passing in subids for different placements and promotions (and they should), share with them how each are comparing. They’ll already know the conversion numbers, but let them know about any variances in disposition data if applicable.
Bad news. There is very little to be gained by holding off on sharing bad news. Definitely let them know if a campaign is shutting down or having technical issues, and certainly communicate any issues of severe quality questions or fraud.

Good news, assistance, and opportunities are great to share with your affiliates, but also never hesitate to discuss problems or quality issues.

By running an honest and consistent program with solid offers and support, the affiliates will start to come to directly to you. Make it easy for them by making sure your landing pages and web sites are well branded with complete contact information, and don’t hide behind anonymous registrations. Be ready to accommodate any unique requests which do not jeopardize or cannibalize your current efforts, and your program will continue to grow.

Who We Are

Tessera Marketing is an online marketing agency specializing in Affiliate Program Development. We build and manage direct affiliate programs for our clients. If you are interested in learning more about affiliate marketing and whether or not an affiliate program could help your business, please give us a call at 303-379-9501 or send a note by visiting www.tesseramarketing.com. We love learning more about your business and helping to determine if any of our services can be of any assistance. Consultations are always free, and introductory packages are available.

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Using SEO and PPC Together

NickNap — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 18:32:00 +0000

SEO and PPC Strategy

When first venturing into the world of search engine marketing (SEM), you’ll often find a deluge of information comparing pay per click (PPC) marketing to search engine optimization (SEO) marketing. You’ll find lots of information on the pros and cons of each vertical and some very enthusiastic opinions about why you should choose one over the other. However, choosing one method of SEM over the other is oftentimes not the most effective choice, and can actually be damaging to your overall marketing efforts. In most cases an SEM plan should include a combination of both short and long term initiatives and allocation of resources should be accordingly applied.

By combining the short term possibilities of PPC with the long term possibilities of SEO you can oftentimes achieve a higher ROI than by individually using either one.

Both online marketing methods have their advantages and disadvantages and chances are your business will lend itself better to one or the other. It’s important as a business owner to understand how both of these methods can help your business, and how they can work together to give you the most bang for your buck.

By combining the short term possibilities of PPC with the long term possibilities of SEO you can oftentimes achieve a higher ROI than by individually using either one.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Marketing – PPC, often referred to as cost per click (CPC) marketing or paid search marketing, is the act of purchasing ad space on search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing. You place customized content on the search engines and then pay each time a visitor clicks on your ad and visits your web site. The cost of each click is determined among other things by the competition on the term, the history of the account and the amount you are willing to pay. Each time someone searches on one of the terms you identify, the term goes through an auction process behind the scenes. The search engine then reviews the metrics previously mentioned and your ad will be displayed in the corresponding position within the paid search area in the search engine results page (SERP).

Pay Per Click Marketing is the act of purchasing ad space on Search Engines. When someone searches on your keywords, your ad displays.

Advantages to Using PPC

The speed at which you can launch a campaign and generate traffic for your site
The ability to see immediate results and optimize accordingly
The ability to turn campaigns on/off instantaneously due to bandwidth or technical issues
The ability to promote certain products/services that are temporary or seasonal
The opportunity to test the market before launching a large scale campaign
The ability to easily set and manage your budget

Disadvantages to Using PPC

Cost, especially in highly competitive industries
Competition

The main advantage to PPC Marketing is the speed to which campaigns can be launched and optimized to quickly drive targeted and relevant traffic to your site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO, sometimes referred to as organic or free advertising, is the act of developing a web site and its pages in a manner that pleases the search engine algorithms. SEO involves manipulating the design, layout and content of each page within a website as well as managing the interaction between your site and others. If a correct SEO strategy (correct according to each search engine) is implemented, the search engine will give your site preferred positioning and placement. The increased visibility in presence and positioning will drive more traffic to your site.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the act of developing websites that please the search engines, ensuring your ads are displayed when relevant terms are searched.

Advantages to Using SEO

The ability to develop a long term plan, with benefits continuing after the bulk of the work is complete
Limited direct costs, other than paying for someone to do the work
Increased brand recognition and credibility
The ability to beat the competition by outsmarting not outspending them
Attracting a broader customer base as your efforts also affect social media, etc.
If done properly, an SEO optimized website will also be a user friendly website

Disadvantages to Using SEO

Time consuming to implement
Delayed results
Changes to algorithms can tank overall results

The ability to invest in a long term plan with minimal upfront costs is the main advantage of SEO Marketing

Benefits of Using Both PPC and SEO
As you can see, each method clearly has its advantages and disadvantages depending on your business and your goals. In most cases, by using a combination of SEO and PPC to a varying degree, you can take advantage of the benefits of both, absorb the disadvantages of each, and see better overall results.

Utilizing both PPC and SEO simultaneously provides a much greater benefit than using either alone.

You can set and achieve both short and long term goals. By using both methods, you can get traffic quickly through PPC while you are building a strategy to take advantage of long term, more continuous traffic from SEO. You can also take advantage of promoting seasonal products or promotions immediately, while not sacrificing your long term goals.
Diversity. It’s never a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. In online marketing it is not uncommon to experience hiccups in your traffic supply. By putting effort into both verticals, you will be covered if your PPC campaigns encounter a glitch or if the search engines decide to change their SEO algorithm (like what happened with the Penguin or Panda updates).

Multiple sources of traffic to your website yields greater control over the number and quality of visitors coming to your site.

Consistency. Having two distinct sources of traffic allows flexibility when it comes to the daily traffic flow into your site. If you are experiencing a lull in your SEO traffic you can turn up your bids and attract more visitors via PPC. This makes it easier to manage and maintain a level of consistency in the number of visitors coming to your site.
Increased Visibility. Repetition, Repetition, Repetition. The more times and places you can get your advertising in front of potential visitors, the better. By using both PPC and SEO you can essentially own a SERP. PPC ads will show up in one area and SEO will show up in another area on the webpage. Not only does it create a sense of confidence for users to see an advertiser appear in more than one location, it allows you to attract users who may respond differently to a search. Additionally, there is some evidence that search engines give preferential positioning to those advertisers utilizing both methods.

Achieving the highest ROI can often optimized with a combination of marketing channels, including SEO, SEM, and PPC working together.

Research. In many cases, the keywords that perform the best in your PPC efforts will also be the terms that you will target in your SEO efforts. If you are actively using PPC, you can continually leverage the data to enhance every aspect of your SEM plan.
Achieve a higher ROI. The ultimate goal of almost all businesses is to achieve the greatest ROI. The way you achieve the best ROI is by being smart and methodical about how and where you put your advertising dollar. Both PPC and SEO are legitimate marketing avenues that together can contribute to that goal.

Who We Are

Tessera Marketing is an internet marketing agency that specializes in creating custom marketing programs for our clients utilizing PPC, SEO, affiliate marketing and more. We get to know our clients and their businesses on a personal level and create custom programs for them based on their individual goals. If you’d like to learn more about how Tessera Marketing can help your business please give us a call at 303-379-9501, or visit our website at www.tesseramarketing.com. Consultations are always free.

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