Selling PPC to your clients - how hard can it be?

The Challenge of Selling Paid Search.

What? Selling PPC? Well, I have a wide range of tools at my disposal to help optimise the return my clients get from their sites: Paid Search is one of them. So, I need to sell the idea, the concept and the benefits to clients to get them to make an investment. Not everyone gets it though. Not all clients see why they should run the risk of (potentially as they see it) hemorrhaging cash to Google/MS/Yahoo to get traffic that they could get through a nice safe strategy like their trusted paper catalogue...

Sell on benefits, not features

So, this missive is not about PPC itself but more about selling PPC to those who can really get benefit from it but are frozen by doubt. Let's discuss what buttons need to be pushed to persuade business owners that paid advertising can provide a good return on investment.

Theirs is an understandable sentiment: As a business owner unfamiliar with PPC, you don't know how much it'll cost to put an advert somewhere on a search engine results page potentially near a competitor without knowing exactly what caused the advert to show when and where it did.

Start small on safe ground
How do you even know if your products will sell well through PPC? Just a little legwork will provide some pretty compelling arguments. Simple tools like http://www.google.com/sktool or https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/KeywordToolExternal are easy to use and free. The information that can be found through these tools can be a gold mine. Just gotta find the seam...Hey! Why not start with a small time 'punt' using campaigns and keywords centered around the client's brand?

The so called madness of bidding on own brand keywords is actually a really good candidate to demonstrate great competitive advantages that can be gained through using paid advertising. Some examples for clients:

If you don't someone else will!
Beat your competitors on your own turf. It's your backyard - own it.

Turbo charge the Click Through Rate on the account
CTR has a significant effect on your campaign quality score. Get the positive cycle going with Click Through Rate. Strong brand keywords can kick start your campaigns

SEO benefits - KNOW the keywords that work for you
Transfer keyword learning into site copy which leads to...

The halo effect
Starting out with paid advertising will quite often cause a boost in organic traffic performance too.

Target Cost Per Acquisition
Seek to maximise the lifetime value of PPC customers and transfer this strategy to other channels for optimal ROI.

Okay, the last point there is suitable material for a whole blog post in it's own right but nonetheless, this handfull of straightforward, easy wins provide enough of a comfort for clients to dive in the shallow end of the paid advertising pool.

More often than not, they find the water is lovely!