SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing and depending on who you are talking to, it may be called different things. Some people will call it Adwords, pay per click, PPC, or SEM – but it is all the same thing – don’t let salespeople try to confuse or convince you with other terminology. For the purposes of this discussion, we are referring to the ads that show up at the top (and sometimes the bottom) of Google, Bing, and Yahoo. There are other forms of online paid search advertising that we do enable for clients such as online display and retargeted ads, but for the purpose of this discussion, we will stick to the ads you see on the search engine results page generally at the top.
Using SEM allows septic and wastewater companies to show up to your local market for those consumers who are in need of septic or onsite wastewater service company who might service a much larger geographic area to consumers in that larger geographic area by appearing in the paid ad sections of the search engine results page (SERP). The ads appear at the top in an auction format – meaning that the company that “bids” the most shows up in the top ad, the second-highest bid gets the second position, the third-highest bid gets the third ad position, and so forth. Pay per click and online advertising in its simplest definition is amazing when you truly pause to think through what has to happen:
A consumer has to need your service or have so much interest in your service that they go to Google (or another search engine) and look for specific words related to the septic or wastewater industry such as septic tank companies, septic tank alarm, clogged sewer, sewer services and other “keywords” related to what you do.
A consumer has to see your ad, read your ad and determine that your ad is relevant enough to what they need that they choose to click on your ad. Only at the point that the consumer actually clicks on your ad, do you pay a dime! Up until that point nothing has come out of your pocket!
The consumer at that point is taken to your website. At this point, your website is the key – does your website beat your competition’s in look, feel, ease of use, and does it clearly meet the consumer’s need? If it does, you have a great chance to convert that click that you paid for into a paying customer.
In theory, this should be a simple process – set up your ads, set up your bids, and get business – but there is a lot more to running an effective Google Adwords or pay-per-click campaign than that! AWP has worked hard to build out an offering for managing the SEM or pay-per-click campaigns of our clients. For us and our clients, pay per click is the tip of the spear and often it is the fastest way to begin helping our clients generate revenue with their websites and digital properties.
Keywords & Keyword Research
One of the foundations of any well-built Google Adwords campaign is understanding the keywords or words that consumers will go to Google and search for as it relates to your business. Some words would be terrible for one business – the word “cheap” would be a negative keyword for a septic company potentially. Also, some keywords cost more to bid on – meaning each keyword has a varying value to how much it might cost to get a click. The keyword “septic company” might cost more to get a click than the key phrase “best septic companies”, but understanding the value of each consumer related to the keyword or key phrase they use to find your service is a task all by itself! One of the advantages that AWP offers is that we specialize in managing campaigns for septic and onsite wastewater companies, and we already know many of the keywords and key phrases that work – we can build on the existing success to fast-track your results.
Campaign Setup & Testing
While we already have a strong foundation to work with by understanding the septic and onsite wastewater industry, each market varies based on factors like how many competitors are in your market, varying customs and tendencies in different regions of the US and Canada, and how aggressively your competition is competing for pay per click market share. We follow a commonly used structure when setting up campaigns that are built on five pillars to build out a campaign:
- Ad Campaigns: Ad campaigns focus on different services you might offer – a simple example would be a “septic campaign” versus a “clogged sewer” campaign.
- Ad Groups: Ad groups allow you to be more relevant to what a consumer is searching for or it may allow you to more specifically target the kind of consumer you are searching for. A great example of this would be an ad group built around “Local Septic Company” will produce a very different type of consumer searching for “Drainfield Repair Companies”. Ad groups allow us to be more efficient in helping you find the kind of customers you are looking for and help us more clearly provide the service a customer needs.
- Keywords: Inside of each ad group we would clearly assign certain words. For a consumer searching for “septic tank pumping”, we would want an ad and keywords related to full septic tanks. There are a whole series of keywords or key phrases that consumers might search for as it relates to septic tank pumping. The goal is to be most relevant to each different ad group and consumer group.
- Ads: We want our ads to be clear, concise, and easily explain to consumers that based on what they see in our ad, we have the solution they need. Further, we want to test different ads – subtle differences in ad text and layout can make a big difference in ROI and we like to test different ads to ensure the best ROI.
- Website: It does not matter how well we build out your pay-per-click campaign, without a well-built and easy-to-understand website as the foundation, consumers will just click away after that work and find a competitor with a better looking and easier to understand website. Your website is your digital property, and just like a building and your staff – you need to put your best foot forward! At AWP we truly understand that the user interface and the experience a consumer has can leave an impression just as easily as the impression left by a physical building and staff.
Quality Score
A well-run and set up pay-per-click campaign that is given time will gain something over time known as a quality score. The higher your quality score, the more Google will reward you as time goes by. A good quality score can help you get more clicks by helping you get a higher ad ranking and Google will also reward you with a lower cost per click. Google wants consumers to find the most relevant results and this is how it rewards marketers who pay attention to the details and provide the most relevant ads.
One of the biggest factors that we know of that affects your quality score is your click-through rate (CTR) – meaning – of the consumers that see your ad, how many of them actually click on your ad? This is one of the fastest ways Google judges how relevant you are to what consumers are looking for. There are more factors that go into a quality score, but to keep it simple, we want to focus on being relevant!
What Makes Advanced Wastewater Promotions Different?
Here are a few main things that set us apart from everyone else who says they are great at pay per click:
- Yes, we are certified Google Partners.
- We disclose our margin to clients in writing and our contract. This is important – if you don’t know how much you are paying us to manage your campaign, how do you really know how much it is costing you to create a customer?
- We share your Google Adwords campaign directly with you – we believe in transparency!
- We don’t just look at Google – there are other ways to utilize pay per click to generate customers and we want to help reduce the cost to create each customer in any way we can.
- We track your campaign with call tracking and Google Analytics – you will be able to track your ROI.
- We are managing your campaign here – you can call, text, or email us with questions and you will not be calling an 1800 number to someone who knows you only as an account number. We are real and you are real and important to us.
SEM Pros & Cons
CONS
- Your visibility is limited by your budget. As an example – if your budget was 10 dollars and every time someone clicked your ad, it cost you 1 dollar – after 10 clicks your budget would be used up and your ads would not show up on Google anymore.
- Due to pay per click working like an auction, it can be difficult to predict how many customers any given budget will produce and it can vary wildly market by market.
- As a society we are adverse or do not like ads – especially consumers who are on a desktop, laptop or full-screen computer will often and most of the time scroll right past the ads – the usage of the ads in this environment can actually be pretty low.
PROS
- Pay per click is fast – within a few weeks, we can make the phone start ringing.
- We can control it – we can control when your ads show up, where they show up, and in some respects, who they show up to.
- For consumers on a mobile internet environment or smartphone – pay per click is extremely effective and can help you capture consumers with an immediate need.
