A lot of PPC advice is focused around direct marketing strategy i.e. you identify an audience and deliver them what they want. You convert at rate X. Repeat.

For the most part, this works well. However, you may be missing an opportunity to spread your message to a wider audience, and this benefit could come free.

Try to make your offer truly remarkable. Is your offer worth remarking upon? If not, could it be twisted so it could be, or put in a form that makes it easy to repeat?

Become A Purple Cow

Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable is a book by Seth Godin. The central theme is that offering me-too products and services is boring. Such goods and services won’t be remarked upon. Since we live in a world of saturated media, to be unremarkable is to go un-noticed. To not be noticed is the death of a business. If you haven’t read the book, I suggest you do – it’s a great read, and it’s short and to the the point.

The lesson of being remarkable translates well online. Online marketers have picked up on it, using remarkable qualities of a message, or format of that message, to help ensure a message gets spread.

The same tactic can be used in PPC.

Landing Page Competition

Take a look at your competitors landing pages. Do any of them stand out? Do they stand out in the sense that the message would be worth you repeating to someone else?

That quality of being remarkable, or being repeatable, is a valuable marketing tool. Sometimes, all it takes to become remarkable is to twist your existing message into something unexpected. Like turning a typical cow into a purple-colored cow. It’s still a cow, but the way it appears makes it stand out.

However, this isn’t just a cosmetic concept. Not only should you have a remarkable angle, but it’s best if you also need a remarkable, unique product or service.

If this sounds familiar, it is – it’s a riff on the old concept of a unique selling point.

The unique selling point has three specific components:

• Each advertisement must make a proposition to the consumer. Not just words, not just product puffery, not just show-window advertising. Each advertisement must say to each reader: “Buy this product, and you will get this specific benefit.
• The proposition must be one that the competition either cannot, or does not, offer. It must be unique—either a uniqueness of the brand or a claim not otherwise made in that particular field of advertising.
• The proposition must be so strong that it can pull over new customers to your product.

The modern twist is that your message should also be repeatable. People should want to spread your message, and be able to do so easily. The benefit is that your message reaches a wider audience than it otherwise would.

Obviously, this will not suit every product or service. For example, it’s hard to imagine toilet paper ever being truly remarkable, and being unremarkable has hardly affected toilet paper sales!

However, it’s an interesting way to think about what you do. Is there some aspect to your service that you can twist in order to make remarkable and memorable? Could you promote it in such a way that people will be “forced” to remark upon it? For example, you could use a quirky YouTube video on your landing page and encourage people to embed it in their site.

What does this have to do with PPC?

There’s no reason your landing pages can’t have a viral component to them that encourage people to remark on your product of service.

You have people’s attention – you paid for the click – and you still need to convert people to a desired action. One of those desired actions could be to have people run with your message and repeat it in other channels. You could embed social media components, like video and Facebook groups, that facilitate people repeating or remarking upon your message.

The pay off is that you create attention in other channels, and if the message does go viral, then you get a whole lot of extra marketing value for free.

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In the previous article, we talked about starting a PPC business, and a little about differentiating yourself from your competition. Let’s take a look at practical ways to do this.

Differentiation

Given that the PPC provider market is crowded, you first need to figure out a point of differentiation.

Points of differentiation include level of service, locality, knowledge of an industry, price, level of awareness, etc.

Take a look at your competition and work out what you can do better, or how you can slice up the market to find a niche you can own i.e. can you specialize in a vertical, like consumer shopping or travel, or focus on one particular region? If so, is there enough of a market to make such a specialization worthwhile? Estimating market size can be a little tricky, but look for relevant industry reports and studies to help you.

Why is differentiation important? Copying someone else’s approach leaves you at a disadvantage, because you’ll always be one step behind.

A developed, competitive market, like PPC, isn’t kind to late-comers offering very similar services, so it’s a better idea to find a point of differentiation and work it hard in order to carve out a name for yourself. Those who come after you might be able to ape your approach, but not your experience. So long as you keep adapting to your market, and refining your offer, you’ll always be one step ahead of the copyists.

It’s not enough just to be different, of course. Being different by charging ten times what the market is charging won’t result in any extra business, unless someone can demonstrate ten times the value. Therefore, be sure to link your point of difference to a genuine value proposition. Answer the question “Why should someone pick you, and not the other guy”?

Developing The Message

Once you’ve decided on one or two points of difference that add real value, you next need to develop your message.

The message is a simple outline of what you do and the value you provide. It is also referred to as the elevator pitch in that it is short, succinct and to the point. It can be difficult to reduce your message to a clear paragraph, so here are a few tips on how to do it. One useful technique is to think of it in terms of questions and answers.

Ask, and answer, the following questions:

What value do you provide your customers?

This value has to be real, not imagined. For example, a provider might imagine a PPC customer values a traffic report hand delivered each month, but that might not be something real clients place any value upon. To find out what potential clients value, it pays to do a little market research. This could be as easy as attending marketing events and asking people questions about the frustrations they have with online marketing. Where there are frustrations, there is money to be made.

What problem do I solve?

If clients tell you their frustrations and problems, you can formulate solutions. It might sound simple, but often clients will pose their problems in the form of a solution, which can be a bit misleading. For example, I client might say “we really need some SEO!”. What the client probably needs is more web traffic, at a low cost, and of course, there are many ways to solve that particular problem, SEO being but one.

Blend the answers into a tight, focused two paragraph explanation of the problem you solve linked to the value you provide. It’s great if you can work in an explanation of why you’re the best person to provide this value.

For example:

“We are TravelClickMasters.com. We provide Pay Per Click services to the travel industry. Our services help travel companies boost visits to their web site, and increase booking rates. Typically, our clients have increased web site visits by over 300%, whilst lowering their overall PPC advertising costs, by using our specialized services. TravelClickMasters is run by Scott Jones, a marketer with 12 years experience in the travel industry”.

It won’t win any medals, but it’s a start

Note how we’ve emphasized the value we provide to clients. It often pays to be explicit i.e. “increased web site visits by over 100%”, as opposed to general i.e. “increased web site visits” because increasing site visits by a nominal figure isn’t something that screams value.

The rest of your copy should expand and support your key message. For example, use before/after case studies that demonstrate the value you create, in this case showing increased traffic levels and booking numbers. Use testimonials. Outline your experience and knowledge of your niche.

Next, test your message out on friends and colleagues. Are they crystal clear about what you do and the benefits your provide?

Note any word or term that causes confusion. For example, “Pay Per Click” is industry jargon. It is suitable to use such a term for people who have had experience of pay per click marketing, but you’ll need to recraft the message for a general audience. Decide who is the most likely audience for your website, and craft the message accordingly.

Web Design

Your web design needs to sync with your message.

First impressions really do count on the web. A study of website credibility factors found that people judged a websites credibility not by privacy policies, security, etc, but by how the website appeared. People will read further if your website looks and feels right.

Use the message as a key part of the the design brief. Web designers appreciate this detail, and will incorporate it into the design.

For example, if your brand is upmarket, then the website should look glossy. The same glossy design will not work for a brand based around low prices. The message would be mixed, and wouldn’t ring true.

Your Message Is Everything You Do

The way you answer the phone, the way you write emails, the way you present yourself should all support the message. If you specialize in, say, travel, you should be talking travel. You should use industry jargon and touch on industry issues.

So, the message is not just something you write on a webpage. It’s something you become. Going through this exercise is a great way of figuring out what it is you really want to become.

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Thinking of setting up a business providing PPC campaign management services?

Let’s presume you’ve got your PPC chops, have built up some practical experience and are now looking to make money out of your skills.

Let’s take a look at how to go about it.

Size Of The Industry

SEM spending is estimated to be worth $18 billion by 2011.

Most activity, in terms of spend, in the professional search marketing space is in PPC, as opposed to SEO. The PPC concept is easy to grasp, implement and measure, and as more and more advertising spending shifts online, it will undoubtedly find it’s way into PPC.

Is Running A Business Really What You Want To Do?

It seems a strange question, but there is a big difference between knowing how to do PPC and setting up a business to sell that service to clients.

When you start a business, you typically have to perform most of the varied business functions yourself. That means writing proposals, attending conferences, pitching presentations, cold-calling, selling and networking. All of these activities cost time and money and none of it is guaranteed to pay off. Once you do land work, you need to run the campaigns whilst searching for the next customer.

That’s the reality of most service-based start-ups. Your hourly wage must reflect that you are likely going to spend 50% of your time working on prospecting, learning, networking, and dealing with administrative issues. Ask yourself if you’d like to “do it all”, or would you be happier selling your skills to a business that is already established, so you can focus exclusively on PPC?

Most inhouse PPC managers with three years experience earn between $30-70K. If you have five or more years experience, that figure shifts up a gear, typically ranging from 50K to, in some cases, $200K (rare – but some people are doing that, and above).

When you’re doing your break even calculations – more on this shortly – keep these figures in mind. The effort involved in running your own business must pay off in relation to what you can earn somewhere else, unless monetary reward is not your sole aim. And an in-house job can gain you experience, help you build your network, and help gain exposure for your expertise.

Cash Flow & Break Even Point

If you’ve decided that your suited to running your own business, the first thing to do is run a few numbers.

One of the most important aspects of start-up bsuiness is cash flow.

Do you have sufficient cash reserves to live on while you’re waiting for your first client to pay up? Cash flow can kill a small business, even those businesses which have a a lot of prospective work in the pipeline. The bills will come in, and your clients may not have paid you yet. Without access to a line of credit or savings, cash flow issues can take you out very quickly. It’s a good rule of thumb to assume you’ll make a loss, or break even, in the first year, so make sure your finances can cope.

Next, you need a break-even analysis. A break-even analysis shows you the amount of revenue you’ll need to bring in to cover your expenses, before you make a profit.

• What are your fixed costs? i.e rent, insurance,power and other set expenses and overheads.
• What is your estimated variable costs? i.e. costs that will vary due to volume sold, such as staffing numbers
• What is you the sales revenue required to cover all your costs?

A simple equation like this will show you how many sales you need to make in order to run your business successfully. It will also give you an idea of what you need to charge for your services.

It should only take you a few hours to make the numbers work, or to see that they don’t stack up. If they do work, then you can go ahead and form a business plan. If you can’t make the numbers work, then you’ve saved yourself a lot of time, money and effort creating a business that can’t possibly survive.

It doesn’t sound like much fun, I know, but business really does come down to a set of numbers. You either sell something for more than it costs to produce, or you don’t.

Competition

Try searching for PPC management services. As you can see, the world isn’t short of providers!

In an industry with such a low barrier to entry, how will you stand out from all the rest? You’ll need to give prospective clients a good reason why your service is better than the others on offer. How do you intend to match or better the credentials of established operators? How can you differentiate your service? Can you do it by geography? Price? Service levels? Performance? Focus on a business vertical / niche where you have established expertise?

Think about how you can pitch your services so they demonstrate real value to a client. If they can do PPC  in-house, they will – so you can’t just sell the benefits of PPC in general- , you need to give them great reasons to outsource to you. What advantage do you provide over doing the work inhouse?

Pricing Your Services

One strategy often used by those starting out is to undercut everyone else. Whilst it can be useful to get a cash flow going, there are problems with this approach.

Once you hook someone into a low price, they’ll come to expect it. And then they may ask for discounts too! A better way is to give someone a low price, but make sure they know this is a discounted price on your usual service. Why would you give someone a low price? This can be a useful tactic for building good references, recommendations and a client history. The advantage to you is that you gain marketing collateral and professional experience, and get paid.

Long-term under pricing isn’t a great strategy unless, like WalMart, you can do a lot of volume with low overhead by dictating the terms of the supply chain. But you are not WalMart (or Google), and you don’t have that pricing power. This creates problems in itself, especially for the start-up PPC business, as you need a management structure and personnel do deal with high volumes. If you can do high volumes at good prices, great! Ask yourself how you’ll manage to scale quickly – in terms of taking on extra staff and moving to bigger premises- if this happens. But beware that some of the easiest set and forget PPC models have a high churn rate, and Google has done beta tests that aim to service the low end of the market via automated technologies.

You also can’t price too far above the market, unless you’re bringing something truly unique to the market that clients can’t get elsewhere – additional exposure on other key properties, press coverage, organic search traffic, a strong focus on improving conversion rates, a business model where you absorb most the risk but keep a bigger share of the profits, etc.

Take a long hard look at the existing PPC service market and try to imagine what is not there. Could reporting be better? Could you add value by focusing on achieving increased conversion i.e. getting involved more deeply with a clients business strategy? Could you specialize in one particular market, like say travel, and become very well known in that market segment?

Often, larger PPC management campaigns are based on a percentage client spend, with some form of retainer for reporting. If you do get paid a percent of spend, it helps to focus where the click volume is decent and clicks are expensive. Legal and hotels are typically far more lucrative than a local shoe repair shop.

Smaller campaigns tend to be a fixed price for establishment, with on-going retainers. When deciding on how to price, look at what your competition are doing, and consult industry research and surveys. While recurring income sounds compelling (we always add up the income before thinking of the costs), if you under-price the cost of maintaining the relationship (as well as the PPC account) then that passive income can easily start flowing in the wrong direction, and end up as a passive expense. A well executed one off deal can be far more lucrative than an under-priced ongoing relationship. If a relationship consistently loses money consider firing the client and spending more time improving the performance on your best accounts.

Your Turn:

What are some of the business lessons you learned the hard way? If you were to start a PPC consulting business from scratch today what would you do differently than you did when you first started?

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Google announced on their LatLong (Maps) blog today that they’re experimenting with placing pricing for hotels directly next to the hotel listings in Google Maps.

At first glance, it looked like another Google-internal affiliate marketing initiative, but it’s actually quite clever.

Here’s the official sample screenshot – Look closely at the price listing drop-down box in Adwords yellow:

If nothing else, it’s an innovative way to roll in Adwords results directly into the organic SERPs.

Paid Placement With a Twist

Interestingly, Google’s post points out explicitly that these listings are not traditional paid placements:

This new feature will not change the way that hotels are ranked in Google Maps. Google Maps ranks business listings based on their relevance to the search terms entered, along with geographic distance (where indicated) and other factors, regardless of whether there is an associated price.

So the blur between paid and organic continues it’s inevitable march forward.

It’s also of note that Google has chosen affiliate sites like Expedia and Priceline as their preferred advertiser testing partners for this experiment, not the hotels themselves…

It will be interesting to see how this progresses, and what other verticals it shows up in.

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