Hi Jill,

My wife and I run a web site selling sun protective clothing for kids and adults and we're based in Edinburgh (or Edinboro, Scotland as you Americans so quaintly say :). We are a very small business, running on a shoestring budget. We're doing well but now need to step up to the next level.

We're in Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory but as yet have not dipped our toes in the shark infested pay-per-click waters. In your view, is PPC now an essential marketing tool or can honest SEO techniques still win the day alone? How do you balance cost with global profile?

Another question is, should we "pretend" to be much bigger than we are or should we emphasise our homespun family business values? Are people more comfortable dealing with what seems a large organisation or would they prefer the personal service and individuality of a site that doesn't try to hide the fact it's a one-woman business?

Regards,

Ken T.

Jill's Response

Hey Ken,

Your site sounds like one that would be of interest to me, as my son could use your sun-protective clothing. (He doesn't tan -- just burns.)

So...pay-per-click (PPC), is it an essential marketing tool? Well, that depends. If your site is already showing up in the search engines' "natural" results for a good number of relevant keyword phrases, and you're making sales off of this traffic, then you may not gain any advantage by purchasing PPC ads.

You mention that you're listed in Yahoo's directory and at DMOZ, which is a great start, but are you getting found through Google, MSN, AOL, etc.? I would take a look at your server logs and see exactly where your traffic is coming from. I'm guessing that the folks in your target market are big MSN and AOL users, just based on my past experiences with a variety of types of sites. And of course, Google is popular with just about everyone.

Once you see how you're currently doing in regards to your search engine traffic, then you can make a search engine marketing plan of action. If you find that you're really not getting much targeted search engine traffic, you'll want to optimize all the pages of your site to rank higher in the natural listings. If you've tried to do this, but aren't having much luck, then certainly buying PPC ads may be a worthwhile endeavor.

I'm not a PPC expert by any means. It's not a service I offer, so anything that I tell you about PPC is based on what I've heard and read from the experts I know, and from my experience with my own lowly Google AdWords campaign for my site. I can tell you that the reading and listening I've done on the subject has helped me craft a profitable PPC campaign for my Nitty-gritty handbook, and gain newsletter subscribers, who often eventually purchase Nitty-gritty.

The thing with PPC is that you can't just set it up and forget about it. You have to track everything you do -- from the different ads you test, to the keyword phrases you bid on and the amounts you're willing to bid. You need to figure out exactly what your conversion rates are for everything to ensure that you receive a positive return on your investment (ROI).

Once you get your PPC campaign chugging along nicely so that it is making a positive ROI, then you're in luck! Eventually you'll see in your campaigns that if you get X amount of visitors from a particular keyword phrase, Y amount will go through with a purchase. As long you spent less on X than you get back on Y, then you're doing a good job!

As an example, when I first started my AdWords campaign, with the help of Andrew Goodman's book, I learned that I needed to figure out how to tweak up my click-through rate, all the while tweaking down my price per click. Eventually, I worked my way down to paying the minimum 5 cents per click for all my ads. This has knocked out some keywords that I can compete with, but that's okay; I don't need to have them all.

Looking at my ConversionRuler stats for January, my AdWords campaign that was targeted towards buying the handbook produced one purchase of Nitty-gritty (one week after the clickthrough). The cost for the campaign was $18, and the handbook sells for $49. So, I made out like a bandit on that one, if only on a small scale.

Now, truth be told, I have all sorts of other AdWords campaigns running that don't give me an immediate return on investment. I spent $44 (for 880 clickthroughs) on ads targeted at getting people to sign up for this newsletter. Out of those 880, 74 signed up. Now, if just one of those 74 eventually purchases my handbook, then I'm about even; two, and I'm ahead! And if any of them eventually use any of my services, then I'm waaaaay ahead! ;-) So for me, it's worth the money. Now that I've also enabled the "context-sensitive" ads at Google, I do have to watch things more closely. I am spending a lot more than I used to for ads, but I'm also getting more out of it, so I think I'm okay for now. Recently, I disabled a keyword phrase that was bringing in untargeted traffic. I think that will further improve my overall ROI for next month.

So the answer to your PPC question is pretty much, sure, why not try it out? But do read up on things so you know what you're doing, and don't bother doing it if you're not going to measure the results.

Now, for your other question...should you try to look like a bigger company than you are? This is really just my personal opinion, for what it's worth...

You are what you are. (Or as Popeye and I like to say, "I y'am what I y'am!") If you attempt to hide what you are -- or worse, lie about it -- then I imagine it would come back to bite you sometime in the future. If people don't want to buy from you because you're a one-person show, well then that's their loss. They're probably missing out on great customer service, or whatever. There are plenty of others who are only too happy to buy from the little guy, and reap the benefits of dealing with a small company. Heck, most of my clients feel that way.

I always laugh when the first thing out of a potential client's mouth is "How big is your company?" Usually, the jig's up right then and there, because if you have to ask, you're probably looking for a number that is greater than one! At first I used to stammer and sputter when I got asked that question, and then try to explain that I contract out different aspects of the work to others with specialized skills, and yada, yada, yada. But I learned that it doesn't matter what you say after you say "one." So now I just happily say, "it's just me!" and they're welcome to take me or leave me.

And yes, I do think you can use the fact that you're small to your advantage. Like I said, customer service can generally be better with a smaller company, plus your specific expertise is also often an advantage. At any rate, honesty is always the best policy.

Good luck!

Jill