This opens the floodgates to a world of implications, but I’ll share three of the most important ones here:

1.  Where are the other 44%?  Asleep at the wheel?  Did they not experience an increase too?  Or is this minority savvy enough to keep their costs per click and their overall keyword advertising low?  The fact of the matter is that two advertisers in the same business, with similar websites could be paying very different costs per click on the same keyword.

Company A manages their search marketing campaign in-house.  They login to their AdWords account once a week and take a look at where their budget is, how many keywords they’re bidding on and which keywords they’re spending the most on.  Company A feels this is adequate and assumes that their competition is doing the same.  Their cost per click stays the same, or increases based on their passive approach to search engine marketing.

Company B knows they need help, so they hire a consultant, a company or have their “IT guy” manage their campaign for them.  They don’t have time to login once a week, so they trust that this is being done for them.  The consultant, company or IT guy does login to the account and adjusts it regularly.  They even report to Company B about how many keywords they’re bidding on and keeps them updated on what their monthly spend is.  As long as this spend doesn’t go up, Company B is happy.  The spend stays the same, but the cost per click on their chosen keywords remains high.  The reason is there is no incentive for the cost per click to go down.

Company C hires a passionate, knowledgeable and very savvy company called, Cyentist.  After an in-depth and exhaustive discovery session, Cyentist is equipped with essential brand-level details and nuances that separate Company C from its competitors.  They also distilled the most important services, products and information that the company offers its market.

From here, Cyentist conducts thorough and complete keyword research, always using the latest professional industry tools.  They find out where the prime advertising opportunities exist and compile a database of keywords on which to bid on behalf of Company C.  Most of the money spent on clicks is saved at the initial bid.

Company C’s campaign is built and goes live.  Cyentist then monitors and measures key campaign ROI metrics daily and aggregates this data into a custom monthly report for Company C.  This monitoring allows for mid-course correction in the strategy and approach as new data is gained and learned from.

Not surprisingly, the investment Company C makes in Cyentist’s services has a dramatically higher ROI than the strategies of Companies A and B, combined.

2.  Your competition gets it.  Even if they are doing it wrong, people who compete against you in the marketplace are now showing up where you’re trying to attract new business.  Your clients and customers have more choices now than ever before.  The cost you pay for a click and for an overall keyword is going up because demand has gone up for the same keywords you bid on.  Essentially, you’re paying for your competitors’ advertisements to show up right next to yours.  You’re welcome.

The question is what are you going to do about it?  You can do the same thing, for what will inevitably deliver ever-diminishing results or you can begin to change your approach.  Those lone rangers out there who never hired a consultant and did it themselves may want to take advantage of a free consultation with Cyentist.

3.  You don’t have to pay more for your keywords; you can find new ones.  Think you’ve found them all?  It is time to start thinking about your own search habits and search nature.

Do you search using the words that come up in Google’s suggestion tools, or do you search using a different method?  Is your method exclusive to you, or could there be hundreds or thousands of others who search this way too?

Then again, maybe you haven’t found all of the popular keywords associated with your brand, products, services or information yet.  Maybe you need to change your bid, the schedule on which your ads appear in search results, maybe your ads need to be rewritten.  Maybe, maybe, maybe!  If you don’t know, you need to find out.  Winning consistently, even in the face of change will be what sets you apart from your competitors more than anything else.  If you feel you’re overspending for the results you’re getting with search marketing, call us today and let us show you how to create real results in a changing advertising landscape.

Marketing via social media and SEO can have long-term benefits even after the initial attempt to direct traffic is exhausted because those links remain intact.  If a link to your web site is found by a prime potential client on a social network years after that link is posted and you win the business, whatever you originally paid for that social media marketing has paid for itself.  Pay per click advertising is not sustainable unless it actively pays you more than you spend on it.

If you want to know how to pay per click for search engine ads, you must start at the beginning and create a solid plan.  First you should ask yourself a few important questions–and answer honestly:

1.  What product(s) or service(s) do I want to promote?

2.  How much of my advertising budget do I want to invest per month?

3.  What type of ROI would be acceptable to me as a result of these efforts?

4.  Do I want to handle this internally or should I outsource the management of my pay per click advertising?

5.  Who will manage this advertising program–and do they know what they’re doing?

6.  What search engine(s) do I use most?  Use what you believe in.

7.  How long do I want to initially run these ads?

8.  If it works well, by how much will I increase my investment – and when?

9.  If it doesn’t work well, by how much will I reduce my investment – and when?  Will I stop after a certain point if no results are achieved – when?

10.  What keywords will I use as a focus to begin building a full keyword list?

Once you have answered these questions, you will begin to experience clarity on the process and automatically have a plan that is more solid than 99% of all businesses that attempt pay per click advertising.  Your answers will indicate the search engine(s) you will create an advertising account on and how much you should spend.  If you choose not to outsource the management of your account, it is advisable at the very least to outsource the initial keyword research if you are not familiar with how to do this.  Choosing the right keywords is often the biggest difference between a successful PPC campaign and one that does not produce a strong ROI.

If you would like to learn more about how to pay per click in Manhattan–or anywhere else, connect with us and someone from our Manhattan office will contact you for a complimentary online marketing consultation.