No worries if PPC isn't your bag... this article ties into SEO and general business tactics as well. If none of those things are your bag, then just skip to the bottom - I made a lolcat pic to appease you. Brats.

I was reading Kate's post on Tightening PPC Ad Budgets and thought I'd chime in with my take on those costly folk I like to call "money pit" users. Money pit users are all those people who are too lazy to connect with your business in the way they "ought" to, and instead choose to query you and click on your paid ad. This is most rampant in the PPC keywords directly related to your business name, e.g., "Jimmy's Repair Shop." While I agree with Kate that pausing PPC spend on your business' DBA and related names is a good tactic when the budget's tight, I'm not so quick to write off the money pit users as a waste of my ad spend.

Let's go over some of the typical money pit user scenarios, and look at why you might want to blow some PPC pocket change on them after all:

1. Users who are about to travel to your physical location and just googled you for a phone number or directions. Think real hard, folks: where should users be looking if they just want your address and phone information? Yep, the local results. By having poor local results (nothing useful, or two conflicting records), you drive these people to the PPC ad space you've rented above it. If you're an SEO being paid to drive natural traffic, then whoever's running the PPC campaign has to make up for the fact that your efforts don't jive in local search. In this case, I'd be more worried about the big local directories and my own SEO than I would be about cutting PPC spend.

Then there's the issue of the location that Google targets for your business. If someone querying your business name gets a OneBox (one with the ten local links) that has your competitors listed above you because G thinks their location is better, you could potentially lose that user. If this is the case with your business, I'd definitely keep PPC in the mix to prevent losing customers who are so close to a sale.

2. Users with typically non-converting interests. In my industry (automotive retail), people are constantly - constantly - calling or emailing dealers to find out whether or not their license plates have come in yet. If you care about customer satisfaction, maybe you don't mind that these people are getting in touch with you by first clicking your paid ad. But if you're like most car dealers, you couldn't care less about the customer once the car is sold, and that means these users are a drain on your PPC budget.

My question is this: why do these users have to go to a search engine to get in touch with you? They've met 2 or 3 people at your business by now, they've spent time in your physical location, and (in the example provided) they have a stack of paperwork from you a mile high. No one gave them a business card and said "Call me at this number if you have any questions"? No one thought to print a "Questions/Concerns" phone number or email address on their paperwork? There are too many users coming in through online searches simply because businesses don't make the effort to get closer with the customer.

By the by, if your client doesn't know if he/she has customers with frequently non-converting interests, I suggest you get access to their recorded 800 number (if they didn't already have one, I'm sure you proposed it as part of your PPC campaign). Listen to the first 10 seconds of every call (or have them do it and generate a trend report), and you might be surprised to find out how many people are calling for reasons that can't possibly result in profit. Plus, listening to phone calls is a great way to pick keyword lists, for those who didn't know.

3. Users who are trying to file a complaint or post some negativity online. I'm a big fan of having a PPC ad group dedicated to negative reputation; often, dissatisfied customers are just looking for resolution, and if you can stick a link in their face before they see an organic listing like Complaints.com or Yelp reviews, you just might stop them from flaming your business on the web (and perhaps even turn them into a satisfied customer). Of course, these users are looking for a supportive listener, so you can't send their clicks to the standard "Contact Us" page... the ad should go to a separate page that talks about how you aim to resolve any issues, and have support staff available at such-and-such number/email. But wait - shouldn't that landing page be optimized so it makes it to the top of the natural SERPs for something like "Jimmy's Repair Shop reviews" or "bad experience at Jimmy's Repair Shop"? Again, here's where a good SEO can help lower the PPC expense. If your "complaints" page makes it to the top of the listings, perhaps you can cut back on the PPC ad group for negative reputation.

So there are some examples of how improving your business in other areas can lift a little weight off your PPC budget. But my friends, if you haven't fallen asleep yet, I've yet another angle: Quality Score.

All these people we mentioned are worthless for conversion on your site... but ironically, they're pure gold for your ad campaign's CTR, and that means improved QS. Let's do a little math with a sample small business budget:

Monthly PPC Campaign Budget: $5,000 

Estimated PPC Budget Wasted On Money Pit Users: $500

Estimated Campaign Quality Score Improvement Attributed To Money Pit User CTR (Dollar Amount): $0.10 per click

(Campaign QS Improvement Per Click) x (Monthly Budget) = $500

This data indicates that the money pit users (who cost me $500/mo) are improving my entire campaign Quality Score by an average of 10 cents per click. On a $5,000 campaign budget, that means I'm getting $500 worth of clicks simply because those money pit users have convinced Google that my ads are highly relevant. $500 wasted ad budget minus $500 in "free" QS-boosted clicks equals a wash, and I can still say that at least those money pit users definitely made it to my site instead of being lost in the natural listings. Obviously these figures are hard to nail down in a real-world campaign, but if you do a ton of testing, I'm sure you'll find that there's some rationale for wasting some of your ad spend.

 

Oh yeah, the lolcat. Almost forgot.