I’d be interested in hearing about people’s experiences with Espotting, Google Adwords, Overture or any other pay-for-performance or paid search listings service.

The theory is quite compelling: you know what you are paying per ‘lead’, you can cap spend, you can target quite tightly by keyword, you get pretty good reporting and analysis etc. Perhaps most intriguing is the notion that, assuming you know your average conversion rate from click through to purchase/registration, then you can use these services to ‘buy’ customers at a fixed price, or at least a price that you can accurately budget for. So, if you know the average value to you of an acquired customer and you know what it costs to acquire such customers using pay-for-performance services such as those above then you don’t have to be a whiz with the figures to ‘guarantee’ a good return on investment.

I’ve been running a few small-scale campaigns with Espotting and Google Adwords over the last months to test this thinking. Bear in mind that these were quite small campaigns targeted at well defined business niches in the UK (hence Espotting for its European coverage rather than Overture). Bear in mind too, that even in the last few weeks, with AOL teaming up with Google at Overture’s expense, things may be different now. With those caveats, and no doubt others I’m forgetting, here are some observations:

1. The volume of traffic referred by Espotting is surprisingly low and certainly less than that which came from the Google adwords. In both cases the same, quite specific, search phrases were bought. Is this purely because Google has bigger volumes of traffic? Or because people are wise to the ‘sponsored’ Espotting links on their search partners results and so don’t click on them? I don’t know, but it’s proving surprisingly hard to spend any money via Espotting even if I wanted to as the volume of clicks is so low (around 120 in almost 3 months).

2. The cost per lead is higher with Google Adwords than via Espotting. This is essentially because with Google you pay per page view whereas with Espotting you pay per click. Given low click through rates, Google works out more costly, though this does depend on the keyword in question. As Espotting operates a market/bidding environment then some keywords are more expensive than others – ‘interactive TV advertising’, for example, was going for a bargain 5p per click, whereas ‘ecrm’ sets you back around 45p. Over time, and assuming these services continue to gain popularity, the rates are likely to go up. More mass market terms like ‘gambling’ are much more expensive (closer to £3). I haven’t checked anything pornographic but I’d imagine there’s a strong market for a choice list of keywords there too.

3. The resulting conversion rates were higher via Espotting than via Google. The click through rates were similar but the espotting leads resulted in more conversions – in this case ‘conversion’ meaning registration. Could just have been coincidence? Or perhaps it is the fact that with Espotting you have more words to play with in the ad i.e. pre-click the user has a clearer idea of what you are about so they are ‘hotter’ leads upon arrival at your site and therefore more likely to convert.

4. The ‘quality’ of resulting converted customers, relative to the target customer, was equally high in both cases.

So far my experiences of these services has shown that they are indeed an accountable, measurable and predictable way of delivering target customers at a cost that can be accurately budgeted for in advance (always nice…). They are also very effective for targeting niches as the more specific the keyword buys the lower the cost (usually - as fewer people want them) and the higher the click through and conversion rates.

So definitely to be used as part of the overall marketing mix but I’m not yet clear whether they are much good for driving large volumes of traffic quickly? I think Opodo did a big deal with various such services, buying all sorts of travel-related keywords, to do just this for their launch drive. Anyone know how they’ve got on? Anyone got other experiences of such services they’d be happy to share?

Hi Steve

I haven't yet tried Google Adwords Select though I am aware of it and you are right that this would give a fairer comparison to Espotting. I'll give it a go...

I had a quick look at Advancepositions.com who appear to be first and foremost an SEO (search engine optimisation) company - part of WPP I note - who make no mention of managing pay per click services though this would be a natural extension.

Is the 'service/tool' you mention actually a managed online service that 'sits on top' of the likes of Google, Espotting and Overture? As I understand it what they are essentially offering is to take away the time and effort involved in managing multiple keywords, campaigns, bids etc. across multiple search engines i.e. outsourcing? So they charge a management fee for doing this?

Do they allow their service to be 'white-labelled' i.e. badged as you with them in the background doing the work? I imagine the attraction to an agency such as yourselves is for you to outsource multiple clients SEO needs to them but badge it as part of your broader service?

Ashley

Hi Ashley

Excellent article on PPC, agree wth what you have found in most areas.
Personally as a Webmarketing company running many capaigns for clients the Google set up is easier to manage. Tried various software options etc but still like to keep control which is by far easier with Google

The other area is speed, with Adwords we can start literally instantly (appreciate the editors can pull the ads later, but with experience this rarely happens now) and more importantly modify them instantly. It is easier also to set up individual campaign budgets.
With Overture, who we do have many ads running , we set individual "daughter" accounts which as you say means a lot of money is in their bank not mine.
john

John

It all depends how you organise your keyphrases and ads when your planning the campaign to start with. Depending on what ad groups and the amount of variation in the keyphrases it should not take more than a few hours to transform them across to Overtures editorial policy which is the most strict. You can then apply that to espotting +image.

Ashley great summary on PPC.
I would also add Mirago, A great little UK company but growing quite fast. The interface has some good features such as a built in position targeting system. CPC's are much lower, as are traffic volumes but quality is quite good and support team are very responsive.

Teddie

On 21:29:06 4 April 2004 John Duffy wrote:
>Hi all
>
>I'd be interested in roughly how long it takes you to
>"translate" a Google campaign to either Overture
>or Espotting. I did some research on Overture and
>Espotting around a year ago and stuck with Google - partly
>my advice, partly clients' budgets preferring the Google
>model.

The Online Finance Forum 2004 - Search Engine Seminars
For businesses in the finance sector Edward Cowell and Martin Dinham along with the leading search engines (Google, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, Espotting) present an insight into successfully managing your search engine strategy.
Where: 26th April 2004. Holiday Inn, Bloomsbury.
Visit: http://www.neutralize.com/about_us/internet_marketing_events.htm to find out more.