We have a client who runs a tiny, local restaurant review site. As you may know, we advise our clients that advertising – paying to put yourself in front of others – should be the last thing they consider when putting together their marketing plans. Not because "it's a rip-off" or some other negative reason, but because there are a ton – hell, two tons of things you can do for free or at minimal cost that will put you in front of your audience before finding a medium and paying them for some space.
But in examining or client's options, we had to agree that is was time to begin to advertise. We wanted to put their web site in front of people in their area who were looking for "restaurant reviews" right now, but we didn't want it to cost an arm and a leg. This is a tiny site, and is still not breaking even. So we went with Google AdWords, and set a daily budget that would barely get you a cup of hot stuff at your favorite coffee house.
This is actually the second paid advertisement that we've run for this web site. The first was on Facebook, and the aim of that was get get "Likes" for their Facebook Page. And that was very successful! For the same miniscule budget we're using now, we took them from 10 "Likes" all the way up to 192 in just days. The stats were phenomenal! But. . . viewing their FB Page was not getting visitors to their actual site to read the reviews.
And that's where eyeballs need to be in order for them to make money on this venture. Remember how I said advertising is the last thing you should consider? Well, they make their money by selling ad space. And they need a lot of incoming eyeballs so that they can send some of them to the advertisers.
Putting yourself in front of people who are looking for you is nearly the Holy Grail. And that's what we're doing with this site. Even through we're not generating waves on Google at the moment, we've tripled their monthly number of visitors. And that was with just the first tentative set of search terms. As we refine the ads for them, they should begin to draw better and at a cheaper rate.
We'll try to keep you informed of the process.