There are not many companies that don’t use paid search to generate sales or enquiries in their organisation these days.
Pay-per-click advertising through Google Adwords for example, can frequently be valuable if regularly looked after and updated, the downside is it can be quite expensive – especially for sole traders and medium enterprises (SME’s). Also, it’s often difficult for companies to work out if they are getting a valuable return on investment (ROI).
There are however, 2 simple, cost-effective ways that businesses utilising paid search can save money and validate the value of their ad campaigns.
One choice is for them to include a easily remembered non-geographic phone number (e.g. 0845) in their paid listing that is devoted to that particular advert only.
By doing this it enables potential customers that have seen the ad to call the 0845 telephone number ahead of moving on to the website (which costs the business money – even if they don’t make a sale). Also, it could be that the business owner or a sales person closes the deal more effectively than the website alone.
Another tip, which enables a business to evaluate the accomplishment of a paid search campaign, would be to advertise a devoted non-geographic number on its site.
By using a non-geographic number, like 0845, potential customers will not judge organisations on their actual location, which means that it is possible for them to gain business where they have no physical presence (an important element of advertising on Google UK and the internet as a whole).
The beauty of non-geographic numbers similar to 0845 numbers, for example, is that it is incredibly simple to attach online call data packages onto them so that companies can see the number of callers have dialled the dedicated number. This would make it easy to decide whether the ad is working or not and whether they are receiving a decent Return On Investment.
On top of this, some Call statistics packages detail the geographic placement of all callers to that number – this can benefit people that promote the company and company managers decide where in the UK their campaigns are working and where they ought to be concentrating their business efforts.
Combining paid search with non-geographic numbers would seem to be a way for companies to tidy up the way they market online. It helps businesses to see what marketing are working for them and therefore what campaign route is most cost effective – a crucial result in the current economic climate.