Adwords, New Call Extension is The Game Changer

Tech Support Business in India

The business of Tech Support for overseas clients is booming in India.

The formula is simple. Arrange for a few tech experts, run ads through google adwords account and charge the customer for services. An Ideal Low Investment Business Opportunity! Because of seemingly very low  entry barrier, it has become an attractive business opportunity for tech savvy people.

Reasons why India is ideal for this kind of Support Business are:

1. India has great number of Engineering and Software experts. In fact India is among topmost countries producing such skilled labor at low cost.
2. Indians can speak good English. They can even be easily trained to fake american accent and there is very little chance native Americans may even notice. The reason why it is the most preferred destination for MNC call centers. 
3.  People in US, Europe are willing to pay for Tech Support services. If one can provide tech support in  specified time limit, people are willing to pay for it.

Old Style Tech Support Adwords

For a long time, Google adwords has played a significant role in call generation for such kind of businesses. Ad text written with a strong emphasis on call, with a toll free number written in the text itself, had made the click and website redundant. There used to be significantly higher number of calls compared to clicks on the website. Ads used to generate calls purely in direct proportion to the impressions gathered by the ads.
Google apparently took note of it and decided to disable ads with phone number in ad texts.

New Call Extension, The Game Changer

The upgraded call extension or new call extension, is the only way now to display your phone numbers in the ad text. So, now Google decides, when to show your telephone number and when to hide it. I've seen typically when Ads start falling in CTR, call extension stops showing and ads start gathering clicks. So, the era when such businesses were thriving on few clicks and a lot of calls is gone now or it is soon to become past. Yes, the ads which were written in the past are still showing on google. However, they will soon be disabled and PPC experts shall have to write it in a new way.

If you want to generate good number of calls through adwords, then, you can't ignore CTR & Quality Score now. Otherwise, phone number may disappear! Yes, all such companies shall have to rework on both the campaign and economic side of this business.

Read This >>

Position Preference on Google Search - Why, When and How to use it.

Position preference was the choice of very few advertiser. It was mostly used for ego satisfaction to always grab the first impression of the users. Not anymore, it is the necessity on few search result pages. You know, first fold of SERP has been occupied by big box of Local Listing. So, on these pages if you rank low, you are out of sight. Some queries have the tendency of very low click through down the order. These are the queries where users do little research work before taking the final action. If you are an advertiser advertising on those keywords, you cannot afford to remain low. In such type of circumstances, position preference becomes necessity. Also, your CTR may get spoiled if you absorb most of the impressions below the fold. Moreover, there are definite advantages of remaining higher in the order, because clicks and conversions follow the the Zipf's Law. So, higher the rank, higher the clicks and higher the conversions and the degree of difference has the propensity to increase as you go higher up the order, that is to say no.3 is more beneficial than no.4, no.2 is more beneficial than no.3 and proportion of benefit between occupying no.2 and no.3 is more than no.3 and no.4. Hence, in circumstances where you have clear cut evidence of low conversion rates at the bottom, it is wise and pofitable to cut down the impression from these positions. Hence, a florist may find, impressions below position 4 is useless because so many sponsored link and Local listing are already present above them that users have little incentive to go any further. Blocking these impressions would not only cut down low converting clicks but would also boost CTR and hence Quality score and hence lower cost per click. So, there are definite advantages of not advertising below certain positions.

Google has made it clear that bottom preference of your ad is treated as hard limit, which means if you have chosen 1-3 as position preference, your ad would never show below 3. However, if you have chosen 2-4, your ad may show above 2 (See:Position Preference Failures). Google's policy of honoring bottom preference as hard limit, is sufficient to block unwanted below the fold impressions, which is required in some situations.

Biggest mistake, while choosing position preference is to choose 1-1. Although most tempting, this position can be very easily beaten by your immediate competitor, andworse for you, he won't feel the heat of your bid because what he pays is based on the bid of the next ad showing! The bid of the ad not shown is not taken into account while calculating the actual CPC an advertiser pays. To understand this situation let us take the case of Advertiser A, B and C. Suppose for the sake of simplicity, they have almost equal quality score and positioning is determined by the bid alone. Let A is bidding Rs100 with pp 1-1, B is bidding Rs150 with pp 1-3, C is bidding Rs50. in this case a won't show at all while B would show at Top and would be paying only Rs51 or something around that. Strategy of B is much better in this case compared to A which does not show at all. If A changes its strategy and decides to become flexible and opts for position preference 1-3 just like B, the game changes. In this case, B would still be at the top, but A would occupy the second position and also, determine the actual CPC paid by B. So, B would now be paying something around Rs100 to occupy the top slot, and would start feeling the heat of A's bids and may be tempted to lower the bid if it gets too hot to resist. The wisdom, is in judiciously choosing the bottom limit.

Read This >>

Why Adsense/Adwords CTR are going down, and the possible remedy

People all over the world are reporting adsense/adwords CTR on content network going down. It is inevetable, because content network has grown at a much faster rate than online population. You see same ads on different pages. Who would be interested in clicking them again and again! Hence the fall in CTR. And, this is the reason all of us have seen Google displaying shifting to Optimized Ad serving. I am against opting for optimized ad serving, because they deliver high CTR ad most often, resulting into fall in the CTR of that ad itself! Also, the chosen ad is by CTR and not by conversion, so it may result in drop in conversions too. This is not the solution either for Google or the advertisers. More important is why people don't click on these ads. Reason is they see same ad at all places they visit. Suitable solution is create a ratio between impresion and no. of ads. Make ads for those 1000 impression, and you would find number of clicks increasing. This situation is beneficial for both Advertiser and Publishers. I am always of the opinion that content network should have large number of text ads. More ads you make, more focused group they get delivered and more exact your message becomes.

P.S. -----> Google Now offers Impression Cap for Display Network ads, which prevents overexposure.

Recommended:

Adsense Heat Map - Best Practices

Read This >>