David from the UK sent me this question, and my answer follows:

Hi Steve,

Hope you're well, and that business is good!

I've been working for a recording studio, and the owner is looking at adwords as a potential advertising scheme. I was hoping you could answer a couple of questions for me to help us out..

How much should he pay-per-click to make things worthwhile? The studio is based in London and doesn't really need to appeal to people outside of the UK - would that make it cheaper?

He's got a minimal budget, and naturally wants to make the biggest impression with the smallest cost. Are there any other methods you can recommend?

Is there any way of getting top of the list in google's regular search (probably with the search term 'london recording studio' or similar)without having loads of link juice.

I know I'm kind of asking for your secrets - but it would be a big help if you could shine some light on the subject.

Many thanks Steve,
Take care

David

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Ok David,

I am working on an update of all the videos at the moment, which is actually going to be a 4th CD added to the set.

Mostly I deal with the US, although Adwords is still pretty big in the UK, and the principles are all the same.

Its hard to come up with a price per click without knowing the profit margins in his business, and what the actual value to him is in aquiring a new customer.

So the factors of:

Targeting and relevance of keywords and ads,

Good ads that make people click,

How good the site converts people to become sales leads,

Percentage of the leads that are closed, with how much money they generate.

How well he can get them to continue to buy more services/products, are the main ones to consider

That equation will tell him what his worth is per sales lead, per visitor, and what the cost per click will be. There are a lot of ways to make the whole process more efficient, depending on what he works on.

A lot of people spend thousands to get visitors, without testing different designs and sales copy on their sites to continually improve the results, and a lot of times just something like the change of one or two words in the headline can change a losing campaign into a winner.

If he is on a limited budget, niche markets are the way to go- find one type of client that needs your recording services and design a campaign just for that, like cleaning up audio for depositions for lawyers, recording voice overs for documentaries or producing background music for ads for radio stations, recording teenagers first albums with the help of their rich parents, (whatever you find out from your own market research, I don't know this business, so I am just throwing out ideas.)

Make a special landing page directly related to only that service with the best sales copy you can, and monitor the results of the entire sales cycle.

If you do this you will likely have less competition, and your profits will actually be higher, while still keeping your advertising costs as low as possible.

Now if this niche market throws you a little bit, have him go through all his invoices over the last 2 years, jotting down information about the different types of sales, and the types of people, and the types of services that have been already delivered - Just within your own business you will find different subgroups of people who have ALREADY PAID YOU MONEY, and different services you might not have realized were hugely profitable.

If you re-target them using adwords, you can definately get more of those people, especially if you have success stories from these prior customers to show potential new customers.

That's my two cents that I can give you without actually going there

Good luck,

-Steve

Steve Blom
Certified Google Adwords Professional

Adwords Training Video Author:

Blog:
http://marketingnewsblog.adwordstraining.org

Free Adwords video:
http://www.adwordstraining.org/video/free_adwords_tutorial_video.htm

Contact: steve@adwordstraining.org