Despite the challenges, PPC (pay-per-click, paid search) can be a great way for businesses to target their market, gain visibility and drive leads in a cost-effective manner. (And despite the insider jargon and cryptic acronyms, pay-per-click advertising isn’t as complicated or difficult as you might think.)

Setting the right expectations is crucial to understanding your new venture. Here are few things to keep in mind:

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. As with many online marketing efforts, it takes time to get good results. It typically takes at least a month to get decent data in your account and make any informed decisions about which ads/keywords are working and which are not.

Set aside a budget for a month. Carefully track your efforts during this period and see what kind of results you achieve. You can then see what kind of revenue you make with this initial investment. Completing this simple test is a great way to find out for yourself what your particular business can expect. Keep in mind that this is only a starting point: continually improving your campaigns will help you improve your ROI.

Low numbers don’t necessarily indicate poor performance. Click-through rates vary greatly from industry to industry. (Click-through rate = number of users who clicked on an ad divided by number of times the ad was displayed.) While it may seem too low, a CTR of about 1–2 percent is a respectable range. While a higher CTR is always good, don’t get discouraged if your numbers aren’t through the roof, especially in the beginning.

Test, test, test. Improving your keyword bidding, writing new ads and pausing efforts that aren’t producing results—these are the basic things you can do to improve your ROI. You can hone in on the best techniques for our businesses and turn your PPC into something that really performs.

Keep these things in mind as you move forward with your paid search efforts. Share with us any experiences you have or advice for others just starting out!

At the ConnectWise Summit, I spoke to many MSPs who use ConnectWise to manage the sales process. As I mentioned in my post last week, ConnectWise is really helpful for managing and tracking tasks for your sales team during the last 20 percent of the sales cycle. Kutenda helps with the first 80 percent.

That still begs the question: How the heck can you generate more and better leads for your managed services business? I had a conversation with Larry Walsh from Channel Insider just last week about the same thing. He basically told me that what he hears from MSPs is that yes, you need more leads. But you also need better leads. So lets talk about how Kutenda helps you generate more leads—of higher quality.

Generating more leads for managed services
How does your managed services business generate new leads today? Here are a few ways that you might use:

- knocking on doors
- cold-calling
- networking at local business functions
- referrals

All of these methods work, and depending on your personality and perseverance, they can work well. But, they all have one thing in common—they require person-to-person engagement. This limits the effectiveness of each of these methods because once you max out on dials (or doors), you have to hire another sales person to increase the number of leads you’re getting. Kutenda gives you a more cost-effective solution to use in conjunction with your other lead generation activities.

Question: If you could drive people who are already looking for your services to your web site to fill out a lead form, would you? Of course you would! That’s where search marketing (pay-per-click advertising, PPC) comes in. Running PPC is simply the fastest way to drive leads to your site. Even if you’re on page 755,343 of the Google search results for “Data Recovery,” you can get to the top of the sponsored results for that same keyword—especially if you narrow your target to your local geographic area. Kutenda’s PPC keyword research tool simplifies the process of selecting keywords for your ad campaigns. Plus, we also give you keyword lists and  ad copy for a whole variety of managed services (Help Desk, BDR, Managed Services and more), so you’ve got a head start in building campaigns to drive those leads.

Getting better leads for managed services
Let’s look back at the more expensive lead drivers again for a minute. Even if you get someone to engage with you from one of those methods, you may not close them all at this point anyway. Here are a few reasons why:

1. they’re not looking for a managed service (just want to deal with an immediate problem)
2. it’s not the right fit
3. it costs too much
4. they realize they can manage it in-house

Are these people still good leads for other services you offer? Might they convert to a customer in two, three or even 12 years from now? Yes! But most likely, you’ll lose touch with them because you don’t have an efficient way to nurture those leads into better leads over time. Again, this is where Kutenda helps.

Our MSP partners use ready-to-send email campaigns we provide to stay connected with these leads over time and nurture them into better (more qualified leads). By sending out regular email campaigns to prospects (and existing customers), you increase your chances of getting them as paying customers later down the road—of turning more of your leads into better leads.

What is a better lead?
What ‘better’ leads are is certainly up for interpretation, but in our world,  better leads are really leads that are more qualified—those that have first gone through 80 percent of the sales process. No matter where that lead comes from—referral, PPC, cold call, etc.—making them into a more qualified lead will improve your sales conversions. Using a lead nurturing system like Kutenda makes that lead qualifying process more automatic, allowing you to spend more time with those leads that are in the last 20 percent of the sales cycle. That is, by the way, when you put them into ConnectWise—so you can use Tracks to keep your sales people on task to close those more qualified leads.

CPC, CPV, CPM, CPL…

Too many acronyms, right? Well let’s talk about one that you really need to know — the one that helps get more customers for your business.

PPC, or Pay-Per-Click advertising, is one of the best ways to make your company’s name visible to prospective customers and get qualified leads for your business. The Pew Internet and American Live Project reported that 69 percent of Internet users click on web ads. There is huge opportunity in this market for businesses to grow and expand their current marketing efforts.

When you get results from a search engine, at the top and right side of the page you see “Sponsored Ads,” “Sponsored Links,” or some other variation of those words. These are the PPC ads. When a company uses paid search advertising, they choose keywords that will trigger the display of their ads. As a result, these ads target only the people who are looking for products or services that your business provides. In all your PPC efforts, the more precise and targeted you can be, the better results you will achieve. Continuity between your keywords, ad text and landing page is crucial.

You also pay for the ad only when someone clicks on it, making PPC one of the most economical and efficient ways to market your business online. You set your own budget, so you know exactly how much your paying for each lead your receive. Tracking your ROI is extremely important to your success. In addition, most search engines protect their advertisers from competitors constantly clicking your ads, or “click fraud,” ensuring that you get genuine leads.

Why pay for an ad to show up in search results when you should be there organically anyway?

Paid ads get you placed front and center in the search engine results page (SERP). Your ad is often the first that searchers will see. This placement is critical to your visibility and can also help your organic search ranking because the more clicks you get, the more recognized your brand can become. In addition, think of a search engine results page as real estate- the more property you own on the SERPs, the better.

Another benefit to PPC is trackable results. If you change your ad text or target different keywords, you will easily see what positive (or negative!) affect this has on your ad performance. Being able to track the effectiveness of your advertising is one of the most important advantages of online marketing.

So what are you waiting for? Go out there and launch a PPC Campaign today! Actually doing the work and experimenting with your results is the best way to learn, and Kutenda makes it easy to get started. When you start to see the leads come in, you’ll be glad you did.