Radio Advertising - My Trial

Hi All

As there are many people on here in business thought I would share my experiment in real time.

I don't usually go for old school media advertising but with what we spend on Adwords for our keywords Radio advertising starts to look attractive. Adwords for conveyancing are very competitive and we spend a lot of money to stay around 3rd position.

I am running Conveyancing ads for Certus Legal Group on 4BC and Magic 882 in Brisbane. Running 2 separate ads, 1 with our website only and 1 with out phone number only. I am trying to increase our website traffic in the hope of increasing our organic google search place.

Ads started on 1 March so very early does but as I said I thought it would be interesting for other business owners on here to see my results as they occur.

Sunday
6 x normal unique visitors to our website

Monday
Approx 2 x normal unique visitors to our website

Our Adwords budget for every campaign (a group of keywords) was blown before lunch time (1 or 2 individual campaigns sometimes rarely exceed budget we never get close to blowing the whole lot).

Tuesday (till 5pm)
Our Adwords budget for our main 2 campaigns have just exceeded their limit and those ads have stopped running.
Can't see unique visitors until tomorrow.


Conversions
So far are nil, but that is expected after less than 3 full days.

Measure of success
Need to get back 3.5 times my spend in revenue for us to continue advertising every month.

But If increased google searches can push us onto page sub 10th place on organic search results (13th on average at moment) and therefore first page then that is worth about 25% of 1 month's radio advertising and (assuming we stay there) it is worth that much every month.
 
Hi Daryl
Had a look at your website and from what I see part of your Google issues are your websites are that the websites are fairly boring and static.

Google likes a site that has regular updates and many pages to look at. Perhaps you need to blog on
Why your services are good
Common problems encountered during conveyancing
Things to watch out for.

For a comparison my website (see link in my signature) gets around 2,000 visits a month (70% from Google) but I have never spent a dollar on advertising or adwords. This enables me to sell around 100 books a month.
 
Thanks for the feedback BW. Always keen for tips.


Have started addressing the content with blogs, 16 articles so far this year but that takes time to improve position.

We get between 200 and 300 unique visits on a weekday at present. Less than 10% are from Adwords. We did have a local SEO company work with us for 6 months and that got us to first and second page across a range of terms.
 
Interesting Daryl and thanks for sharing. How much business comes in from that?

Currently my website is down and I'm not really bothering with it. Most of our business comes from calls and face to face meetings - enough growth to keep me and team busy currently but I have never stopped to think what we are missing out by not being active on the internet.

Hmmmm. May have some online work to do.
 
Hi Daryl
Had a look at your website and from what I see part of your Google issues are your websites are that the websites are fairly boring and static.

Google likes a site that has regular updates and many pages to look at. Perhaps you need to blog on
Why your services are good
Common problems encountered during conveyancing
Things to watch out for.

For a comparison my website (see link in my signature) gets around 2,000 visits a month (70% from Google) but I have never spent a dollar on advertising or adwords. This enables me to sell around 100 books a month.

Your site ranks because it's just people looking for information. You're not going after commercial terms.

When you start playing in areas where there is money to be made, Google will come for its cut. They do that by constantly jumbling organic results so you are forced into adwords if you want to generate consistant revenue.
 
Interesting Daryl and thanks for sharing. How much business comes in from that?

Currently my website is down and I'm not really bothering with it. Most of our business comes from calls and face to face meetings - enough growth to keep me and team busy currently but I have never stopped to think what we are missing out by not being active on the internet.

Hmmmm. May have some online work to do.

My Planning practice generates double figures of new phone calls everyday purely from website. North of 80% of new income (ie not repeat customers) is from google search.

Law Firm
Residential Conveyancing - 60% of new of income (inc Adwords), Business Conveyancing - 90% Commercial Conveyancing 70% Commercial Leasing 10% Wills 0% Trust and Company Setups 20% Commercial Litigation <10% Front End Commercial & Business Law <10%
 
we spend a lot of [Adwords] money to stay around 3rd position.
Less than 10% are from Adwords
Is there any justification for allocating your spend to something else that will grow your organic search? I don't know how or what that would look like but with that kind of split its probably time to wind back Adwords and improve organic. Another suggestion is the Social Media angle which looks good from what I just saw.

PS: I think I just broke your site. Sorry. Its down. Really. It loaded. I went to do a Page Speed test and it no longer loads. :eek:
 
For radio - morning or evening drivetime is normally when people have radios on. Maybe you should try a community/special interest radio station. Might be cheaper and listeners might show loyalty to sponsor.

Also a good ad could be uploaded from your website

Advertorial in a free neighbourhood magazine can also be cost effective.
 
Your site ranks because it's just people looking for information. You're not going after commercial terms.

When you start playing in areas where there is money to be made, Google will come for its cut. They do that by constantly jumbling organic results so you are forced into adwords if you want to generate consistant revenue.

Exactly! They come looking for information (on a wide range of topics) and then they are directed to the books I want to sell.
 
Is there any justification for allocating your spend to something else that will grow your organic search? I don't know how or what that would look like but with that kind of split its probably time to wind back Adwords and improve organic. Another suggestion is the Social Media angle which looks good from what I just saw.

PS: I think I just broke your site. Sorry. Its down. Really. It loaded. I went to do a Page Speed test and it no longer loads. :eek:

All good working now.

We spent $1k a month on SEO for 6 months to up our organic results. The revenue v expense on Adwords return makes it well worth it.
 
Exactly! They come looking for information (on a wide range of topics) and then they are directed to the books I want to sell.

You're not in a competitive space. Thats why you are ranking. If I want to rank for how to paint coffee cups I could have #1 within a week. Competing in a commercially competitive environment on the internet is a totally different beast.

Google is a public company looking for profits to keep their stock holders happy. They do that through paid advertising.
 
Is there any justification for allocating your spend to something else that will grow your organic search? I don't know how or what that would look like but with that kind of split its probably time to wind back Adwords and improve organic. Another suggestion is the Social Media angle which looks good from what I just saw.

The problem with organic search is it is unpredictable. I used to rank for keywords in Oz that had over 40k exact matches a month. BUSINESS WAS GREAT! I thought I had it all worked out and then one day BAM they updated their algorithem and chopped my revenue in half. It can be a very dangerous animal when you have commitments to staff and overheads when you take a hit like that.

Even a small drop can be devastating. If you are ranking for some big terms and go from position #1 to position #6 or #12 you are bust.

These days I don't bother with it. Just stick to adwords because I know what I am getting. Not as profitable and I hate giving them money but better the devil you know and can predict.
 
Can you list a keyword that is your competitor's name?

eg can Virgin use Qantas as a keyword?

When I Google Qantas the only adword I get is from Qantas. Seems kind of dumb that Qantas is spending money to get an ad result when the organic result is always Qantas. Seems kind of dumb that Virgin is not trying to pinch that ad space and get business.
 
When I Google Qantas the only adword I get is from Qantas. Seems kind of dumb that Qantas is spending money to get an ad result when the organic result is always Qantas. Seems kind of dumb that Virgin is not trying to pinch that ad space and get business.

Organic result ????? the use of the word organic has reached its use by date, the WOTM [word of the moment] now is 'conversation' :D
 
Thanks for sharing that its something that I will need to look into eventually. Sometimes I wonder about how legit are the google adwords and if there a bot sitting on it clicking it away.
 
Can you list a keyword that is your competitor's name?

you can bid on competitor keywords i.e. Qantas can bid on a keyword like "Virgin" and vice versa. However, this doesn't mean you will show for the keyword due to a range of other factors. The keywords you bid on and price you are willing to pay are two of several factors that determine if/when your ads will show on a search engine results page.
 
Sometimes I wonder about how legit are the google adwords and if there a bot sitting on it clicking it away.

they try to keep it honest by automatically refunding you for dodgy looking clicks (multiple clicks from the same IP for example).

However, there is a lot to be said for mis-clicks and mis-taps as well as just plain dopey web users clicking on stuff without reading it first.
 
Time for an update

So over the 1st month

Website traffic consistently up 30%

Adwords budget blown out of the water

Another record month but this month even exceeds our growth predictions by a further 15%

Funnily many people don't say when you ask that they heard you on radio, the initially say google but dig further and ask if they heard the radio ad before google and they say yes.

Month 2 paid for today.
 
Back
Top