Who here does PPC?

One thing I like about PPC is the fact you can turn it on and off as you wish.....I tend to travel a little and have another business that has me a trade shows and away for several days at a time.

Another cool thing is, in my area I dont have to pay what many pay in a competitive market. I do PPC on my other company and only know enough to have someone manage it for me being its very expensive when you do it on large scale like global pretty much...we have certain areas turned off that are complicated or I dont have a distributor in.

I can build a site for Carpet Cleaning and have a few nice landing pages for the keywords....and with $500 a month can do well with certain keywords. After some investigating I found some really good longtail keywords that arent even being touched and are being searched in my area.....Boom. sounds good to me ....but I will be on my own with this and not paying for management of PPC


so, who does this? What are your thoughts on this for our industry?

For dummy's like me, what is PPC?

I bet AC knows?

Pay Per Click advertising...google advertising...sorry I assumed

Oh yea, I've never done that so I had no idea.

DP, has experience with it I think?

Davey....you seem to only pinpoint higher end jobs...what is your aproach in doing so? Obviously the penny saver type ads are tire kicken bargin shoppers BUT what brings out your "creme" jobs?

DP and Carpet Daddy are the ones that I know of that do PPC regularly.

Devon are there certain times of the day that your getting the most impressions and click throughs? If so I would probably turn it of during the slow times to maximize that PPC dollar.

Devon07 wrote:Davey....you seem to only pinpoint higher end jobs...what is your aproach in doing so? Obviously the penny saver type ads are tire kicken bargin shoppers BUT what brings out your "creme" jobs?

That is correct. If I get any sense they're price shopping over the phone on 1st contact, I usually will confront that right then, to try to eliminate wasting their or my time.

I emphasize quality, and do things most other cleaners don't, like take my time and do the best job possible, and don't nickle and dime my customers.......I don't do work for all that call me, maybe 50-70% really, but once I have done work for them they see the value in my higher price/quality, and almost always become a replete or long time customers.

PPC can do really well but you have to know how to block ip numbers and regulate your campaigns

if you dont you can run your whole monthly budget out from some person on the other side of the US spamming your URL


If you want to do it really well you may need to pay someone to run the campaigns for you, it can get really complicated. If your spending just a few hundred a month and getting jobs then no biggie, but if your going like 1000/month or more then it would be a good idea.

you can lose a lot of money with PPC so be careful, our market is a little too competitive for me.. the keywords like "seattle carpet cleaning" are pretty expensive per click

I have a firm doing it and yes, they turn it off and on accordingly...We used to get really slow in the winter as many contractors have less work during these months...BUT we found awesome keywords that prevent me from being slow during this time.....my guys are so good I fear they will die some time....lol

In busy and competitive markets longtail and misspelled words become very nice to me. In my case Im sure we turn them off and on depending on what part of the world we are dealing with.... I do best with retargeting and have a really high conversion doing so.

ACpower1 wrote:if you dont you can run your whole monthly budget out from some person on the other side of the US spamming your URL

No shoot that's actually happening? I thought google prevented that crap from happening

Davey....that builds over time im sure. How long you been in Biz?

AC....what is the rough number for that keyword last you checked?...im only compairing to my area.

google only knows your a local service if the campaigns are configured that way

someone selling a product on their website doesnt mind ip addresses from 1000 miles away

Devon07 wrote:Davey....that builds over time im sure. How long you been in Biz?

AC....what is the rough number for that keyword last you checked?...im only compairing to my area.

I think it was around 13$ last I checked but that was a few years ago... need to start working on the website and google more.

not super impressed with our seo company so far

Google does do it to a degree from what I hear....I dont see any fraud on my huge budget. there will always be some but not much...repeating IPs are looked at hard and we dont pay for them.

Hey Devon,

whats your approx population in your service area and about how much budget are you putting into PPC if you dont mind me asking?

what kind of service is your site doing for you?.....i mean, is it worth keeping or is it just a dead hores?

Devon07 wrote:Davey....that builds over time im sure. How long you been in Biz?

Yes, those repeat customers don't happen instantly.

How long?...tooo long, I think lol..........since 1986/7

My population is small for our city limits BUT we have a captive audience for a larger area of about 50+k....we are to far away for anyone outside the area to cover so, whoever is here is who will do the work. My budget isnt set yet but im thinking $500 mo. I will adjust it accordingly.

The nice thing is...i will be the only one doing it.

Devon07 wrote:The nice thing is...i will be the only one doing it.

That can be a good thing and it can be bad thing. The question you should ask is "why aren't the others doing it"? Are they walking over a gold field or did they find that there wasn't any gold there already. I would try and find out if there were any shovel marks, so to speak.

Thats a good and cautious point except for the fact I know my competition....they arent savvy to the internet very well...im not trying to sound like I am but i know when im out gunned and also know enough to hire when im low on guns too.

Only one guy in my area has a website that is friendly to phones....and it does appear that even that was accidental. the sites are all outdated and not professional at all. my closest contender from the "web" asspect is locked out of his own site....lol also its not functioning well. either way I dont have any fear that they already broke ground.

AC...does your domain have any keywords in it?

Davey Cracker wrote:
How long?...tooo long, I think lol..........since 1986/7

Wow didn't know you were at it that long Dave. I recall a realtor telling me about a guy in biz for 35 years and if you had stairs he would pass on the job Knees must have been shot

Thats back when I started....except I took a vacation.

ACpower1 wrote:PPC can do really well but you have to know how to block ip numbers and regulate your campaigns

if you dont you can run your whole monthly budget out from some person on the other side of the US spamming your URL


If you want to do it really well you may need to pay someone to run the campaigns for you,   it can get really complicated.       If your spending just a few hundred a month and getting jobs then no biggie,    but if your going like 1000/month or more then it would be a good idea.  

you can lose a lot of money with PPC so be careful,    our market is a little too competitive for me..    the keywords like "seattle carpet cleaning" are pretty expensive per click

This I know is not correct, I can't tell you how many times Google refunded my clicks due to companies that kept clicking on people's ads, they track down the ads by their ip address, so you don't have to do it manually.
I restarted my adwords about a month and a half ago and boy it had changed a lot, especially on pricings, the max bid for keyword "carpet cleaning los angeles" is about $ 18 / click ? You have to bid that much if you want to have a shot at being on the top 3 position, what I did was I put that much bid but I put the "special" at very high price, which is $ 499, so that no apartments or small jobs click my ad and cost me an arm and a leg.
I agree with AC you have to be very careful managing your ads, one of the most important thing is to list as much as possible your negative keywords, services that related to cleaning but you don't do, e.g. leather cleaning service, high pressure cleaning service, etc.
Negative keywords will avoid your ad being listed by Google when people are searching for those specific service.
There are so many additional features now than a few years back, the great thing is they have customer service available to answer your questions, they used to charge for customer service time to answer your questions.