I recently had an inquiry from a friendly lady who was interested in using Adwords to help sell her husband’s book The Ethical Executive. I thought it might be a good time for an ethics check before accepting this proposition.
Do you think I did the right thing?
– — – — – — – — – — – — – — – –
Friendly Lady,
(REALITY CHECK BEGIN)
Let’s take some time to consider your motivations for choosing Adwords as an advertising platform. Adwords of course is a very agile and inexpensive vehicle for serving ads and generating interest in a product. It is also very responsive and can begin to return results immediately as opposed to other types of advertising that have a long term cumulative effect.
As with any type of advertising, the revenue generated by selling a product must be considered when determining whether it would be worthwhile. In this case, with a book that may cost $25, after overhead the profit from selling one book might be $5 or less. The cost per click to get someone to your website in Adwords might range from 50 cents to $5. That is just to get someone to your website with no guarantee that they will make a purchase.
With a conservative estimate of an average $2 per click you could achieve 150 visits to your website per month from Adwords. With no historical data and no time to test and experiment to find the best conversion rate, it is hard to guess how many of those visits would be likely to actually purchase a book. Almost certainly less than 25%. Therefore based on that guess (25%) it would cost you $500 to sell 37 books per month. This is clearly not a profitable equation (unless you happen to profit $15 per book).
THE OPTIMISTIC POTENTIAL
That being said, there are other objectives to consider. As we discussed it would be tremendously profitable if Adwords could aid this book to make the best seller list. If this were possible, the momentum of being on that list would result huge number of sales.
While the number of books which must be sold in order for a book to be a candidate for the best seller list is unknown, it is also most likely more than 37 per month.
In addition to the specific trackable sales resulting from Adwords referrals,
there is the added benefit of interest and buzz which can be generated. It is possible to achieve a great number of ad impressions using Google Adwords which means that the name of the book could be put in front of a lot of people’s eyeballs. This could result in additional word of mouth and more purchases which would not be directly attributable to Google Adwords. Obviously with a larger budget this ancillary effect can be increased.
There is also the benefit of the vast amount of data that can be collected by using Adwords coupled with Google Analytics to track user behavior. In the case of a long term project this data can become the basis for findings which can help you to effectively develop your messaging, drive design changes in your website, as well as predict outcomes of other potential initiatives.
If you are a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization you can apply for a Google Grant. Google provides grants that range from $10,000 per month to $40,000 per month in free advertising for qualifying organizations.
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I believe this is a good example of an SEO/SEM truly taking the time to assess the customer’s individual situation and potential to profit from using Google AdWords. Kudos for being among the search marketers in this industry that care as much (or more) about doing the right thing for potential clients, as opposed to just fattening their own bank accounts.
Not all websites can truly turn a profit by relying on AdWords as their primary source of marketing. As such, I never recommend that a site rely solely on paid advertising. As mentioned in the post, more often than not the click through that the site owner has paid for does not result in an actual sale – leaving one open to a great deal of expense, with no guarantee of conversion.
Many people, myself included, never consider following “Sponsored Links”, as they’ve have become more sophisticated and often realize the only reason the listing exists is because the site owner paid Google to show it. In my opinion, investing time learning and utilizing social media outlets (or investing your advertising dollars in outsourcing those tasks) will expose your product or service directly to your target audience.
My experience has taught me that the networking aspect of marketing a product or service is far more effective in the long term than any paid advertising, as once you stop utilizing AdWords, you exposure completely disappears.
Ultimately, it comes down the the site owners goals, how quickly they want to generate traffic and how much money they’re willing to risk in that endeavor with no guarantee of conversion. One of many keys to search marketing is exposure…going back to the traditional marketing adage stating the more times people are exposed to your brand, the more likely they are to remember it – and even trust it.
There is no substitute for building a rapport with a target audience. Participating in existing popular blogs and forums is a great way to network with individuals that are already actively discussing topics related to any given product or service. Luckily, for those business owners that don’t have the time or inclination to dive in to Social Media themselves, there are numerous search marketers and search marketing firms to whom those tasks can be outsourced.
P.S. Thanks for sharing the info about the Google grant! That’s something I was not aware of! I’ll certainly be sure to share that information with my future not-for-profit clients!
Thanks Aly,
You’re right that not all websites can turn a profit by relying on AdWords – it often depends on their particular needs are in addition to the lifetime value of a customer.
In the case of a book, the lifetime value of a customer is usually pretty small.
I never follow sponsored links unless I’m looking to buy something.
I wonder what would be the best low cost of entry advertising model for something like that.
Social media works if you have someone on staff that is passionate, and knowledgeable in social media, and a relatively good writer. So many companies somehow don’t have this.
Have they thought about providing PDFs of the book or sample chapters through their site?
Properly done, the PDF can be indexed by the search engines and may help drive people to the site.
hey eric, i think ya did the right thing for both parties.
so what do you do with this person? she still has a need and desire that could be met by other service providers.
i guess the other point of the post is: know when to say no and who can say yes.
@mrjawright – That’s a good point you’ve got. Sample chapters in pdf might help it get indexed.
Getting it scanned by Google and included in Google Books might help it as well.
@MarkEckenrode – My thought is to find someone good to refer her to that can help her – preferably someone who has contacts and connections in the publishing world. If you have an idea of who I could refer her to that’d be great.
You absolutely made the correct recommendation here, though I think it was less a matter of ethics and more a matter of good business sense. I do see how an unethical person may have implemented the campaign and ran with it just for personal gain, but in the long run that person is making a bad business decision.
Ethics aside, you may have gained a long term client from this advice. Friendly Lady may not be able to use your services to sell this particular book, or at least not solely with paid search, but she may have other offerings that fit perfectly in the paid search world. Because she knows you give honest, trustworthy advice, you can bet she will turn to you before she goes to another PPC outlet.
It seems to me that the long term gain of giving honest advice will most definitely be more profitable to you in the long run. Or, at least that’s how it would go in a perfect world…
That’s a great point Kyle, I believe there is always an upside when you go out of your way to give good advice. Of course, the person receiving it isn’t always pleased to hear it.
But as you say, in the long term it always pays off.
Definitely good advice, although some might consider the profit loss acceptable in order to gain a bit of brand awareness. Still, when dealing with folks who are not experts, the best thing to do is make sure they really understand everything so they can make an informed decision.
Thanks for emphasizing that Donna, the last thing I would want to do would be to detract from the typically under- appreciated brand development value of PPC.
It is so important to develop the long term view with reference to the true value of Adwords. Keyword performance data, brand awareness, measuring user response to messaging, etc.
DazzlinDonna has a really good point — for some companies, it’s all about brand awareness and not clickthroughs or conversions. That’s why it’s so important to sit down with your client and understand clearly and specifically what their goals are. From there, you can not only determine whether or not AdWords is the way to go, but also perhaps come up with a few other alternatives for them to consider.
I didn’t know about Google Grants either – thanks!
This was a great post. I found out about it through John Kremer’s newsletter. There has been so much conflicting advice about Google adwords, and I have actually been plotting my very own google adwords campaign – sales page, ad copy and all. I even fought with my husband over the notion of weather to use a squeeze page, so that even if a customer didn’t buy, there would be a likelyhood of at least capturing their email address if they opted in.
After reading this post, I realized that my book, priced at $14.95, would probably not be a good candidate for google ad words. I was drawn in by one of my JV’s claims that she nets approximately 5-$7000/month with google ad words, however, she spends about $3,000 on the adwords themselves. That’s still a profit of $2-5,000/month. I was salivating. But I had to remind myself that she was selling a much higher-priced ticket item price point of $77. So that makes sense that it would be worth it for her.
So… tonight I worked for the last 6 hours starting to put together the beginnings of my very own “back end product” at a higher price point. That is what all the internet guru’s are espousing anyway! The book is a calling card. You write the book to sell the workbook. You write the workbook to sell the home-study course. You write the home-study course to sell the workshop, to sell the seminar to sell the retreat, etc. etc. etc.!!!
Thanks all – this is a fascinating topic!
I’ve been advertising my book, “Dementia-Diary,” with adwords on and off for almost 2 years. My campaigns are now on permanent hold. It’s been a financial failure with zero benefits to offset the money down the tubes. I learned the truth of the above articles the hard way. In my opinion, there is no way to make money on most books using Adwords.
Both as the author of a book on ethical marketing (Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First)/founder of the international Business Ethics Pledge (http://www.business-ethics-pledge.org) AND as author of a low-cost marketing manual for authors, Grassroots Marketing for Authors and Publishers, I commend you.
Not just in SEO but in any form of marketing, it’s our obligation as the hired experts to steer the client toward those methods that are appropriate to budget, to the client’s personal style, and to the desired outcome.
As for what this client should be doing instead…there are soooo many options! I’d probably do a lot of online networking, joint-venture proposals, book excerpts, and more. Of course, I am saying this without knowing much about the particular situation; when I write a full marketing plan for a book, I spend about three hours on it.
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