Dex One formally R.H Donnelley

Click, Click… Click, Click, Click… That’s the sound of your Dex One budget withering away to a bucketful of mostly useless clicks.

Face it – Google’s cluttered and with a demand much more significant then the supply, click rates are through the roof. PPC Advertising is expensive and here’s why…

The average website converts at 6%, and that’s on a good day. Let’s say you’ve decided you want to test out $1000 on a local Google AdWords campaign. Hypothetically speaking, the average cost-per-click for your typical service industry market is roughly $8 for decent positioning. If you were to manage the AdWords campaign you might get 125 clicks. If you outsource it it you can cut that number  in half…

Going back to the average website conversion rate… Of the 125 clicks you’ve  driven to your website, 7.5 of those  customers are likely to call you generating a generous $133 cost per lead (cpl) average. To some businesses, that might not be a big deal, but to small businesses with a lower point of sale – this would be outrageous, and it doesn’t even include the fees that Dex One would charge you…

I’ve tried pretty hard to like Dex One, but it’s hard.. I have not seen a product that is worth vesting time and money to and I cannot pitch a business who approaches small businesses on the fact  that they need, clicks.

Small businesses don’t need clicks – they need to know that their cost per lead or lead acquisition rate is far enough below their point of sale that they have a chance of making an ROI, even if it’s small.

My personal opinion is this: Dex One misleads small business owners. I’ve heard ads that claim they have some special relationships with major search engines, I’ve heard ads that preach to consumers the need for clicks when in fact they should be talking about how they can increase their bottom line by driving up their site conversions and down their lead acquisition rate – but they don’t.

Business owners are  smart and they are starting to realize, local internet advertising isn’t about clicks. It’s about driving the greatest number of locally targeted phone calls for the lowest cost available…

Believe it or not; there are some local online marketing companies who won’t sell you on clicks; they will sell you on value and the ability to convert traffic and drive up your ROI. Advertising is meant to make you money, not take it.

Don’t buy clicks, buy leads.

Until next time -

SHAKES

Tags: dex one, google adwords, merchant circle, pay per click, rh donnelley, yellow pages

This entry was posted on March 12, 2010 at 12:19 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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