ONLINE newspaper marketing vs GOOGLE PPC vs NEWS Website

[AWW_Spencerport]

Anyone use Online Newspaper Marketing? In Rochester, NY the #1 website for our city is the Newspapers website. They receive over 230,000 unique visitors per month. Second is the News website 13Wham.

Does anyone use these online marketing techniques? Any success?

Our local news agency has a special - $700 for 140,000 impressions. Which included a large banner ad a side box ad.

 

[cmjerry4531]

I just went through about a month long negotiation with the local newspaper here in Montana that has similar unique visitors. They are the dominate force within the internet realm for sure. However, they too wanted to charge $20 per 1000 impressions. I can buy ads on Autotrader for far less than that, and even less if I went about buying remnant space on websites.

To get my prices lowered I went after these things:
1. With how many visitors you get, $20/1000 impressions isn't going to give me the consistency I need to make an impact
2. Of the impressions that I am getting only a portion are actually in a buying cycle or close to one
3. I can buy ads in areas that have car shoppers for far cheaper
4. If I can get the ads at the right price I can make it worth your while

A month later I got the price I wanted, more than half off, as well as a bunch of design work as added value. Of course, I only have two other companies that have a budget to compare to mine - only one being a car dealership.

As for the actual value of these impressions, it's mostly branding. Typically you are able to reach a good portion of the market through the newspaper's website, and stats show that these people make sufficient amounts to be able to buy a vehicle. Just make sure to A/B test your ads, and you can also ask if you can embed a cookie in those ads to track it back to your website.

 

[terrencegordon]

Our local news agency has a special - $700 for 140,000 impressions. Which included a large banner ad a side box ad.

It would be ideal if you could carve out $1,400.

Give $700 directly to Google Adwords where you pay for clicks only and the impressions are free.

Give $700 to your newspaper site and measure the Click Through Rate (CTR).

See which one yields the cheapest clicks. My bet is on Google, but this would be a very interesting test.

 

[DealerMarketing]

allot more to it..then giving google 7 bills and seeing who gives you the cheapest clicks. unlike the newspaper, Google will reward you with a high QS score. YOU CAN CUT YOUR $700 IN HALF WITH A 7/10 QS SCORE AND OPPOSE TO A 3/10.. Newspaper will give you traffic but not near the quality.

 

[kcar]

Go With the PPC, DON'T go with the New's website. I've done this before, bad idea, zero leads and just generally bad traffic and visit times..

 

[terrencegordon]

allot more to it..then giving google 7 bills and seeing who gives you the cheapest clicks. unlike the newspaper, Google will reward you with a high QS score. YOU CAN CUT YOUR $700 IN HALF WITH A 7/10 QS SCORE AND OPPOSE TO A 3/10.. Newspaper will give you traffic but not near the quality.

Not sure I followed that, but Google doesn't just hand you a good QS score. It takes know-how and time.

I'm not a fan of buying on a CPM basis, but theoretically if he gets a 1% CTR on his newspaper ad, he's got an effective $2.00 Cost Per Click.

Compare that to Google - and based on the keywords and the competitive landscape, the clicks could be considerably more expensive. After that, it obviously boils down to the quality of the traffic.

 

[DealerMarketing]

Google adwords considers a 1% CTR in a dealer campaigns as Above Avg. Getting that % with a online newspaper audience who main purpose is getting the current news could be very slim. I agree the comperitive landscape is a big factor. I do have a Chrysler dealer in Rochester who avg's $1.25 per click and ranks top 3 for most keywords. However, I'm sure in many markets it's much more competitive.

 

[DealerMarketing]

 

[joe.pistell]

I'm the 800lb gorilla in this subject. I can help. Buckle your seat belt... here we go!

NewsPaper web site banner ads and Google PPC are really apples and oranges.

NewsPaper web site banner ads (lets call them NPB's) are more branding tool that happens to create some site traffic, where as Google PPC is mostly a site traffic tool that happens to have a lil bit of branding ability.

My SUMMARY:
Go with PPC*, then, after the PPC game plan is dialed in, then I would open up a remarketing campaign, then, would I go off into branding ads (like NPBs)


DETAILS:
There is a boat load of waste in NPB's. Comparing Cost Per Click (CPC) of NPB's vs PPC's* will be an unfair fight.

#1). The vast majority of NPB's impressions go to people that are not in the market.

#2). Your NPB ad gets rotated on and off the page. Your buying impressions, not the ad position (pause and think about this). If you refresh the page, in many cases, your ad will be gone. So, this means, if your ad makes an impression to someone in market, but, the shopper can only remember that he needs to go back to the weather page to find your ad.. WTF, your ad may not be there! Not good. IMO, this is the single greatest disconnect with NPB's.

#3). In my little part of the world, comparing CPC of PPC vs NPB is not a fair fight. The CPC of NPB's are 200%-400% more expensive with a bounce rate that is easily 100% higher than PPC*.


CAUTION!
PPC has awesome ROI, but PPC spending must match your dealer profile*!!!
IMO, if I had a tight budget and a small inventory, I'd go with Google PPC ads that uses a tool that creates ads based on your inventory (i.e. Haystak or DDC's Total Control Dominator) If I had a giant inventory (or multi-franchise) I'd expand the PPC ads into more generic terms and expand my advertising geo-footprint. Only then, after my PPC game plan is dialed in, would I go off into branding ads (like NPBs)



*PPC's done right require a SMART manager that runs the PPC game plan intelligently. I've written extensively here on this topic.

HTH

 

[joe.pistell]

Google adwords considers a 1% CTR in a dealer campaigns as Above Avg. Getting that % with a online newspaper audience who main purpose is getting the current news could be very slim. I agree the comperitive landscape is a big factor. I do have a Chrysler dealer in Rochester who avg's $1.25 per click and ranks top 3 for most keywords. However, I'm sure in many markets it's much more competitive.

Kevin,

You can't generalize on any part of PPC performance without Keyword context. I've got a handy lil' strategy/education tool that helps everyone.

All PPC ads fall into 2 classes: White pages and Yellow pages.

White Pages = They Know Your Name.
Yellow Pages = They're looking not for you, but for what you're selling.

White page PPC's are dirt cheap and have killer QS (Quality Scores).
Yellow Page PPCs are far more expensive and the QS depends on EVERYTHING*.

The challenge of PPC is not White Pages visits, it's the Yellow Pages style of visits. White Pages visits has the lowest CPC, bounce rate and highest QS. Mixing White Pages performance data in with the Yellow Pages data creates skewed results that may lead to poor assumptions and these assumptions are the building blocks of bad decisions.




*ck out this awesome video by Hal Varian on Quality Score helped me a ton and I'm sure it'll help you too!