Why Pay Per Click Ads Should Be Avoided in Network Marketing (Part 1)
This article originally appeared in the October issue of the Network Marketing Magazine.
In my article from the July issue of the network marketing magazine I mentioned the 5 lies the experts tell you. One of these lies is that all you have to do to go out and build a big network marketing business is buy some pay per click advertising. Today I’ll go into more detail about why this is a bad idea for your business.
In case you don’t know what Pay Per Click is, let me take a step back and cover the basics. Go to Google and search for the name of your company. Here you’ll see the usual Google listings. At the top there may be a small box in sort of a peach or off white color that has one to three search results in it. Guess what? These are not real results — those are paid advertisements. Also, do you see the search results on the right hand side of the page? Those are all paid advertisements as well.
These are called Pay Per Click advertisements. Google is one of several sites that offer them. Yahoo and MSN offer pay per click advertisements as well. There are dozens of smaller sites like 7search and Kanoodle that are entirely Pay Per Click oriented.
Pay Per Click or PPC is basically an auction system. You bid on how much you are willing to pay for one person to click on your ad. The person who bids the most is the one at the top of the page. The person who bids the second highest amount is next on the page, and so on.
Now we have the first reason why PPC shouldn’t be used in network marketing. The fact that it is an auction system means that the prices for keywords for your company are going to be driven up dramatically by other distributors in your company. It’s going to be hard to be listed at #1 because there are constantly going to be people driving up the price. In fact, when you begin to build a downline, some of your own team members could be bidding against you. You’ll be hurting one another because you’ll be driving the price up so high. If all you had to pay was 10 cents per click it might be worth it. You could get 1,000 clicks for $100 and even the worst web site would hopefully convert some of those into genuine leads for your business. The problem is that many of you would have to pay 1 dollar or more per click just to get your site listed in the top! That price will only get worse as more people join your company and start competing on ads!
So, one reason you should avoid PPC is because the price will become higher and higher. Another reason is that pay per click has a steep learning curve. The problem is that while you are learning to use pay per click ads properly you are wasting money. You can quickly spend $500 or $1000 without getting any results. There is a lot of fraud in the PPC industry, and while you’re figuring out the right keywords and strategies to use you are spending money. Odds are you won’t be sticking with PPC if you spend $1000 without any sign ups.
A third reason you should avoid using PPC is that companies like Google limit the number of times a particular web site can appear in the search results. What does that mean?
It means that if you use your company’s self replicated web site as opposed to an original and unique web site, Google may not list your site. What Google will see is 10 or 20 people all using their company’s self replicated web site and trying to buy Adwords. (Adwords is Google’s name for their PPC ads.) To Google, those sites all look the same. Even if it has your name and your photo on it, 95% of the web site is the same thing. Google is smart enough to know those web sites are all self replicated, , and thinks that makes their web site look cheesy. Imagine that you are searching for something on Google and every other link you click takes you to the same web site. You’d get frustrated with Google pretty quickly and would go search on Yahoo or MSN instead. So Google limits the number of times any particular web site can appear in the search results. To truly use Google’s PPC you’ll want to be promoting a unique web site.
Therefore, I would suggest not using PPC because this is a duplicable business. Anyone you sponsor is going to try and do what you do. They’re going to copy you (and sometimes they should). Even if you learn how to do PPC properly your new team members will have a hard time duplicating you. As I mentioned earlier, if they do duplicate you, you will each be driving up each other’s price per bid. If you succeed in doing PPC and teaching your team to do it, then you’ll hurt yourself more by driving up the price per keyword!
Do you agree? Or do you think I’m crazy? Click on the number of comments beside this post to leave me a comment and let me know how you feel about my post!
- Ben Fitts
The custom card guy
Popularity: 14% [?]
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Hi Ben,
Great article Ben! I definitely agree with what you had to say.
1.) Do not use company replicated sites. Bad for business and related to this article, bad for PPC.
2.) I agree that you also would be bringing on “competitors” for your keywords, every time you sign someone up, if you are marketing the same thing!
3.) There’s a definite learning curve to PPC
However, one point regarding the bidding system. It’s my understanding (based on Perry Marshall’s information) that it is possible to pay less then top bidder if you have a higher CTR (Click-Through-Rate). Of course, as you said, it takes a while to get to that point and can take a lot of money in the process.
In addition, what about co-op’s or joint ventures with your teammates to generate leads? Using a “rotating” lead capture page and pooling money to pay for the same clicks, could be an option to avoid competing against each other. However, my suggestion would be to stay away from promoting the same stuff that is being promoted by every other person in the company you are in, as well.
I think the gist of your post is right on. PPC, though a technique that should “eventually” be learned and used, has it’s place and application. There are many other ways to market your site(s) that do not cost a ton of money that can be leveraged first and do not take a lot of time or money.
It would be interesting to see a discussion on how to “integrate” PPC as part of your business and when to implement it.
I look forward to your future posts!
Talk to you soon, bud, and thanks for all the SEO training at Marketing ICE!
Nelson Rivera
http://www.nelsonrivera.net
Hey Nelson,
Thanks for your comment. We agree on a lot of points. I even talk about advertising co-ops in part 2 of this article.
I knew we were friends for a reason.
- Ben
Thank you for the article! It’s very useful and interesting.
But still some people use PPC – why?
The auction-style system which PPC is based upon is definitely a solid reason to avoid it. Investing in SEO efforts is by far more cost effective then running PPC campaigns.
You’re totally correct. Search engines ignore these cookie cutters websites. Their business is providing ‘unique’ relevant content. No search engine can stay in business returning 30,000 identical web sites for one MLM company.
Time for a different approach to get leads:
Let’s say, you’re a 47 year old female flight reservationist, who’s into fitness. You’ve just joined ABC healthyfood MLM. You know a lot about fitness. And what you don’t know, you can study.
What you do now, is build a terrific website with a fitness related theme. Fill it with keyword focused content pages. Adapt, but do not duplicate verbatim content provided by your company. The result will be targeted free traffic from the search engines. These are your own pre-qualified leads that come to you. You don’t chase them.
By over delivering quality information in response to a search engine query, you establish yourself as a sharing, generous expert.
What do you do now?
Do you ask your visitor to fill out a form for your free CD-ROM? Do you send them with a link over to your online store to see the professional athletes endorsing your product? Perhaps.
A simple invitation for the reader to contact you is also good. Your visitor may not be ready to join a Network Marketing business opportunity. They may just need information.
The internet is a beautiful tool to sort (pre-qualify) people; allowing the building of relationships, as opposed to selling.