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Sage Lewis is President of SageRock Inc., a digital marketing company founded in 1999 with the goal of helping clients engage customers across an ever expanding interactive marketplace through multiple channels such as search and social media. To learn more about Sage and the company, visit the SageRock, Inc. website. – Tina
I learned in the book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People," that a good way to get ahead in the world is to make other people feel appreciated and important. So, with that knowledge, it only seems appropriate that my first guest blogger post here talks about why I like Microsoft adCenter.
Whenever I am starting a brand-new project that has little or no advertising budget or I'm working with a client who is very skeptical of online advertising, the first place I like to go is Microsoft adCenter. The reason for that is because very often the cost per click is lower than Google AdWords and the cost per conversion is usually lower too.
Take a look at these two comparisons:
Here you can see what the average cost per click and cost per lead is for this client in AdWords. It's $1.06 and $75.01 respectively.
Now look at the same time period for adCenter:
Here you can see that the cost per click is $.85 and $76.55 per lead.
In this example you can see a fairly different cost per click. But take a look at this much more dramatic example:
You can see here a huge difference in cost per click.
Very consistently, I see this kind of thing. Both of these are small businesses but the first one is a business to consumer type company and the second is a business to business company. While I see a gradual increase in the cost per click at adCenter, I still see an across-the-board lower cost per click and additionally, it is often still easy to find really good bargains. So, if I need some affordable yet high quality advertising I often start with adCenter; no online advertising campaign would ever be complete without having an adCenter component.
When I was asked what I wanted to write about in this column the topic that came to mind was small-business marketing and advertising. I am a small business owner myself and I have a real soft spot for all small businesses as a whole. So as I progress here that will be my topic. I'll try to bring you the most useful and helpful information I can provide for the small business marketer and advertiser.
If you have any topics that you want me to cover please just let me know. I'd be happy to give you my thoughts.
Thank you for reading and I look forward to a long and happy time here at the Microsoft Advertising Community.
Thanks for reading!
Sage Lewis
You can keep in touch with Sage on Twitter, Facebook and via his YouTube Channel.
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Obviously the CPC you will be cheap because the competition is much smaller. You become an interesting alternative for large and small advertisers who get a positive ROI with you.
I hope you improve the quality of results in Brazil and they can bring the AdCenter here because it is difficult to work with so weak alternative to Google, like UOL Links Patrocinados and Yahoo! Search Marketing.
Congrats on your new column Sage! What you say is indeed true. Although there is a lower traffic volume many times through the MSN network, those clicks tend to come cheaper and the the leads very comparable to Adwords costs.
Notice how the variance is much higher on adcenter. Wish they would figure that out.
Thanks all!
I think a lot of people forget (or don't want to take the time) to setup an account at adCenter. But it's totally worth it, imo.
Great post Sage...
Interesting as well...just yesterday I was moving funds away from adwords to adCenter for a client.
For an eCommerce business I would suggest looking at a similar comparison chart that shows historical conversion data and the average cost-per-sale as opposed to the average CPC.
My experience with adCenter is that although it is much smaller from scale and coverage points of view and does not have the extensive locality and resources as AdWords it has proved to be a valuable contributor to our marketing efforts. Both conversion rate and revenue per conversion noted higher and that what makes adcenter a great platform for us and our clients. Would recommend to everyone.
I agree with Sage Lewis, set up a account in Adcenter is difficult than in Google ADwords.