To serve as the voice of the pest control industry, protecting the livelihood of pest management professionals while fostering education, promoting professionalism, raising ethical standards, enhancing environmental stewardship, improving public health and quality of life.
February 8, 9, 2011 at the Kalahari Water Park and Resort in Wisconsin Dells. Here is the speaker lineup:
- Bobby Corrigan, of RMC Pest Management Consulting
- Mark Keuther, of Sunbelt Business Brokers
- Phil Pellitteri, of the UW Insect Diagnostic Lab
- Clay Sherer, of DuPont Professional Products
- Arnold Ramsey, FMC Corporation
- Robby Personette, WDATCP
- Dave Mathis, B & G Equipment Company
Watch for the conference brochure in the mail. You can register online at www.wisconsinpest.com. Click on “News.”
If you’re familiar with pay-per-click advertising then you probably already know about Google AdWords. This is Google’s flagship advertising product and primary source of income. Using AdWords, you select the keywords that trigger your ad to appear alongside the search results for those keywords, and the amount you are willing to pay per click.
However, there’s another show in town, and I bet you haven’t considered advertising with Bing and Yahoo. It’s a good idea to take a closer look at your choices. According to the Search Engine Journal, the Bing-Yahoo partnership should establish Bing with a 30% search market share and position the cooperative as a serious competitor to Google.
Will the Bing-Yahoo partnership be a success? It’s hard to say now, but here are three reasons to consider advertising on Bing.
1. Prices are reasonable. Google has been in the adwords business a long time and has more advertisers. Here’s what this means: when someone searches for bed bug control, there can be hundreds of companies bidding to get their ad on the first page of the search results. With Bing, there aren’t as many companies competing for the top ranking and you can expect to pay less for placements. I searched for “bed bug control” on each platform. Google generated top rankings for three national pest control firms, and a glut of self-help products and control measures. Bing, on the other hand, produced not a single top ranking for a pest control firm, and instead offered many sponsored links for products such as powders, sprays, and control systems. Reading between these lines, can you sense the opportunity?
2. Audiences are different. Google and Bing deliver different audiences. Google is probably the default search engine on your system, meaning your Google ad will be seen by many more people. You won’t obtain as much viewer traffic from Bing, but you’ll have access to the Microsoft Network (MSN) audience. For certain types of businesses, this can mean higher sales because these search engine competitors deliver different audiences. For example:
- MSN users are older than Google users. Most MSN users are in the 25-54 age range while Google’s range from 13-34.
- MSN users are primarily female; 57% to 50% for Google.
For pest control companies who serve residential accounts, these may be the customers of choice.
3. Support is better. If you spend half a million with Google you’ll get an account representative dedicated to your concerns and questions. Anything less than that and support likely comes from a disinterested offshore representative. Bing is trying to recruit smaller advertisers with improved customer service. If you think you’ll spend at least $500 per month, you can use MSN’s Quick Launch program and receive free advertising consulting. For details on this, visithttp://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoft-adcenter/quicklaunch-resources
MSN has great expectations for Bing and it may be a good choice over AdWords. These days, it seems as if everyone “googles” everything and it is amazing how often people look for products and services in those little classified-style ads that appear alongside search results.
If you decide to give this a try, don’t give up too quickly. Many advertisers will try a couple of ads based on a few keywords, but when they don’t get any results, they believe that pay-per-click is not for them and leave the idea behind. Instead, invest just a few dollars a month, maybe as little as a buck a day for the next quarter. Don’t make any decisions until you have the data to indicate how many people have clicked on your ads and eventually became customers.
Mark L. Hendrickson is President of The Wingra Group, a Madison-based marketing and business development company. He can be reached at wingra1@gmail.com.