As many of our client funeral homes can attest to, Pay Per Click (PPC) proved to be a valuable way for them to win new client families. However, there are variables in PPC that are mysterious for many that make them shy away from this powerful online marketing strategy. One of those variables is cost.

In this post, lets talk about how to project the monthly cost of a PPC campaign based on some assumptions from thousands of cases.

Keyword/Term selection

The most crucial aspect that would determine the success of your funeral home’s PPC campaign is keyword or term selection. You should only bid on terms that are extremely relevant to your services and location. Anything more than those would certainly jack up your costs, like, if you’re in Atlanta, there’s no point in bidding for terms with the key words “Druid Hills, GA” in terms of cost, even if you’re planning on expanding to that location in the future.

You can use Google’s very own AdWords Keyword Planner or Word Tracker to select the keywords that’s right for your funeral home. Or we can help you choose based on our years of experience in helping funeral homes maximize their PPC campaigns.

How many will click your ads?

Which is clicked more? Organic search results or paid ads? Studies have shown that about a third of consumers click on paid ads.

Using this assumption, if the search term related to your funeral home in your particular area has 1,000 per month, your potential PPC clicks would then be 330 (1,000 x 33%). But how many in terms of percentage would actually click on your PPC ad? It will depend on a lot of factors, the most important being how aggressive your bids are and the quality of the ad copy or how well-written the ads are. Mind you, you must limit your ad copy to only under 80 characters, so it takes tremendous effort to pull it off.

Use Google’s tool to help you test your ads, or you can contact us to help you craft your funeral home’s ad copy.

Generally, based on tests and researches, about 9 percent of searchers will actually click on a PPC ad if it’s well-written and if it’s within the top three bid positions. Therefore, out of the 330, only about 30 will actually click on your ad (330 x 9%).

Determining cost

Let’s assume that your ad falls within the top three bid spot, and the average cost for that position is $2.30 per click. Your estimated monthly PPC expenditure would then be determined by multiplying that amount by the number of clicks (30 x $2.30), which, in this case, would be $69.

Beware of click fraud

It’s disheartening to note that in some industries, there have been well-documented cases of click fraud. It is a practice where competitors indiscriminately click on ads to cost other businesses thousands in questionable clicks. It could also happen to you, but the chance of that happening is very slim. Otherwise, you can file a dispute with Google so they can look into the matter.

There you have it, quick and simple ways to estimate your funeral home’s monthly PPC expenditure. If you have questions about Pay Per Click and search marketing for your funeral home, call us up at (800) 810-3595 today.