Most Burning Question:
What is considered an acceptable ROI from Google Adwords?
Your question is a little broad. I’m not sure what you are tracking as far as conversions go… So, I’ll give a broad answer about ROI.
I’m going to assume we are talking about Return On Investment and it will be measured as dollars out for dollars in. This allows us to create a ratio for an answer, and gives us 3 broad categories of response.
Note: The help page at Google uses percentages. That’s the same as the ratio multiplied by 100. I like the ratio because 3 to 1 tells me I make $3 for every $1 spent.
ROI is great than 1 – Any ratio greater than 1.0 means for ever dollar you spent, you made more than a dollar back. This is a good thing. Now, this is measured in raw dollars, so may not indicate you actually made a profit. You could choose to measure using net dollars to be more accurate.
ROI is equal to 1 – This means you are at a break even point. Dollar in gets a dollar out. If you are just starting out, this just means your advertising is doing something right, but you need to test more to find what will actually make you more money than you are spending. Google adwords is the IDEAL platform for testing, and as a rule-of-thumb you should ALWAYS be split-testing 2 ads. Always try to beat your best ad.
Now, if you had an ROI of 3 and it suddenly dropped to an ROI of 1, then I would say you have a problem and better give it your focus immediately. It may be time to pull the plug on those ads or the keywords. You’ll need to do your homework to figure out what the issue it.
ROI less than 1 – This is not where you want to be, unless you are just getting started and haven’t yet figured out the right combination of ad/landing page/keywords to get your conversion rates up. When in this zone, you’ll need to do everything you can to get it in positive territory, or pull the plug on it.
Now, back to your question… Acceptable ROI can be very different for each business, and very different by keyword-phrase. I’ve seen some adwords ads get ROI’s of 30 and higher, but they are low traffic keywords. And for the same client, some ads will get only ROI of 2, but they have huge traffic and the client knows that once people buy once, they will buy again within the next 2 years so as long as the ad doesn’t lose money…. they are happy.
Another way to go about all of this, and one that I think is actually even more useful, is to know what you can spend to acquire a new client or customer. This requires you know the lifetime value of an average customer. You can get this by adding up all your revenue and dividing by total number of clients/customers.
So how is this useful? If I know I make on average $1000 for every customer I get, and I know my costs not including advertising are $200 per customer on average. That leaves me with $800 to play with. I decide I can live on $600 and so can then spend up to $200 to acquire a customer.
When you know that number, you know what your options are for advertising and marketing.
There is an article here on my blog that goes into more detail on important numbers for your business. It’s called
The 5 Most Important Numbers For Effective Hypnotherapy Marketing
I also have an article here on my blog about using Google Adwords. It’s called
9 Quick Tips For Using Google Adwords
QUESTION: I was wondering if you have any advice on how to generate the most sales & referrals when I do a Hypnosis event like a free seminar done for World Hypnotism Day?
First thing… Make sure you send them a reminder and keep them excited about attending. You can’t make any sales if no one shows up.
Here are three important elements to getting sales from your Hypnosis event.
- Build trust, believability, and credibility before you make your pitch. The best way to do this is by providing UNQUESTIONABLE PROOF about any claims you make.
- Make the best possible offer you can. Do not skimp here. Make it irresistible to anyone who is remotely interested in your services.
- Take all risk out of the transaction for the prospect. You can do this through creative use of guarantees. (I have articles here on my blog about this) Hypnotists mostly seem to be terrified of anything that takes away risk for the prospective client. Think about what message this sends to your prospects.
Some other things to consider:
GIVE A REASON WHY
If you plan to offer a discount on session packages, You must give them a REASON WHY you are making such an offer to them or subconsciously they will wonder why it’s suddenly so cheap.
If you have read Robert Cialdini’s landmark work on the Psychology of Influence, you may remember the story of cutting in line at the copy machine.
Simply adding the word “because” with any reason worked about 90% of the time. Often the request went like this… “Can I get ahead of you to make some copies because I’m in a hurry”
Similar results have been found in testing sales copy in direct mail. There is even a classic book called Reason Why Advertising (pdf) by John E. Kennedy.
GET THEM TO TAKE ACTION NOW!
If you have done your presentation well, people either know they want more of what you have or they don’t. But if you give them time to ponder it, you’ll lose many sales. People get busy and distracted the moment they walk out the door. They may really mean to get back to you, but things happen and next thing you know it’s 5 week later and forgotten.
Make the offer time limited. Example: This offer is only good till I walk out the door today. You can still sign up for sessions tomorrow, but you can only get it at this special rate today.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Be careful not to give them too many choices. A confused mind will say no.
It’s better to have one focus (example: stop smoking) and three options such as Silver Program, Gold Program, Platinum Program.
Make the platinum program very expensive with tons of personal service, the silver program is your regular effective set of sessions, and Gold is regular plus some extras.
Most people will go for the Gold program and some might go for Platinum.
You could pass around an “interest sheet” on other topics you work with. Have them put name and email for more info.
GET CONTACT INFORMATION
If you are doing an event, at the very least, get contact information from everyone who attends. Name and email is a minimum, and I would get full mailing address with phone being optional.
This information is so amazingly valuable, yet very few in the hypnosis business bother to collect it. This is basic Lead Generation Marketing.
Like I said at my NGH Presentation… If you don’t have a constant stream of qualified leads coming in, you don’t have a business.
Now one thing that is very important to know about getting contact information… people hold this information as valuable. So you must think of it as a transaction, they give you contact info and you give them (something of value) in return.
If you are doing a free seminar, workshop, or stage show… you are giving them something of value. So get their contact information when they register for the event.
RE-USE YOUR EVENT
Always re-purpose your content. When you put on a talk, seminar, or workshop… ALWAYS have it recorded. Ideally you want digital video. You can strip audio off of digital video so you can make both CD’s & DVD’s (or podcasts and youtube videos).
There is so much you can do with this material. Use it in new client packages, use it online to help explain or demonstrate what Hypnosis can do. Use it as bonuses for clients. Give them out at other talks as gifts.
But if you don’t have it, you can’t use it. Start recording all your events and then ask yourself “how can I use this in my marketing?”
LET YOUR PERSONALITY OUT
Finally, make the event fun and let your personality shine through so people can connect with you. This is extremely important. If you are stiff and boring, you’ll lose people.
Don’t try to be ‘corporate’, be yourself, let your personality out during your presentation. Show your sense of humor, or your ability to notice unusual things, etc.
The human element which allows us to connect is essential to all aspects of your business, but especially at live events.
One more thing, this is important… you can’t make everyone like you, so don’t try. Attract the kind of people you WANT to work with by letting your personality out. If you try to please everyone, you’ll end up being boring and pleasing no one (including yourself).
Question: How can I get the most people to attend my World Hypnotism Day event?
Here is a quick list of what I would do to get the most butts-in-seats for a World Hypnotism Day event. 
- Getting free publicity will get you the most mileage.
- Using other people’s lists. Get businesses, non-profits, colleges etc. to promote you to their audience.
Example: You do a Stop Smoking with Hypnosis Seminar. If you partner with the American Lung Society, get them to promote your event to their list.
Example: If you are doing stress relief, call all your large local businesses to send a message to their employees.
- How many ‘events’ calendars are there in your area? TV, Radio, newspapers, etc. Get listed in as many as possible.
- Get a local proclamation from the Mayor, or City Council etc. This is an idea Tom Nicoli came up with last year for World Hypnotism Day. Full instructions are in the WHD members area. At least 14 people pulled this one off last year.
Here is an example of a Proclamation from WHD 2009:
- Post event announcements on free Internet event sites like CraigsList.org
- Partner with other hypnotists doing WHD events to put a large add in the local newspaper. List all the WHD events in different parts of the city in one HUGE Eye-Grabbing ad.
- Start a Meetup Group on MeetUp.com This is a social Media site so people will find you by searching for topics and keywords.
Note: You can get a lot of mileage out of using Meetup.com. You can also use it as a way to keep track of registrations and to send email reminders.
- Post ads on Facebook.com You can target ads by location, age, income and other demographics, so the ads are highly targeted. You can also create an event listing on Facebook that anyone can find by keyword.
- Post ads using Google Adwords. You can target by location and keyword search. Drive them to your meetup.com sign up page.
- Old School – visit all the businesses in your area and ask to drop off flyer and/or free tickets. Make sure you require them to register to activate free ticket. Send them to your meetup site.
By the way, there are 3-steps to ‘getting people to attend’. These are as follows:
- Find people who are interested
- Get them to register (you build a list)
- Get them to show up (you follow up with reminders of the benefits to showing up)
So you need a list or a tool for registration and follow up. This is why I suggested Meetup.com, but you can use an email system of your own if you already have one.
