Pay-per-click helps online business thrive

Remember September '08? Your stock portfolio actually had value; your business likely was putting along very nicely; and Andy Hortatsos had refined his online keyword advertising - a move that saved Shadesaver.com $40,000 in pay-per-click advertising fees and increased revenue 25 percent.

Today, the less said about most of our investments the better; many businesses are barely poking their heads above ground and hoping they don't see a shadow; and Shadesaver.com, founded by Hortatsos in 1998, is coming off its most profitable year, 2009.

Savvy e-marketing, including pay-per-click advertising and branded online stores, is a big part of Shadesaver.com's success.

Whether Shadesaver.com's approach would work for your business is unknown. You may not want to copy what Hortatsos has done, but what he has done is worth a thought or two. Hortatsos' ability to see and take advantage of opportunities is the mark of many successful entrepreneurs.

Glendale Heights-based Shadesaver.com sells high-end sunglasses, items that a year ago probably wouldn't have made many lists of projected top sellers - even at Shadesaver.com's discounts. Shadesaver.com, however, sells its designer sunglasses online, which is where buyers have been shopping.

"Folks aren't visiting brick and mortar malls," Hortatsos says. "They're going online to do searches. Search tools have gotten better, which makes pay-per-click more important."

In fact, Hortatsos continues, pay-per-click is "still an extremely important way to bring traffic to the site."

Pay-per-click advertising centers on those sponsored links that appear on search engine results pages. Write a brief ad; pick your keywords; determine with Google, Yahoo or another search engine how much you'll pay each time a searcher clicks on your ad; but make that determination knowing that the price you choose to pay per click determines your ad's position on the search pages.

Working with JumpFly, Inc., an Elgin company that manages pay-per-click campaigns, Hortatsos has "added keywords as we've added brands. But," he cautions, "that means it's more important for someone to manage (the process) and make certain pay-per-click is profitable.

"We are extremely cost focused, and we work to maximize our marketing" - which at Shadesaver.com means adding "a degree of sophistication" to marketing, he says.

That sophistication includes a branded store on Amazon.com, a separate vuarnetstore.com, a selling partnership with Overstock.com and an eBay store.

E-mail marketing also is part of the Shadesaver.com process. So are banner ads on sites with demographics that match Shadesaver.com's customers. Search engine-focused page coding helps. Customer service - returns, of course, but also a sharing of information and knowledge with customers - is important.

Profits are the ultimate measure, but Hortatsos points to two additional ways positive results show. "We're becoming more important to suppliers," he says. "Manufacturers have figured out this is not a channel they can ignore." And, Hortatsos adds, Shadesaver.com has a stable of 30,000 repeat buyers.

Questions, comments to Jim Kendall, JKendall@121MarketingResources.com.

© 2010 121 Marketing Resources, Inc.