AdWords for companies in Service industry

Know any service company using AdWords?

[vibgyor79]

Our new client is a large CRM company (customer service, email processing, chat services and so on). We have just started running their Google AdWords campaigns. Their services cost anywhere between $5000 to $50,000 per month (depends on lots of factors) and they already have a large sales team. The gestation period of a "sale" is around 3 months.

Questions -

1) Will our client find Google AdWords useful? Let me rephrase that. Is Google AdWords in particular and pay per click search engines in general useful for companies in the service industry? Are there any companies out there using Google AdWords solely for branding purposes?

2) Since the visitor does not actually take out a credit card and buy online, how do you think we should measure the "performance" of Google AdWords? By the number of leads per 100 visitors?

3) Their corporate site has email and telephone contact details. In addition to this, they have a dedicated sales team. Even if Google does send in a lead, how will our client track it? All I can think of is inserting "Where did you hear about us?" in the email form.

Thanks!

Ashwin

[steveb]

I don't sell anything and ad words is very helpful to me. The situation you describe sounds perfect for ad words. Who would click on such an ad except someone interested? A couple bucks a day seems like a great investment. Even one deal a year would make it pay off. I doubt any tracking would even be important since it seems like an obviously good move. Just be sure to word the ad so that you don't attract off-topic clicks.

On the other hand you will probably have a hard time making the .5% minimum unless you restict your searches. Ad words can be good for branding but you do have to achieve that minimum click level.