Starting out with Pay Per Click (PPC) on Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Bing?
Most newbie marketers make the same mistakes that leave them feeling “beat up” by the system. It takes more than a good keyword to get a solid rate of return on your clicks. Here are 3 quick tips for the beginning Internet Marketer:
1. Don’t Throw Mud At The Wall
Do your research on your keywords first. The last thing you want to do is set up hundreds of keywords hoping you’ll get some clicks which lead to sales. Remember that each time someone clicks on your ad, that is money out of your pocket so choose wisely. There are many ways to research effective keywords. Use a free keyword tool such as Wordtracker that will show you which keywords have the most amount of traffic. Do your research directly in Google and act as if you are the prospect. Your goal is to put yourself in the mind of the buyer and figure out what they are searching for and what stage of the buying process they are in. This way, you can target your audience accordingly with laser-focused keywords instead of going in “blind-eyed” hoping to get someone to bite.
2. Make It All Flow
Google is a system. The more intertwined all of your marketing parts are, the better your results will be. Make sure your ad copy and landing page (website) is an accurate reflection of your keywords. Google is all about relevancy. You’ll want your ad copy to have the keywords included directly in the ads and your landing page be relevant to your specific keywords. Separate your campaigns to reflect each target audience to be more organized.
3. Don’t Pay The “Stupid Tax”
Most newbie internet marketers using pay per click (PPC) make the dreadful mistake of simply increasing their keyword bids to get higher on the results page. It’s no mystery as to why so many new marketers go broke very quickly. Pay per click (PPC) marketing is a science, but it’s also an art form. You’ll need to consistently analyze your efforts and pay close attention to your numbers. An easy way to constantly improve your efforts is to separate your goals into 3 distinct parts: Number of Impressions, Number of Clicks, and Number of Conversions. If you are struggling to fine tune your campaigns, work them in that order. Start with tweaking your best performing keywords to increase your impressions. More impressions simply mean more traffic. Once you have a good amount of impressions, you can now work on the amount of clicks you get. To increase your clicks, tweak your ad copy to be more relevant and/or more appealing to your target audience. Now that you have an increased flow of impressions and clicks, focus on your landing page. Does it deliver what your ad copy is promising? Make sure the landing page provides what the customer was looking for when he/she clicked on your ad.
Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing can get expensive very fast. Google, Yahoo and MSN will gladly eat away at your marketing funds if not given the appropriate respect. Don’t jump into it unless you know what you are doing. If you are just learning, start small and test until you see some initial results. Once you have a small campaign running effectively, then you can begin to expand them out.
