Friday, April 16, 2010

How to Run More Successful Pay Per Click Ads

You can actually maximize the efficiency of your Google Adwords Pay per click campaign before you write and execute an ad. It is possible to write your Pay per click ads for Google Adwords in a manner that will draw the attention of your prospective client to it, and this can be done by making the ad quite specific. "The Ultimate Guide to Search Engine Marketing: Pay Per Click Advertising" book by Bruce Brown reveals more details on his expert statement that generic ads simply do not work with Pay per click advertising. These are some of the basic techniques that you can use to add to the already fantastic results that you will be getting from your Pay per click campaign with Google Advertising:

1. Ads should link directly to the product purchase page. It is better to bring a visitor directly to the sales page than to the home page. By directly linking the visitor to a product purchase page, you will have a better chance of making a sale.

2. Use a reputable search engine. Google, and the others like Bing and Yahoo! are among the leading search engines where you can set up a Pay per click campaign. Make sure you are reaching the widest possible audience by selecting a search engine that many of your target customers will be using. The most popular Pay per click Advertising is that of Google Adwords.

3. See what the top ten competitors are like. It is good to know what your competitors are made out of as the traffic that you are competing for is searching for the very same keywords. What do the top ranking sites do? What can you do to make yours stand out? The internet market usually scrolls through various Pay per click ads, and this is why your ad still has a high chance of being clicked even if it is not at the top of the rotation.

4. Advertise your site more. Though highly effective, Pay per click ads like Google Adwords is only one way that you can bring more of the traffic that you need to your site. You can reach more of your target audience by using other kinds of advertising methods such as contextual ads, classified ads, and affiliate marketing.

5. Use the demographic targeting feature. When you use the demographic targeting feature of that some Pay per click ads like Google Adwords has will allow you to effective show your ad in only the area of your interest. This feature is will help you narrow down your ads to appear only to the potential clients in the area of your concern, and allow you to concentrate your marketing efforts for that specific location.

6. Figure out what the right keywords or keyphrases are. There are a vast number of online keyword tools, and the most popular is the Google Keyword tool. This tool will show you a list of alternative keywords and keyphrases and its statistics based on your specified keyword search. With the results generated by this tool, you can study the figures and decide which keyword or keyphrase will be the best ones to use.

7. You may have the need to filter your ads. There are many instances of fraudulent clicks, and the Ad Filtering feature can be used to block certain websites or regions to stop the problem. If you get fraudulent clicks, you will end up wasting your money and will not be able to correctly estimate what your real click through rates and conversion rates are. If you see any such activity or simply want to prevent any such occurrence, there are some Pay per click providers like Google Adwords that have fraud detection and prevention programs that you can use.

You can make the most of your Pay per click campaign like that of Google Adwords to bring in more of the kind of traffic that you want. These are just the very basic things that you have to know to run at the highest efficiency your Pay per click campaign like that of Google Adwords. If you want to be able to get a bigger share of the enormous income potential that the internet can give to you, it will be to your advantage to apply the other marketing strategies like that which can be found with Google Advertising.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Google Adwords: Writing Compelling Ads

Google Adwords remains as the premier paid traffic source in the internet today, and any business can setup and run ads on the Adwords network within hours. However, you are limited to just 35 text characters per line so you have to type in a specific manner to get favorable results. You just need to learn how to write ads specifically for Ad words in order to profit from it.

A whole science has emerged around writing effective adwords ads and knowing what to right in each line is just a part of it. If you're totally new with Adwords, here's a strategy you can use to base your first ad on.

1. Use the keyword in the headline. Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd, authors of "The Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords" state that internet users are more likely to click on an ad if the ad's title or headline contains the keyword or keyphrase they were searching on. Use this to your advantage and capture people's attention instantly.

2. State a benefit in the second line. People are more likely to respond and click an ad if the ad clearly states a benefit near the title. Make sure you are listing your benefit on the second line, not your offer or a feature. Think in terms of 'giving them what they want' first before stating your product's attributes.

3. State a feature or offer on the third line. Your features and offers must support your benefit statement. The idea here is to state your feature or offer in such a way as to back your benefit claim. Remember to keep your feature or offer brief and simple so as not to overpower your benefit.

4. Place your landing page URL in the last line. Many companies make the mistake of inserting only their website URL on the last line, but you have the freedom to enter in any destination you want in this area. This is a great reason to set up a separate landing page specifically for your Adwords campaign; this landing page URL can be inserted into every ad you run so you can track how well your ad is performing.

5. Split-test your Ads. Split-testing means running two similar ads at the same time to see which one will gather more clicks. Make small changes in your ads and see which version will perform better.

Setting up your Google Adwords campaign for the first time can seem like a daunting task, but it doesn't take long to understand all of the elements of Google Adwords and creating compelling and persuasive ads. Remember to track your performance always so that you can pinpoint areas for improvement. In any case, don't delay your usage of Google adwords and follow these tips to start running ads now.

Sunday, March 14, 2010

How to Measure the Effects of PPC Marketing

Pay per click advertising is a vital internet marketing tool, yet how can you measure the results of PPC marketing strategies? With basic understanding of SEO and PPC plus the use of web analytic tools, you can measure the effectiveness of your Pay per click campaign. Here is the process to learn so that you can know how effective your PPC campaign really is:

1. PPC has to be integrated with web analytics tool. The author of "Web Analytics: An Hour a Day", Avinash Kaushik, adviced the use of many web analytic tools and to incorporate the PPC data into it so that its effectiveness can be measured. Kaushik specified that access to the backed of web analytics tools is vital to know what is happening behind the scenes (instead of hiring an SEM service for this task).

2. Define your key performance indicators. The next question you need to answer is what exactly generates a 'sale' for you? Is it the click to a sales page (a lead capture)? Is it the payment and transaction itself? Defining what is the performance indicator for your particular campaign will help you narrow down your focus and track user behavior that is getting the conversions you need.

3. Keep track of your unique visitors. Unique visitor counts will vary significantly by campaign, and you will need to know exactly how much it cost to attract these visitors, even if they didn't complete a purchase or submit their information. The reason why this is important is because you need to know if the campaign is working. If people are only clicking through to the site but not converting, you may be targeting the wrong keywords.

4. Apply a split test. Online marketers have a technique known as a split test that can identify what are keywords or keyphrases that are bring them the maximum conversions in their respective target markets. A split test can be conducted by running the same advertisement using three different ad service providers at the same time. This will enable your to track clicks, see from where the most clicks are coming from, and pinpoint how your target market finds your website. This data is used to decide which ad service provider will be retained exclusively based on the highest yielding return.

5. Know the cost of each acquisition. When you know how many visitors your website has and how many of them actually generate you income, you can accurately compute the individual acquisition cost of your campaign. This will tell you exactly how much you have spent to get a sale. Then, you can calculate the average selling price and study your ROI.

Measuring the effectiveness of your pay per click marketing strategy can take time and you will need to tweak it as you go along. Still, it's a process that every savvy marketer needs to go through in order to optimize their ads and get the highest conversions from each and every campaign.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

How to Get Started With PPC Campaigns Properly

The popularity of pay per click marketing has been steadily increasing among business owners. Unlike organic search rankings, which take time to develop, pay per click advertising with Google Adwords can place your business on top of search engine results immediately.
Google adwords may seem expensive to some, however, it can get target leads into your website. Here are 5 steps to help you launch your PPC campaign:
Step 1: Define your advertising budget. Programs such as Google Adwords allow you to set a daily budget, or limit, so you can better manage your marketing campaign. This allows you to pay only for what you want at any given time, and can be valuable in tracking where your marketing budget is really going. Set your budget fairly low when you first begin to see what type of interest you are generating, and then start paring it down. You can also put in a lot of money, launch several ads and select which ads perform the best.
Step 2: Decide what type of risks you are willing to take. Boris Mordkovich, author of the book "Pay Per Click Search Engine Marketing Handbook" points out that PPC advertising with the major search engines is a less risky endeavor than conventional marketing campaigns, but certain search engines will offer you a higher return on investment than others. Advertising with the more popular search engines may be more costly so you need to decide if you are willing to take on the added risks.
Step 3: Choose your keywords. Most PPC programs provide their users with online tools for researching keywords. Choosing the right keywords can literally make or break your ad, and you may need to invest some time into finding the keywords that are generating the highest conversions. Aside from keyword research, you may have to do A – B split tests to select a winning list of keywords.
Step 4: Review your campaign’s results. Most PPC platforms provide a convenient reporting tool that gives you the ability to adjust your campaign based on the data you gathered so far. These reports will give you an overview of the number of clicks for a certain keyword or keyphrase, what time of day the ad was clicked, and if you have an analytics program enabled, whether that click led to a sale.
Step 5: Fine-tune your ads. When you have finished reviewing the reports, you can then pull the plug on low performing keywords and only run ads on keywords that brought in the most results. This list of keywords will allow you to focus more on creating and optimizing your ad copies.
The secret behind every successful Google Ad words campaign is through optimizing your campaigns by testing and tweaking. Go through these five basic steps so you can make the most of your PPC advertising campaign.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Ways to Use PPC Advertising and Maximize ROI

One sure way to get massive traffic to your site and to capture your target audience is to use the Pay per click marketing strategy. There are certain tactics and techniques that can be applied for you to get the most out of your Pay Per Click strategy. These are some of the most effective Pay Per Click techniques that can be used regularly:

A key Pay Per Click technique is the A/B testing of advertising copy to track insignificant changes, though this does not have to be done often. One assessment that is necessary can be done by changing keywords or keyphrases in your ads to check if there is any marked difference in user behavior. After a short period of time, the best performing keywords and keyphrases can be determined with this kind of assessment. When planning for your Pay Per Click strategy, it is also necessary to test your landing page.

Testing you landing page can be conducted by setting up several various landing pages and placing identical ads on all of them. This is an effective way to measure which landing pages are generating income and which are not. Regular analysis of patterns and trends by using quantifiable data gathered with the use of the web analytics tool is also recommended.

You need to make a judgment call that is not only based on figures and numbers to decide how much to spend for your Pay Per Click campaign, according to the authors of "Ultimate Guide In Google Adwords", Perry Marshall and Bryan Todd. Your assessment should be based on your confidence in your site potential to make income, market knowledge and your budget. You have to estimate what the average time of each site visit. Are your potential clients going to immediately purchase or browse around your site first? There may be a need to up your budget to bring in potential clients rather than those who are simply hunting for information.

Constant monitoring of keywords is of utmost necessity so that the ones that do not work too well can be replaced.To eliminate the less effective keywords that show up in irrelevant searches, detect them by the use of Google Adwords tool.

Why spend your time competing in organic search listings when you have already bid to properly position those keywords and keyphrases? It is a waste of money to buy ads for keywords that are already securely positioned on major search engine listings. The ultimate goal is to place your site of the top ranks of search results and the wise way to do this is not to repeat keywords already placed in ads.

Pay per click advertising with Google Adwords and other sponsored search listing providers is a proven method for generating quality traffic, but that doesn't mean you can just set it on autopilot. You need to learn some basic techniques and tactics to attract the type of traffic that converts.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Don’t Make These Mistakes When Creating Google Adwords Ads

Building a Google Adwords Campaign is challenging, more so if you're just trying to make a dent in your target market. You can spend your time spying and figuring out your competitors, however, you will only gain marketing data from your customers when you put out an ad and focus on optimizing it. Nevertheless, this strategy also makes it easy to make mistakes - and some that can be very costly.

Perry Marshall wrote a book entitled "The Definitive Guide to Google AdWords" for people who need information on how to setup effective Google ads. The book contains strategies, useful tips and advice on Google Adwords starting from market research all the way to optimizing your campaign for better results.

The whole point of an Ad words campaign is to connect you or your business with your target market, turn them to visitors or audience of your site and get them to accept the value you are offering. Avoid these mistakes in order to have a successful ad words camapign.

1. Writing ad copy without keywords. Most ads I see only utilize keywords on their headlines. There might be a reason behind this, but in most cases, not including keywords in your ads' body would result in poorer ad performance.

2. Send traffic to your site's homepage.. Avoid sending your visitors to your homepage. In most cases, a homepage serves to guide visitors to the different contents of a site. Those who click on ads do so because they want to get more information referred to by the ad. However, visitors will often leave if they have to exert some effort in order to get what they want from a site. Give them what they've came for by directing them to a landing page listing your value proposition for them.

3. Using only broad match keywords in Google Adwords Keyword Tool. Broad match keywords are most useful in giving you a general idea about your market. Use the 'phrase match' and 'exact match' features in the tool to generate a highly targeted list of keywords that you can use both for your ads and your website copy.

4. Use of low-performing keywords. Understanding exactly what your target market is searching for will take some time, and you cannot always assume that people will be searching for your products or services using the same keywords that you may use online. You will need to generate a list of relevant and similar keywords using the 'synonyms' feature on the Google Ad Words Keyword Selector Tool to drill down on search results and optimize your campaign.

5. Stating your offer solely on the body of your ad. Make sure you emphasize the 'ultimate benefit' right away in the headline of your copy. Imagine that your reader/viewer is only reading the headlines; will they be compelled to click on the ad or read the remainder of the copy?

Friday, January 1, 2010

Understanding the Value of PPC Advertising Campaigns

There are many instances that websites do not get more traffic or appear on the top ranks of search engines in spite of the fact that they are keyword optimized. Many companies have landed in the top ranks of the most popular searches and this is partly due to the fact that they use the pay per click advertising method. Is using the marketing tool of pay per click advertising that effective?

The author of "Web Analytics", Avinash Kaushik, says that pay per click methods still hold a lot of weight in the internet world. Pay per click (PPC) is an essential part of search engine marketing and in combinations with proper search engine optimization (SEO) methods will bring high click-through results and can become a very successful online campaign, the author stated.

Pay per click advertising can be particularly effective when you're working with highly competitive keywords. Some companies are fortunate to work in micro-niches where there is very little competition for certain types of keywords. However, most companies work in well-established niches where there is much more competition for relevant, high-converting keywords.

Many people are not aware of the fact that they might be wasting their money generating keyword optimized content that is in fact ineffectual in getting to the top rank of searches. There are many keyword results that have thousand of websites linked to it and this fact may make it nearly impossible for your website to land in the first few pages of the search.

Using Pay per click advertising will take you out of the bottom ranks and land your website on the front page. Google and other major search engines categorize Pay Per Click results as 'sponsored listings'. Your targeted market types in your specified keywords and your website will either land on the first page of the search list, on the right side column of the page or on the top of the organic results.

The amount of your bid for your keywords will determine the position of your Pay Per Click. Let us say that you had bid a above average amount on a specific keyword that bring you to the top ranks of the search list, and those that have placed in a smaller amount will be found in the next few pages. The prime position gets awarded to the highest bid amount depending on the number of contenders for that spot.

Pay per click advertising methods can be a valuable component of your online marketing campaign, but it may take some time to fine-tune your strategy and attract the right type of traffic. You will need to conduct extensive research on what people are searching for when they purchase your products or services, consider alternative keywords and keyphrases that might lead people to your website, and review the overall cost per click using various tools available through the pay per click advertiser.

To get the advantage over competing websites and bring you the many benefits that come with it, you can opt to use Google Adwords or any other Pay per click advertiser. This marketing tool can be used even if you only have a small budget, and to get the most out of your money, try combining different ads and keywords that are relevant to your site.