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How
To Get Instant
Traffic To Your
Website For Only A
Nickel A Lead!
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Pay-per-click advertising is one of the
most cost-effective methods of getting leads known to Internet
business owners. It gives you instant traffic, and allows you to
test your business model in real time.
At the same time, pay-per-click advertising (or PPC) is not as
simple to use as the PPC companies will have you believe. If you
jump into the system without preparing for �tracking' your
results, doing deep keyword research, establishing your ROI and
most importantly, testing your ads, you'll lose a lot of money
really fast.
Before we start talking about the major PPC engines, here's a
brief overview of what you need to know.
The Basics Of Pay Per Click
There are some terms that you should know if you want to
understand any discussion on PPC. Some of these are self-explanatory,
some you might have heard before. Either way, go through this
section and make sure to read those parts that you don't know
of.
The PPC Model
In the PPC advertising model, you have three core elements �
keywords , ads , and bids . These three elements are combined
with � placement ' to create an advertising model that
displays �relevant' ads on search engines (in response to
keyword searches), portals and websites that opt to display such
ads on their pages (the ads to be shown are determined by a
keyword analysis of the page).
For a PPC campaign, you need to know the keywords that you are
targeting. For example, for a niche site that promotes a time
management product, I would create a list of keywords that
included keyword groups containing terms related to time
management, productivity, saving time, self improvement and
maybe even business soft skills. As I've told you before about
keyword research, you should have a big list so that you capture
most, if not all, of your target traffic.
The next step is to write the ad copy for the ads that will be
displayed for your searches. The ad copy is extremely important
because along with your bid amount, this will determine the
�conversion rate' (explained below) of your ads. Write concise,
compelling ad copy that highlights the benefits of your website
/ product, and avoid fluff.
Once you've written your ads, it's time to bid . The bidding
mechanism differs from PPC engine to engine, but the idea is the
same � your bid amount is the maximum cost (usually calculated
in U.S. dollars) that you are willing to pay for each keyword.
It's important to know how much you can afford in terms of
bidding costs so that you avoid going into bidding wars with
your competitors, and also so that you don't spend more than you
make through this campaign.
Cost-Per-Click
Cost-Per-Click ( CPC ) is the amount you pay each time a
potential customer �clicks' on one of your ads that they see
on their search engine results or on websites. This is often
less than the maximum bid amount you set for each keyword.
Conversion Rate
Conversion Rate is the ratio of clicks over impressions (the
number of times your ad is displayed on searches or page loads
on websites). A typical conversion rate is between 2 to 3
percent � that is, for every 100 impressions, you get 2-3
clicks on your ads.
Conversion Rate is closely tied in with the quality of your ad
copy , and also with Placement , which I'll discuss next.
Placement
If there is more than one person bidding for a keyword (as is
almost always the case), the placement of the ads (which ad
comes in on the first slot, which comes in on the second, etc.)
is determined by bid amounts of each competitor. The higher your
bid, the better your placement (Google adds the conversion rate
into their placement calculations, and I'll tell you how later).
Your conversion rate to a certain extent depends on how high
your ad is placed on the �rankings' and this leads advertisers
to place high bids just to rank at the top. The trouble with
this approach is that you might enter into a bidding war with
your competitors and lose a lot of money.
Tracking
Tracking refers to measuring which keywords are bringing you the
best leads or sales, and which keywords are bringing you
�window shoppers' � people who are �compulsive clickers'
and don't buy or sign up. Tracking your ad campaign will help
you further fine-tune your ads and improve your ROI.
ROI
Your Return-on-Investment (ROI) is determined by how much you
are spending over how much you are earning in net profits from
your ad campaign. It's important to establish a base ROI before
your start your ad campaign � assume a conversion rate of 1
percent � so that you don't over-spend and are able to run
this campaign within your budget.
The Pay-Per-Click World
Currently, there are two major PPC engines, Google AdWords and
Overture (now known as Yahoo! Search Marketing ). While there
are many alternatives such as Espotting (now Miva),
MetricsDirect and Kanoodle, the top two PPC engines are a class
apart when it comes to delivering results.
However, one of the first pieces of advice you'll hear from most
people is that bigger PPC engines such as AdWords and Overture
are too �expensive' to break into (with CPC for top positions
easily passing $3-$4 for many keywords, and reaching $10 for
really competitive keywords).
In reality, if you are just starting out, it's critical that you
pick one of the top two PPC engines. Why?
Traditionally marketers judge PPC engines on the following
criteria:
Reach � How large your potential target market is.
Cost-per-click
Quality of traffic � Do the leads fit your customer profile?
Are the willing to spend on your products?
Quality of service � The tools and help offered by the PPC
engines.
Overture and AdWords beat their competition on all of these
metrics except CPC. However, the benefits of �cheaper' clicks
are more than compensated for by the ease of use of the big two,
and more importantly, as any PPC expert will tell you, the
quality of traffic from Overture and AdWords is far better than
from other PPC engines.
Overture
Overture was purchased by Yahoo!, and recently renamed to Yahoo!
Search Marketing. The name's not catchy, but with Yahoo! Behind
the �second-largest' PPC engine on the Internet, you can
expect that the quality of traffic and services will improve
over the next year. Yahoo's acquisition of Overture is the
single biggest reason advertisers have started paying attention
to Overture again, although Google AdWords still commands
leading respect.
Overture is a manually edited PPC engine. When you write ads for
your website, these ads (and the keywords you specify) have to
be approved by human editors before they can appear in search
results on Overture partner websites. While this ensures that
the quality of ads remains above a certain level, this is also a
hassle, as new ad campaigns can take several days to be approved,
and there is a distinct lag between the time you plan to improve
a section of your campaign (for testing) and the time those
changes actually go live.
Overture keyword bids are totally transparent, meaning that any
advertiser can see at any time what other advertisers are paying
for that particular keyword. This is both useful and harmful �
advertisers can accurately target their �ad placement'
positions, but knowledge of the top 2 or top 3 bid amounts can
easily lead into a bidding war, and competitors undercutting
your ads by posting a bid that is $0.01 higher than yours.
Google Adwords
Google AdWords is the leading PPC engine on the Internet,
although it's closely followed by Overture. Combined, the two
PPC networks are distributed on nearly every search engine or
portal.
Google is totally automated � your ads go live within minutes
of being written. This is one of the two significant advantages
AdWords has over its competition � no need to wait for
�approval' of your keywords and ads, which can take a few days
on other PPC engines.
Google AdWords, like Overture, does not charge you your maximum
bid amount, but just one cent more than the bid lower than yours.
On the other hand, AdWords bids are not transparent like
Overture � bidders have no idea what their competition is
bidding. This reduces the threat of bidding wars.
The second advantage of AdWords is that it includes conversion
rate calculations in its ad-ranking algorithm. Simply put, your
ad may rank higher than your competitors' even if you are
bidding lower, just because you have a higher conversion rate.
AdWords rewards ads that are better written, and thus provides a
subtle barrier against ad spam.
PPC advertising has become the ultimate marketing tool for
testing new ad campaigns, business models and landing pages
without spending too much money. Where else can you test a sales
page by sending it 100 leads for $5?
If you are looking to promote your website / product effectively
but cannot wait for your search engine rankings to show on
Google or Yahoo, you should seriously consider PPC advertising
as an advertising tool that not only brings in instant traffic (and
sales), but is a hedge against ranking fluctuations by ensuring
that you stay on the top page for your target keywords.
This is just a general overview of Pay Per Click marketing/strategies.
Stay tuned for Part 2 coming soon, where I'll go into some much
more advanced techniques to really ramp up your traffic, all the
while spending less money! |
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