If only pay-per-click campaigns were as easy as a snap of the finger, then every web page could strike it rich at the first try.
Unfortunately, pay-per-click (PPC) isn’t that simple. While the actions required to participate in many search engine PPC programs don’t take a genius to figure out the steps, the true marketer understands what it takes to achieve a response rate worth bragging about. Can the ordinary web page owner do it herself? Perhaps yes, if luck is on her side. But, do you really want to leave your campaign to luck?
Most of the big search engines have great PPC services. For example, Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing Solution (previously known as Overture), go through the mechanics of how to advertise and submit for review or activation. With Google Adwords, your PPC campaign can be up and running in a matter of minutes! Yahoo takes a little longer because of their human review process. However, this doesn’t mean your campaign will be visible to searchers. Your ad may not climb positions until way down the road.
Get your plan together before launching a campaign by following a few basic tips:
– Identify your target customers and their likes and dislikes. Knowing this gives you insight on how they search online for services and products and how they react to certain phrases and keywords.
– Pick keywords with strongest appeal and track them using a system like Yahoo Search Marketing Solution and Google Adword. Avoid jamming your PPC ad with every keyword under the sun.
– Did you split- test your keywords? Granted, space inside a PPC ad is limited. So why not use your space wisely by continually testing which words and phrases actually get the best results? Perform research by testing out your keywords in the Search Engine of your choice and monitoring the results.
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– Performance and traffic are not the same. You can attract heavy traffic but still have poor performance. Motivate visitors to take action by clearly announcing the action you desire your visitors to perform. As your performance rises above your competitor’s, this puts you at the head of the line to purchase better PPC ad positions, attracting even more visitors who are willing to take action.
– Is your campaign linked to “landing pages”? A “landing page” is where the visitor is directed upon clicking on a keyword. Direct your visitors to a page in your site that is most relevant to that keyword and to that population of visitors who are most attracted to that keyword. Studies show the more relevant the landing page to the visitor the more likely the visitor is to respond to the call to action.
A great return on your investment (ROI) is the goal of a PPC campaign. When it comes to creating a great PPC campaign, learning to set up a PPC ad is only one part of the picture; the other part is incorporating strategic planning. To discover simpler and more successful ways to carry out a winning PPC campaign, go to www.1dmom.com/archive.
Copyright 2005 Riki Trafford. All rights reserved.
Riki Trafford is the owner of Direct MO
Marketing Inc
which offers low cost keyword-targetted web traffic.
For comments and questions visit his web site:
http://www.1dmom.com/
