PPC Marketing - Reliable Web Advertising Solution

There are people who somehow get apprehensive when it comes to the matter of bringing their businesses online. This is a pretty understandable stance because for them, the internet is pretty much an unknown territory. There are many differences that can be cited between an actual physical business and a web-based one. For example, the level of competition online is simply way too stiff and you will need different approaches in order to stay competitive. You have to build a strong online presence so that your brand will resonate well with your target market. But don't fret, there are numerous tools and strategies that one can use in order for his business to compete effectively in an online setting. One of the most popular solutions when it comes to web advertising is definitely PPC marketing. Want to know the reasons why it is such a reliable web marketing solution?

PPC marketing or pay per click marketing is an advertising solution that works in conjunction with search engine results. Have you ever experienced seeing various coloured boxes that contains links whenever you enter a query into a search engine? These are basically the ads that are utilised in a PPC campaign. You have the option of focusing on one search engine or you may opt to sign-up with many different ones, it is all up to you as to what kind of approach to take. But for the best results, it is highly recommended that you at least create a PPC campaign for all major search engines such as Google and Yahoo. In a PPC campaign, you will only have to pay for actual results. This essentially suggests that you will only be charged if your ads have been displayed or clicked by end-users. So in a sense, this particular advertising solution is almost free from any sort of risk. But keep in mind that you need to focus your campaign or else you will attract unwanted traffic.

One other major marketing solution for online businesses is SEO or search engine optimisation. This type of online advertising technique is widely implemented because it has the tendency to build up your website in a more organic way. But the downside is that it requires a lot of time and effort before you will be able to see some favourable results. However with PPC advertising, you won't be having such a concern. The benefits of PPC are rather instantaneous and you may see actual results hours after you have started your campaign. In addition, PPC is known for allowing complete control over the campaign. This means that advertisers will be able to set the campaign based on what their business needs.

PPC Campaigns - The Mistakes to Avoid   How to Create a PPC Ad in Microsoft AdCenter   Focus Areas of Successful Google AdWords Management   Why Your Business Should Choose Google AdWord Solutions?   Use PPC Marketing to Boost Your Internet Business   

Hire a PPC Expert for Taking Online Advertising to the Next Level

There is a whole lot of science involved in this advertising strategy. On a very simple note, it is similar to buying the top notch space as in the print and electronic media. The only difference lies in the fact that an enterprise or an individual has to pay for the total no of visitors on the website. Looks simple? Ahem it is not! A lot of analysis goes onto the implementation of PPC as an advertising strategy. For that matter any strategy that has a commercial aspect attached requires a lot of market study and cost analysis. Therefore a large enterprise should have at least one PPC expert in the marketing team. In case of SMBs, they can seek to hire a PPC expert based on the outsourcing model.

Imperfection is the law of nature. Therefore no strategy is infallible and works well with all situations. Similarly Pay-Per-Click does work best for certain situations like campaigns, direct response business and keyword promotion. For long term marketing and promotion actions such as website marketing, a single strategy like PPC does not work good because then it would be a very cost intensive affair. A clever mix of SEO and PPC is the best in such cases. In case of smaller advertising and marketing campaigns, PPC is a great way to generate immediate traffic. In this case, an individual or an enterprise has the flexibility of changing the messaging at any point of time. In the case of direct response business wherein the target audience can immediately lured to buy the advertised product, PPC can be very effective. Enterprises like Jabong and Flipkart go for PPC. In the third case where enterprises are looking forward to promote certain keywords, this marketing strategy comes across as an effective solution. A PPC expert is generally well versed with the market mechanics and the business model.

It is important to hire a PPC expert for the correct implementation of the advertising mechanism. PPC is not about click but about how those clicks are converted into business opportunities. For this particular purpose, a PPC expert monitors certain things very closely. They are:

• Track the conversions- this entails a close monitoring of the total number of visitors who made purchases, completed a sales enquiry form, downloaded a white paper, and registered with the website.

• Set a practical PPC budget- the budget set for per click should be less than the total profit earned per click.

• Search for the niche keywords- it is important to use all possible market analytic tools and freeze upon narrow, focused keywords.

• Writing good content- it is the prerogative for all marketing initiatives, short term or long term. A clear cut, smart writing with evenly balanced keywords Effectively Support all possible advertising initiatives.

It is important to hire a PPC expert who understands the market dynamics and is flexible enough to cleverly accommodate change. Also, a PPC expert should be vigilant enough to prevent other keywords from outbidding his chosen keywords.

PPC Campaigns - The Mistakes to Avoid   How to Create a PPC Ad in Microsoft AdCenter   Focus Areas of Successful Google AdWords Management   Why Your Business Should Choose Google AdWord Solutions?   Use PPC Marketing to Boost Your Internet Business   

How To Set Up A Successful Pay-Per-Click Campaign

If you are familiar with Pay-Per-Click ads, then you know that these types of paid search marketing work by putting ads on the side bar of your search engine or web site and are used to bring people to your web site.

The concept is pretty simple.

You create an ad. You place a price upon its worth. And you submit it to a search engine.

When someone clicks on that ad, you are charged a price for it and they end up on your web site. You only have to pay if someone clicks on it. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

But now for the tricky question. Are you getting your money's worth from these ads? Ninety-nine percent of the businesses that use this type of advertising do not understand it. They send people to their home page and don't even know why the person came there in the first place. What's worse is the person who cost you that advertising cost leaves without you ever knowing what they were looking for.

How much does this cost you each month?

Does this mean that you shouldn't do Pay-Per-Click advertising? Not at all! You just need to do it better. And you can with these two simple rules!

Don't send people to your home page. Send them some where on your web site where you can sell them a specific product or service. The page they land on is conveniently known as a "landing page". The purpose of the landing page is to give the consumer the EXACT answer they are looking for and the ability for you TO GAIN information from them.

What information do you need to gain? Primarily an email and/or phone number. A name to go along with it might be nice, too. With this information, you now can contact that person who is interested in what you are selling. You can also figure out your return on investment (ROI) which is unknown if you send the person to your home page.

Example: If you spend $1.00 per click on a keyword and three people click on that word, you have spent $3.00. That money is gone and you hope that they spend money with you, but you will never know. However, if you have three people click on your keyword and two of them give you their name and email, you have spent $1.50 on gathering two customer who you can contact and forward future sales and specials. Those $3.00 gain MUCH better traction and value to you in the long run.

If you have any questions on how this works, please feel free to contact me at DUQofURL_at_gmail_dot_com or by phone at 866-675-6560 and I can show you how your business can succeed through Pay-Per-Click advertising.

PPC Campaigns - The Mistakes to Avoid   How to Create a PPC Ad in Microsoft AdCenter   Focus Areas of Successful Google AdWords Management   Why Your Business Should Choose Google AdWord Solutions?   Use PPC Marketing to Boost Your Internet Business   

Create a Tsunami of Prospects With PPC Marketing

PPC Marketing, commonly known as Pay Per Click Marketing is a popular method of promoting your web site or business on the internet allowing traffic to be driven to your website sometimes within hours rather than weeks or months as with more traditional page ranking methods such as SEO.

Commonly found on search engines, PPC advertising revolves around sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed at the top or to the right of the organic search results (usually in a coloured or shaded box). An advertiser pays an amount of money for visitors who click on these links and land on his or her web page.

Pay Per Click advertising involves bidding for the top or leading positions on search engine results pages and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services.

Generally, the rule has always been the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results. This has changed slightly in recent times with the addition of a quality score introduced by Google.

However, essentially the idea is to get as high as you can in the listings so more people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to your website. Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through to their website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

Cost Per Click (CPC)

Pay Per Position

Pay Per Ranking

Pay Per Performance

Pay Per Placement.

Setting up a PPC campaign would typically involve the following procedures.

Opening an account with a selected PPC search engine provider (usually free)

Researching and organizing a keywords list or phrases known as long tail keywords relevant to your business.

Bidding on the keywords or phrases to determine your position in the rankings.

Constructing a compelling attention grabbing ad copy.

Setting up a 'landing page' for your ads that will convert your prospects like crazy.

Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are numerous benefits to Pay Per Click advertising that can make it a very effective way of promoting a business 'online'.

You can launch almost immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly. They can go live within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.

PPC provides you extremely targeted traffic. The whole process of browsers clicking on a link that they are interested in narrows visitors down into 'qualified' prospects who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer.

PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, other than the organic search engine results that you may get from your SEO efforts, thus widening your reach.

Track and monitor your campaign. PPC advertising uses a tracking system that will record who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive. You can track the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are invaluable tools allowing you to monitor statistics such as your return on investment (ROI), the acquisition cost of each visitor and customer conversion rates allowing you to see the percentage of visitors that are converted to customers once they reach your landing page.

There are some important things to consider and adhere to when planning a pay per click campaign:

1. Understand your product and the reasons people would want to buy it. Understanding this allows you to determine which keywords or phrases will trigger the best reaction in your prospects, thus giving them a motivated reason to click on your ad.

2. Determine your daily or monthly budget and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in the forefront of your mind and not getting drawn into bidding wars. If a chosen phrase is too expensive then research another one. You might be bidding against a large corporation with very deep pockets.

3. Learn how to bid sensibly and effectively. A bid that is too high will rapidly wipe out your budget, while a bid that is too low can lose you a high and relevant spot on the page rankings. Carry out research on your competition. Discover how much are they are bidding on similar words?

4. Watch your profit margin. The purpose of the campaign is to return more in sales or leads than it costs you to get them. Measure your margin against your spending. Know when to pull out of the campaign.

5. Don't just guess on your keywords. Carry out some research using the free Google AdWords tool. Make an informed decision about which keyword phrases to bid for. Focus on specific and niche keywords. Avoid general terms and phrases. For example "Best Prices for Televisions" is very general whereas "Best Price for Sharp 54-inch Super Widescreen TV Model XYZ" is far more focussed and probably a cheaper keyword.

6. Construct compelling ads. A good PPC ad is one that grabs the prospect by the eyeballs and can command a call to action. There are several approaches to this:

Major benefits (Lose weight)

Direct Instructions (Go there now)

Discount offers

Free goods, reports or information

Testimonials.

Famous celebrity/endorsements

Money back guarantees

Free trials

Reverse Psychology (Get it now, this offer may be withdrawn at any time, scarcity etc)

7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your landing page should be optimized to convert. After all, you've paid real money to get the prospect to your site, so now is the time to sell them what they want.

8. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. Your website should be simple and designed in such a way that it will be easy to navigate and fast to load. Avoid animated start ups forcing your visitor to sit through a fancy flash introduction. Most visitors won't share your love of the creative. They will simply click away.

9. Include contact details to create a good impression and a feeling of security among potential customers. After all, the visitor may well be new to your site and knows nothing about you, your products or your services.

By using these simple rules and taking the time to learn about the various tools that are available, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing strategy that will maximize your return on investment and drive visitors and sales to your site much quicker than SEO alone

PPC Campaigns - The Mistakes to Avoid   How to Create a PPC Ad in Microsoft AdCenter   Focus Areas of Successful Google AdWords Management   Why Your Business Should Choose Google AdWord Solutions?   Use PPC Marketing to Boost Your Internet Business   

First Step in Your PPC Campaign Venture

The internet has a lot of benefits to offer to business owners and entrepreneurs. The people who are discovering the power and opportunity that they can get from the web is greatly increasing. Online shopping is changing the habits of shoppers. To avoid the line and squeezing in a crowd of people, they just go to their computers and look for online stores. It's fast and convenient. With this new behaviour, one can only take the opportunity to market one's goods and services to these people. There are a lot of methods that you can do to effectively advertise your business. One of the most common and highly successful methods is starting a PPC campaign. PPC means pay per click. You may find that the first step to this strategy is quite easy but can be quite hard if you have a well-organised management system to follow. If you know how to handle it, this can result to be a profitable venture. But if you don't have a firm grasp of the process, this could end badly as well. You need to familiarise yourself beforehand and do a lot of research so that you will be knowledgeable in every step of the way.

Thinking of a niche is the first thing that you should consider. It doesn't necessarily have to be only one niche. You can choose as many as you like as long as you can manage them well. Then the next thing you do is research for keywords to use. Look for keywords that are related to your niche. There are tools that you can use to find the words or phrases that customers will most likely type in the search engine. These tools range from free to paid versions. Of course paid ones will most likely offer you keywords that are laser targeted. You should also note that the keywords that you should use are not that competitive. Make use of long-tailed keywords as well. Add a specific area or city to target potential customers in a particular place. What would make your keywords even more effective is if it's relevant to the customers. People click on ads and they want to be directed to a website that's related to the link they just clicked. For example, when you are promoting weight loss, don't send them to a website about clothing and accessories. In addition to that, the search engine will charge you lesser if your ad keywords and the website you are linking to are related.

There are a lot of methods and procedures that you need to follow in order to be successful in your PPC advertising. Just take note to think of something that entices and attract the customer's attention. Don't be afraid to experiment and put some variety in your ads. Who knows, they might be the reason that you will have a good conversion rate.

PPC Campaigns - The Mistakes to Avoid   How to Create a PPC Ad in Microsoft AdCenter   Focus Areas of Successful Google AdWords Management   Why Your Business Should Choose Google AdWord Solutions?   Use PPC Marketing to Boost Your Internet Business   Targeting PPC Ads by Location   

Best PPC Tips for ECommerce Sites

I've been managing online marketing and advertising campaigns for several years. eCommerce sites are of particular interest to me versus B2B sites for the simple fact that it much easier to determine the efficacy of SEM (Search Engine Marketing) efforts when a sale or conversion is the goal. I want to share a few basic tips for Small Business owners who are creating or managing their E Commerce PPC campaigns. This isn't advice coming from a Google Certified Advertising Partner, but rather an entrepreneur who knows what it takes to launch a successful eCommerce site from scratch and grow it's success!

1. Have realistic expectations from the beginning. If it were easy to sell products online just by launching PPC advertising, every small business would be successful. The advantage of PPC advertising as far as SEM is concerned is the ability to target your advertisements to people searching for a similar product. The key here is "searching for". For example if you sell "hand painted purple colored rocks" chances are you'll find a very low search volume. On the other hand if you sell skin care products you'll find a very high search volume. Google, BING, and Facebook make their advertiser user interface very user friendly. They want you to use their service and spend money. The systems are not automatically opimized to spend that budget efficiently. That's up to you.

I've worked with a lot of Business owners and Brands that are convinced they have the next million dollar idea or product to sell. Just because you're passionate about it, does not guarantee the world will agree! Your friends, family, and colleagues may support you and substantiate your belief, however keep in mind they're supporting YOU. Your average customer has no personal connection to you or your Brand.

2. Know your conversion rates. Looking at your Google Analytics reports, or whatever program you use to measure traffic to your site, determine how many visits or clicks need to occur for you to make one sale. This is your conversion ratio. If it takes 100 clicks to make 1 sale, your conversion ratio is 1%. This is extremely valuable information to consider as it will help you determine how much you can bid or pay per click. Let's say your average sale is $34.95, you have a 1% conversion ratio, and you're paying $1.00 CPC. That means it would cost you $100 in PPC spend to earn one $34.95 sale. If that's the case something's not working and it's time to consult with someone experienced with eCommerce PPC Advertising for Small Business.

3. Budget, Budget, Budget. When allocating the investment to build your e commerce site and develop your product and stock your inventory, don'f forget to ear mark a budget for advertising. The most common pitfall I've experienced are Small Business owners who have spent their entire budget on developing their site and product, and have little left over to advertising. PPC Advertising is a testing game. It's nearly impossible to launch a PPC campaign and have outstanding success right out of the gate. The search engines place value on the history of your account. Just like gambling in Vegas, make sure your mindset is such that you're prepared to part with your advertising dollars without necessarily generating revenue initially. PPC advertising campaigns have to be contiuously monitored and tested in order to be optimized.

4. Know your audience. By design, PPC Advertising means you're only paying for clicks on your ad. However you don't just want any clicks, you want potential consumers to click. This is why setting targeting parameters with your PPC campaigns is so important as is the ad copy itself. You may be better off paying a slightly higher CPC if it means it's a consumer more likely to purchase your product!

PPC Campaigns - The Mistakes to Avoid   How to Create a PPC Ad in Microsoft AdCenter   Focus Areas of Successful Google AdWords Management   Why Your Business Should Choose Google AdWord Solutions?   Use PPC Marketing to Boost Your Internet Business   Targeting PPC Ads by Location   

Creating a Sales Funnel for a New Product: Part I

Before you can even begin to create your sales funnel, it's critical to first research the market viability of your product idea.

If you're a true entrepreneur, you probably have a million ideas zooming through your brain at any given moment. When you get particularly excited about an idea, it can be hard to be objective about it: Is there really a need for this product? Will people pay for it? Is someone already making this?

Even (and perhaps especially) if you're part of the target market for your product, it can be really hard to separate yourself from your idea and to know if there's a genuine need for it.

It's easy to get so excited that you move right past the planning and research stage and right into creating and marketing your product. The problem is that this is a great way to waste a ton of time and money.

Fortunately, there are some easy ways to get a sense of the market viability for your product, even if you only have a small research budget.

(By the way, we've covered this topic briefly in the past if you're looking for even more tips for determining market viability).

Keyword Research

It's never an exact science, but researching popular keywords can give you an idea of how popular a product may be. If you've come up with a completely original idea, you're likely not going to be looking for product searches, but you can look for questions related to the problem your product solves.

Check out the Competition

If your product is similar to one that's already on the market, make sure you're doing some sleuthing - sign up for your competitors' mailing lists and follow them on Facebook and Twitter. Watching their social media interactions can be very telling. For instance, if you see a common complaint mentioned again and again on their Facebook pages, this gives you a pretty good indication of ways you can improve your product and increase its market viability.

Talk Directly to Your Target Market

Conduct focus groups, call up people you may know in your target market, send out surveys, ask questions or create polls on your Facebook page. Any way you can think of to ask people who are actually part of your target demographic. There's no substitute for going straight to the source.

Just don't assume that because someone indicates they think it's a good idea that they'll actually buy it. Surveys are a good way to get general information, but take them with a big grain of salt.

Look for Unmet Needs

Visit online forums in your niche to get a sense of any unmet needs in your niche. Again, this is by no means an exact science, but can give you a general idea of whether your product is actually needed.

Use Dry Testing

Perhaps one of the best ways to see if there's an actual need for your product is to use dry testing. Dry testing is the process of selling a product before it's been created.

While it can definitely give you a good sense of viability, BE CAREFUL. It can easily make people feel misled or duped if done incorrectly.

It basically involves creating a sales page, but instead of the "buy now" button leading to a payment page, it leads to a page that explains that "this product is not yet available. Get on our list to be notified when it's ready."' Be really careful not to string people along.

Once you've conducted some basic market research, it's time to start creating your sales funnel. I'll cover this topic in my next post, so be sure to watch out so you don't miss it!

PPC Campaigns - The Mistakes to Avoid   How to Create a PPC Ad in Microsoft AdCenter   Focus Areas of Successful Google AdWords Management   Why Your Business Should Choose Google AdWord Solutions?