Wanna know the easiest way to capitalize on all the leads your Google AdWords pay per click marketing efforts are bringing you?

Get organized BEFORE you start an AdWords campaign. It’s so simple that most internet marketers don’t even think about.

The Psychographics of the Average Internet Marketer

We say this a little tongue-in-cheek, but really, the average internet marketer is so overwhelmed that they wind up doing only what is necessary to keep things rocking along. This is why most never get around to things like categorizing leads, doing follow up, designing special offers for their various niches, cross-marketing to their database, etc.

You can take class after class, learn “inside secret” after inside secret and buy the latest pay per click campaign management software, but if you don’t take the time to get organized – to use all of these tools – you will never realize their full potential.

Google PPC Marketing Advice: What to Do Before You Start Your Pay Per Click Campaign

So, before you start a Google pay per click campaign, decide:

How you’re going to store leads (do have a way to capture leads don’t you?). You should store them with some type of data management software;

When you’re going to follow up;

How often; and

With what kind of offer.

This is the bare minimum.

Keeping the Pareto Principle in mind (ie, 80% of your sales will come from 20% of your customers) you should have no problem increasing your bottom line if you get organized – before you start your Google AdWords pay per click campaign.

Have you heard? The AdWords Advantage Online Summit starts this week (Mar. 9)– there’s still time to register and save 40%!  Learn how to fast-track your AdWords profits during 14 educational sessions led by the Pay Per Click experts on March 9-30, 2010.

Just announced….The AdWords Advantage Online Summit (AAOS) has announced the schedule of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising online training classes to be held  March 9-30, 2010.  All AAOS participants will save 40% upon registration by the early bird date (March 4).

“Next week we will unveil the first ever online educational AdWords training summit for marketers to learn unbiased Google AdWords techniques from experts who have run multi-million dollar Google AdWords campaigns,” said Mary O’Brien, Adwords Advantage Online Summit and PPC Summit Founder.

 These 14 educational classes uncover the value of AdWords tools, resources and methodologies, and gives students ample opportunity to learn how to improve their AdWords campaigns through hands-on guidance for results at the top of Google.

Each one hour class will teach advertisers step by step how to leverage AdWords to their advantage and develop more profitable campaigns. Attendees will learn Google AdWords Pay Per Click solutions for all business types — Ecommerce, B2B, SMBs and more. Attendees will be able to access the recorded class for 90 days.

AdWords Advantage Online Summit Training Schedule (March 9-25):

> AdWords Optimization in Challenging Times
> Promoting to the Right People at the Right Time - Ad Scheduling & Geo-Targeting
> Assign Proper Attribution and Solve the Complexities of Measurement
> The New AdWords Interface – Save Time and Optimize Your AdWords Campaigns
> AdWords on Steroids: Implement Advanced Strategies Leave Your Competitors Gasping
> Slash Click Costs (37%) & Increase CTR (82%) Using Mathematical Formulas
> 30 Tips in 60 Minutes: Convert MORE AdWords Visitors into Buyers
> Understanding the B2B Buyer Sphere: How to Apply Enquiro’s Latest Research to AdWords
> Utilizing SEO and Social Media Marketing to Improve AdWords Strategy
> Researching and Managing Keywords-the Key to Google AdWords Success
> Get the Most out of Google Analytics & Google AdWords
> Contextual Advertising – Best Practices and Hot New Secrets
> AdWords for Local: Sort Heads from Tails, Find Free Clicks and Calls 

More information at AdWords Advantage Online Summit.

Everyone has inherent traits that affect their job performance. Before you wonder if you’ve landed on the right blog (yes, this blog is about pay per click marketing), let’s explain how this can help – or hurt – your Google AdWords PPC marketing success.

For example, if you’re super competitive, you may have to do some ego checking at the door. Why? Because it can cause you to get into a bidding war – not because the keyword phrases are the absolute best ones for you to use – but because you want to command the top spot on Google.

This not only costs you time and money, it can cost you Pay Per Click sales as well. How? As stated in the post, Recession-Proof Your Pay Per Click Campaigns:

. . . research has proven that being number one isn’t necessarily the best spot to be in. . . . Because you get  a lot of curiosity seekers who’ll click on ads in this spot. An ad in the third, fourth or even the fifth spot can convert [even] better.

Luckily, Google’s Pay Per Click program makes it easy for you to control costs. If you do your part (eg, controlling inherent impulses that can lead to negative campaign results), Google does the rest by giving you tools like:

(i) the ability to set a daily ad budget so you never have to worry about overspending;
(ii) in-depth reports to track how your campaigns are going; and
(iii) and the ability to start, stop and/or change your ad campaigns at any given moment.

This is what makes pay per click marketing with Google an ideal choice for new and experienced online retailers.

To learn more about how to fast-track your AdWords success, attend the AdWords Advantage free preview webinar on March 2 to learn money-making tips from the experts!

It’s October, which in some cases, means that you’re already late to the game if you haven’t put together a PPC holiday marketing plan.

The great thing about pay per click marketing though is that you can be up and running in minutes.

Following are three things you can do to ensure more profits this holiday season.

Holiday Keywords: Add holiday keywords to your PPC campaigns. This is a basic that many pay per click marketers forget – especially newbies. What are some of these: pre-Christmas sale; post-holiday sale; black Friday deals; holiday fragrances; holiday gifts for her/him; etc.

Bundle Products & Services: Last-minute shoppers tend to be stressed out because they’ve waited until — well, the last minute. The more you can pack into an offer, usually the easier the sale. This is why things like gift baskets tend to be great sellers. You ostensibly get “more for your money.” And, this is what every shopper wants – especially the procrastinators. Give it to’em!

Sell the Ease; Not Your Product: Many pay per click marketers are hyper-focused on selling their particular product or services. But again, especially around the holidays, shoppers are looking for more than this. What are they particularly looking for? Ease and convenience.

So sell the ease of online shopping – and live up to it. The easier you make it for prospects to order from you, the better. So do as much as you can to entice them, eg, offer free shipping, offer a generous return policy, offer a discount for ordering online, etc.

Note: Don’t offer services that are detrimental to your bottom line just to secure a sale; but make every effort to sell as much ease and convenience as you can.

By following these basic pay per click holiday marketing tips, you can help to ensure a profitable holiday season.

The title of this post sounds like an oxymoron, we know. But we’ll explain why it’s really not. You really can use your Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign to drive free traffic to your site.

Successful Affiliate Marketer Explains How Pay Per Click Marketing Drives Free Traffic
No matter how much money you invest in pay per click marketing, only a certain percentage of it will come from these efforts. Now, it may be significant, for sure. For example, one successful affiliate marketer says that about 60% of her traffic comes from PPC advertising.

She goes on to explain that she uses PPC to drive traffic to her sites initially. And then, something amazing happens. She says that once you drive traffic using this paid method, the search engines stand up and take notice of your site. The reason is simple – search engines pay attention to sites that get traffic; they rank them higher.

Now, it’s like that success feeds on itself. Once you start to get traffic, search engines notice. Once search engines notice, they rank your site higher – which means it gets even more traffic.

This last part is significant because it means you start showing up higher in organic traffic results – ie, getting free traffic.

The bottom line — even with a small budget, pay per click marketing is a great way to start getting traffic to your site. As discussed here, this initial push can get you on the path to getting free (ie, organic) traffic.

Choosing the right keywords is vital to success as a pay per click marketer, as we discussed in the post, Create Pay Per Click Keywords that Get Results. The advice dispensed in this post gives you everything you need to think about when putting together a keyword list.

Here, we want to add one more thing to this list – how to choose “buyer” keywords.

What Are “Buyer” Keywords?
Our definition of these is keywords where prospects are looking to buy (NOT investigate, compare or anything else).

“But,” you may be thinking, “how do I know what these are?”

It’s relatively easy. In last week’s post, Classify Your Keywords for Better Pay Per Click Results, we discussed categorizing keyword phrases according to where they should be used during the sales process.

Use Google’s Keyword AdWord Tool to Choose Buyer Keywords
Almost all pay per click marketers use Google’s Keyword AdWord Tool to find the best keywords for their PPC campaigns. But you should take it a step further and choose actions over objects. Let’s explain further using an example.

For example, let’s say that you ran a pay per click campaign for your company, which offers bike tours through Central Park in New York City. You’ve done your keyword research and see that “bike tours NYC” is a popular keyword phrase.

But, this is a noun (“object”). A more effective keyword phrase may be “book bike tours NYC”. A person looking to who types in the keyword phrase “bike tours NYC” is more likely to be interested buying now that a person who types in “bike tours NYC”.

See the difference?

And, this is what we mean by choosing “buyer” keywords for your pay per click marketing campaigns.
 

Sometimes internet marketing experts get so wrapped up in dispensing the latest advice on all the cool new gadgets and tricks of the trade that we forget to remind webmasters of the basics.

So because spring has sprung and most of us are having a hard time focusing, this week we’re going to remind you of a few basics about internet marketing. So here’s part information and part inspiration to get you on the road to pay per click marketing success.

 3 Things You Can Do Today to Achieve Pay Per Click Success

1. Start: Most of us put off starting until we know how to do x, y or z. Don’t! If you’ve been wanting to run a pay per click campaign, put one together and let it run. You don’t have to spend a huge amount of money (in fact we suggest that you don’t if you’re new), but do start a campaign. Sometimes, just seeing your ad pop up will get you excited about the next step, which is . . .

2. Familiarize Yourself w/ PPC Tools: You can start by reading the tutorials on Google. The keyword adword tool and the search-based tool are excellent places to start. They will show you how to get the best keywords for your campaign, as well as host of other information on how to run a successful pay per click campaign.

3. Study the Competition: This is perhaps the best thing you can do to ensure PPC success. You can severely shorten your learning curve by looking at the competition to see what’s working – and equally as important – what’s not.

It’s understandable to be a little lax this time of year. After all, the flowers are blooming and the sunshine is calling you outside. But, take your laptop, sit in your favorite café, sip your latte and get these PPC basics down pat. Then, when it’s time for you to really put the pedal to the PPC metal, you’ll go from 0 to 60 in profits in no time.
 

Running a Pay Per Click campaign can help your organic search results. Many are surprised by this because internet marketing is usually divided into two camps – paid or non-paid results.

What are Organic Results?

If you’re new to internet marketing, the phrase “organic results” may elude you. Organic search results are simply non-paid results that pop up when you conduct a web search.

What are Paid Search Results?

Paid results are those across the top and to the right. They usually appear under a heading like “Sponsored Links,” or in a shaded box at the top. Advertisers have paid to be put in these positions.

Both are highly effective forms of internet marketing, but knowing which method to focus on, when, and how to combine them to produce the best results can be confusing – not to mention expensive – if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Pay Per Click and Organic Search: The Perfect Internet Marketing Strategy
The short answer to why the two strategies work so well together is time and links.

To explain, pay per click campaigns can start to deliver traffic to your site immediately. If you have done your job on the content end, then those visitors who find you via a pay per click ad will then start to link to relevant content on your site. The more one-way links your site has, the higher it moves up in organic search results.

Organic campaigns like article marketing can take weeks or months to show measureable results. By getting that initial influx of traffic via pay per click marketing, you jumpstart your online marketing campaign.

Most of us don’t pay much attention to our pennies. When we’re checking our wallets for cash we don’t count pennies; when checking our bank statements, we focus on the dollars and not so much the cents.

But, did you know that you can use your pennies to beat the AdWords competition? It’s a huge, cost-saving search engine marketing strategy that can mean the difference between being the highest bidder for a particular keyword and losing the AdWords bidding war.

When marketers set up an AdWords campaign, most of the focus is on the even numbers, ie, $0.10, $0.20, $0.40, $1.00, $1.20, etc. Why? No one really knows, but one the fact is that if you focus your bids on odd numbers (eg, $0.11, $0.21, $0.41), you significantly increase your odds of winning the bid for a keyword without breaking your budget.

Here’s an example: Let’s take the keyword “marketing.” The average CPC or Cost-Per-Click is $3.88 (Google AdWords Keyword Research). If you bid just one cent above, you would be the winning bidder at $3.89.

Now take a moment to review the average cost per click on random keywords. You will quickly discover that more times than not, the majority of the bids are even numbers. While you may not have the budget to bid $3.00 on a keyword, know that this method applies to all keywords, in all of the AdWords programs.

If you’d like to learn about other winning AdWords strategies like this, join the AdWords experts at the upcoming PPC Summit Chicago or New York. They have the knowledge and experience to help make your AdWords campaign a success.

Remember trying to solve the rubik’s cube? Getting all the colors to match was a feat only a few managed to achieve. Pay Per Click campaigns can be like this — finicky little creatures with the power to drive you mad. But, you don’t give up because the fun is in trying. Luckily, pay per click campaigns are simpler to solve than the rubik’s cube. Following is one straightforward way to maximize results.

Split Test Campaigns: A Magic PPC Bullet?

A key step in every successful pay-per-click campaign is optimization. But to know which elements of optimization works best, you have to test, test and retest. This is why split testing can be the magic PPC bullet.

What is split testing? It’s when you create two different versions of some parts of your PPC campaign, then run them against each other. For example, take the headline. Leaving everything else alone in the ad, you would change the headline, run the ads and see which one pulled in better results.

Split testing can even be done on elements within elements. Say you used the same headline but used different punctuation within that headline, eg:

>Mothers Day Flowers: $20

>Mothers Day Flowers – $20

Something as simple as punctuation can dramatically improve your click thru rates. Obviously, the ad with the highest click thru rate would be the winner of the split test.

Successful PPC campaign managers know that split testing is vital to their online marketing success. You can use it to improve landing page results, headlines, AdWords copy, etc.

In essence, you can split test your way to PPC campaign success.

Learn all of this and more at PPC Summit, register now and save $400!