Pay Per Click StrategiesBetter Search Engine Marketing / Pay-Per-Click Results Start Here – We Guarantee It!

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.
 

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.

You can have a killer AdWords ad, but still not be getting the conversion rates you want. It’s at this point that many pay-per-click advertisers start to shake their heads, wring their hands and tweak their ads. Don’t. Stop!

You’ve forgotten to do one thing. What is it? Take a look at your landing page. Remember, your AdWords ad and your landing page are like a married couple – it takes the two of them working in concert to be effective.

If you’re getting lots of clicks on your AdWords ad, but you’re not converting those clicks into sales, then your landing page may be the culprit. Following are some landing page areas to assess to increase your pay-per-click ad results.

Landing Page Areas to Assess to Increase Your AdWords Conversion Rates

Copywriting: Many times, PPC advertisers will spend hours and hours on the 130 words or so of an AdWords ad, but they spend practically no time on the few thousand words that can make up a landing page.

For example, does your landing page deliver on the promise of your AdWords ad? Does it boldly state the benefits? Does it differentiate your product/service from your competition? All of this needs to be present before customers will part with their hard-earned dollars.

Don’t Oversell: What we mean by this is, don’t try to sell a prospect on every product or service you offer. Remember, confused customers don’t buy. If you’ve gotten them to click through, deliver on the promise in the ad they clicked on.

Ease of Payment: Does your site make it easy for prospects to purchase? If not, change it. This is a simple fix.

Your landing page is every bit as important as your AdWords ad. The two work together to make the sale for you. So if your AdWords ad is doing its part, make sure that your landing page is also.

Learn more at the upcoming PPC Summits in Chicago (April 22 – 23) or New York (May 13-14)! Register now and save $400 at www.ppcsummit.com.

In the post, Pay Per Click Headlines: 3 Ways to Change It and Increase Your ROI, we discussed how what may seem like small little changes to your headline can produce big results. Continuing in this vein, we will discuss the most powerful words in the English language – and how you can use them in your body copy to increase your ROI.

In his book, How to Make Presentations that Teach and Transform, Garmston references a Yale study on words. He writes:

. . . the most powerful words in the English language are those “that affect us most directly.” They include you, easy, love, free, save, discover, health, success, proven, guaranteed, results and new. They are powerful because everyone is concerned about health, safety, relationships and security. 

Now that you know what the words are, how can you use them to increase your Pay Per Click ROI? Perhaps the best way to explain it is to tell you the best thing not to do. 

Don’t Try to Sell Every Benefit

This is one mistake many Pay Per Click marketers make. It’s ineffective because it can muddy your primary message. Remember, the goal of an AdWords ad is to get qualified prospects to click. State one or two benefits that you think will appeal to your target audience – and marry it with one of the above words. 

For example, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. An effective ad using two of the seven most “powerful words” might read something like: 

Valentine Roses: $18.95
Free Shipping If Order Recd by 2/13
Guaranteed, On-Time V-Day Delivery
www.xyzrosesite.com 

The benefits stated in this ad are “free shipping” and “guaranteed delivery.” These are two critical benefits that appeal to someone who really wants to send roses to their special someone on Valentine’s Day. 

Don’t delay, register now and get huge savings for upcoming PPC Summits in Chicago, New York and LA!