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There are quite a few pay per click pricing models. The one that might be best for cash-strapped small business owners though is the “hourly consultation” model. Following are three reasons why.

3 Reasons Why the Hourly Consultation Works Great for Small Businesses with Limited Budgets

1. No Long-Term Commitment: This is the most obvious reason. No long-term commitments means there’s no danger of overspending. You’re not locked into a contract that you may be able to afford today, but not tomorrow.

2. Knowledge on a Dime: What we mean by this is, you may already have knowledge about pay per click marketing. But, you’re a little fuzzy about one or two areas and want to get some help to better understand them.

So, you hire a PPC marketing consultant or go to a pay per click training workshop to fill in the blanks, so to speak. This can pay huge dividends because just one or two tweaks learned at an informative seminar or pointed out by a pay per click expert can vastly improve your ROI, and lower your costs to boot.

You can literally save thousands with the right knowledge.

3. Learn and Implement as You Go: When you use this PPC pricing model, it can really help you to become a better pay per click marketer. How?

When you pay for knowledge, it’s because you really want to know something. With this level of passion, you tend to implement what you learn as quickly as possible. And, it’s in the very doing that you learn what works, what doesn’t why, what needs to be changed, what else can be tried, etc.

As these three reasons highlight, if you’re a small business owner with a limited pay per click marketing budget, it can actually be a blessing. For, it forces you to use the resources you have much more wisely – and this is a lesson that you can’t fit in a “pricing model.”

Every pay per click marketer knows that the success of any campaign depends on the keyword selection. But, it goes a step further than simply choosing the right keywords. Once chosen, keywords should be classified.

What Is Keyword Classification?
Keyword classification is where a pay per click marketer categorizes keyword phrases according to where they should be used during the sales process. For example, let’s say you have 75 keywords that you want to use in your pay per click campaign. You would go through and group your keywords by which action they are likely to cause prospects to take.

In the beginning of the buying process, you’d probably want to use keywords that generate qualified traffic and interest. The types of keywords you’d use during this phase are broad.

For example, let’s say you were selling affordably priced laptops. Some keywords you’d use might be cheap laptops, discount laptops, etc. During the middle part of the buying process, consumers want more information. So key phrases used during this phase might include those that lean toward things like product reviews and consumer feedback (eg, cheap laptop reviews).

During the final part of the buying process, consumers are usually focused on specifics. So, your pay per click keyword phrases might include specific products and brands (eg, Dell Inspiron Mini 12).

The key to any pay per click campaign is planning. Hitting small goals along the way will ensure that you convert more prospects overall.

The reason Pay Per Click advertising is so popular is that everyone can do it – with a budget as little as $50 or $100 (or less). But, not all clicks are created equal. Some can cost mere pennies, while others can go for tens or hundreds of dollars each.

So, how do you determine how much you want to spend per click? Well, it’s an art.

Pay Per Click Marketing: 2 Tips on How to Spend Little and Gain Big

Budget: Start with the amount in your budget to determine how many clicks you can get. For example, if you have a $100 per month budget and you bid on a keyword that is 25 cents per click, then you can afford 400 clicks per month.

If you bid on a keyword that is $5, then you can only get 20 clicks. So obviously, the larger your budget the more clicks you can afford. And, this is why you’ll always see the big boys at the top. You won’t be able to outbid them.

Now comes the cool part though that does allow you to spend a little, and still gain a lot.

Position Smartly: As in, don’t even shoot for being number one. As we discussed in the post, Pay Per Click Marketing: 3 Tips for Quicker Results, “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. . . . [but won’t buy].”

This wastes money.

The best strategy is to position yourself high enough to bypass the tire kickers, while keeping your cost per click as low as possible. In order to do this, you have to know which keywords to use to get you in this “sweet spot.” It’s an art, and takes time and testing, but well worth learning. 

At PPC Summit, we teach you this and a whole lot more about how to be successful as a pay per click marketer.