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

If you’re a Google AdWords pay per click marketer, you know how important it is to rank high for the right keywords. However, many PPC marketers pay too much – unintentionally. Following is one way they do so, and how to avoid it.

Are Your Organic Listings Robbing You of Valuable Pay Per Click Dollars?

In the 8/24/09 post here entitled, Get FREE Traffic with Pay Per Click Marketing, we stated:

Once you start to get traffic [via paid search methods like pay per click], 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 (emphasis added) traffic results – ie, getting free traffic.

The point is, traffic brought via pay per click ads can result in higher organic listings. So for example, if your site is ranking in the top 3 in organic listings, check to see if you can adjust your bid(s) to be in the fourth or fifth position.

As you already hold spots in the top 3 organically, there’s no need to spend more pay per click dollars to rank in those positions.

How to Get Double the Bank for Your Buck Using Google Pay Per Click Advertising

To further capitalize on this, make your Google AdWords pay per click marketing dollars do double duty. How? When you’re doing your keyword research for your AdWords campaigns, optimize your pages so that they rank high for these same keywords organically.

When used in this manner, Google pay per click marketing makes an excellent “tester” for your search engine optimization efforts, for it measures the possible success/failure of keywords before you go through the time-intensive process of optimizing your pages using them.

If you want to learn important strategies for AdWords success, then sign on and listen to the expert led sessions during the AdWords Advantage Online Summit going on now through March 25th!

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!

In our latest newsletter, we discussed how to Get the Biggest Bang for Your PPC Buck this Holiday Season. We want to to take another look at this topic and add a little bit more to it. The holiday season is so short and the economy is still struggling, so we’re staying on you a little bit so you can get the most out of it and start off the new year in good shape. 

Hire Help: one of the best things you can do right now is to hire help or outsource work. “But,” you may be thinking, “I can’t afford to hire help. My sales don’t support adding additional staff.”

We don’t mean hire staff to help with sales; we mean hire help so you can get sales. For example, if you haven’t done your “holiday” keyword research, then outsource it so you can get that Christmas, Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Solstice campaign up and going!

Start Early: Do you notice that every year the holiday decorations, holiday TV ads and holiday radio announcements seem to come earlier every year? This is because merchants are extending their selling season.

After all, the sooner shoppers start thinking about the holidays, the sooner they start shopping. What have you done to extend your holiday sales season? Offer early bird holiday coupons on you landing pages, use holiday language in all of your pay per click ads, “decorate your website, blog, landing pages (ie, use holiday themes), etc.

As an online marketer, your holiday doesn’t have a definitive date; it’s not Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day or New Years Day. Your holiday has a “selling” season – and it’s right now. Are your pay per click campaigns reflecting that? If not, then check out the AdWords Advantage Online Summit - it’s a must-attend online training event to help pay per click advertisers increase AdWords results!

Recently, Google started sending pay per click marketers their account performance data via email. This information has always been available to PPC marketers, but you had to log into your account to get it.

The reason getting this information via email is so important is because it:
(i) reminds you to check on your pay per click campaigns; and (ii) allows you to take a few minutes to tweak what may not be working.

So if you see an email with the following subject line land in your inbox, take a break and see what it says, for one or two insights gleaned from these reports can significantly increase your ROI. AdWords Oct 2009 Account Performance. Customer ID: (Your Customer ID Number)?

This is for October 2009, obviously.
Following is one way to quickly use the info in your Google’s Account Performance Reports to increase your ROI.

The report is categorized into four sections, ie: Account Overview; Keywords with the Most Clicks; Ad with the Most Clicks; and Content Sites with the Most Clicks.

If you’re pressed for time and can’t analyze all the data, as keywords drive success in pay per click marketing, go directly to the “Keywords with the Most Clicks” section. Using the info there, you can make do two things:

I. Increase Organic Traffic: As you have a list of your high-performing keywords there, use this to create keyword-rich copy for your website. You’ll drive organic traffic, in addition to the traffic you’re paying for.

II. Tweak Poorer Performing Ads: Add these high-performing keywords to ads that aren’t performing as well as you thought.

If you get in the habit of checking your pay per click ads when your Google Account Performance Report lands in your inbox, you don’t have to worry about settling into a pattern many PPC marketers fall into, ie, “set it and forget it” marketing.

It’s not hard to make money with Google AdWords, but many fail to do so because they make it more complicated than it needs to be.

Keep it simple by doing the following:

Decide On Your Offer: Putting together a successful AdWords campaign starts NOT with keywords, but with your offer. Why? Because you have to be very clear about this before you move on to selecting your keywords.

For example, if you operated an online bookstore, do you want to send readers to the romance section, the science fiction section or the history section? “But,” you may be thinking, “I don’t care what they buy, as long as they buy something.”

We counter with, in order to get browsers to “buy something,” you have to first get them interested in “buying what interests them.” And, this is where you get specific.

Think of it like a local bookstore they may wander into. A reader may pop in to buy a specific book, but once there, they start to browse and come out with two, three or four things.

The bottom line here is – web surfers don’t care about making a purchase from you. What they do care about is getting that book that their friend, mother, aunt, etc. recommended.

If your specific pay per click ad landed them in your online store, you have a chance of making that sale.
Use Keywords Effectively: Once you have tightly focused your offer, now you can move on to doing effective keyword research. Here again, be specific. When choosing keywords remember, it’s not about how much traffic a keyword will bring, but how much “qualified” traffic it will bring.

Rock the Landing Page! Round out your campaign by having a clear, concise, professional landing page that gets prospects where they want to be. Don’t make them surf to find what your ad promised. Land them there directly.

If you do these three things, you will be well on your way to Google AdWords campaign success.

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About the Author
Want to out perform your Google AdWords competitors? Attend the AdWords Advantage Online Summit (Dec. 1-17) and learn how to fast-track your pay per click marketing profits. Register now and save 40% at http://www.AdWordsAdvantage.com.

Last week here, we explained how video ads work. Now that you know that, this week we wanted to give you two specific tips for making them work for you.

Memorable Image: “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Many pay per click marketers who use video advertising forget this. They get so caught up in the medium that they forget that the medium should serve an end purpose – ie, convert the viewer.

Your image should immediately capture your viewers in some way – intrigue them, amuse them, enlighten them.

How can you make an image memorable? A lot of what you do will depend on your type of business, but following are two quick ideas:

(i) Use Bright Colors: This is particularly effective if you use a black background in your ad.
(ii) Sparse Text: Many PPC marketers try to cram too much text into their ad. But sparsely worded ads can be very powerful. In fact, one famous copywriter used just two words in a headline once (Free. Money.) No explanation, no details, nothing. It was very effective.

Once you have their attention, you can . . .
Make Them Act: This is where a call-to-action statement comes into play. Just because it’s video does not mean you abandon some tried-and-true marketing practices. Do you want them to sign up to your newsletter, request more information, make an immediate purchase, call you, etc.? Whatever it is, let them know.

If you do these two things – at a minimum – you will be well on your way to creating very successful pay per click video ads. Want to learn more? Don’t miss Pay Per Click Summit coming to the Double Tree Hotel in Chicago, IL on November 4-5, 2009.

Even novices to pay per click marketing know that the profit – or loss – is in the keyword selection. To learn more about keyword selection, read, [How to] Classify Your Keywords for Better Pay Per Click Results. Building on the lessons in this article is another piece of the keyword selection puzzle, ie, long tail keywords.

In case you don’t know, long tail keywords are simply multi-phrase search queries web surfers type in to find stuff, eg, “antique car parts mercedes” is a phrase someone who is restoring an old Mercedes might type in to find parts.

Following is the number one reason to spend time ferreting out long-tail keywords.
Long Tail Keywords Signal Serious BuyersThis may be the most important reason to focus on long-tail keywords. It makes sense when you think about how web surfers search for and make purchasing decisions on the web. The more serious a web surfer is about buying, the more focused their search gets.

In the long-tail keyword phrase above, a non-serious surfer might have typed in simply “antique car parts.” But, this surfer qualified it with a car make. To get more specific, they may type in something like “antique car parts mercedes” and “1956 carburetor”.

See how specificity tends to mean the buyer is serious. They’re looking for specific information for a reason – they have a problem they need solved.

So, the next time you sit down to do keyword research for your pay per click campaign, don’t forget that the long-tail is a very profitable keyword center. Don’t ignore it. 

In the post, Pay Per Click Advertising: 3 Things for the Busy Fall Season, we discussed some areas to assess to improve your pay per click marketing results when the fall season rolls around. And, although it’s technically still summer, the busy fall season IS here (after Labor Day is when things tend to kick off).

Now that it is, you may be wondering, “What specifically do I need to do to increase sales with my PPC campaign?” Rather than give you a list of tips – which you may or may not get around to following – we thought it best to share with you three traits we’ve identified that almost every successful pay per click marketer has – or should develop.

Diligence: The hardest part of success is the monotony of doing what it takes – day in and day out – to succeed. This means doing your keyword research, setting up different landing pages, tweaking your website, etc. In short, doing what’s necessary to succeed as a PPC marketer.

Patience: This trait is closely tied to diligence, for you have to test, test and retest pay per click advertising to know what’s working, what’s not working, what may work, what did not work, why, etc. Nothing about pay per click marketing is “set it and forget it.”

It is hands on, which makes it exciting – and frustrating – at the same time.

Knowledge Seeker: As pay per click marketing is a form of internet marketing, it constantly changes. This means staying abreast of emerging technologies, PPC marketing rules, search engine guidelines, etc.

If you have – or can develop – these three traits, then pair it with some basic pay per click marketing knowledge, you will be well on your way to succeeding as an online marketer.

Learn more pay per click marketing by attending the next PPC Summit coming to Los Angeles Sept. 23-24 and Chicago Nov. 4-5. Check out the excting new session topics and agenda at www.ppcsummit/agenda. Register by Sept. 15th and SAVE 35% with code LI.