How to Make Your Online Business CLICK With PPC Advertising

To state the obvious for those to whom it is not obvious, PPC stands for Pay Per Click. There are several companies on the internet now selling clicks, making it one of the most popular forms of advertising on the planet today. The biggest and best known of these is Google’s Adwords. PPC works by the placement of ads, usually text ads on websites. The beneficiaries of these ads only pay the advertising company and the website owner when someone clicks on the ad. These ads also show up in search engines and email other locations on the internet. The ads are usually placed close to the top of the page beside search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount for visitors who click on these links or banners and land on their web page.

Most PPC companies have variable payment systems where the advertisers bid for the top position for their keywords. In Google Adwords this often means that the top bidder pays less than the bidders below him. This is because there are other factors involved in the order of ad placement such as the click through rate (CTR) and relevance etc. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services. The higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results or the better the position, the more the people will find the ad and click on it and to go to the advertiser’s website.

When the ad is clicked on the advertiser would pay the bidding price for that click.

There are other slightly different forms of PPC advertising. They are known as:

• Pay per placement
• Pay per performance
• Pay per ranking
• Pay per position
• Cost per click (CPC)

The procedure for setting up a PPC campaign usually follows these steps:

1. Set up an account and deposit funds to cover your campaign.

2. Research your keywords and create a keyword list for the intended product or website.

3. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases. (Start Low)

4. Writing your ad copy (i.e. content). Make sure to include the keywords you intend to use in your campaign.

5. Setting up the 'landing pages' for your ads.

6. Writing the ads containing your keywords and placing the advertisement in the search engine.

The Advantages of PPC
PPC advertising has many benefits to anyone involved in internet marketing. The first and most obvious is that it is quick. You can set up an account and get started immediately. Your ad can be displayed online within an hour. Secondly the quality of the traffic is second to none. The visitor clicked on your ad containing your keywords and therefore must be looking for what you have. It is up to you and your website to convert these prospects into buyers when they get there. This should be easier with PPC traffic than with other visitors because they came looking for your product.

You can show your ad in places that you might never show an ad using any other form of advertising. It is easy to track the success of your advertising investment. You can sometimes use the PPC system for this and if not there are many people selling the software needed to track your clicks and many of these give you far more detailed information than your PPC company would do.

The PPC campaign itself will not help you with your search results. But, if you do your PPC campaign properly you will probably find that your search engine results are improving. This is because it gets you to focus on your keywords and your search engine optimisation (SEO) in a way that you would not otherwise do.

What to consider when planning to set up a PPC campaign

1. Know your product. Examine your product closely. Make a list of your product’s benefits and the problems it solves and basically why people should buy it.
2. Research your price. What are similar products selling for online. What have the other products got that yours does not have. Does your product have something that similar products do not have? If so, you may be able to charge more.
3. Plan your spending. Budget for the PPC campaign. How much can you afford to pay per click and still make a worthwhile profit? Do not exceed this amount. And do not get involved in a bidding war. This can lead to you spending more than you ever intended.
4. Start small. Start Small. Start Small. Get the message? If you were already a PPC expert, you might not be reading this article. So, I will assume that you are not doing too well at it yet. The most important thing to know is that for no particular reason different things work well for different people. You must learn what is going to work well for you. You can get tips and help from people who know, but they will not all work as well for your website or your product as they did for the person who advised you. So start small. Do your research. Change your ads and use the ones that give the best results. Then change your ads again. Keep improving. You can increase your spending according as you become more successful. If you do not have the success you hoped for, at least you have not blown the mortgage. Right?
5. Keep a close eye on your spending. Check in with your PPC account at least once per day. Check your budget and see if the two are compatible. If not, make an adjustment. If your PPC is costing more than you intended reduce your spending there, do not increase your budget to cover your spending. That is unless you are selling enough to comfortably cover your expenses.
6. Research your keywords again. This is an ongoing process. People change. Fashions and trends change. You have to keep up with these trends and changes. A keyword might work very well today and next month or next week that keyword is not as effective any more. It could simply be that a new word has become more popular for the same product. Keep checking.
7. Keep updating your ads. You never know what is going to work for you when it comes to text ads. You have to keep changing them. You will most likely have several ads running in the same PPC campaign. If you have not, get over there right after reading this and create some more ads. Always have your best ad running with some new ones that you are trying out. As soon as that best ad is beaten by another replace it with the new one and continue like that until you have a few good ads. Then what? You keep doing it. There is always room for improvement and things keep changing. So you have to keep changing too.

Writing ads that work

A good ad is a persuasive ad. Ads are usually intended to persuade people to do something. This thing usually involves the spending of money. So you could say that ads are there to sell. If your ad persuades people to spend money on your website of product, it is successful. So, what makes an ad successful? There are several approaches to this:

1. You can demonstrate the effectiveness of your product. (Show that it does what it says on the tin)
2. Give discounts. Two for one deals etc.
3. Endorsements. Get people who are well known for their expertise in the area of your product to endorse it.
4. Celebrity Endorsements. This often works even better than having someone who knows what they are talking about recommend your product.
5. Money back guarantees. Reduce the risk to the shopper of buying your product. People often do not buy products because they are afraid of spending their hard earned money on a product that either does not work or does not arrive. A money back guarantee often reassures people that if things do not work out, they will not be at a loss.
6. Free Trials. Offering free trials can give people the opportunity to see that the product will do what it is supposed to. They can try the product out and if it works out they can pay for it. If it does not work out the time runs out and they either give back the product or pay. With digital products the product can be set to stop functioning after a set time.
7. Offer Free gifts that the buyer will get if they buy the product you are selling. This can be particularly important if you are an affiliate selling other people’s products, because there are probably many others selling the same product and you have to persuade people to buy from you.
8. Sell the benefits. This means that you highly emphasize the benefits of having the product verses not having the product. Make them wonder how they ever got along without your product up to now.
9. Sell the sizzle not the sausage. That is what my uncle used to always say. He was right. Think about it. When did you ever see an ad for sausages that showed what went into them or even showed them in their raw state? Never! The reason is that they are selling that thing that is sizzling on the pan. It looks and smells delicious. Just seeing it on the pan in a TV ad makes people’s mouths water and they can almost smell it. If you can do that with your product, you will have an easy sale.

Your Website
Have a good professionally designed website. After all your trouble building your PPC campaign, it would be wasted it all this targeted traffic landed on a website that did not live up to their expectations. If your website has content that expires it should be changed and updated regularly. These days it is not hard to find good content. There are hundreds of article directories to choose from. It is not necessary to keep changing the content of your website to keep or improve your position in the search engines, but if the nature of your content is such that it needs to be maintained then do so. People will not buy from a site where the content is obviously out of date. An example might be a website on the Olympics. While the Olympics were on it would have been necessary to keep up with the ongoing events and have the latest results displayed at all times.

Basic navigation and linking standards should be maintained. That means no broken links (i.e. links that are either dead or bring up error pages) and all images that should be there must be there. The navigation must be obvious and easy to follow. Do not have people scratching their heads trying to work out how to find your product or the payment page or any other page. They will not hang around. So make sure that your pages do not take too long to load. There should not be too many large files like images and video because they slow down the loading. Not everyone has broadband so if your visitors are on dial up the page could take an eternity to load. There are so many other websites out there, there is no reason for them to struggle with a rubbish site.

Check your text for misspellings and grammatical errors. Some people will not notice them when they are there, but those that do notice will very likely be put off and those errors may be the reason they do not buy from you simply because the errors give an overall bad impression of the website.

If you pay attention to detail and keep an eye on your budget, your ads and your website, PPC can work very well for you. Think of it as one of the tools in your toolbox. If it is not used properly it can do damage. If used with due care and attention it can make your business.