WebRipple Internet Marketing

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Is Hated More Than Hines Ward

Sorry … forgive my reference to the Pittsburg Steeler wide-receiver that some say is the dirtiest player in the NFL, however, most business owners strongly dislike pay-per-click advertising because of their experiences in the past. Typically, a business owner or manager would set up a PPC campaign, research a bunch of keywords, supply a daily budget amount and proceed to leak a lot of money with no obvious results. Usually they would then swear off of pay-per-click for the rest of their lives.

Normally the PPC campaign is set up through Google AdWords without good tracking software (analytics) or a plan to maximize their return on investment. Website owners and managers don’t really know what their website visitors are doing after they arrive on the site. Remember, there had to be visitors since you only get charged when search guests “click” on your ads and then arrive on your page.

Here are the right steps for a successful pay-per-click internet marketing campaign.

The First Step Is The Analytics

Web tracking has come a long way recently. The old method of providing web stats such as: number of visitors, repeat visitors, visitors that asked for directions and visitors that clicked your email address has been replaced by much more sophisticated and informative reports.

Current analytics include valuable real-time information such as:

• How website visitors are traveling through your site – Do they drop off after one page? Are they traveling to your “money” pages? Do they abandon just as they are about to convert?
• How many pages do they look at, how much time did they spend and were they on your website pages before?
• Where are your visitors from? Local? In country? Or from another country?

You can set up goals and conversions with the current analytic and tracking programs. This allows you to see if web visitors are moving to your most financially desirable web pages and if they are completing the actions that helps you complete a sale, record a prospect or include someone for your newsletter mailing.  This is essential information for a pay-per-click program.

Next Step Is The Landing Pages

Most pay-per-click campaigns should be built around four of five main but different keywords. Each main keyword would then be expanded to several (sometimes hundreds) of related keywords. These would all be grouped into an ad group or ad category and each ad group would need to point toward a distinct landing page. These landing pages would be optimized for the distinct keyword and its sub-keywords. This is necessary for several reasons:

1. Google AdWords and Bing adCenter want to know that their search customers are arriving on a page that is related to their search inquiry
2. Focused landing pages tend to increase click-through rates (the percentage of clicks on your ads compared to how many times the ad is visible) which improves quality scores
3. Quality scores are used to determine how much you pay for a front page placement with the search engines. (Example: a low quality score can cost you up to twice as much as a high quality score for a search term)

Landing page design is important and sometimes needs to be tweaked to provide the desired quality score results.

Now You Need The Right Pay-Per-Click Ad Copy

Correct ad copy is vital for all aspects of a pay-per-click strategy. The headline of the ad should include the keyword (preferably as the first word) which will then stand out when the ad is seen. The brief body of the ad should contain something unique about your website or business but also include a call-to-action (Example: 10% Off Today, See Our Great Inventory, Buy Now And Save!) for the best results. Remember that you are walking a fine line between wanting increased web traffic and wanting those web visitors to do what you want them to do on your site. You don’t want ad clickers to look and leave after they have cost you some money by clicking.

The good thing about ad copy is that you don’t need to get it right the first time. You can post many ads into each ad group (I recommend three to each group) and then track how they are performing and make adjustments accordingly. Be cautious in making those adjustments. Many pay-per-click ad managers adjust after only a couple days or weeks of results which is probably too fast to recognize a permanent trend.

It might be time to reconsider pay-per-click advertising for your company website. How else can you get immediate first page listings on the search engines targeted to the local or national audience of your choice that is seeking products or services tailored to what you have to offer?