Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the many ways of promoting your business. You only pay when a user/potential customer actually clicks on an ad to visit your website. You pick keywords or phrases such as "shopping" or "Green used car" and when the results come up your ad will be displayed. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest PPC network operators as of 2007. PPC is often used to refer to keyword advertising on search engines and other websites. With PPC, search engines can give you instant traffic and allow you to test out new business models and ads in real time.
To get started, you will need to create a simple text ad (or banner ad) that will catch the potential customer’s attention. The key to online advertising is to think creatively. You need to find specific keywords that are related to your website and the content. You must word your ad in a way that it manages to attract only that reader who might be interested in your product and/or services. You are actually paying on a per click basis and hence you must only get those visitors who will buy and utilize your product or services. The best way to go about configuring the perfect wording is tweaking the ads that you have created. If your first ad is not working out, try re-wording or adding or deleting a sentence.
Once you start getting results, track your progress in Microsoft Excel. Use one column for keywords, and another for keyword clicks. Create columns that will represent category phrases. Once you figure out your phrases, think about what local or geography you will sell your product or services. Once you input the data, take out any phrases that are too generic. Start using the keywords that are left in your PPC campaign and then grab the click through rates and conversion data and add the new columns and paste next to that particular keyword. This way you canget an organized visual of what keyword is working and what keyword is notworking.
- Understand what makes you special and why people will want to choose your service or product.
- Keep an eye on your competitors' keywords, messaging, and deals/offers.
- Cater ads to different buyer wants and needs.
- Test price, information that reassures buyers (e.g., "official site," "24/7 support"), and time sensitivity (e.g., "Offer ends soon").
You can also choose where you would like to advertise (demographics) such as:
- Geographical location
- Age and gender
- Income levels
- Popular sites
- Blogs
- Your favorite websites
- Day of the week
- Time of day (morning, afternoon, or night)
Don’t have a website but still want to advertise online? No problem. Most PPC networks will allow you to create a “mini” website that your ad will point to. You can add graphics, images, color schemes, and videos to your mini website. Anyone without a website no has no excuse to advertise online. For “brick and mortar” stores, make sure your PPC campaign list the city you are advertising. When your ad is seen, you want to make sure the person surfing notices that your ad is specifically for the area you are advertising for which will increase the quality of your click throughs. Avoid sending the reader of your ad to the home page on the first click. If there’s nothing local about the landing page, the user may abandon the page and move on. Send the reader directly to the product page you are advertising.
What I like about buying keywords on a PPC search engine is that it provides a trackable medium. Before you start any marketing campaign, you will need to decide what the goal of your marketing medium. If you are just “branding”, then you should know up front to expect to lose money to gain mindshare or reinforce your brand. Advertising on blogs is similar to advertising on popular website. Good places to start advertising on blogs are:
www.blogads.com
www.adbrite.com
www.smorty.com
The advantages to advertising online enables site owners to receive new traffic, instant sales, and more measurable ROI. It also enables a website or “brick and mortar” stores to be found by search engine users even if no site exists or the site is not search engine compatible. Another advantage include small businesses to be able operate globally. If your plan is to target the world with your ads, you better have a big budget. Broad PPC campaigns can get very costly in a short amount of time. Instead, begin by targeting the local market you are familiar with. Your geo-targeted ads will cost less, and they will be better aimed at your specific audience. Make sure you localize your keywords. Not only do you have a greater chance to appear in the top SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages), but you have an opportunity to do so much faster than if you were targeting global customers.
