Because of increasing competition that has led to higher advertising costs with pay-per-click marketing, many battle-scarred - do-it-yourself businesses have not realized their desired objectives. Although publicized as a straightforward, self-service marketing tool, pay-per-marketing involves far more knowledge than most businesses are able to invest in developing in-house. Faced with a moderately or less performing pay-per-click marketing program and the pressure to allocate resources elsewhere, many businesses choose to drop their pay-per-click marketing entirely leaving a vast potential of sales for their competitors to harvest.
If you face pay-per-click marketing challenges, before you decide to drop the program, try these proven strategies to get it producing your desired results.
Discover These Proven Strategies to Produce Quick Results.
A. Keyword-Level Tracking
Track your pay-per-click marketing at the keyword-level referred to as the root. For pay-per-click marketing, it is essential that you know your per click results from the money you have spent.
For example, if you have 1,000 keywords active in your pay-per-click marketing program and you spend a total of $3,000 a month do you know which of the 1,000 keywords produce the best results
What if 80% of your sales stem from 20% of your keywords Moreover, what if this 20% accounted for just a small percentage of your $3,000 monthly cost If you do not have keyword-level tracking you will not be able to make these financially beneficial assessments. Time-tested experience shows that the 80/20 rule applies to pay-per-click marketing.
Does the 80/20 rule apply to your pay-per-click marketing Get keyword-level tracking.
But Beware of Matching Options!
Although matching options (i.e. broad, advanced, exact, phrase and so on) offered by Google Adwords, Overture and other pay-per-click search engines provide convenience they unfortunately skew your keyword performance results.
If you setup a broad-match for the keyword real estate, you will attract visitors who have entered any possible variation of the term real estate including geographically specific real estate keywords that may have absolutely no relevance to your product or service.
Here is a scenario where matching options skew your results
You generate $1,000 in revenue from the broad-match keyword, real estate yet the total click cost for it exceeds revenue and because of the keywords negative return, you label it as a poor performing keyword.
What if the majority of the click cost originated from irrelevant, broad-match keyword variations like Louisiana real estate - while one variation, real estate strategy generated all of the revenue By identifying this keyword (hard to do in a broad-match environment so rely on your web stats program), taking this one keyword and isolating it as an exact term you will reduce your total click cost while continuing to generate the same revenues.
How are your broad-match keywords performing Isolate keywords to save click costs and to regulate individual keyword performance.
B. Landing Page Development
Pay-per-click marketing is unique compared to other mainstream forms of online marketing. In part because marketers have the opportunity to select specific keywords, write specific ads and direct the click-through to a specific web page. This connect-the-dots structure creates the need to develop consistency among the visitors expectation from the keyword they enter to the ad that draws their attention and down to the web page, they land-on. Relevancy and consistency are essential for an effective pay-per-click marketing program.
One of the reportedly major reasons why pay-per-click marketing programs fall short of their intended goal is because businesses direct all of their click-throughs to their home page. Since most businesses home pages are designed to serve mutliple audiences (i.e. media relations, investors, current clients, potential prospects, customer services, etc.) they do not provide the level of relevancy and consistency expected from the visitor to get them to act confidently.
What in the Virtual World are Landing Pages
Landing pages are simply web pages designed specifically for a keyword or related group of keywords. They are highly relevant to the keyword searched and consistent with the ads claim. They immediately focus a visitors attention to a primary call-to-action (most wanted response). In essence landing pages ask your visitors to take an action.
If your pay-per-click marketing is not living up to your expectations, consider which web pages you are sending visitors to. Are they relevant and consistent with your pay-per-click ads and keywords Do they offer too many calls-to-action Do they fit the expectations of the visitor searching on the particular keyword
For example, are you sending a visitor searching on the keyword Sony LCD TV to a web page with twenty varieties of electronic products An effectively designed landing page would present the visitor a Sony LCD TV with customer benefit oriented copy, an immediate buy now call to action and all applicable guarantee, shipping, customer service and return policies.
Make it Easy for Your Visitors and they will Reward You with Sales.
C. Keyword Selection
Keyword selection is important. The keywords you select provide access to pools of visitors at different stages in their buying cycle. By selecting the right keywords for your products or services, you can open a completely new market of ready-to-buy visitors.
Make sure that you thoroughly canvass your marketplace using strategies such as:
Your competitors websites
Your websites copy
Third-party tools Overtures Suggestion Tool, WordTracker, and others
Your website metrics program (look for natural search engine keyword phrases)
Search engines like Ask Jeeves or Alta Vista (who suggest keyword variations)
Most importantly, THINK about your potential customers and what direct or indirect keywords they may use to find your products or services. Never give up searching for new keywords to setup and test. Both seasonal and even weekday keyword performance fluctuations should be analyzed and studied in addition to potential associations people make to find your products and services.
What about you - have you selected the right keywords
D. Bidding Strategies
All pay-per-click search engines possess unique bidding nuances. However, for the two largest, Google Adwords and Overture do not become fixated on the top bid position. Test how each keyword performs against your websites sales or lead conversion metrics up to the seventh bid position.
Depending on your product or service, you may be amazed how bid position six attracts less click-throughs but produces greater sales or lead conversion on your website. Or maybe position four generates better conversion. Regardless - test, test and test the outcome may mean lower costs and higher sales conversions for you.
Consider this New Update in Your Bid Strategy.
Are you aware that recently Overtures top partners, MSN and Yahoo, opened their results to up to eight sponsor results or paid ads on the first page In some cases, the fourth and fifth or fifth and sixth positions will show at the bottom of the first results page and again at the top, right margin of the first results page in essence two ads for the price of one.
Do not be lured into competing for the first place position instead keep an eye on your keyword performance (via your keyword-level tracking) and occupy whichever position provides the best sales or lead conversion.
E. Writing Effective Ads
Finally, always test different ads by interchanging words in the title and description. For Google Adwords, try split-testing two different titles and descriptions and add a unique tracking code to each one so you can identify which one causes the best sales conversion increase. Notice that I did not state, the best click-through rate increase. Why Because a lot of nothing (i.e. a lot of traffic without sales or lead conversion) is not a financially effective strategy. Consider that even a single word change on your ad can create a significant jump to your sales or lead conversion rate.
Follow these strategies to boost your pay-per-click marketing results today. Good Producing!
Kevin Gold is a Partner and Co-founder of Enhanced Concepts, Inc., which specializes in turning website visitors into leads or sales through tested website conversion strategies and performance-focused search engine marketing. To learn how to generate greater performance from your search engine marketing and to turn more website visitors into leads and sales go to
Google AdSense is easy to install on a web page or blog and constitutes additional source of income without spending anything. You have to apply on-line for Google AdSense Program and generally approval comes from Google within two days. Those having AdWord account can use AdWord e-mail address and password for AdSense account also. After acceptance of application, Google confirms creation of your Adsense account thru e-mail. You get a code for AdSense text ads and another code for AdSense search. These codes are to be installed on web page or blog and within minutes the page will start displaying ads from Google, and a Google search bar. AdSense is available in dozen languages worldwide.
The code for AdSense can be placed on any of your web pages. I think placing it on your blog will give you distinct advantage because blogs have several points in their favor. They are easily indexed by search engines. Recently two of my simple blogs were indexed by Google within 2-3 days of submission of URLs which I think is quite fast. With Yahoo! it is even easier - just add the URL of your blog to your My Yahoo page and Yahoo! will start accessing it immediately. GoogleAlert is a free tool that can be used to know when your blog is indexed by Google.
You can have your blog up and running in minutes free of cost from several sites that provide this service. I personally use blogger.com. With blogs you do not need to worry about designing websites, registering domain name or hiring web site hosting service. You simply write your content on the blog and it is ready for publication.
An excellent article by John Taylor on creating blog is re-published here:
http://sanjay-j.com/art1ab33.html
With AdSense wide range of options is available - number of ads for display, shape and size of display, color schemes. More than 200 colors are available from which you can choose color for border, background and text. 24 pre-set color palettes are readily available; in addition you can have your own custom-palette to match with the appearance of your web page. Similarly, color schemes are available for Google search bar.
When the web page is opened, Google ads are placed which match with the content of the page and are highly relevant. Google finds right ads for the web page from 100,000 AdWord advertisers.
Several options are available for the ads that you would like to be displayed on your page. Ad filters can be activated which will block up to 200 URLs of your choice which you do not want to show on your page. You may like to filter away ads from your competitors. You can even choose your own default ads for display. Google uses sensitive content filters to prevent display of sensitive material. If you find that your page is not really getting relevant ads, it may be time to look critically at the content of the page, particularly the keywords used in text, links and tags. Little SE optimization of the page should resolve this problem.
Sometimes Google places public service ads when no target ads are available. To suppress public service ad, it is possible to specify your own image ad or HTML page ad which will appear in place of public service ad. This ensures that some ad is always present there. Or, if you like, the space reserved for Adsense ads can be made to collapse.
AdSense tracker is another useful feature which tracks the ads on your pages and generates report for you. The reports can be customized based on requirement. Typically reports can give page impressions displayed, number of clicks and click-thru rates. It is also possible to check earnings any time.
Web page owner can make use of all these facilities and try to get best results. With the help of Ad tracker lot of useful information can be obtained - which ads are doing well, which color combination gets better results, which location of the web page is best for showing ads and so on. This analysis can be used to improve traffic as well as click-thru rates.
With AdSense you have virtually nothing to lose. If you have not yet installed AdSense on your website you can perhaps give it a thought. Any free space which can be created on your website to accommodate AdSense can be used to generate additional income.
Sanjay Johari regularly contributes articles on small business to various ezines. He invites you to take advantage of International Success Mentoring! Earn while you learn. Join the longest running internet business opportunity - because it works!