A CUTCO sales representative tip sheet for PPC search engine campaigning.

A CUTCO sales representative tip sheet for PPC search engine campaigning.

Day by day, tick by tick, and click by click, time is passing and none of us are getting any younger. Has anyone mentioned to you that 192 days have passed since the beginning of 2005?

Just as 2003 and 2004 marched forward in the blink of an eye, 2005 is rapidly marching on, yet for may web entrepreneurs few visitors are marching over to see what's up. Are they marching to a different drummer or is it that your traffic generation strategy is just not keeping the beat?

Do you market to women? It's important to note that the e-commerce gender gap appears to be widening, as more women opened their purse strings than men last quarter: the percentage of online purchases made by women reached 62 percent in the fourth quarter with men accounting for just 38 percent of transactions. (BizRate 2004)

With 173 days remaining in 2005, imagine how much different your business would be if you could get perhaps one "take action" type visitor to your site per week.

If you're asking "Wait a minute, just how can I do this?" Maybe a little internet advertising is in order? Seems that's what a lot of successful online marketers are doing. And of all the methods out there, nothing seems to beat pay per click advertising...

Of funds budgeted for search engine marketing this year, marketers said they would spend 51% on paid search ads, 6% on paid inclusion, 10% on contextual ads, 12% on search marketing agency fees for paid search, 11% on search marketing agency fees for optimization, and 11% on other areas of search marketing. (Source: Forrester Research 02/2005)

Every where you look you see stories and statistics that prove "it can be done". Yes, online sales are happening. Reports are continuing, sales are up, and the drum beats on.

51 percent of small business owners report that the Internet has improved their profitability, 58 percent said the internet has helped their businesses grow or expand. (ACNielsen, 2004)

But I'm A CUTCO sales representative, I'm told it is another story for people like me?

Maybe you are thinking that "some things" sell online but not your cutlery, house and kitchenwares. Nothing could be further from the truth. In most cases, it is not the product or service that hinders a sale, it boils down to traffic, strategy and page presentation. Whether you advertise using Google's AdWords, or do pay-per-click at Overture, Yahoo or MSN search, it's the campaign strategy that's important.

In my previous blog entries (last week and the week prior) we started our series of PPC search engine tips. These tips will unquestionanly help your marketing campaign and hopefully put some of the statistics on your side. Without any further delay, I'll continue with my tips this week.

Tips for your PPC campaign:

• Expand your keywords by asking your spouse, friends, neighbors, relatives, existing customers and strangers to look at your web page and offer their keyword suggestions. In this phase you cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen.
• Put your biscuits in the oven and watch'em rise... That is, use web based 'keyword expanders' and research tools to expand your keywords beyond what you can come up with on your own.
• Remember, searchers may type in something that describes your product, but more often than not they will be typing in words describing their problem. If your product or service solves, fixes, heals, masks or even distracts them from their problem, you want those keywords on your list.
• "In-house" keywords (those used frequently by others in your industry or business) are often the most costly because lazy business owners don't often think beyond their own nose. The result is these limited keywords get bided-up sky high. Customers on the other hand seldom search using "in-house" keywords. Your goal is to find keyword niches popular with customers but less popular with your competition.

In addition, I've written a many 'how-to' articles specifically to help get your internet marketing strategy on-track. You might find these internet marketing articles for CUTCO interesting or helpful.

To make certain you don't miss this series of PPC tips, you might consider subscribing to my RSS feed.


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CUTCO | PPC | pay per click | AdWords | marketing | search | retail statistics | marketing statistics | sales statistics