Does Pay per click scare the jeepers out of you?

Does Pay per click scare the jeepers out of you?

While contemplating the deep dark inner essence of my morning coffee, it hit me like a caffeine brick that lot's of people are running pay per click ads (like: Google, Overture, Yahoo, MSN search etc) and are not having the kind of results they might have expected. After several more java jive jolts, I decided to embark on a multi-week PPC tips post. What am I talking about? I plan to share what I consider the best tips for running a successful pay-per-click search engine campaign. I consider a 'successful' campaign one that generates blog, site or landing page visitors perfectly suited to your ad offer and visitors whose clicks don't cost you more money than you have in your bank account :-)

Unless you have very deep pockets, or you're completely nuts, or you have a solid money-making conversion rate, paying big bucks for clicks that don't pan out is like handing the impoverished street corner beggar your credit card.

So how might you structure your PPC campaign to assure results without losing your shirt? What follows here and over the next few weeks are my tried and true techniques that can perhaps put your pay per click campaign on solid footing.

Search engine campaign tips:

1. If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
2. Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.
   
   Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
3. Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.

Don't forget that if you run any PPC search engine ad campaign over a few weeks and you get zip for sales or sign-up results, the problem is most likely NOT the traffic you're generating from your ad, rather it is your site, your landing page, your product, your service, your price or some factor other than your PPC visitor hits. The first thing I'd look at (if results are low ) is your landing page. Fish just don't bite when the bait is no good.

For additional help with your pay per click ad campaign check out the articles linked in my previous post.

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

Best of Luck with Stanley Home Products !