Winning clicks without losing your shirt in "Pay per Click" marketing

Winning clicks without losing your shirt in "Pay per Click" marketing

Over coffee this morning, it hit me like a caffeine freight train that lot's of people are embarking upon pay per click ads (like: Google, Yahoo, MSN search etc) and are not achieving the kind of success they deserve. In fact, some folks are so paralyzed by the thought of 'paying for clicks' that they have never even tested the PPC waters.

After a few more java jive gulps, I decided to launch a multiple week tips post on the topic. In fact, over the next few weeks 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 or web page visitors uniquely targeted to your ad offer and visitors whose clicks don't cost you a fortune.

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 business suicide .

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.

Tips for your PPC campaign:

1. When thinking up keywords, use examples of specific things your product is used for: 'clean floors', clean countertops', 'wash floors', 'mop floors', 'polish stove top', 'remove grime', 'shine appliances', 'disinfect bacteria', 'hide furniture flaws' etc.
2. Explore variations: 'soy milk', 'soymilk', 'soy-milk'
3. Add plurals: 'protein bar' and 'protein bars'
4. Use abbreviations and acronyms
5. Use US and UK spellings
6. Keyword phrases may be questions: 'how to repair bad credit', 'when should I diet', 'how do I lose weight', 'where are discount cosmetics', etc.

Keep in mind that if you run any PPC search engine ad campaign over a few weeks and you get zero or very low sales or sign-up results, the challenge 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 generated traffic . The first thing I'd look at ( if things aren't going satisfactory) is your landing page. Your landing page must be the 'pearl' in your sea of PPC campaign tools. Anything less and you might as well be shucking oysters.

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

Best of Luck with Your franchise !