The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success

Whether you're looking to do Paid Search Advertising yourself or to hire someone to do that for you - you should know what makes a Pay Per Click campaign successful - or you will end up suffering. Paid search advertising may look deceptively easy to do. Countless times small business owners decide (and correctly so) that PPC is going to do wonders for their business and 'dive' right into it...

Unfortunately most of them don't really educate themselves enough on what to do and how to do it, and then they end up spending a helluva lot of money, with little to no results. Next they declare that Paid Search Marketing doesn't work and then they're out!

Alternatively, the small business owner hires an overpaid, over-promising PPC management firm, and lets them do whatever they like - not knowing what to be aware of in order to make sure he's getting the best possible results for the best price...

Well - despite the doom and gloom scenarios above, I'm here to tell you that PPC works for most businesses!

It works very well, and can be one of the best, quickest, most cost effective and best tracked medium of advertising/promotion there ever was... Sure, there are other ways you can market your business, but if you know how to, and if you want almost immediate results that are fully tracked - then PPC can't be beaten.


OK, let's get to the top 10 essentials of Pay Per Click marketing:

1. Know your market place

It's as obvious as daylight, but people still go into PPC without doing their research. Bear in mind that you may know your market place offline, but when you consider the internet - it may be a whole different environment. So make sure you look into it - even if you have to pay for professional research - it will be worth your while.

If you're letting an agency manage your paid search, then make sure you ask them about your market - make sure they have done their homework thoroughly.

2. Know your target audience

Again an obvious one - and yet again people don't do this step properly. Don't just list out a bunch of demographics about your prospective customers. Get into character - engineer 'real-life' people profiles (avatars), describing everything about them.

Creating about 3 customer avatars for your business, will help you understand your customers, and thus you'll be able to anticipate how they behave. Knowing how they are likely to behave, will allow you to setup a VERY effective PPC campaign process, that will guarantee you success.

Remember - your customer just wants to feel understood, then if your product/service is good - they will buy.

3. Know what you want your visitor to do

In other words decide - do you want a prospect visiting your site to:

call you to make an appointment?
email you with more info about themselves, before setting up a consultation?
click on the "Buy Now" button on your landing page?
sign up to your membership site?
sign up to your free newsletter?
download a free report?
The clearer you are about what you want visitors to do, the easier it will be to entice them to do just that. If you don't tell your prospects what it is they need to do to progress this visit to something that is of benefit to them, they will click away, most likely to never be seen again...

4. Know how they look for you & your product - i.e. understand searcher intent

This one's not so obvious. Only very good paid search marketers know that keywords have different intent behind them. In other words, if a searcher on Google types in "running shoes" they are highly likely to be doing some preliminary research on what types of running shoes there are.

If the same searcher typed in "running shoes reviews" - then they are likely to be still researching - but they now know that they will buy - when they find the shoe that appeals to them.

A prospect with 'buying' intent, however, will likely type in "buy asics gel kayano running shoes" or "asics gel kayano stockists". You get the idea...

5. Start small - grow big later

This simply means that it is better to find the most suitable keyword phrases for your business, and run with that small group first. This will allow you to test the 'waters' and it will help you keep control of your budget.

Later on, when you know what works and what doesn't you can add other phrases to your heart's content.

6. Split test your ads

It is amazing how many people don't take advantage of this feature on Google AdWords. Split - testing will give you a constant way of improving on your ads. Your ad is the 'window' to your sales... so you cannot afford not to be constantly trying to make it better converting than before.

7. Use landing pages (LP)

Landing pages are powerful when using them correctly. They allow you complete control of what your visitor experiences. I always recommend that if you are only wanting one result from your prospect you should use LPs. But if your resources and knowledge are limited, then at least make sure you are leading the searcher to the most search-relevant page you have on your site.


8. Track everything

This says it all - even if you don't know how to, or with what - find someone that can help you. Outsource this job, or simply head over to Google and read all there is on their Analytics service. In some cases this is perfectly sufficient.

9. Listen to your stats

Once you have your tracking working, make sure you look at your stats to see the results. I recommend you look at them once a day in the beginning - depending on the size of your campaign, the amount of traffic your keywords are getting, and the amount of money you've budgeted to spend.

Once your campaign is working and making you profit, you can start looking at it less often, but at least once a week. Also make sure to optimize it regularly on the basis of your stats.

10. Learn consistently and constantly

Learn from your successes, your failures, your competitors' successes and their failures too... I have a document template that I use for all my campaigns called - Lessons Learned. It's only through experience that you will be able to progress and optimize any paid search campaign.

Well - hopefully you'll find the above list of PPC essentials very useful. Of course there are a lot of other important points to consider, like daily budget, competitive research, and return on investment requirements, but the above 10 will be able to start you off in a very strong way.

Bear in mind that whether you're managing your own PPC campaigns, or you're hiring a professional to do it - you can use the list above to make sure you're getting the best out of your campaigns.


About the Author

Anita Chaperon is an experienced Paid Search Marketing professional who's managed multi - national campaigns with large budgets for a variety of small and medium businesses. For more information on how to make paid search work for your business, visit OnTargt.com.



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How to put AdSense in the middle of Blogger posts

Problem

In the famous Google AdSense heat map are reported the most profitable areas where to put advertising for your site or blog.

There is no mention of a placement in the middle of your posts.

Why?

Because by default Blogger, the blogging platform offered by Google, doesn’t offer a way to break a post in the middle and put there an ad.

But, if you search very carefully on the Net, you’ll find that several webmasters tried to put ads in that position and report a significant increase in profits.

This post doesn’t confirm an increase in profits when an ad is in the middle of a post, but explains how to put AdSense in the middle of a Blogger post.

Solution

There is a simple way to solve this problem: move post body around the advertising code, just with a bunch of JavaScript and a couple of DIVs. In 2 easy steps:

In your Blogger template:

Find the tag (you must check Expand Widget Templates in Blogger console) and replace it with following code:

...

*** EDITOR COMMENTS: - Google obviously doesn't want ads in the middle of Blogger posts. this is the second time the html I posted to put adsense in the middle of Blogger posts has vanished. In addition, the code also disapeared from the test blog it was put on.

For the betterment of the SEO movement, this blog cannot get "black listed" by Google, so we need to move to a different topic. ANY FEEDBACK?



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Savvier Keyword Research for Google

The late Ken Giddens, who was a first-rate web marketing
genius in his own right, said 'If Content is King on the Internet,
then Keywords are Queen.'

That's exactly right. Discovering just one new pocket
of keywords that you hadn't thought of before
can double your traffic in 10 minutes.

One of the most valuable things you can do is get
a 'competition level' of various keywords. How many
people search? How many bidders? How many pages
are there on the Internet about this topic?

Before I start a Google campaign, I take a look to
find out how many bidders are bidding on my keyword.
If there's less than 10, it's going to be a day at the
beach. More than 30, we'd better sharpen our pencils.
More than 60: Only experienced web marketers should play.

Every conceivable combination of keywords represents
a market.

There's an infinite number of keyword phrases.

So there's an infinite number of markets out there
for you to tap into.

Search Engine marketing is all about niches. It's not
about being all things to all people, it's about being
a few specific things to a few specific people. The
profit is in areas where there's a lot of need and not
very many bidders.

Example:

There are 103 Google bidders on the phrase 'used car.'

But there are only 13 bidders on the phrase 'used japanese car.'

And there are only 24 bidders on 'san diego used car.'

It's always better to be a big fish in a little pond,
*especially* if you're just getting started. The narrower
the niche, the more valuable the click usually is, and also
the less that click normally costs you.


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How to Build a Keyword List

Perhaps the most important task in any search engine marketing campaign – whether it is for organic search engine optimisation (SEO) or pay per click (PPC) advertising, is building a list of relevant and searched keywords.

Unfortunately, most people do not know what keywords are actually being used to find what they are offering.

Developing a list of keywords takes time and patience.

In order to develop a comprehensive set of keywords, plan on spending at least 8 hours of work if not much more. It could actually take days to develop your first list and from there on it is an ongoing process.

Here are the basic steps to conducting keyword research for either organic search engine optimisation (SEO) or pay per click (PPC) advertising:

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Importance of Keyword Selection in a PPC Campaign

Excellent advice from Bruce Clay.

To a large extent, search engine marketing is about choosing keywords for your Web site that will be most effective, and keywords in a PPC campaign are just as important as in an SEO campaign.

What is a keyword?

A keyword is a word or phrase that people (consumers or businesses) would employ to locate information on the products or services or topic that they are interested learning more about or purchasing.

For example: A professional bull rider is interested in purchasing new boots. He turns on his computer and visits his favorite search engine.

In the search box he enters the keyword cowboy boots. In addition, he may also enter men’s cowboy boots, western cowboy boots, or authentic cowboy boots.

Of course, since he is a cowboy, certain brands of boots are important so he might also enter designer cowboy boots, Justin cowboy boots, or Tony Lama cowboy boots.

Finally there are different styles of cowboy boots: round toe cowboy boots, crepe sole cowboy bots, and narrow or point toe cowboy boots.

The core idea behind keyword selection is identifying the words or phrases that are important to your target audience and therefore will be the most effective to use on your Web site.

When search engine visitors click in your PPC ad, they are sent to a page on your Web site. As an advertiser, you are only charged when a visitor clicks on your advertisement to visit your Web site.

Making sure you are bidding on keywords that people will be searching for is critical to the success of a pay advertising campaign.

Up front, it is all about visibility. The more eyeballs that see your ad – if it is relevant to what they want – the better chance you have of making a sale or getting a lead.

Bidding on the wrong keywords will only frustrate you and waste your hard earned money.

Bidding on the right keywords can bring you rich rewards but be warned, you will need to research the cost of bids for keywords because some good keywords can also break you.

Incorporate some niche keywords into your campaign that might not cost you as much. You will also want to balance the keywords that will bring you visitors at the short end of the tail or buying cycle as well as the long end of the buying cycle.

Learn more about how to perform proper PPC keyword research to identify what words are being used in searches today.

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Writing Effective PPC Ads (Creatives) for Your Pay Per Click Campaigns

Excellent advice from Bruce Clay.

For ad copy to convert readers to visitors, it must grab the reader’s attention.

Whether it's a print ad in a magazine, a pay per click ad on a Web page, or a sponsored listing on a search engine results page (SERP), your message must call out to the person reading it.

You may be advertising in the right place at the right time, however, without the right message, you will have a problem.

If you’re not appealing directly to the person who is reading your ad, you risk them seeing it without realising how it relates to them.

If the ad is a pay per click (PPC) ad, your potential customer has executed a search and is looking for something specific. If you write your PPC creatives to speak directly to them, there's a better chance they will click on it and visit your Web site.

So what characteristics do you look to include when writing ad copy?

First, be sure to use your keywords in your title and even in the description when you can.

If possible, start your title with the keyword or keyword phrase.

For the description, understand that people want to accomplish or learn something, be entertained or take advantage of an offer.

People are motivated by fear, money, hope, lust, despair, health, safety, education, appearance, status etc. (Although maybe not all at the same time!)

You will want to include a reason for someone to choose to respond to your ad and take action.

Care about their problem and create an emotional statement using action oriented language. Remember W.I.I.F.M. What’s in it for me?

For example, perhaps you are offering a health resort holiday package. You might appeal to potential customers about the opportunity to get in shape and improve their appearances. Or maybe they just need a holiday from the daily stress of home and work.

Appeal to their wants and needs and they'll be enticed to click-through.

Your PPC ads might look something like this:

Health Resort Special
Relax, Rejuvenate & Meditate.
Join us for a wellness stay.

Holiday Get-away
Pamper Yourself & Relax.
Join us for a stress-free stay.

Beach Holiday Rentals
Stressed, tired, need to escape?
Feel your cares melt away...

Health Resort Holiday
Get in shape today at our
private paradise holiday getaway.

However, effective ads are only a part of the campaign.

Once your PPC creatives persuades a searcher to click, your landing page must now convert them.

It should look professional and above all offer them what they were looking for in the first place. They will be more likely to convert into a customer or a lead if the page they go to gives them exactly what they were looking for.

Appeal directly to your target audience with both your ad and your landing pages and you will experience greater quality visitors and better conversions.


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