Paying for Website Visitors: The
Allure of PPC for Small Biz Owners
There are good reasons why many webmasters and website owners
choose to pay for visitors to their website as opposed to the
involved and often grueling method of search engine
optimization. Improper SEO may not only waste time and
resources, there is never a guarantee that what your site is
optimized for will result in actual sales or conversions.
Choosing Bid for Placement advertising can help ensure that you
get what you pay for and pay as little as possible to do it.
How You Know if Pay Per Click is Right for You
The single biggest mistake most PPC advertisers make is paying a
higher amount for visitors than they can afford. Pay per click
search engines are ideal to generate traffic if you already know
what it costs to generate one sale or conversion. By not going
over their predetermined amount, advertisers can dramatically
increase the likelihood of their websites' success.
High-End Pay Per Click is Not Right For You if…
There are millions of websites online but only a small
percentage of these sites can benefit from the traffic that
high-end PPC resources such as Google Adwords or Overture
provide. When it comes to generating conversions from the
top-tier of PPC's, low profit margin categories of business
(members of affiliate programs for example) would do well to
avoid higher priced bid for placement search engines (as bid
prices are often too high) and focus on 2nd tier pay per click
services or vertical portals working on a bid for placement
model.
How to Choose A PPC That is Right For Your Campaign
When choosing a PPC campaign for your website, take into account
not only bid prices, but traffic volume, customer service and
account management tools.
Check Bid Prices
A significant mistake that novice PPC advertisers make is to
jump immediately into the largest advertising networks, namely
Google Adwords and Overture. While these PPC's certainly have
the most extensive reach, bid prices per visitor are higher than
any other network and can easily drain your account before even
one visitor converts. Check bid prices before signing on
anywhere and match as closely as possible to what you have
determined you can pay for each website visitor.
Inquire about Customer Service
No thanks to their size, larger PPC's usually have much less
attentive customer service (unless you are one of the larger
advertisers - this means spending $10,000 a month or more). Many
second tier PPC's pride themselves on their attentive customer
service. Always ask your PPC company if they can help advise you
before and during your campaign to ensure the highest ROI.
Investigate the "Reach"
Bid for placement search engines (PPC) are simply advertising
networks that help you spread your message to their users. As
some PPC networks have greater access to more users, it is
important to investigate the reach not only of their own network
but the network size of their partners. When speaking with sales
or customer representatives ask for a list of their partners.
Top Tips for Success with PPC
There have been many small business website owners who have lost
their proverbial shirts with bid for placement advertising. Case
study after case study has shown that the reason that most fail
with PPC is a lack of understanding on how to maximize the bid
for placement model to their advantage across various networks
simultaneously. Here are a few tips to make the most of an
online advertising campaign using a PPC methodology:
1) PPC success resides in your titles and
descriptions:
Well-written titles and descriptions can make or break a
PPC advertising campaign the same way they affect traditional
search return listings. The most important thing to keep in mind
when writing titles and descriptions is that you are not only
speaking directly to the searcher, you have an obligation to
explain your product or service so that it either elicits a
positive response sufficient enough to motivate them to click or
discourage them from clicking altogether if what you are
offering is not what they are actually looking for. When writing
titles and descriptions, focus on the specifics of what that
user will find at your site, i.e. special deals or discounts,
signup information for a newsletter, registration for an e-book,
etc.
2) Use Specific Terms for Specific Pages
By bidding on specific terms related to your business and
directing visitors to specific pages which represent those
terms, conversion rates on this practice increase dramatically.
Imagine conducting a search and finding a great title and
description but then having to go through hundreds of page to
locate the information. When “landing pages” are created which
offer information on what the surfer originally searched for,
chances are that they will take the action you want them to,
whether it be signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a
product. A common rule of thumb is to have no more than fifty
terms per page that you are promoting on a PPC.
3) Be Passive or Aggressive, but be something.
Most PPC advertisers are either passive PPC players or
aggressive marketers. The secret behind PPC marketing is that
these networks’ partner with other networks to display
advertisers’ advertisements. So the higher you bid on a PPC, the
better placement you will receive on network/partner sites.
Bidding in this manner makes you an aggressive PPC marketer and
the advantages are many and include – more traffic and more
exposure to target markets.
If a small website (or one of a low profit-margin category of
business) decides that the traffic that each PPC network alone
provides is sufficient, managers of the campaign must be aware
of their bid amounts (overbidding or underbidding) as well as
what can afford to pay for each visitor. Usually the top four
positions are where most of the traffic is received from - the
highest percentage of total clicks (thanks to partner networks).
The number of clicks in your account will usually decrease
incrementally based on your bid.
CONCLUSION: PPC advertising has proven to be a productive
method of generating traffic (and more importantly) sales or
conversions for many webmasters and web site owners. If you are
thinking about trying your hand at pay per click, make sure to
use the tips outlined in this article and ask others PPC
advertisers if they have any advice!
Peter Prestipino is the Marketing Director of 7Search and
http://www.PayPerRanking.com - the second most
trafficked PPC advertising network on the World Wide Web.
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