When it comes to Pay-Per-Click advertising it seems that there are those that spend a little and make a fortune and there are those that spend a fortune and make very little. Most of us are aware that those who are successful can find themselves with a very high return on what seems like a brilliant, across the board investment. However, in the face of being realistic we all know that sometimes we just have to find the most fiscally responsible method of advertising.
Pay-Per-Click Decisions
You must consider the market when making Pay-Per-Click decisions, what product or service do you have to offer, is your product or service even capable of bringing you a great ROI for your advertising dollar. Not everyone will make a fortune, and it’s wise to know when you should try other forms of advertising. Business suppliers, business to business companies, and highly specialized items don’t always do very well when it comes to Pay-Per-Click advertising. While you might offer the best restaurant stoves in the industry for your area, Pay-Per-Click is likely to bring you a lot of homeowner consumers. This demographic will be looking for stoves that are appropriate for their home.
Website Analytics are Worthwhile
Internet based advertising is extremely affordable when compared to traditional forms of advertising. Consider the cost of advertising if you only advertised on radio or television, the cost alone might be prohibitive enough to prevent you from even having your own business. Yet, because of the exorbitant costs of most media advertising you can usually bet that there is a business owner with a close eye on how well their advertising dollars are serving them.
A trend that seems to be developing among web based business owners is to spend their advertising dollars on the web the same way they spend on slot machines. They simply toss in their money and hope for a lucky roll. Website analytics can help you put in your due diligence, make educated and informed decisions, and then help you draw conclusions about your advertising decisions. In the long run a high quality analytics package can not only save you money when it comes to advertising, but it could literally save your business. Overspending on ineffective advertising, the improper use of keywords, and haphazard advertising can easily be blamed for more than 60% of all failed Internet businesses.
Website Optimization before Advertising
There is a connection between your website’s ability to be located on the Internet and the effectiveness of your advertising. While many new Internet marketers have heard of things like Pay-Per-Click (PPC) and article marketing, there is a tendency to ignore revving up the site for search engine friendly results.
Keeping your Web content search engine friendly not only helps you get found and stay within view of the public, but it also helps to create cohesion between your website and your online advertising. Visitors to your Website will be able to tell immediately that the link they’ve clicked is actually taking them to a relevant website or page. When you’re trying to advertise for less, your website can literally do quite a bit of the work for you.
In order to make your website competitive and to keep it competitive you’re going to have to make sure that it stays visible. This can be done through advertising alone but you’ll find you have much better results and a more robust return on investment when you work your website’s continually updated Search Engine Optimization into your advertising campaign.
What about Budget Caps?
Budget caps are integrated into various advertising programs in order to help keep your campaign within a given budget. On the surface this sounds safe. And it is safe. You will not spend more than you allot when you integrate budget caps into your program. However, there is a significant downside.
The system calculates your budget differently than you might expect. It would make sense that your bids, your keywords, and your campaign would be playing fairly against those without budget caps, but this isn’t true. Just for argument’s sake let’s say you set your budget at $50.
Then let’s say that you have the stars and the moon lining up with you that day and your website link should be in the number two position based on normal calculations. So logic and a sense of fair play would tell us that you should be able to maintain your earned position all day long until you hit your limit. If it took 4 hours to blow through that $50 you might expect to be in the earned position for 4 hours. Then you’d expect you’d pretty much drop out of sight. This is not the way it works at all.
Your budget cap gives the system permission to spread out your results based on the cap. That means even if the sun and moon and stars are all in perfect alignment for you, your site will be listed rather poorly on the results page. It’s much better to make sure that you are able to watch your performance and make adjustments to prevent overspending.
Top Slot Doesn’t Mean Top Earnings
Be wary of trying to bid competitively enough to become one of the “sponsored” listings. Usually, this means bidding very high and it tends to incorporate brand names. Sponsored listings are found either along the side or in highlighted colors at the top. You’ll pay dearly for this position and yet most users ignore these results. They are not considered by most users to be organic results and therefore have less sense of trust from the user. “Sponsored” means to the user that the slot was purchased, and historically these have been seen by the user as advertisements, not web page results. Perception is an interesting thing. By being listed in the top five organic results you save quite a bit on your bid and end up with more visitors.
Don’t Forget the Quality Score
A lot of Internet marketers are unaware that the quality score of their ads, which is designated by Google Ads, impacts their overall placement. The lower the score is the more you end up paying and yet the less frequent you will find yourself on the results page. The more you can blend your campaign together with optimization techniques the better your score will reflect. Simply optimizing your landing page can enhance your quality score several points.
Copy Success
We’ve been told all our lives not to copy, to think for ourselves, and to be original when it comes to success. Internet Marketing success works backward from that principle. You want to be able to copy the success of others. How do you do this? Simple. Check out the ads that are constantly outperforming everyone else.
You don’t have to become a marketing expert, reinvent the wheel, or create ad copy that is so stellar you are waiting to hear from the Nobel Prize committee. Look at the simple advertisements that are consistently hitting high ranks and you’ll see what you need to do. Adgooroo.com is a simple free site that will allow you to find the relevant information that you need with the simple entry of a keyword. From there, you can build your ads to reflect the same qualities of the most successful advertisements online.
Active Web Group has the capability to manage Pay-per-Click (PPC) advertising campaigns of virtually any size working with you to research effective and relevant keywords, write better ad copy for the Sponsored Listing, help provide an effective incentive for the visitor to click through and more ways to effectively optimize your PPC campaign for your business.
For more information on Cost Effective Search Engine Advertising, call us at 1-800-978-3417 or Contact Active Web Group and let us help you!
