Newbie Guide to PPC

[marknyc4643]

Ok wanted to make some contributions to the warrior since I'm a longtime lurker. So for most of you guys..you will know this already.


For the newbies...that are not familiar with PPC...this is for you guys.



PPC stands for Pay-Per-Click - a popular advertising technique on the Internet. Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser's web page.


In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services - the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it "keyword auctioning"). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.


PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

• Pay per placement
• Pay per performance
• Pay per ranking
• Pay per position
• Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.

1. Creating a keyword list.

1. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.

1. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.

1. Writing out an ad copy.

1. Setting up the 'landing pages' for your ads.

1. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business 'online'. Some of them are listed below:

• Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly - they can go 'online' within an hour or minutes depending on the platform after winning the bid and paying for it.

• Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic depending on the traffic source. Visitors are narrowed down into 'qualified' people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer - those who are more likely to become a 'lead' (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.

• Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or "organic" search engines.

• Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive - the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:


1. Know your product. ( Very Important )



Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).


2. Stay within the budget.



Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible. ALSO MAKE SURE YOU CAP YOUR DAILY SPEND

IF YOU DONT KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING !!


So start at $10/day especially if you are still learning a new traffic source. Every advertising platform is different: i.e google v.s facebook.



3. Bid just right.


Know how to bid right - a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot. Depending on the traffic source it is possible to get penny clicks especially with facebook.


Really your bid depends on CTR most of the time..if you have done your research for a niche or offer..then your ad copy should be right in line with that targeted demographic and help you reduce your bids by 60-100% at times.



4. Watch the bottom line.


Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program - if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.


Get familiar with using Microsoft excel or a spreadsheet program if you want to keep your profit and loss fairly simple. New ppc tracking platforms can help you as well especially when you add conversion tracking.



5. Find the right keywords. ( Very important )



Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.


Focus on low competition long tail keywords that your competition is not bidding on. Also try and build a keyword tree to give you more ides for new keywords.




For example we will use baseball glove as a seed keyword.



Baseball glove:


Lets extrapolate terms based on baseball glove.


We can come up with specific models of baseball gloves


Such as :

Wilson A2000 SC-DW5 11

Wilson WTA2000 1788A-BL
Wilson A2000 SC-DW5 11


Thats straight forward..these are buying keywords as well..because if you are searching for specific model names then most likely a consumer has decided that this is the item they want to buy !

But lets go further :


If we do a site profile for demographics for the site justballgloves dot com on quantcast what will we uncover about people who buy baseball gloves ?





We see that a lot of the visitors are young hispanic teens.

What keywords could we now think of that are not even baseball related
that would proably have no competition. Of course we would have to weed through these keywords..but I gurantee that there would be a lot of keywords that would have very low bids and high ROI !

So to be frank. THink out of the box with keyword research.



6. Write effective ads.


A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:

• Discount offers
• Testimonials
• Celebrity/famous endorsers
• Money-back guarantees
• Free trials or sample offers
• Freebies
• Reverse psychology
• Major benefits ("Lose weight")
• Direct instructions ("Click here")

7. Maintain a professional-looking site.


Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple - designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.


Simplicity is Key and K.I.S.S ( Keep it simple stupid )






But how exactly PPC advertising can increase traffic, leads and sales and make me more $$$?


PRE-QUALIFIED TRAFFIC. All visitors of your website are already considered as a qualified consumer or buyer of your product. PPC advertising leads your customers to you for a lesser cost.
Having pre-qualified traffic sent to an optimized landing page with an
offer that is spot on will drastically increase conversions !



INSTANT EXPOSURE, IMMEDIATE PROFITS. PPC search engines enable you to get your desired results fast. They will have your website live within just a few minutes to hours which means immediate increase in sales.


CONSISTENT TOP LISTINGS. You just have to choose the right keywords related to your site and business and place them within your web pages.



Design of Landing page or website:




First, design your website in such a way that it will attract Internet users. A user-friendly site is always recommended so that the customers will know which one to click. If it doesn’t look professional or user friendly, most likely, users will just ignore it. ( So Important )


The average internet surfer even a pre-qualified internet surfer will most likely take 3 seconds to decide if they should stay or leave on your website.


YOU HAVE 3 SECONDS TO WIN THEM OVER..SO MAKE SURE YOUR SITE OR LANDING PAGE IS EASY TO UNDERSTAND AND EASY TO NAVIGATE.


Its not always about fancy graphics..concentrate on usability more than aesthetics. Hell look at craigslist .




Closing:


This was a brief introduction to PPC fro newbies. Most of you guys will know this stuff already but I wanted to give something back,,even if its a basic guide.


Also make sure you dont fall in love with traffic sources...google or facebook may have a pretty interface but if anything should ever happen dont put all your eggs in one basket !


Diversify your traffic sources with SEO,mailing lists etc.. as you become a more experienced internet marketer.


Diversification is key.




If you found this post helpful please thank me




Good Luck guys !!

[owenlee]

good luck..for a newbie you need to have some money for testing too...

[PPC-Coach]

Nice post, thanks for sharing it!

[marknyc4643]

thx coach..

I need to add your affiliate program to my sig