Offline PPC What Do You Want To Know?

With Google, most people that offer this use an MCC.

Adwords is only one form of PPC... you still have microsoft adcenter, 7search, facebook, linkedin, adbrite and other lesser known platforms.

If you're banned, create a new account, with a new credit card number and delete the flash cookies that were installed on your system.

I had a ban on my google adwords account, never understood why.
I then joined the google engage program, they sent me a load of vouchers,
and the next time I looked at my google adwords account, no more ban.

Want to reply on this one, my personal adwords account is also blocked.
What i did:

- Started a business
- Use VPS to register new adwords
- Use a redirecting post address
- Use a business bank account (or cc)

Just don't leave any traces that can lead back to your other account.

And you can use your adwords without problems via your VPS.

Definitely safer to target exact match at first. Phrase and broad will get you much more traffic but spend a lot more as well.

For me doing a landing page my key elements are very simple. You hit on some of them. The main keys are to be clear in the offer. This will triumph over any skilled copywriter. 1. Clearly describing the benefits they receive from taking action will always win. 2. Strong call to action. Ask for the sale/Lead. 3. Building trust. Testimonials, money back guarantee, any types of credibility you can add to the page will increase conversion. 4. Good use of flow. Headline leads them into the copy. Copy leads them to the conversion. This one takes time to master. 5. (One of the most important) Call to action above the fold of the page. 6. Put navigation at the bottom of the page. If you put it at the top you are basically distracting the user from the purpose of being there. Users have ADD. If you give them a reason to leave they will. Follow these 6 steps and you will do fine with the page itself.

I tell all of my students to always start out with exact match. Then, once you have a better grip on things experiment with phrase and broad. You can spend a ton of money fast with ppc. And broad match is the way to do it. (Any broad match campaign has to use negative keywords or your campaign will suffer greatly.) Also, this helps to increase you ctr since you are really targeting the ads toward those keywords.
I hear this one a lot. I bid aggressively for a top spot. Here is why. Google will adjust the bids for you based on quality score of your page, your cpc, and you adgroup targeting. If you bid aggressively I've found in testing that you give yourself a better shot of getting more clicks right off the bat. It shoots your ctr up which lowers your cpc. Then, because of your high ctr you can start slowly lowering your bids to get into the sweet spot on the page. That way Google rewards you with lower cost but a higher position very quickly. That sweet spot usually depends on your product/service. But, I've found that it's in the 3-6 range. Make sense?
No. I would go ahead. I've seen increases in conversion rate based on social proof definitely. However, you have to start somewhere. It's better to take action and get it going. Then, let the campaign build as you go.
Not necessarily. What you have to do is determine your LTV. That is your life time value of your customer. What is a customer worth to you? That is one of the most important numbers in your business. Everything is based on it. If you figure that out you can go into this saying "I want a 100% ROI so I can pay this much per lead". As far as your ROI suffering without reviews. I wouldn't say so. They definitely help conversions. But, it won't kill it either. I would just focus on starting out with a super targeted campaign. Mainly focus on buyer keywords. That way you limit the possibility of failure. As you get a better converting page through testing you can branch out more on your keywords. Split testing ads and multivariate testing of pages is the key. I've gotten a 50% increase in conversions just solely on button color. Test Test Test.
Ask away. That's why I started this one. You guys are helping me as well. As I'm building my training program I can see what areas people need the most help in. And it's here for everyone to learn from.

Thanks. I'm working on it now. It's going to be video step by step with real world stuff that I've come across. Then, I'm doing a bunch of extras in there as well. I should have a date solidified by the end of this week. I'll let you know. In the meantime any questions you have just fire away.

Actually you can do that. What I normally will do is put the navigation at the bottom of the page. I watch analytics very closely as well. I'm a huge stat nerd. One thing I've seen work well if you just really want your nav at the top of the page is to put your opt in box on every page on your site except the contact page. (Since it has a contact form) The main thing is that you don't want them to get too distracted. the attention span is so low of a visitor that you have to do everything you can to keep them focused on why they are there. You might also try enticing them some sort of freebie to get the lead. The most important thing to remember is that you paid to get them to come to your site. They are interested or else they wouldn't be there. Think of getting the click as setting appts in telemarketing. The web page is the closer. You lose money if they leave without committing a desired action.

Sometimes it depends on the keyword. I've had issues where I've done everything I can and still can't get it up where I want it. The next thing though is if they are converting? Do you have conversion codes setup?

Well, if you are talking about how Google calculates adwords QS (Quality Score) and things like that then all you really have to do is just make a small change to the ad. Usually I'll add a period or something like that then save it.

That's a good thought. I do this stuff so much I just do it without thinking. I need to put together a setup checklist. Thanks. So, what I do at that point is setup google conversion tracking. I track at the keyword level for conversions. It will also track the ads as well so you can see if a certain is getting more conversions than another. You can start figuring out why it is converting higher. I always make sure conversion tracking is in place before any campaign goes live. Then, while I'm waiting on things to go live I'll create 3 ads for every adgroup. Hope that helps. Keep firing away with the questions.

That's definitely the million dollar question. I get asked that a lot. I've seen a ton of different pricing structures and have used a ton of them as well. It depends on the size of the campaign. I'll start with the little stuff since that's most of what you guys are going to be managing. I personally won't mess with campaign's if they spend less than $500 per month. On those ($500-$1000 per month) I'll charge $149-$249 per month to manage those. I do charge a setup fee of about half the monthly budget. But, I also limit them so it's not 500 keywords or something crazy like that. Most of these are going to be small amounts of keywords. Very targeted, etc. I'll use a similar structure with higher budgets up to say $5,000 per month. If I run a mid sized campaign of say $5,000 - $25,000 per month. I charge 15%. $25,001 and up I charge 10%. The largest I've run so far was almost $500,000 per month. The way it works out is that you save them so much money and get them so many more conversions that they are happy to pay. It's taken me the past 8-9 years to perfect my methods on it. Using my methods I was able to recently manage just shy of 500 accounts for small business at one time. Hope that helps. Sorry if I got too wordy and detailed with it.

There are a few tools out there get fairly close. I use keywordspy.com quite a bit. It does pretty well with it. The best way I've found to do it is to bid high on my terms and optimize from there. That gives me usually the best cpc.

I've used speed ppc. But, I'm one of those that likes to do my own pages. That said, I know quite a few that have had good success with it.

I've used websites a lot. It's a good in the door. Build them a new site and upsell seo and ppc. Also, the vouchers work great too.

Google is still evolving the mobile side. A lot of the tools aren't available yet for mobile. However, I don't think that changes much of their approach on how they calculate QS and all that. So, I think it's still relative to mobile and will become even more so as time goes on.

Also, on your banned account question...about 3 years ago Google went through and literally banned hundreds of thousands of accounts. One of mine got banned as well. We had to call and straighten it out. Thankfully I spent enough to have my own rep. For the ones that didn't it didn't go as well. They were banning like crazy because of an FCC possible violation from the spam type affiliates that were selling get rich quick stuff and using Google's name. Unfortunately they nabbed a lot of good accounts in the process. So, they later went back and removed those bans for some of them. You won't really find much on this outside of the FCC violations. I got more details from my rep at the time.

Yes to both questions. The landing page plays a huge role in QS and cpc. Really it comes down to relevancy. If you play by Google's rules then you will always come out on top. They give you everything you need to know. You just have to remember that they are nerds. They speak in tech terms. So, to make an MIT algorithm work for layman terms. In other words you should be using the main keyword phrase in your adgroup as the main key phrase on your page. Then, pepper in some LSI keywords just like in SEO. This will inherently raise your QS due to it being more relevant to your viewers. If this doesn't make sense just ask and I'll explain it further. That's the simple principle though.

What I do is create an MCC. Master Client Center account. It's basically a control panel. Then, through there I setup individual accounts. For instance, in my most recent setup I was managing roughly 450 offline businesses ppc accounts. I setup their credit card info in the Google account so that's it's billed directly there. Then, I setup a subscription through paypal or my merchant account for my fee. I do know of a couple of companies that do it where they just bill the client the full amount (management fee + budget). However, you need to either have a huge credit card (even then you'll run into issues. I cover this in my course) or you can setup financing with Google to get net 30 or even net 45. That's the way to go if you are billing a lot of clients. But, starting out it's easier to do the clients credit card in the account.

It sounds like you are thinking of Google conversion tracking optimization. Basically, this is where Google automatically optimizes your adwords campaign for conversions. So, if you say I only want to pay $15 per conversion. That is what it starts optimizing bids for. You have to give it the conversion data of around 30 or so conversions to be able to know what it's doing and effectively optimize.

Google analytics will allow you to setup conversion funnels and all of that to watch the flow of your sales process. That let's you know which point people are leaving at. Maybe they don't feel comfortable at a certain point in the sales process and bail out. You can see that report and start testing to fix the issue. Does that all make sense?

Actually nearly any do. I've done adwords campaigns for info products on clickbank, people search companies, AC companies, plumbers, electricians, dentists, flower shops, etc. The main difference between SEO and PPC is that PPC starts right away. Also, you pay for each visitor that clicks on your ad so you really have to optimize the campaign to make sure you are getting the most out of it that you can. I normally will use a two pronged approach with a client. I'll get them going on PPC and SEO. Then, I take the most profitable keywords on PPC and optimize them on SEO. I keep them running on PPC though for those profitable keywords. Now, the business is getting even more traffic and revenue coming in and it's all profitable. Win Win.

Here are a few points I wanted to add which may be of help to many new to ppc:

a) Successful PPC advertising is about knowing your value per visitor,
your break even number in order to obtain maximum net profit. So many
google advertisers get this wrong. Many think its about the lowest cost
per click but the only thing that matters is the net profit per campaign.
Maybe start with the 10 best targeted keywords, with the highest search
volume.

Use analytics to track campaigns down to the individual keywords and save between 40%-80% costs.

b)Create your first landing page with the number 1 keyword optimised.
The number1 keyword is the most targeted and has the highest search
volume for your market.

c)Setup your first adwords campaign: Makesure you use the optimised
number 1 keyword for your business. Ensure the campaign has exact
match, search network only and all regions, all times.

d)Overpay for the traffic at first: 99% of advertisers don't know this
tactic. Tactic 1 is lose money on purpose and not make a profit. The
objective is to track if anything converts at any price. If it
does carry out our most wanted response, optimize the campaign for
maximum profits.If not much traffic doesn't convert we can stop buying
traffic for that particular keyword.

e)Lower Costs: Need to improve the landing page first;

If we can prove that traffic we drive to a landing page
will convert, hence the higher the clickthrough rate the
lower the cost per click. This will increase our profits.
If the landing page score is low, tweak the page to
increase the quality score which will reduce your costs even further.

f)Alternative way to reduce costs even further other than increasing the
quality score is split testing. Play beat my control ad and run 2 ads to
determine between 30 to 100 clicks which is the control ad and which ad needs to be rewritten.

This increases the clickthrough rate and reduces the CPC.

g)Monitor your conversion data. For example where the
best and worst converting traffic is coming from.Also check
out adscheduling, if certain days or timesconvert better
than alternative days and times.

h)Another method of maximising profits by reducing clicks costs is implementing negative keyword matchings.

Great way of reducing unwanted clicks and increasing your clickthrough rate.

Hope this helps,

I have done ppc for clients where I didn't manage or control the landing page but I tell them up front that the results might not be as good and why. As a result I usually try to get them setup with a landing page at the very least. That way I know it will convert. As far as clicks go, you are going to get more traffic with SEO. That's why I use them together. SEO is also going to have some keywords you are going to have difficulty ranking for. Also, it's going to take time. PPC is instant. Huge benefits in running PPC.

It does actually help with SEO I've found in many ways. One way is that it allows you to focus SEO on most profitable keywords without guesswork. Also, I've never really seen it mentioned by Google but in my testing and the testing of colleagues we've noticed that having traffic on the site is noticed by Google in Analytics and we have seen faster ranking as a result.

I am using PPC for my online campaigns. If you want immediate results, use ppc. Easy to set up and very effective as long as you have the right keywords, good ads to get high quality score and you work on the budget.

anyone have input on mobile ppc and adwords for you tube?

looking into them.


thanks

kirby

Your thoughts on conversion analysis and reviews with client? Best Practices..

Obviously them seeing the conversions and the reports, but what about lower volume or intangible benefit (maybe customer returned later to the site or called).

More specifically PayPerCall.


ex: Landing Page or mobile website conversions, click to call (called plumber from landing page)... Your best practices for tracking?

Yes. I usually will set aside X amount to get started with then increase it as I get business. If you start a very targeted exact match campaign in a local area you should be able to get a campaign started with that. No reason why you couldn't pick up some clients if you setup the campaign properly.

However, let me ask...Is it problems with ranking or converting that is giving you problems on SEO? That could be a huge problem if you are selecting poor keywords or your site isn't converting. If that's the case you'll have the same issues on PPC that you are having on SEO.

Yep. Sent it over.

Think of the ones who bring in the most from their clients. Lawyers (I've seen $55 per click in this one recently), Plumbers, Electricians, real estate agents, Dentists, Doctors, etc. Then, just think outside the box a little. Think of how many businesses out there have a high LTV with their clients. Life Time Value.

If they catch wind of what? Teaching people the correct ways to use their systems? I set up new accounts for clients and myself all of the time without any issues. I've been doing so for 8 almost 9 years now. If you have any questions fire away.

Normally I charge a setup fee then a monthly maintenance fee. You could do something like charge $800 per month and devote $500 to the budget and $300 for you or just do a percentage of the budget.

Not anymore. You will occasionally run across situations where you can do that. However, most of the time Google will end up killing the ad due to trademarks. I don't even set that up in the first place. The reason is because if you get too many "warnings" for violating things with Google they will just shut you off. Better to avoid it all together.

You can also setup 800 routing numbers. (An 800 number that routes to their phone number). That way you can track conversions through phone and pages.

Use those vouchers. They are everywhere are readily available. That gives you a foot in the door. Once you've done a few clients get some case studies going to show your results. Results and confidence go over way better than certifications.

The biggest mistake I see people make is sending traffic to a poorly optimized page. I had one client running their own ads when I took it over. They didn't even have a contact form on their site. I had to search for the phone number. And they asked me why they had never received any responses.

Yes. I really like MSN. You have to approach it differently though. You have to go in knowing it's a tier 2 program. Meaning you won't get near the traffic most of the times as Google. The audience is different so most of the time you can't just take a successful page from adwords and run it on MSN with the same keywords. You have to test for MSN and Google separately. But, there is really good money to be made on MSN. No doubt. And if you look on fiverr.com there are some guys selling $300 of coupons for MSN for $5.

First thing you need to do first before trying to create a new account or anything is figure out why they banned it. Did you receive violation notices? If you receive too many violations your account will be considered a repeat offender and they will shut you down. If you don't know just ask them through email on the help pages. I would say call but if you haven't spent much they usually just refer you to the help pages for email contact. That's where I would start. Once you figure that out the best thing is to not do whatever you did again.

Then, unless they can fix your account you could just create a new account with a new credit card, new email etc. And follow the rules very closely. I hear people bash some of their rules. But most of the ones that were banned when the big issues came about 3 years ago they were doing things that were bad for all of us. Not just Google.

Google conversion tracking is what let's you track conversions only from your adwords account. When that's in place you can see which keywords and which ads let to the conversion. It allows you to optimize that campaign better.

Google Analytics is a whole other beast. It allows you to track everything that goes on with the website. You can setup conversion funnels that will show you where people are leaving in the sales process. It's more for landing page and site optimization. Also, it's great for tracking SEO progress. (Which keywords are getting you the highest converting traffic and things like that)

I've seen it work for certain things. It's best for lead gen. It really depends on what you are targeting. Remember it's demographic driven. The thing is with it is that you need to think from a media buy standpoint. Go into it with a ton of ads to test. I wouldn't start with less than 20 different ads. That would be just to start with. I test heavily when it comes to media buys because the conversion rate and CTR is generally lower on average. Through heavy testing I'll get the CTR rate considerably higher.

Some things that you could test on facebook would be florists for holidays like mothers day, etc. One thing I'll do sometimes is play with the ad creation tool on there and see how many people have certain keywords in their profile info. For a lot of businesses it's not going to work. But, if you do some testing you might surprised with what it will work with.

Yes. I'm a little behind at the moment with the content. I got swamped with clients. Anyway, I'm going to have some early launch pages out over the next couple of days. It will cover how to manage ppc with real world experience on effectively managing account. I'll be constantly adding content to it as well. I will also be explaining in detail a few different ways to get clients. As soon as I have the launch pages up I'll put the link in here.

I do promote offline clients with PPC. The ROI really depends on the niche. For instance, let's say I do a Lawyer in DC. I'm going to be paying about $35-$75 per click. So, a lead might cost them $200-$500. However, this is where you do the math with them early on to show the value. That lead has a chance of making them $10,000. Huge ROI. Let's say they spend $1200 to get a lead that turns into $10k. Are they happy. Of course.

A plumber - Let's say he's running at $21-$27 per click in Atlanta, GA. (Yes, these are real numbers from real clients. ) I've built him a site that is getting him a 45% opt in rate. If he gets 5 leads in 2 days. He's probably spent around $276. But, 3 of those leads turn into jobs. He charges $125 per hour and averages 2 hours per call. He spent $276 and made $750. Is he happy. As a clam.

So, you have to look at how much a client is worth to them. The key is test test test.

It's going to be a monthly recurring. I just worked out the pricing and am setting up some launch videos this week. The first one should be out tomorrow. I'm going to mainly focus on offline marketing. But, all of the material will easily carry over to the affiliate side. There is still good money to be made in the affiliate world. I've made plenty of it. I was an affiliate doing PPC for a couple of years until I got into client management.

Sure. It really is just a basis of User Experience Design. Its designing a site for optimal user experience. Making it as easy as possible and comfortable as possible for the user to do what they came there for. Here is a good article about it: What Is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools And Resources | Smashing UX Design

This is on the principle of basic usability and functionality. I take that even further and go into landing page optimization and testing with it. I also apply a lot of direct marketing background to landing pages. (My mentor has been a marketing exec for AMEX, Time Magazine, Intuit, etc) So, when I look at landing page or site design I look for psychological elements. Look for friction on the pages. By friction I mean what is preventing the person from taking the next step you want them to take.

Here are a couple of really good performing sites that I can think of:
pinterest.com (It's a very sticky site. By sticky I mean people stay a long time)
Amazon.com (The standard for ecommerce)

A great lead gen page is on optimize press. They have the squeeze 08 page template that I've tested alot. With some very clearly written copy I have gotten as high as 50% opt in from PPC. Even higher if you add video.

Hope that helps.

I sent you a PM. I'll give you a hand with it.

However, I think you pointed out something in there really good that people on here could benefit from.
No. The reason why is because you don't know how the other traffic will convert. I've had pages get 47% opt in rate on Google. So, I try a cheaper traffic source to get more traffic right? Opt in rate drops in half or less. Had a great page on Yahoo one time. Moved it over to Google. Not even close to the same response. Once I did some tweaking and testing I got it to convert very well for most sources. But, even then there were sources that didn't convert that great. The copy can be good and the message very clear but it may not solve the problem of the different traffic sources.

You can't assume because it converts in one place it will another. You have to consider the demographics, how they are finding the ads, are they casually browsing profiles or are they actively searching for a solution? Too many factors to consider for a blanket statement. That said, the best answer is to come up with a really good starting point and just get ready to test test test.

Your biggest change is in demographics. I've noticed in testing that Bing has an older crowd. So, as a result things will work a little differently there than on Google.
Here is a decent article outlying the differences.

Comparing Google and Bing Demographics

If you look at compete.com or one of those you can really see the difference in the demographics.

Glad I can help. If you need any help let me know.

Yes. I will normally put a separate one in the mobile side so you can track those differently.

good to see that your system is nearly ready, it would be a great help if you could have a W/P theme sales page similar to one that converts best in your business , much more sales for you and a big help for anybody that buys your offer

It's going to be $49 per month (Discount for buying a year at a time. $420) and will include a forum with coaching (even looking into accounts). Content will be updated on a regular basis. I'm also including some sample contracts and will be constantly adding new tools and features.

Great. Sorry it's taken longer than I thought. We started doing some advertising with Craigslist and the clients came out of the wood works it seems. So, between that and the content I've been swamped. I'm setting aside this weekend to finish up the main content. Then, I'll be adding to it monthly as well as answering questions and all that. I'm going to cover several ways to get clients and include sample contracts and stuff like that.

So, again thanks for all of the interest. Looking forward to getting it launched.

Thanks a lot. The support on here has been fabulous. If you have any questions hit me up. Glad to help.

It doesn't really depend on the niche at all honestly. It depends on 2 factors. Keywords and message.
Keywords - is it a targeted keyword. (Meaning are they ready to take action)
Message - is it clear and understandable what the offer is?

If I'm doing lead gen opt ins I normally will work toward getting 20-25% as a starting point. Once I hit that 20-25% mark I know I'm clear with my message and am using the right type of keywords. At that point you just continue tweaking until you hit as high as you can. There is always room for improvement. But, in my testing I've always found that once I hit that 20-25% mark that's when I've got it. From there it's just testing minor things with the copy in ads or page, page elements, headlines, etc. The more you test the more money you make.

Remember too, if someone sees an ad saying that by clicking they will receive X. Then, they get to that page and the wording is different or it's not clear than you've lost them.

Does that all make sense? If not just ask.

I'll get you a reply this weekend. Incredibly busy week. I did get it though.

As long as you set expectations on what they will receive everything is fine. I had one client that was just gouging people. If he charged them $900 per month he was keeping $600 and putting $300 toward the budget. (I personally think it's wrong and I told him so. In fact I no longer work with him as a result) He had 400 clients like that. He later lost his merchant account because of the refunds and chargebacks.

The moral of the story is price it fairly and set expectations. Let them know what they can expect to see as a return. As long as you do that you'll be fine. And as always guarantee nothing. Guaranteed results mean guaranteed chargebacks and unhappy customers.

There is a way things work. PPC feeds SEO. Local Places to me is just another piece to the puzzle in marketing. The goal in marketing a site is to round out that full package.

What I mean by PPC feeds SEO is that you can use PPC to find keywords that convert for the client. It's not about getting the client ranked. That's stupid. I can rank nearly anything and have done so time and time again. However, it's when you rank them for profitable keywords. Now that's when you have a client for life.

It depends on the goal. If they ONLY want conversions by phone you could try just putting the emphasis on the phone number. Then, do an opt in box with the drive of having the company call the customer. That way you get the best of both worlds. That's what I normally do. Also, remember to use redirect numbers from Google, twilio, or one of those to track conversions.

I totally understand where you are coming from. When I started adwords was in its infancy. This was around 2003. So, I literally had to figure it out all on my own. There was no Google help, no ebooks, nothing. So, I made some monetary mistakes in developing my techniques. I must have lost $200-$300. (This was when I was getting .10-.15 per click.) Ah, those were the days. That was the expensive markets. Then, I found out how to get a campaign breaking even. Then, it just kept getting better and better. I was making like $7500 per month as an affiliate and only spending $1500 to get that.

Why did I tell all of this? Because, these days it's not $200-$300 you would lose. It would be more like $2000-$3000 trying to learn your way. I am creating the course I wish had been there when I started. In the course the modules are PPC 101, 201, 301, How To Get Clients, and a coaching forum. I literally start with a $100 voucher and create a campaign from scratch with the video recording it step by step. As time goes on I'm going to add videos monthly showing the progress of that campaign and others. Everything I've learned the hard way I reveal.

In the forum I'll also be helping with questions. As people have problems pop up I'll be there to help you through it. That's the whole point of this. Hope that answers your question. And yes, a CPA offer or affiliate offer is a good way to start testing. Also, your own site for your business would be a good place as well.

It's going to be $49 per month.

Yes. You can use squeeze pages but they have to be based around some content. Normally what I'll do is have the main site setup for SEO then I'll have squeeze pages that have links in the footer to the main site. I'll have the privacy policy, terms, contact form, etc. Then, you need to make sure you have some good content on the squeeze page.

They've always hated affiliates. The type of affiliates that make things bad for their searchers. If you are doing things the proper way you'll have no issues.

You'll love this then. I cover 3 (for now) ways that I get clients for ppc. I've got probably 10 different ways I do. I'll be making more videos each month on that. I'm thinking about doing a WSO just for the how to get clients section. There are a ton of ways. And just so you know, the ones you mentioned above I never use.

I've done campaigns in the US, UK, Germany, Australia, Canada, and a few other countries. The stuff I'm teaching is just solid PPC not geared toward one country or location. I'm starting with adwords but will be adding bing later on. I'll be adding to it monthly.

I spent 4 years building and running a marketing department for a $20 million per year internet marketing firm. Here is what one of my reports had to say about my training him (I hired him and he took over managing our $400k per month accounts under my direction.) I pulled this from linked in.
Joey Muller

, Internet Marketing & PPC Manager, HD Publishing Group (colleague)
reported to you
“Michael was a pleasure to work with. I reported to Michael, and I always appreciated his management style which allowed me enough room to spread my wings while keeping me aimed in the right direction. I really enjoyed being on Michael's team and can easily that say he taught me much of what I know about marketing today.” August 3, 2010

The program I've set up is designed from beginning to end. My first video is called what is ppc? I want to have a program where someone could know nothing about ppc and in a short time be easily managing clients and making good money. Or they could do their own affiliate thing and make money that way. Whatever the case may be. I'm looking at creating a full setup for PPC. It's a little unorthodox at times also. I basically build a campaign while just talking out loud instead of keeping the conversation in head. Step by step. I have taught a ton of ppc to be successful using ppc. That's what got me interested in kind of retiring from management and going into teaching like this.

As far as getting clients goes Google makes it easy for you. I teach several ways to get clients using the $100 vouchers. It's not hard getting clients. Just takes a little work on your part. They don't care about your experience they care about your results for them.

Great questions. I actually use webdesign to get ppc clients. I also use PPC to get web clients too. To be honest I can't think of many markets I haven't been in at one point or another. I've managed over a thousand campaigns over the last 9 years.

I have worked with startups. I'm working with one in Germany right now. The tactics I'm teaching in the course apply to anyone doing ppc of any kind. I do put some local market spin on it but it's not narrowed down to that. It applies to any market on any scale. In fact, I'll be updating it monthly and over time it's going to end up covering everything from the local stuff to affiliate marketing, mobile, etc. I want it to end up being an all inclusive ppc course. The main focus at this point is search/text ads. The next step I'm adding is mobile. Then, I'm hitting the display network. It applies to all types of products though.

Great. It's really an awesome way to make money. Also, if you are selling websites it's an awesome upsell. If you have any questions just ask. I'm happy to help.

@Eloy - That is true that I never 100% any tool. That's why in my training I focus on teaching the principles of marketing and how to look for certain things to key on. Google's keyword tool is about the most accurate out there. The thing that throws many people though is the numbers they see are "Average" numbers. That means average over a years time. If you look at numbers as much as I have you begin to see hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly trends. Ups and downs. So, it's always best to compare to your actual campaign results. Google also is showing you past data. They can't show it real time because even though they own massive data centers no one's data center is big enough for that. Most of the keyword tools out there gather data from doing statical analysis of Google numbers as well as a few other search engines combined with dogpile and some of the old school places where "search" began so to speak.

The problem I have with using multiple keyword tools (And I've used pretty much every one out there and written a couple of my own) is that you run into issues grabbing traffic numbers from different sources and trying to apply them to Google. If you look at composite Bing and Google numbers and run a Google only campaign it won't turn out like you want. Why? Different demographics of searchers.

Great question. They have a department setup that sets up campaigns for free. As a member of Google engage you can use that department to setup campaigns and even charge clients the setup fee. (My rep from Google told me to do that) They are actually trying to help offline marketers by doing that. For them it gets more customers in the door for adwords. And they also know that people who should know how to run adwords will keep the clients spending money with them. If the clients run their own campaigns there is a good chance they will mess it up and not touch ppc again. I have yet to use that because I do a lot of my setup based on instincts and past experience. (My keyword research is a very serious thing for me. I probably over analyze it if anything else. That's why it's the longest video of them all.)

I have mentioned to people that Google will do that for them. But, the key is to look at the campaign before it goes live and see if they did what you want. In the humblest way I can say this I've never spoken to a Google rep (and I've had 4 of them assigned to me that were really good.) that has known more about adwords than me. It's just because I've done it in the real world for so long.

I'll probably have them setup a couple of test campaigns soon just to see how well they do with it. If they do a good job or at least a decent job it could take out quite a bit of the setup work for you. Then again, it could end up making you spend more time fixing it. They know the rules and can pass the tests but that doesn't mean they can make money at it.

Yes. I'm going to be adding new content on a weekly basis.

As long as you have a full site you should be fine. I normally do link back to the main site as well though. The obvious best scenario is to have a killer opt in on your main site. I've gotten 7-10 QS on optimize press pages just as recent as a month ago. So, it definitely works.

I write my own copy. In the past when I've managed people I've given them room to grow by writing their own copy. Normally though I like to do it or direct it myself. Also, I've been building websites for 16 years so that helps with the design.

If you are looking to create a landing page I would use something like optimize press or another theme where the opt in form is above the fold (shown on the page without scrolling down). That's if you are doing lead gen. If not just a good sales page. Just a tip: video helps conversions a lot.

Do you mean MCC? My Client Center? That's used to manage multiple ppc accounts in adwords. It definitely makes life easier if you are doing multiple campaigns.

It sounds like you are off to a decent start. There is usually always room for improvement. There are so many different ways to increase conversions it's insane.

First, are you tracking? If so, cut out things not converting. Take your keywords that are converting and getting a decent amount of traffic and setup adgroups for each of them specifically. Setup a landing page just for that adgroup.

Next, continue testing your ads. Check to make sure that your offer is clear and consistent from the ad all the way to the lead gen page.

Do some split testing on your page for headlines, button colors, button copy, etc. PM me if you want me to take a look. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the compliment. Good question. I'll be quite honest, I've gotten a good positive ROI on things that people said were impossible. I got a 150-175% ROI in the background check and people search niche running over 700 sales per day. I also recently did a successful campaign for a PPC company selling PPC services. This isn't me bragging. This is an example of what's possible.

You have to look at it differently. I've been doing SEO for 16 years now. I've ranked hundreds of sites that are still making big money. However, I've never heard of Neil Patel. I'm familiar with SEOmoz of course. Do you think anyone outside of the SEO market really knows who any of these people are? In fact most people don't even know what SEO is. They just know online marketing. Paid and Free. That's what they know.

So, you have to approach it this way. SEO, PPC, Media Buys, Direct Mail, Cold Calling. All of these are tools. If the message to your audience or demographic isn't clear you won't make a dime. All you have to do is figure out what your audience wants, what questions do they have inside their head. Then, answer those questions. Talk to them in terms they understand. You do that and you'll have an incredible ROI. No matter what niche you are in.

Good example of that. I was talking with someone the other day. My wife and I have been dabbling with Craigslist (We run our business together out of our house. We've done that for about 8 years now). All we are doing is answering ads for web design in the gigs area in major cities. It took a week or so of split testing email responses but we are now up to an 8% conversion rate. Last week I sold about $2000 worth of work in one day. All without meeting a client face to face. I never talk on the phone more than 20-30 min. It's because we got the message clear to them through testing. We let them tell us what they wanted to hear through testing.

You don't need the big name among industry professionals to sell. Because you aren't selling to them. You are selling to businesses that desperately need your help. They've never heard of SEO, Neil Patel, SEOmoz, or any of that. They just need more people at their site buying their products/services.

Also, it doesn't hurt much that most SEO companies are trying to get all of their business through SEO and not PPC. Just like if you SEO a PPC company there is a whole lot less competition.

Does that make sense?

Think about it a bit. See if you can find pockets of people (micro niches or whatever you want to call them) that have their credit card in hand looking to do whatever it is you do. It doesn't matter what you call it. It might be driving more traffic, getting more sales, etc. They've narrowed down what they want. They are ready to buy. Then, just cater your pitch to that. Does that make sense?

Not necessarily. As much as Bing doesn't have the traffic of Google they still have a good bit of traffic. I've made some good money off of affiliate campaigns there. I'm actually doing some affiliate campaigns right now in fact on Google and Bing. There is still quite a bit of affiliate stuff to be had on PPC.

The trick is to add value to their customers. Treat it like you are setting up a business around a niche. Not just an affiliate product or campaign. If you do that you'll be quite all right.

If I were you I would leverage Engage. They will create the campaign for you free of charge. I wouldn't trust people on fiverr for that. If you need help with someone just let me know. Send me a PM or something.

You definitely will have to do a landing page. However, you need to build what I'm calling a mini authority site for that niche. It's basically building a small business in that niche. That way you can market different affiliate products or even create your own product if you want. You can build a list and build an actual business around that niche. If you do the thin sites they won't last long and be shut down. Thin sites are the little one page squeeze or landing pages. Build a site with an about us page, contact, privacy policy, etc. That extra hour spent building the site will make the niche business go much better for you.

Actually yes. I've currently got a package of logo templates in the resources page. This week I'm adding a step by step wordpress setup. I'm also working on some themes as well.
Currently I haven't but I'm putting together a list of guys who can knock these pages out and do a good job doing it. One of them is a WF member that does great work for a great price.
If you use something like traffic estimator in conjunction with the keyword tool you can get a pretty close guestimate.
At that point I'll normally institute automated rules to control things. Can you give me a little more detail? I'm happy to answer the question. There are just a lot of variables there. It depends on what your LTV of your customer is and a few other things as well.
Yes. I'm working on a calculator to do this for the site right now. I always do this. First you figure out what you are making per sale (if it's an affiliate sale then your commission, if it's a client then the LTV of a client). Then, that lets you know how much you can spend to acquire that client. Then, you'll take an estimated conversion rate percentage. I usually start at 2% for sales and 15% for leadgen. (I do that because it's conservative. I know I can improve it with optimization). Then, I get my estimated cost per click.

Now just do the math:
LTV - Cost Per Acquisition((CPC X 100) / (Conv Rate X 100) = CPA) = Profit
Example: If your LTV is $65, sample conversion rate is 2%, cpc is .75.
$65 - (2 / $75=$37.50) = $27.50 profit per sale
I can normally optimize the process to be very profitable even if it's break even or losing slightly.

It's pretty complicated. That's why I'm building a calculator to do it for you. If that doesn't make sense let me know. I've got a full video that I'm working on now to explain this. That's how complicated it can be.

The traffic estimator is one that is included with Google. The calculator I'm building is an ROI calculator that will do the calculation on expenses. Yes. It's going to be web based.

The reason why I think it's good to focus on offline businesses first is simply because it's a good way to get your feet wet and make money in online marketing. I also do plenty of affiliate marketing and product creation. It can get expensive. So, offline marketing offers a way for people to learn PPC while working with other people's money. If you follow my techniques in the course you'll be way ahead of the curve.

The ideal way to setup a page for a client is to put the opt in form above the fold on their current site. They might need a new site. They might also need a mobile version as well. (There is 3 sales right there including PPC) Affiliate marketing isn't as hard as people make it out to be. I've done well with it for years. I'm going to be doing a version of my site just for affiliates although both offline and affiliate will apply to each other. It's still just advanced ppc training. With affiliate marketing it's your money you'll be spending. That's why I recommend to go offline first to get experience. Get it paying the bills then go affiliate if you want. Once you know PPC good enough you can pretty much make money at will.

I use some tools myself like Keyword Spy but you don't have to buy them. I teach how to do everything using the free tools available to you. I teach marketing principles. Teach a man to fish principle. Then, once you understand the principles you can use tools to automate things and make it easier.

That would be a great pitch. If you offer a free consultation and after looking at the account you know you can lower expenses sure. However, I would focus more on getting paid and delivering solid results. Most of the companies out there focus on getting them ranked. If you focus on delivering solid results you'll be way ahead. Remember too that if you've gone through my course you know more about adwords than 98% of all businesses out there. And more than a lot working with adwords at Google. (More on that to come. I've got some news on Engage that I found out yesterday. I'll put it in a different post.)

I've put some videos in the site going through step by step techniques of how to find clients that need adwords help that are already running it. Also, you can use craigslist, and several other free techniques that require no out of pocket money to get clients. I sold several thousand dollars of work in one day about 2 weeks ago just using craigslist. I just wanted to try it out to proof test it for my members. Only took about 4 hours worth of work to get those results and cost me nothing.

Thanks for the kind words. Keep the questions coming.