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Pay-Per-Click Tactics |
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sprouting like mushrooms in spring - have you noticed? I saw a count of 270 recently. They must be great if they’re becoming so popular, right? But as usual, throwing money at a problem (lack of traffic) won't necessarily fix it. I would be embarrassed to show you some of my credit card bills for PPC search engines, and even more embarrassed to tell you how meager the resulting sales were. Overture.com is by far the largest PPC out there, now joined by many others as I noted above. Even Google, the king of free search engines now has added a "cost-per-click pricing" wrinkle to their search pages. PPC's are most likely part of most marketer's strategies at some point, because they are probably the quickest way to drive targeted traffic (visitors that are interested in your type of product) to your site. If free search engines are going to wane in popularity, how do you respond? After all, you need to be where the potential customers are, and if they are going more and more to PPC's then you need to have a PPC strategy. Here is my first suggestion. 1. Take a diversified approach. Have you noticed how every article you read on investing invariably includes the mantra "diversify your investments"? Whether the market is going up or down, whether the economy is in boom or recession, diversify is always a recommendation from the experts. Well, it applies to your marketing strategy also. You may well find that one particular approach (an ezine, for example) may ultimately be the biggest winner for you. But the way to find out what is the killer strategy is in your particular case (if indeed there is just one) is to try several. Unless you are incredibly lucky, you will be in a major experimentation mode for some time, and in fact never really leave that mode as long as you are in business. So, although I am concentrating on PPC tactics here, my first bit of advice is to be working on other fronts at the same time. OK, you know you shouldn't rely on any one marketing method to the exclusion of all others, and hopefully you have seen how the Traffic Virus tools can assist you in your diversification - how should you approach the PPC monster? That brings me to my second suggestion. 2.Don't overlook Overture.com. Since Overture is the biggest PPC and you can spend as little as $20 per month to maintain an account, you should do so. The secret is not to jump into the middle of the food dish with the big dogs - you'll get your ears chewed off! Even if it is the perfect search term for your site, for most of us it is insane to spend several dollars per click to get a visitor. Luckily, you don't have to. When you log in as an advertiser, go to Manage Listings, then Add Listings. Click on the Search Term Suggestion Tool and enter a term or phrase associated with your business. You will get a list of related phrases and the number of searches done on each in the previous month. Try several related terms to get a rich assortment of phrases centered around your business. Copy and paste all the ones you like into a word processor, along with the number of searches. Now click on View Current Bids (B in a circle) and enter a search term from your list to see what the current bids are. The terms with high search numbers may have bids of several dollars. Go down the list until you start finding terms where you can get in the top 3 spots in the 15-20 cent range (or less), but are still relevant to your site. Here is where you want to concentrate. The top 3 spots are termed Premium Listings and reach 85% of all Internet users, according to Overture, compared to 40% for lower listings. If you can find 20 terms for 15 cents each that have produced a total of 500 clicks last month and you get 100 visitors from those terms, you have spent only $15. In comparison, 100 visitors clicking on $3 search terms would cost $300. The secret to getting the same number of visitors at low cost is to bid on more search terms, but make sure they are all low cost. 3. Don't stop at Overture.com Now that you have identified search terms you like, you need to move on to other PPC engines. Some of the top ones are: www.findwhat.com www.7search.com www.bay9.com www.goclick.com www.kanoodle.com www.epilot.com www.searchgalore.com www.espotting.com www.search123.com And if that is not enough, you can find over 270 at http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com/ Many of these engines offer a credit of $10 or so to new customers (one is even offering a 500% credit for any deposit - do you think they need business??), so it makes sense to try out several. Since none of these engines have the traffic of Overture.com, you may be able to get at or near the top ranking on search terms that you found at the top of the Overture search term list. (NOTE however: You will need to check the keyword popularity on each PPC before you bid. A word or phrase that generated 50,000 requests on Overture may generate a big fat 0 on the next engine, and it would be a waste of time to bid on that term.) The operative phrase here is the same as with all Internet marketing, TEST, EVALUATE results and TEST again. You will undoubtedly find that some engines give better results than other, so you will know where to concentrate your resources. How will you know which engine is doing best, you ask? 4. Use an ad tracking method. Tracking can be done several ways. One way is to use a tracking URL so you can tell where your traffic is coming from. At the end of your URL, add a question mark, followed by some term to identify the source. For example, for Overture listings, use http://www.mysite.com/?source=overture Be sure you test the completed tracking URL so you know it works correctly - Overture will decline the listing if not. If your URL is a subdomain, for example, you will probably need to omit the "/" preceding the "?". There is additional information about tracking URL's on Overture's Add Listing page. The access logs on your web host server should show the "source=overture" or whatever the source is. Another method is to use an ad tracking program or service. There are many to choose from; I use the Ultimate Ad Tracker provided by EzineTactics. You can check it out at http://EzineTactics.com/?id=4662 Another popular ad tracking service which also includes a host of other services is call ROIbot. You can review it at http://www.roibot.com/r.cgi?R56962_1 Ad tracking services require you to enter a special URL for each source you are tracking. The URL routes to the ad tracking service which records where the visitor came from, then routes the visitor to your normal URL, all instantaneously and without the visitor being aware of it. Another method is to use one of the free services that put a code on your web page to provide you stats about your visitors. In return for the service, a small ad will be placed on your page. A few of these services are: www.hitboxcentral.com www.openwebscope.com Still another way is to make a duplicate web page for each PPC and name the page after the PPC sending the traffic. You can then analyze your web stats to see which PPC's are performing and which are not. 5. Work on titles and descriptions This is the heart of the process, of course. If your title and description doesn't attract visitors, you're dead meat. But if they attract the wrong visitors, you're dead broke meat! You should treat titles and descriptions like writing a classified ad. You need to write something catchy but informative. Also be careful to read the guidelines for titles and description provided by the PPC you are considering. Overture is particularly strict in evaluating your submissions and won’t hesitate to decline a listing for any infraction of their policies, whether you see it that way or not. Incorporate the search term in both the title and description. Listings that do have a 50% higher click-through rate than those that don't. You may be able to use much of the same description for different search terms, but it’s worth the extra time and effort to be sure you have attractive and informative titles and descriptions that closely match each search term. Remember, targeted traffic results from targeted titles and descriptions. Check out the competition to see how they are writing their titles and descriptions. I'm not suggesting to copy their words, but you will be able to get some ideas and approaches that you can customize to your application. Compose your titles and descriptions in your word processor instead of on the PPC entry form. This will allow your spell checker to find errors and also make sure you have a record of the titles and descriptions to use with the next PPC. If you put all these suggestions to work in your PPC efforts, you should see a steady stream of quality visitors to you site, and significant sales accompanying them. Glenn Gordon - Building Success Online at http://www.ur-in-business.com The Ultimate Autoresponder Guide at http://www.AllAboutAutoresponders.info http://www.BusinessBuilderNewsletter.com This article may be freely reproduced as long as the resource information is included. |