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Posted on 21. Dec, 2009 by The Wizard in Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click advertisers only pay when an advertisement they placed on a Search Engine, Web Site or Blog is clicked to access the advertised content.

PPC is effective when properly managed. However, there are pitfalls which must be considered before initiating any Pay Per Click programs. These include:

• If not properly managed Pay Per Click can be expensive
• It’s possible to get involved in a bidding war drastically increasing PPC costs
• Advertisements placed on inappropriate web sites or content networks deliver un-targeted traffic, increase cost and lower campaign ROI
• As traffic increases so does the cost

Effective Pay Per Click Strategies

Prepare PPC Budget

It is imperative at the outset of your PPC campaign to prepare a budget for the advertising campaign based on profit driven campaign goals such as; increased sales, leads for the sales department or other objectives identified through business Strategic Planning.

Decide on PPC Providers

There are many Pay Per Click providers available with the leaders being Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

Although there are other PPC providers I prefer to work with the “Big 3″ as I have personally experienced “Click Fraud” and poorly targeted traffic when using other PPC providers. However, even when using the primary Pay Per Click providers, you must pay attention to where you ads will be displayed. The use of Google’s content network does have the potential to deliver poorly targeted traffic which is unlikely to convert into your company’s identified goals.

Keyword Selection

The selection of keywords is critical to the success of your PPC campaign. The keywords are used to develop your ad title, ad content and landing page content, and therefore must capture your target audience’s attention immediately.

Investigating potential keywords is essential to obtain a reasonable ROI from your PPC investment. Cost per click varies depending on how popular the keywords are, and how much traffic they are likely to generate.

Paying for the #1 position is not always necessary, often the best strategy is to pay for positions 3 or 4 which are still highly visible and less expensive.

To learn more about the keyword selection process visit Keyword Research. Two very good services for keyword suggestion tools are Wordtracker and Trillium’s Keyword Discovery, both use different processes providing varying results. Another tool which should not be overlooked is Google’s Keyword Tool.

Ad Creation

The key to effective Ad creation is writing ad title and copy that uses the keyword / keyword phrase in an attention grabbing manner using very few characters. You only have seconds to grab your target audience’s attention, thus the importance of writing attention grabbing ad copy.

The use of action verbs, limited time offers, specials and identifying the benefits of your service or product are important factors in developing your PPC advertisements to encourage the “click”.

Landing Page Development

For each ad campaign you can greatly improve your conversion rates by developing landing pages specific to the ad content.

There are two types of landing pages: Reference pages and Action pages.

Reference pages provide the visitor with detailed information about the ad offers and should be relevant and include the keywords and phrases used in the advertisement. Action pages should include motivation to encourage your visitor to complete the transaction or conversion identified in the Pay Per Click planning process.

Key items in a Landing Page Include:

• Headline – Relevant call to action
• Prices, bonuses and special offers appropriate to advertisement
• Page Body Copy – Easy to scan copy detailing product or service benefits
• Sub Headers and Tag lines – action orientated, problem solving
• Buttons and Links – Easily accessible and identifiable to encourage conversion

Testing

It is important to test the effectiveness of your ad and your landing pages. Typically A –B testing is the most informative, enabling you to compare results from advertisements and landing pages which are similar but different while targeting the same keywords and keyword phrases. However, it must be remembered that without significant traffic volumes A-B testing results can provide inaccurate results.

It is now time to try out your Pay Per Click strategies, one final comment is; Start your bids low and build, that is one key factor to keeping within your Pay Per Click budget and obtaining maximum ROI.

Analytics, PPC & SEO: So Happy Together

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Its recession period that world is facing; it’s the time of financial crisis. This is affecting most of the companies and most importantly their money management policies. Industries are cutting their expenditures and are looking for cheaper ways.

“Marketing & Advertising” are the most important area which no business sector can avoid. Though marketing and advertising is quite costly field, but an organization has to go for it as they have to show and maintain their existence.

Taking both the above stated cases together, what will be the best medium for advertising and marketing in the period of recession & financial crisis…… Of course INTERNET.

Internet is the cheapest and most effective of all other marketing areas. Here are the few important ways for promoting your brand through internet –

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

• Pay per click Advertising

• Affiliate Marketing

When a company has to spend a large amount of their money just for showing their existence, even in the period of financial crises. There is no logical reason well enough to explain that why not to choose website promotion schemes. It is obvious that boosting website in search result by website promotion services, an organization can not only cut its expenditure to a greater extend and most importantly it will be going to adopt a long term profitable strategy.

A good search engine optimization services can make website to appear on top results for chosen keywords, thereby increasing the probability of getting business from the people who are seriously looking for it. But the condition is “the keywords selection should be done intelligently by professionals”. A good quality SEO service proved beneficially for long term.

An expert Pay per click management of a website for right category of keywords can attract people to the website who are serious for making deals. With appearance at right place for right keywords, a website can do miracles to the business.

Affiliate marketing or placing banner on related website can drag quality viewer to the website, and if handled properly it can proved to be the best way of advertising.

As these up and downs are common in market and business should not stop because of these fluctuation. All we have to do is to plan our strategy well so as to survive difficult period like these.

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By Ed Henrich , October 15, 2009

Earlier this year, Google CEO Eric Schmidt referred to Twitter as the “poor man’s e-mail system.” So, what does Twitter have in common with e-mail, and how can e-mail marketers use it?

Like e-mail, Twitter is a messaging system that allows you to reach customers directly and gives them the ability to reply or forward (retweet) your message to others. Twitter is permission based. People follow, unfollow, or block you (similar to subscribing for e-mail).

What’s different: Twitter messages are (mostly) in public view, not personalized and limited to 140 characters. It’s also fleeting. I haven’t seen studies, but my attention span is much shorter with Twitter than e-mail. I think time will show that Twitter can have great reach (especially retweets to reach prospects), but not have the same relationship building depth as e-mail.

Use Twitter for Community, Brand, and Business

Two clients that provide good examples of business tweeting are Whole Foods Market and Southwest Airlines.

Whole Foods

Whole Foods uses social media to make its brand feel more local. In addition to its corporate Twitter account with nearly 1.5 million followers, it also has a slew of local Twitter pages. The company also indexes these local pages on its Web site. These create a much more personalized experience, as these tweets from my local store show:

Suffer from Inflammation? Know someone that does? Join us in our Cafe at 7pm for a FREE Health Talk on Nutrition for Inflammation!Fall is here! And our Fuji Apples are on sale for $1.99/lb! Try this amazing recipe for Pumpkin Apple Pie! http://tinyurl.com/pumpapple

Looking for a new friend? Friends of the Oakland Animal Shelter has some cute & furry pals lookin’ for a home at our store today! 11-2pm!

We’re running out of our Millenium Kombucha! Today it’s buy 1, get 1 FREE! Same goes for full cases! Hurry on down!

Local tweet topics include store events, fresh produce that is seasonal by region, limited inventory items, and local charities. Being local is about product and community.

Southwest Airlines

Southwest stays true to its brand with the various Southwest associates who post on behalf of the company on Twitter. The land of the free drink ticket keeps it fun with contests like these tweets:

To celebrate our new in-flight wine selection, tell us why “You’d Rather Be Drinking Wine than Working” #wineswa http://bit.ly/4sGoz0 8:12 AM from CoTweet

Let’s start Monday off right! Who’s ready to win a trip to Napa, courtesy of Southwest and @napamarriott? http://bit.ly/4sGoz0 #wineswa 8:09 AM from CoTweet

Twitter Versus Facebook

In the ClickZ column “Twitter Surpasses Facebook as Top Link in E-mail“, Bill McCloskey cited a Wet Paint study showing that companies with the highest social media activity increased revenue by 18 percent in the last 12 months, while least-active companies saw a 6 percent drop in sales.

I found this correlation between company growth and adoption of social media when comparing airlines’ social media activities. The fastest-growing airlines (Southwest and JetBlue) are the ones with strong social presence on Facebook and Twitter.

Bill also found that the integration of e-mail with Twitter and Facebook is growing. (Based on counts of links to Twitter and Facebook in marketing e-mails.)

In the column, “To-Do List for Facebook and E-mail Integration,” I explained how to integrate Facebook with e-mail. Twitter is a different animal to integrate. Its 140-character limit and low-barrier application make it a more mobile phenomenon. Eighty percent of Twitter usage occurs on mobile devices.

Twitter for Business: Your Quick-Start Guide

• Register your name. Beware of squatters, just like domains in the ’90s. I registered twitter.com/GapMaternity in less than 30 seconds. If you registered a URL, then register the Twitter username. (If you work at the Gap, contact me. I’ll turn it over. Everyone else, don’t let this happen to you.)
• Learn. Monitor how leading companies like Dell, Zappos, and Southwest are using Twitter.
• Listen to what Tweeters are saying about you. Many third-party Twitter readers, such as TweetDeck, will highlight Tweets that include your Twitter handle (example: @SouthwestAir), but you can also keeping a running search page open at Twitter Search. Refresh it periodically.
• Plan for success. Define your goals and objectives. Dedicate one or more staffers to monitor and participate in conversations. Once customers find you on Twitter, many will use it for questions or comments. Think of staffing the way you do for inbound e-mail, but with an advantage: because questions are mostly public, you answer once for all like a forum. For marketing tweets, set up conversion tracking like you would for e-mail.
• Create “shareworthy” content. What content could be exclusive to your Twitter channel? Understand what’s useful, entertaining, or has perceived value. Make it easy to share or follow.
• Integrate your Twitter efforts with marketing efforts in other channels, including e-mail. Promote your Twitter URL on your Web site, in e-mail messages, and other marketing materials. Explain the benefits of following you (such as insider info, special deals, advance sale notice, or flight delays). Promote this page just like you would an e-mail signup page.

• Encourage subscribers to share your e-mail messages with their networks (“Share with your network,” or SWYN). Explain what’s in it for them. Don’t just post links in an e-mail message. Make it easy to tweet and retweet.
• Use customer tweets in your e-mail program, just as you would use some customer reviews.

Twitter Can Humanize Your Brand

When Twitter co-founder Biz Stone was asked about Eric Schmidt’s comments, he replied that Twitter has some similarities to e-mail products but is really for discovering and sharing what is happening right now.

“We think it’s important to introduce the power of a real-time network to even the weakest of signals around the world – as Twitter grows, we realize it’s not about the triumph of technology, it’s about the triumph of humanity,” he said.

Use that insight in your Twitter program, your e-mail program and every other cross-channel program you have. Time to humanize your brand!

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