Join the forum discussion on this post - (1) Posts

Google and Yahoo claim that PPC, or pay per click, marketing is very easy to master. We tend to disagree! PPC can be an enormous way to waste money if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you follow these critical steps during your initial set up, you will be well on your way to making money using PPC.

[ =3,21,22]

Before you start setting up, do a Google Search for “Adwords Coupon Codes” There are always some great ones available. You may end up with $100 in free clicks!

During Set Up:

1. Create Goals for Everything You do on PPC: If you are writing a PPC ad for anything, you should have a measurable way of tracking it. Do not set up an ad campaign that you can not track on your website. What does that mean? For every ad that you set up, you should have some page on your website that let’s you know that your goal for that ad, whatever it is, was accomplished. Google has code that you can place on this page, and once you have that code inserted, you will know what keywords not only brought visitors to your site, but what keywords converted into paying customers. You will see how much you are earning off of each keyword right up against how much you are spending on it. Google will even tell you if you are gaining or losing on that keyword, and how much each visitor is worth to you. So, set up those goals. For example, if you are selling a product, the reciept page that visitors reach after purchasing should have this code. If you want the visitors to sign up on a form, the “Thank you for Signing Up” page should include this code. If you are selling a digital product, the actual download page can have the code on it. The code will not be visible to your visitors, it will just provide you with a wealth of information. Do not set up an ad without it!

2. Location and Language: As you are setting up your PPC campaign, the program will ask you what region you want to include. If you are marketing a local business, only include your immediate area! Target one region, one language at a time. If your site would fit several different countries or languages, set up different ad groups for each one.

3. Content and Search Network: When you select Content, your ads will show on different websites that have signed up for adsense. When you select search, your ads will show up on the Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) when someone searches for that keyword. Set these up as separate Ads. These return very different data, and it will help your tracking a great deal if you set them up separately.

4. Writing your Ad: Include your benefits on the first line of the ads, and the features on the second line. Don’t tell people what your business can accomplish, tell them what it can accomplish for them. Make the ad about them, not you. Don’t worry about including the name of your business in the first line, people aren’t looking for you, they are looking for the product or service they were searching for. Let go of the pride and leave your name out of it! For example:

Instead of:

The Shopping Boutique
Great Diaper Bags, Unique Selections
Handmade and Personalization Available

Think of an issue the potential purchaser is struggling with, or a question they have and enter the conversation in their head. The ad becomes this:

Monogrammed Diaper Bags
Same Baby Gear as Every Other Mom?
Be Unique with a Monogrammed Diaper Bag

The first ad is focused on the company, where the second ad is focused on the customer.

5. Choose your Key Phrases in the same manner you would do keyword research for SEO. Include everything you can possibly think of that is relevant. You cannot have too many keywords in the research stage! (You will weed some out later). As you include keywords, choose match types that make sense. If it is a longer keyword, choose broad match. If it is very short, make it an exact or phrase match. This will all be helpful for research purposes!

6. Focus on Long Tail Keywords: “Shoes” is a short, broad keyword. It will likely be extremely expensive and not convert well, because someone searching for shoes is probably in research mode and not ready yet to buy. (Make this exact match a negative keyword!) “Michael Kors strappy black heels” is a long tail keyword, and if someone is searching for this keyword, it is highly likely they are ready to get out their credit card and spend some money! This word will also be less expensive per click. Use locations, brands, models, and proper names whenever you can.

7. Include Buying Words: If individuals are searching using these words, they are likely ready to buy. Include words like “Buy a Diaper Bag” or “Purchase a Diaper Bag” or “Looking for a Diaper Bag” or “Shop online for a Diaper Bag.” They receive far fewer searches than “Diaper Bag” but they have a higher purchaser intent, and are likely to be less expensive.

8. Use Powerful Language: Words like “killer, proven, fast, easy, effective” are really strong and get a lot of attention, but be careful not to look spammy, or people will ignore you! Be careful not to get too “salesy” – don’t use all capital letters and exclamation points. Would you click on an ad that said “LEARN HOW I MADE $1000 IN ONE WEEKEND, CLICK HERE!!!!!” I sure wouldn’t!

9. Use Your Ads to Weed Out Customers that aren’t a Good Fit: If you sell an expensive product and know that will turn away some customers right when they reach your site, put something in your ad that indicates this. You may call your products “High End, Designer, Luxury” or even include your price in some of the ads. People who are looking for a discount will skip your ad and though it will take down your click through rate, your conversion rate will increase.

10. Instead of using Broad Match over and over, rewrite and use exact: You can put your keywords in a spreadsheet and auto generate this process. For example, consider these four key phrases: personalized diaper bags, custom diaper bags, personalized baby bags, custom baby bags. They could be set up as personalized diaper bags, and custom baby bags, with broad match, and all four words would technically be covered. OR, you could set them up as four separate key phrases with an exact match, and receive a much higher click through rate.

11. Group your Key Phrases: and write separate ads for each group. Using the previous example, Personalized Diaper and Baby Bag related keywords should have different ads than Customized, with wording that would appeal differently to the groups that would search for the different words.

12. Bid on the Names and Urls of your Competitors: Then write a clever ad that explains why you are a good alternative. It’s amazing how many people enter the url into a search engine rather than the browser. These will be inexpensive clicks to earn. Make sure you aren’t burning any bridges with people you may want to work with someday!

13. Setting Your Price: This is the hardest thing for anyone to give recommendations on, because it completely and utterly depends on your business, your budget, and how much you make on each conversion (and how many clicks it takes you to receive a conversion). We use this general rule of thumb: Use the Google Traffic Estimator, and what it tells you to spend, and half that amount. This should be the right price to keep you in the sweet spot. This is a general rule, but you have to be responsible for not spending more on a word than you are making on it. Watch your analytics carefully, and make decisions based on those. Don’t start out bidding too low. You will get a low CTR, and this will make your ads more expensive in the long run.

14. Write Many Different Ads: When you are first starting out, you can’t have too many ad variations! Write several different variations for each ad, making them as different as possible. It will be clear after a few weeks which one is performing better. Select the best performing ad and tweak it (as a new ad) to see if you can ever “beat” it. If you find one that performs better, make that your top performing ad that you test against. You are always trying to find an ad that will out perform your best ad.

15. Create Unique Landing Pages for your Ad Groups: Do not send all of your ads to your homepage. Take your customer to the exact page that they are looking for. For example, if I set up an ad for Monogrammed Zebra Diaper Bags, and sent individuals to my home page, I might have a very high bounce rate. However, if I sent them directly to the Zebra Category (or even directly to the specific product page!) I would have a higher likelihood of a conversion. It will also improve my quality score, which will lower the price of clicks. If you don’t have a specific landing page for a specific ad, either build one or leave that ad out.

16. Set Negative Keywords: When you were doing your keyword research, you likely saw several keywords show up over and over that were relevant to your keywords, but not your website or business. You will have the option to set up Negative Keywords. You can also set up negative exact matches. For example, I might set up an ad for Diaper Bags, but I don’t ever want to show up for people that are just searching for “Bags.” I would set up a negative exact match for bags. Google will show you, on their website, exactly how to do this. If you have an ecommerce store, you might want to go ahead and remove words like “free,” “discount,” and “wholesale” unless you offer these things. These are people who are looking to save money, and they may not be the kind of customers you want!

17. Dynamic Keyword Insertion is very powerful: This is a tool that Google offers that will help you greatly improve your click through rates. It allows you to place the actual keyword individuals are searching for right in the headline of the ad. The ad will then be bolded by Google, and will receive more attention. This is how you do it in Google AdWords: {KeyWord:Default Keyword}, where ?Default Keyword? is the headline that should be shown in case that the search string is over 25 characters long. Make sure you are sending customers to a relevant landing page, however. The big stores, like Target and Amazon always bid using these, but then send you to their homepage, and then they don’t necessarily carry the product. It’s very frustrating, and a waste of their money!

[/ ]