Pay per click or PPC advertising is possibly the easiest and
most effective way to market your business online. Getting your
website listed in the search engines is vital due to the fact
that the majority of website traffic (statistics say over 80%)
comes from the search engines. Effective PPC management begins
with devising a strategy to drive qualified traffic to your
website.
PPC (PPC) advertising is simply advertising your website through
the use of the search engines' "sponsored listings". When using
PPC you bid on keywords or keyword phrases that your targeted
prospects may use to find whatever your website offers. Yahoo!
Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture) for instance, only
considers the bid amount in ranking a site. The most popular PPC
Google Adwords uses bid value and your success (click through)
rate.
To develop a your PPC strategy and plan, you must conduct market
research. This should consist of identifying your target market
(preferably a niche market), identifying keywords that your
target market uses to search for what you are offering, and
analyzing the keywords and alternative keywords that will appeal
to your target market.
During your keyword analysis, you will want to find out how
popular keywords are and what the average bids are for certain
keywords you are considering for budgeting purposes since
defining a budget is a necessary part of PPC management.
Budgeting for PPC advertising involves not only determining how
much money you can spend on your campaign, but basing that on
the monetary value of a click to your website since you are
paying per click.
Your conversion rate, the number of unique visitors divided by
the number of sales, plays an important role in determining the
value of a click to your site for PPC advertising budgeting
purposes as does the average net profit per sale. By dividing
your net profit per sale by your conversion rate, you can
accurately determine the value per click to your website. The
price per click that you pay for your PPC advertising should
not, of course (!!!) exceed this value.
So if your selling a product that gives you a £10 profit, and a
particular keyword takes 50 visitors to create a sale you would
bid no more than £0.20 per click to break even.
A few tips about PPC if you DIY.
1. Don't put more money than you have to into your account -
sounds obvious but....!
2. Test, test, test have at least two separate ads for the same
product at the same time. Drop the lower performing adverts and
add a new one until you are satisfied with the results.
3. Make sure to keep up with your results daily at the very
least and adjust your strategy according to results.
4. Continue to look for new keywords and as you find new ones
lose the poorer performers.
If you approach PPC advertising logically, follow the direct
marketing mantra of test, test, test, monitor results regularly
and make adjustments only according to results PPC advertising
is a powerful tool for driving profitable traffic to your site.
About the author:
Richard Hill is a director of E-CRM Solutions and has spent many
years in senior direct and interactive marketing roles. E-CRM -
http://www.e-crm.co.uk - helps you to grow by getting you more
customers that stay with you longer. We provide practical
solutions that pay for themselves. We help you to make sure that
your marketing works.
Written by: Richard D S Hill
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