Getting Started with Pay Per Click Advertising Management

So you’ve set up your advertising accounts and have some ads running. Now is when you find success or failure. Many marketers or small business owners set up one ad, one campaign, buy “broad match” keywords like “hotel new jersey” and mark a date on their calendar to check back in a month. This is not for you.

Managing Campaigns, Ads and Keywords is an Ongoing Process

You will have an immediate advantage, save money, and drive more leads, if you simply commit to spending a half hour or so a day to optimize your ad campaigns. One of the great benefits of paying only for each click is that you can see what gets attention, what doesn’t, then change and test in near real-time. By managing your campaigns, you will reap greater rewards, but it takes patience that others won’t have.

Look for Keywords That are Doing Well and Doing Poorly

Prior to this phase, you need to have set up analytics with reporting on goals/conversions. In short, you need to know which ads and keywords end up making you money–and which do not. But don’t throw away keywords that don’t immediately result in sales. You’ll test them later. There may be opportunities to advertise on a variation of the keyword that your competitors are not taking advantage of. Now give special attention to the keywords that are doing well. They are your money-generators and deserve the majority of your attention. Baby them. Tweak the ad copy. Customize more finely to appeal to your prospects.

Separate Good From Bad. Create Targeted Ads and Landing Pages.

Find the keywords that are doing better than the rest. Now make a separate campaign and set of ads that are more targeted to lure in that specific person searching for that solution. And don’t neglect the landing page: The trick is to have the landing page be in harmony with the other steps in the process. Use the same messaging, specific keywords, and offer, on that landing page. Make a more detailed campaign of keywords with variations. Next, leverage your matching options.

Compare Phrase and Exact Match Cost and Results to Broad Match.

• Broad match: Anything containing those words plus any other words will call up your ad.
• Phrase match: When the keywords are in that order, your ad will show, as well as when terms are before or after that phrase.
• Exact match: Your ad will only display when the keyword you choose exactly matches what the prospect typed in.

You can place ads in any of these methods. Why bother with the difference? Because the more specific you get, the less you’ll spend, and you may have better results. When you choose for your keywords to match exactly, you have to do a little more work, and have a more extensive exact list of keywords to manage. Here is where many don’t bother. But if you bid on specific terms, you can often get a click for less money. And that means a greater ROI.

Hire an Agency or Use Software Tools as the Scope Grows

As you refine your ads and ad campaigns, you will naturally see your list of keywords and ads to manage grow. Consider using PPC management software, websites, or an agency to manage the details.

A pay per click management agency will handle the tedious work of optimizing keyword-by-keyword, and may have more sophisticated reporting tools. If you are required to show results to the rest of the company, it’s especially helpful and time-saving to have reports ready when you need them.

Trust But Verify

But stay involved. Monitor your chosen agency’s results. Actively give guidance and pose questions to make sure your budget is being spent effectively. Generally agencies are not out to just take your money, but they have many clients to juggle. You need to be in constant contact with your representatives, their managers, and the technical people, to maximize ROI. If they aren’t paying enough attention, shop around and move on.

Top 10 Pay Per Click Search Engine Ad Programs

Google AdWords

• Advertise your business on Google
• Pay only if people click your ads
• No minimum spending requirement
• You are in complete control of your spending

Yahoo! Search Marketing

• Connect with customers searching for what you sell
• You choose keywords and set a daily budget
• Stop displaying your ads or cancel your service at any time
• Each account requires a nonrefundable $30 initial deposit

Microsoft adCenter

• Start your search advertising with Microsoft today
• Get started with only $5
• Then pay only when someone clicks your ad
• Bids start as low as $0.05/click

Marchex Adhere

• Sign up today and get $25 in free clicks!
• Start advertising your business in just a few minutes
• Access to top search and local Web sites
• Reach more customers searching for what you sell

Searchfeed.com

• Attract targeted leads
• Exposure to millions of unique visitors each day
• Offers unique campaigns for advertisers of all types and sizes
• Extensive list of campaign management tools

MIVA

• Drive targeted traffic to your website
• Bids start at just 10 cents
• Pay when a user clicks on your ad
• Extend your online reach

ABCSearch

• Initial deposits matched up to $100!
• The world’s largest privately held meta-search engine
• Geo-targeting; Bulk upload system; No sign up fees
• Bids begin at $0.10

Findology.com

• Sign up and get $50 in free clicks!
• Auto and fixed bidding options; Submit multiple sites
• Fixed or recurring payment methods; Keyword stats
• Minimum deposit of $25

AdBrite

• Buy ad space on specific Web sites
• Search or browse to find a site you want to advertise on
• Write your text ad and start your ad campaign in minutes
• Other (non-text) advertising options available
• Purchase ads on a flat-rate or CPC basis, depending on the site

Bidvertiser

• Sign up now and get $20 in free advertising
• Pay per click advertising on sites of your choice
• Start receiving new prospects in less than 10 minutes
• Choose your geographical targeting
• Monitor the performance of your ads

Best of the Web Directory

• Get listed in the Internet’s oldest directory
• Generate targeted traffic and leads; Gain market exposure
• Expedited review – Listing live within 3 business days
• Reach new customers and enhance your Internet marketing efforts
• Online account management; Flexible pricing options

Best of the Web Blog Directory

• Get listed in the Internet’s oldest directory
• Generate targeted traffic and leads; Gain market exposure
• Expedited review – Listing live within 3 business days
• Reach new customers and enhance your Internet marketing efforts
• Online account management; Flexible pricing options

Lead generation with PPC is attractive to people working in sales, marketing and finance, because it is directly measurable, unlike SEO which has many factors to take into account. If you are the one responsible for the website, generating leads is one of the biggest metrics your boss will use to evaluate your results.

With SEO, it is hard to give a concrete answer about what is working and what is not, partly because of the ever-changing search engine landscape. Who knows for sure when and how Google will be changing its algorithm? By using payperclick, you can show a direct correlation between factors such as keywords, ad copy, landing pages and conversion, with facts and figures to back it up.

Smart marketers focus on lead generation for the success of the business, as well as justifying marketing budgets. Just having a website that looks good does not reliably pay off. One basic mistake marketers make in PPC is to direct the user to the home page instead of a specific lead-generation-focused landing page.

Some elements of a successful lead generation landing page:

Connect the Dots for the Prospect

Tie the message and content of the page directly to the keyword, ad group or ad copy that the prospect clicked on. Don’t leave the prospect wondering if they are in the right place or whether you have the solution to what they are looking for. Say it up front. With some search engines such as Google, you can dynamically insert the term they ACTUALLY searched on (not just the base keyword) into the URL. Then code your landing page to take that term and serve the content customized for that search, perhaps even putting their search term directly on the page, which will inspire confidence in the prospect.

Great Lead Generation Form

Are you making the user click to another page to get to a lead generation form? That is guaranteed to make your campaign less successful. Put it right up front, not down below the bottom of the first screen they get to.

Make it obvious what will happen or what they will get when they submit the form. Customize the “submit” button to say what their action is: “Get my free white paper” or “Contact me” for example. Can you show an example of what they will get? Can you tell them how long it will take for them to get a response?

Also test a landing page design with an arrow or similar object pointing to the form or submit button. This will lead the prospect’s eye to the most important action on the page that you want them to take.

Offer a Reward

Offers are an effective incentive to improve your PPC lead generation results.

Provide a truly useful resource that helps the prospect solve their problem, and they’ll be more likely to trade their contact info with you for it. It’s important to make it high quality, not just fluff, to enhance the feeling of trust.

To get the prospect to take out their wallet, an enticing offer or discount gets results. Do your finance people tell you it’s not fiscally viable? Figure out the life-time value (LTV) of a prospect. Then you can justify offering a product or package at a discount, because you know that over time you’ll reap greater rewards.

One example is a company who sells guitars. They offered a package of guitar strings for a ridiculously low amount, because starting that relationship was the true goal–not making a few pennies off a small item. Then they began their lead nurturing campaign, knowing that a segment of the prospects on the list will end up buying a $500-$1000 guitar!

Make it Easy to Contact You

Don’t hide your phone number just because the least-fun part of your job is dealing with customers! Remember, prospects are the life-blood of the company. Train yourself to think of every call as an opportunity. Even if the person on the other end of the line is a poor prospect, now you have an incentive to go tweak your PPC lead generation campaign to pre-qualify better, which also saves you money in unproductive payperclick ads. Even better, now you know what information is missing from the landing page, helping you convert more truly qualified prospects who were just abandoning your site without bothering to call and ask!

Effectively Addressing Searchers’ Needs

Whichever page a customer lands on must immediately provide enough information to show the customer that what they are seeking has been found. Failing to do so will quickly send the customer back to the search results. The landing page must also provide enough contextual information regarding the rest of the site so that the customer can begin appreciating what the website is about.

You may already have many of the pages for which your customers are looking, and all that is needed is to ensure that search engine listings (organic and paid) are directing customers to the right pages and that those pages are designed to best represent your website. If you do not already have one or more pages that directly address an identified important keyword phrase, then new content pages may need to be created. All pages on your website should present ample information in the form of navigation controls and content to lead the searcher to more appropriate pages if the page on which they landed is not exactly what they are looking for.

Focused and Controlled Advertising

Managing the ROI for paid listings and PPC advertising comes down to understanding the value of a visitor, as well as calculating the actual cost for the desired action. When managing paid listings and PPC campaigns it is important to analyze the cost per click, conversion rate, and therefore the net cost per desired action for each keyword phrase or keyword phrase group. Ad headlines, copy, and landing pages should be customized based on the targeted search term. Each should also be tracked and optimized separately.

The price per click can vary greatly for any given topic. It is crucial to mange the campaigns so that the keyword phrases chosen and the prices paid per click achieve the best results. This is accomplished by implementing and using tracking and reporting mechanisms to track the results of paid ads. Tracking all the details involved in the paid listings and PPC process is mandatory to determine the level of success for each campaign.

Search Engine Friendly Site Design and Coding

In simple terms, search engines collect detailed information from the millions of available websites and match that information against phrases entered by customers looking for goods, services, and information. Where your pages are listed in the search results and what content from your pages is displayed can make the difference between the potential customer clicking on your link, on your competitor’s link, or trying again with another search phrase. So an important part of an effective search engine marketing strategy is to understand how search engines gather information, how they rank that information, and how they display that information.

Below are a few of the specific implementation issues to consider when making your website search engine friendly.

Technical Issues

Crawlable Site Architecture - Having a crawlable site architecture means that all of your important pages (pages you want the search engines to see) must be placed in the spider’s path. Do this by creating links to the target pages from other pages and by not burying the target pages too deeply within your site. Dynamically generated pages often pose additional problems which require special attention.

Page Titles - Page titles are a crucial part of page structure for scoring well in search engines. It is ideal to have a different title on each page of the website.

Description Meta Tag - Description meta tags are being used more and more by search engines to pull text for a results description.

Linking Within the Site - To be found by search engines and create relevance, all pages on the site should be linked to from the main page, or from sub-main pages. Search engines note the text that is used to link to pages and use that text to index the source and target pages. Using keywords in links will have a positive effect on rankings.

Domain Names and URLs - Using keywords in URLs can be very effective for search engine optimization. The terms in the URLs are indexed by search engines along with the text of the page. Additionally, the site’s URL is often used by other sites as part of their link text.

Site Organization

Clustering Content - Search engines interpret a page by looking not only at that page’s content, but also by looking at other pages linked to that page. Clustering your content such that similar pages are grouped under the same sub-main page and including sufficient links among these pages helps you increase the relevancy of all your pages, and thus your positioning.

Provide a Site Map or “Spider Food” - Spiders find the pages of your site by using links. The best way to quickly get a spider to look at all of your site’s pages is to incorporate a site map, linked from the home page.

Page Layout

Include Header and Introductory Text - Search engines look for and like headers at the top of the page. Text at or near the top of the page is more important than the rest of the page.

Navigation and Context - Internal pages need to present a clear reference for users on where they are on the site, what they can do, and what other sections are available.

Footer Text and Navigation - The footer provides an additional place to include target keywords and provide links to the main sections of the site.

Text versus Graphics - Search engines primarily use the text on the page when they index a page. Limit the use of graphics and use ALT text and keyword-friendly file names.

Content and Keywords

Use Keywords Often - The text on the pages helps determine ranking and shows up in the search engine descriptions. It is important that this text be optimized for the keyword phrases you are targeting.

Content for Target Keywords - Search engines look beyond just the words on the page. It is important that your site has valuable content specifically focused on the words that you are targeting.

Optimize All Detail Pages - Many important pages do not show up in the target keyword list. These are often product- or topic-specific pages. It is important to optimize these pages as part of the process so they show up high in search listing results.

Since most searches are now done with multiple-word phrases-75% by recent statistics-it is crucial to focus your efforts on the keyword phrases that are best suited to the user’s goal. It is also important to look at the keyword phrases your competitors are focused on and how they are ranked. This process often results in hundreds or even thousands of keyword phrases, each having some relevance to your business. The leading search engine marketing firms use a combination of third party tools, internally developed tools, and proprietary methods to select the right keyword phrases for each website.

Determining which phrases to target involves looking at each phrase from multiple perspectives. While it makes logical sense to strive for the highest listing for every possible keyword phrase, that goal may not be reasonable or achievable. In some cases it may be wise to limit the focus to the most popular keyword phrases, while in other cases focusing on second- or third-tier phrases may be more effective.

If done properly, this analysis results in an optimal set of keyword phrases and related content that, when placed in the appropriate places on your website, increase the probability that:

• new customers will find your website instead of a competitor’s website
• customers are directed to the pages on your site best suited to their immediate need, and
• you achieve a positive return on investment.

External Links

External links are an important factor in how search engines determine how to rank sites for various searches. These external link factors include:

Link Popularity: Higher-ranked Sites Are Better - Just as your site will have an overall ranking in the search engines, so will any other site linking to your site. Any site linking to your site that is ranked highly will have a more positive impact on your site’s ranking than a link from a site with a low ranking.

Linking Sites Should Be Relevant - Sites linking to your site should be somewhat relevant to your site and vice versa-the more relevant the better. A site linking to your site that has little or nothing to do with your site will have much less positive impact and could possibly have a negative impact.

Links Text Must Be Meaningful - Search engines look at the link text and that is used to rank the page-the more relevant the keyword, the more valuable the link. The most common mistake is to use the text “click here” to define the actual link.

Directories - Links from directories like Yahoo and the Open Directory Project are valuable sources for links. These links are given high value by search engines like Google.

Tracking and Measuring Results

Part of an effective analysis involves understanding the appropriate metrics with which you need to compare your results in order to determine just how well your efforts are working. Without these tools and you will not be able to tell if your strategy is working and, even more importantly, how you can alter your strategy to further improve your results.

Tracking the Desired Action

For paid listings it is important to track which keyword phrases, ads, and entry pages produce the desired action. This action may be e-commerce sales, file downloads, or registration. In all cases the goal is evaluate conversion rates and how much money you spend to determine which ads are achieving positive ROI.

Many Businesses Are Leaving Money on the Table

Want to know how to throw away money with PPC advertising?

• Use a short list of general keywords for your business
• Write one ad to appeal to all varieties of prospects
• Point prospects to your home page and cross your fingers that they figure it out
• Only check your ads once a month

We’ve heard the marketing people who give up saying “It just doesn’t work.”

Instead, we recommend

• Think broadly about how real people search for your product or service
• Target categories of prospects with specific ad copy
• Show the prospect to a page that speaks to their specific need
• Stay vigilant and active with managing your campaigns

Choosing Keywords is the Key

With Pay-Per-Click advertising, you place ads to show up next to the search results for specific keywords. People who search on some keywords will come right on through and buy exactly what you have to offer. Others will click, costing you money, then kick the tires and go away never to return. You don’t just want “a lot” of people visiting your website. When you are spending money for every click, you want qualified prospects: You want people who have their wallets out, ready to spend some cash. The rest of them, well, there are other ways to get attract them and turn them into a customer, eventually.

Make up a list of the keywords that describe your product or service. At this point, you’re probably missing AT LEAST HALF of the terms that people ACTUALLY type into that little search engine box.

If you have a website, find out from the webmaster, technical support, or “the IT guys”:

• when users visited the website, what keywords did they use in their search?
• when someone was browsing the website itself, and they used the search function, what did they type in?
• and most of the time, you’ll end up asking, “How come we don’t have this data?”

You’ll certainly find some very interesting variations or specific searches you had not thought of. Add these to your keyword list.

• look deeper alternative ways to say the same thing
• add modifiers such as types or colors
  

Writing Ads

Catchy ad copy is the way to stand out above your compeitors in the ad space. But beyond that, think if it as a way to mirror the searcher’s desires, connect, and satisfy their need.

You’re strictly limited in how many characters you can use to “make your case.” Choose them wisely. Some say it is like writing a haiku: Get to the point. For example, “we have pool supplies” is not going to get someone to click. There are lots of websites for pool supplies. Instead, consider each keyword group and make it specific. Better examples are:

• “Dirty pool?”
• “We fix stinky pools”
• “Solar Pool Covers in Stock”
• “Save Energy – Solar Pool Covers”

Use the keywords people are searching with to generate different ad copy.

Where Am I?

The number one mistake businesses make is to direct a person to their home page. They’re lost. They were looking to book a room with a Jacuzzi, but now they have a puzzle to figure out. “Did I get to the right place? I have no idea if they have what I searched for.”

Instead, have a specific page that matches the ad campaign, even down to the keyword level, that talks about that solution. There are two benefits:

1) The prospect is more comfortable, won’t click away, and is more likely to convert to a buyer
2) Tracking the effectiveness of your campaign spend is easier and more precise when you can see exactly where someone landed and follow them through their action path.

Maximize Your PPC ROI

Last but not least, it’s a mistake to set a hard, fixed budget of $100, $100, or $10,000 for your Pay-Per-Click advertising budget.

Find out how much you pay to acquire a paying customer. As well as how much they will spend, not just today, but in your future marketing efforts. When you know that spending $1,000 to get 1000 leads that also ends up with a few customers that gain you $2,000, you can decide. Would you spend an additional $1,000 to get $2,000? Any business would, given the means. Keep the budgets dynamic and you will make the most of your Pay-Per-Click advertising.