To get the most out of your business’ Pay Per Click, you have to be careful to create an efficient, well thought out campaign. Otherwise, you could quickly find yourself spending an unnecessary part of your business’ budget on ineffective Google, Yahoo and Bing ads.
making every dollar count
Here’s how to get started in PPC, get the most out of your search marketing budget, and avoid some of the most common mistakes:

  • Choose your keywords and phrases carefully. A great deal of your success, or failure, in pay per click will come down to which keywords and phrases you decide to bid on – that is, what search terms you want to trigger your company’s ads. Remember, you’re only paying for clicks, but it’s easy for them to add up quickly. Given that useless traffic can easily cost you a lot of money, deciding what keywords shouldn’t be associated with your ads is just as important as choosing the ones that will.
  • Set your bids and budgets to reach concrete bottom line goals. It’s easy to set high bids for a click, ensuring that your ads will show up first in search results (at least for the short term), but you can often bid a few places lower – and get nearly the same number of views for your advertisements – for a fraction of the cost. It’s nice to be at the front of the pack, but it’s a lot more important to stay profitable, so bid with your bottom line in mind.
  • Write ads that appeal to a specific kind of customer. Unless you’re in a very, very niche industry, there are probably several, and maybe dozens, of other websites that a searcher could choose to click on, instead of yours. Think about what your competitive advantages are, and what kind of customer is the right fit to do business with you. Then, write pay per click ads that speak directly to their most important needs and issues. This step is difficult for some businesses, since it usually means not marketing directly to other groups, but it’s the only way to stand out in crowded search engine listings, where you have less than a second to make your case.
  • Pay attention to your landing pages. In the same way, your landing pages – the web pages on your company’s website that a visitor is taken to after clicking your ad – should also appeal to a very specific type of prospective customer. Both the ad and the page should show an understanding of what matters to them, and both should have a compelling offer. If there isn’t a good reason for them to make a purchase, learn more, or take some other action, they’re going to click elsewhere… making the money you spent on the click a waste.

 
ppc done right
Effective PPC campaigns waste relatively little money, while stirring up the RIGHT kind of attention for your website. If you don’t have the time or search engine marketing (SEM) know-how to strategically and creatively organize relevant and up-to-date PPC campaigns for your website, partner with someone who does. There’s no shortcut to making PPC work, and no substitute for a campaign that’s planned and implemented the right way. Don’t shred through your budgets angling the wrong ad or landing page content toward the wrong target audience.