Pay-Per-Click Advertising – A Method to the Madness

Now, some of you have just read the title of this article and you must admit that you are a little intrigued. A method to the madness? Let me explain.

Pay-Per-Click advertising or PPC, as it is more commonly known, is fast becoming the most compelling online advertising medium. Now, many people think they can just jump right into PPC and just watch the sales roll in. Is it surprising that these are the people who end up spending big money only to never make a sale or generate a lead? No, it isn’t surprising in the least. These are people who failed to research the online market for Pay-Per-Click advertising whether it be through Google, Yahoo! or MSN. If wasting thousands of dollars with no return on investment isn’t madness, I don’t know what is.

There is a specific method which needs to be applied to PPC campaigns, regardless of the industry you are targeting. These methods are simple and easy to follow. Allow me to elaborate.

1. Always do your research. If you don’t know enough about the industry you are marketing for, you’ll end up wasting money. Take some time to familiarize yourself with industry terms and phrases. Talk to clients and learn how they search for your products and services. 
2. Choose the proper keywords. If all you are bidding on is a list of 150 generic keywords, sure, you might see some traffic conversions. Anyone can get lucky. Achieving consistent results is what builds your business.
3. Create ad groups. What this means is that you should divide your keyword list into segments. To put it more simply, if you have a keyword list for an insurance company of over 100 keywords spanning car insurance, home insurance, life insurance and dental insurance, you should create an ad group for each insurance type. Setting up your PPC campaigns in this fashion gives you more control over the advertisements which will be displayed after a search query.
4. Write target advertisements. This can be a little tricky sometimes. Google, for example, allows you only so many characters for each line in your ad. Your title line must be within 25 characters, your 1st description line must be within 35 characters, as well as your 2nd description line. Your display URL for your ad must also be within 35 characters, but your destination URL can be within 1024 characters. These restrictions mean that you need to be very creative in how you word your advertisements.
5. Include your keywords in your ads. By doing this, your ads will stand out a little more from the competitions. The search engines will often bold keywords in your ads if they were part of a search query. This lends relevancy to your advertisements, helping you attain a better position in the sponsored link area of the search engines while bidding less than your competitors.
6. Link to pages with relevant content. This is very important, especially with Google. Google likes to see you direct people to pages that have information relevant to the keywords that trigger your advertisements. This will also help you gain better positioning while paying less for your keywords.
7. Split test. What this means is that you need to constantly be changing your advertisements. Start with three ads for each ad group and every few days, take the lowest performing ad and re-write it. When you split test your ads, your goal is to increase your click-through rates and conversion rates by offering people highly targeted ads.
8. Analyze and refine. This step is one of the most critical ones. You should always include some sort of analytics software in your websites. This allows you to monitor how people from your PPC campaigns are interacting with your site and track where you are losing prospective customers, giving you the information you need to revise areas of your website that are making people lose interest.

Seems simple doesn’t it? Well it isn’t. Without proper attention to detail, research and without a willingness to follow proven methods, PPC campaigns can easily fail. This is one of many reasons you should contract a PPC specialist. These are people who use proven methods and are often certified to do this type of work. When handled by a professional, a PPC campaign can easily give you a return on your investment that will not only cover your advertising costs, but will help you grow your business by generating new customers, leads, and revenues.

By Randi Brawley
Copyright © 2008 SYNERGe-Marketing.