Pay Per Click Tips to Success
Pay per click campaigns are advertisements placed on websites, often displayed as search engine results, where the cost is calculated in relation to the number of times the advertisement is clicked on. These types of campaigns have developed a reputation for being rather costly. However, when set up correctly they can earn a high ROI. Here are some PPC tips that can help to bring down the cost and improve your results.
Calculating Value for Money – Advertise High Margin Products
A Jupiter Media Metrics study found pay per click advertising to offer the best return on investment when it comes to online marketing. The first pay per click secret is that sometimes its just not worth it!
Pay per click campaigns are better suited to products where the profit margin is bigger as apposed to items with small profit margins that rely on mass sales like ballpoint pens.
Use your website statistics to check conversion rates to determine how many clicks are need per sale. For example, if you get 300 clicks and make 3 sales, your conversion rate is 3% and you need 100 clicks to make each sale. You should already know your profit margin per item. If you make $30 on each sale you should not spend more than $30 for the 100 clicks. Using this method to calculate a budget per click is extremely important – do not bid higher than what you expect to earn from the campaign.
Creating Effective Advertisements and Writing Successful PPC Ad Copy
One of the best methods to designing a pay per click advertisement is being very specific. Any PPC Manager or specialist will tell you that specific advertisements receive more hits and traffic than general advertisements. Once you choose the relevant, specific keywords to target make sure to include the keywords in your ad copy.
When your campaign goes live you will being to appear next to several of your competitors’ advertisements. For this reason it is crucial to write your ad title and description so that it catches the users’ attention and sets you apart. Pay careful attention to including benefits or incentives that your company or website offers to customers.
Maximize Your PPC Budget
In addition to focusing on conversion rates, choosing specific keywords and writing good ad copy you can also maximize your budget by setting your advertisement to run only during peak hours. Many websites offering professional business products or services turn their ads off during late night hours as any searches are unlikely to deliver any serious business. Other websites choose to run their ads in the evenings and weekends when consumers have free time, especially when they are selling a consumer based product.
Another way to maximize your budget is to test, test and test your ad some more. You can do this by performing various searches and see what shows up. You can also change the title and description of your ad copy or the landing pages visitors see when they click on the ad. Testing helps you get the best conversion rates possible which earns you the highest profits.
Remember, you are paying for these ads and paying each time someone clicks on the ad. Make the best of it and continuously test to make sure it is still relevant and still performing. Make changes wherever and whenever necessary.
Make Small, Gradual Adjustments and Earn Big Results
Sometimes the smallest changes can make big differences. Most Pay Per Click Software programs can help you make these small changes by showing you:
- Popular search phrases related to your keywords
- Common misspellings of your keywords
You may also consider adding negative keywords to your PPC Campaign to prevent your ad from being shown to unqualified visitors. For example if you are advertising high end engagement rings and jewelry you may add negative keywords such as “cheap”, “inexpensive” and “low cost” to prevent searchers with lower budgets.
Another option is using an exact match so that your ad is only shown when the exact keyword phrase gets searched on. You can be even more specific by using quotation marks or square brackets around the words or phrase that you only want exact matches on.
The trick is to remember that you pay every time someone clicks on the ad so it is important to try to limit the inclusion of your ad in irrelevant searches.
One Final Tip to Success
Once your Ad is designed and you are sure that it will only be shown to relevant, qualified searchers you need to make sure that your visitors are taken directly to the related page. This is often called a ‘landing page’ and it is designed to meet the specific needs of visitors being referred by a related PPC ad. For example if the advertisement is for a specific brand and model of a digital camera the landing page should be it’s product page and not a generic digital camera page. Your visitors are expecting to find exactly what they want when they click and won’t have the patience to search for the page with the relevant information. Furthermore, having an unrelated landing page can affect your quality score – which can in turn increase your CPC.