3 Tips for Getting Started With PPC Marketing

Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing, also known as paid search can be a black hole for newbies. Beginners are attracted to the simplicity of the PPC model, where one can drive traffic virtually instantly to any web page they want usually for a low cost-per-click. Their cash is then subsequently sucked out of their credit cards because they either forget to monitor their campaigns or they put up bad campaigns to begin with. Plus, they never followed the following three tips for getting started with PPC marketing:

1. Do your homework (research).

The search engines will reward your ads for relevancy. The more relevant your ads are, the higher they’ll rank and the less you’ll have to pay for those rankings. The first step towards achieving higher relevancy is to do your keyword research.

Let’s say you want to drive traffic to your landing page where you want to build a list. First, find common keyword phrases in your niche to target. Then, generate long tail keywords by adding modifiers to those broad keywords. “Golf” is a broad keyword, while “how to improve your golf swing” is a long tail keyword. You can expect to pay well over a dollar per click for broad keywords. On the other hand, long tail keywords have far less competition because less people search for those terms, so get used to paying less than a quarter per click for these terms.

2. Stay relevant.

This relates to tip #1, but having a relevant campaign will drastically increase your ROI. There are a few components of an ad campaign, many of which can be optimized for relevancy.

For example, as previously mentioned, your keywords need to be relevant. If you try displaying a weight loss ad for an online marketing keyword, the search engines are going to slap you with a ridiculously high cost-per-click. Therefore, your ad copy also needs to be relevant. Ideally, you should include the full keyword in your ad copy. This means creating a new ad for each of your keywords. It seems like a lot of work now, but it’ll save you a lot of money in the long run.

Another important part of your campaign which needs to be optimized is your landing page. Basically, your main keywords need to be found a few times on your landing page in places like the domain name, the headline, and the body text.

The bottom line -- someone who clicks on your ad expecting to see a solution for a receding hair line and, instead finds a website for your home business opportunity is going to get you whacked by the search engines, whose goal is relevancy for the user.

3. Don’t “set and forget”.

There’s no such thing as autopilot profits with PPC – you have to constantly monitor, test, and tweak your ad campaigns to ensure that everything is running smoothly. Your cost-per-click could suddenly jump, for example, and you’ll want to be there when it does to compensate for it. Some of your ads could suddenly start experiencing a low click-through rate, in which case you would want to test new ad copy, test new keywords, or dump the ad. It takes constant monitoring to ensure that you pay as little as possible per click, achieve the best rankings, and get the best click-through rates. It’s a lot of work, but it pays massive dividends.

It is important to get the proper training and direction when first attempting PPC marketing. Dr. Bob Clarke is a PPC marketing and branding expert who teaches his team of new and experienced entrepreneurs the secrets of selling anything to anyone, anywhere in the world.