Pay Per Click StrategiesBetter Pay-Per-Click Results Start Here – We Guarantee It!

A successful pay per click campaign begins and ends with effective copy. After all, it’s the words that drive prospects to click, or not. To get high click thru rates however, you need more than good writing, you need effective search engine optimized (SEO) copy. Following are three SEO copywriting tips that will help to increase your pay per click campaign results.

Headlines: Some internet marketing experts say that headlines are the most important part of your PPC campaign. It’s usually the headline that gets noticed first. Your headline should always, always, always contain keywords. Add to it an effective qualifier, eg, free, discount, cheap, easy, etc., and you are well on your way to increasing your click thru rates.

Landing Page: An effective headline will get your prospect through to your real workhorse; your landing page. Your landing page should also include keyword phrases sprinkled throughout the copy.

The best places to put your keywords on your landing page are in the headings and subheadings. Other SEO copywriting tips for your landing page are to:

• Leave lots of white space on the page
• Use bullet points and numbered lists of points; and
• Use your main keyword phrase in the last paragraph of the page.

The running thread through all of these tips is that keyword placement on the page is as important as the keywords themselves.

Use Google AdWord Keyword Tool: When it comes to keywords, you shouldn’t repeat the exact same keyword phrase or you could get banned by the search engines for spamming. This is why learning to use Google’s AdWord Keyword Tool is important. It will give you alternate phrases you can use in place of your main keyword phrase.

These SEO copywriting tips should be employed in all of your pay per click campaigns; in fact, in all of your internet marketing efforts – to get maximum results.

If you’ve ever wondered what your competition was doing, you can easily find out. Knowing specifics like who is bidding on what keywords and how much they are spending can help you boost your PPC campaign results.

SpyFu: The Pay Per Click Campaign Equalizer
Spying on your competition to better your PPC campaign is possible with SpyFu.com. This neat little tool allows you to see what your competitors are paying for specific keywords. Some say this tool straddles the black hat marketing fence, but you can use it in an ethical way, ie, to garner information that can give you a competitive edge.

How SpyFu Works
By typing in a keyword or a domain name, you can quickly determine the cost per click for a specific keyword or domain name, how many people are clicking on these keywords daily and even track the keyword’s ad history.

Let’s take the term “internet marketing.”
>The average cost per click is $0.96 to $13.20.
>The average clicks/day is 120-129.
>The cost per day is $97.33 – $1.71k.

If you move further down on the page, you can see that Google dominates this keyword with a daily ad budget of $45.43k – $112.81k. If you are just starting a pay per click campaign you can see that this would cost you a significant amount of money to compete with Google, so you can search for other keywords that fit your budget.

Using this PPC marketing tool can help you plan which keywords are out of your price range before you even set up your campaign, saving you the trouble of testing and tweaking keywords you can’t afford.

Now that’s internet marketing done smart!

Most of us don’t pay much attention to our pennies. When we’re checking our wallets for cash we don’t count pennies; when checking our bank statements, we focus on the dollars and not so much the cents.

But, did you know that you can use your pennies to beat the AdWords competition? It’s a huge, cost-saving search engine marketing strategy that can mean the difference between being the highest bidder for a particular keyword and losing the AdWords bidding war.

When marketers set up an AdWords campaign, most of the focus is on the even numbers, ie, $0.10, $0.20, $0.40, $1.00, $1.20, etc. Why? No one really knows, but one the fact is that if you focus your bids on odd numbers (eg, $0.11, $0.21, $0.41), you significantly increase your odds of winning the bid for a keyword without breaking your budget.

Here’s an example: Let’s take the keyword “marketing.” The average CPC or Cost-Per-Click is $3.88 (Google AdWords Keyword Research). If you bid just one cent above, you would be the winning bidder at $3.89.

Now take a moment to review the average cost per click on random keywords. You will quickly discover that more times than not, the majority of the bids are even numbers. While you may not have the budget to bid $3.00 on a keyword, know that this method applies to all keywords, in all of the AdWords programs.

If you’d like to learn about other winning AdWords strategies like this, join the AdWords experts at the upcoming PPC Summit Chicago or New York. They have the knowledge and experience to help make your AdWords campaign a success.

You can have a killer AdWords ad, but still not be getting the conversion rates you want. It’s at this point that many pay-per-click advertisers start to shake their heads, wring their hands and tweak their ads. Don’t. Stop!

You’ve forgotten to do one thing. What is it? Take a look at your landing page. Remember, your AdWords ad and your landing page are like a married couple – it takes the two of them working in concert to be effective.

If you’re getting lots of clicks on your AdWords ad, but you’re not converting those clicks into sales, then your landing page may be the culprit. Following are some landing page areas to assess to increase your pay-per-click ad results.

Landing Page Areas to Assess to Increase Your AdWords Conversion Rates

Copywriting: Many times, PPC advertisers will spend hours and hours on the 130 words or so of an AdWords ad, but they spend practically no time on the few thousand words that can make up a landing page.

For example, does your landing page deliver on the promise of your AdWords ad? Does it boldly state the benefits? Does it differentiate your product/service from your competition? All of this needs to be present before customers will part with their hard-earned dollars.

Don’t Oversell: What we mean by this is, don’t try to sell a prospect on every product or service you offer. Remember, confused customers don’t buy. If you’ve gotten them to click through, deliver on the promise in the ad they clicked on.

Ease of Payment: Does your site make it easy for prospects to purchase? If not, change it. This is a simple fix.

Your landing page is every bit as important as your AdWords ad. The two work together to make the sale for you. So if your AdWords ad is doing its part, make sure that your landing page is also.

Learn more at the upcoming PPC Summits in Chicago (April 22 – 23) or New York (May 13-14)! Register now and save $400 at www.ppcsummit.com.

In the post, Pay Per Click Headlines: 3 Ways to Change It and Increase Your ROI, we discussed how what may seem like small little changes to your headline can produce big results. Continuing in this vein, we will discuss the most powerful words in the English language – and how you can use them in your body copy to increase your ROI.

In his book, How to Make Presentations that Teach and Transform, Garmston references a Yale study on words. He writes:

. . . the most powerful words in the English language are those “that affect us most directly.” They include you, easy, love, free, save, discover, health, success, proven, guaranteed, results and new. They are powerful because everyone is concerned about health, safety, relationships and security. 

Now that you know what the words are, how can you use them to increase your Pay Per Click ROI? Perhaps the best way to explain it is to tell you the best thing not to do. 

Don’t Try to Sell Every Benefit

This is one mistake many Pay Per Click marketers make. It’s ineffective because it can muddy your primary message. Remember, the goal of an AdWords ad is to get qualified prospects to click. State one or two benefits that you think will appeal to your target audience – and marry it with one of the above words. 

For example, Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. An effective ad using two of the seven most “powerful words” might read something like: 

Valentine Roses: $18.95
Free Shipping If Order Recd by 2/13
Guaranteed, On-Time V-Day Delivery
www.xyzrosesite.com 

The benefits stated in this ad are “free shipping” and “guaranteed delivery.” These are two critical benefits that appeal to someone who really wants to send roses to their special someone on Valentine’s Day. 

Don’t delay, register now and get huge savings for upcoming PPC Summits in Chicago, New York and LA! 

In the post entitled, Are You Making This All-Too-Common Mistake with Your PPC Campaign?, we relayed two reasons it’s critical to constantly monitor, tweak and analyze your PPC campaigns.

One of the reasons was that customers become blind to your ad, eg, they gloss right over it because they’ve seen it so many times. At this point you may be thinking, “But what do I tweak? I don’t want to mess with a successful ad?” And we’re not telling you to. What we are saying is to change ads that are underperforming. Sometimes, something as minute as changing the punctuation in an ad can skyrocket your results. 

How Important Is the Headline in a PPC Ad? 

Industry experts say that five times as many prospects read your headline as opposed to the description line. As the headline is the most important part of any PPC ad, here will give you three tips on tweaking it that could help your ads to perform better, ie:

>  Spark curiosity by making it a question, eg, Want to Make $100 Today?

>  Mention a benefit, eg, Eliminate Dry Skin Today

>  Add a negative qualifier, eg, May Bahamas Cruise: $559+ (there are two negative qualifiers here – the month and the cost. This weeds out those who are, for example, looking for a fall Bahamas cruise for under $500).

PPC Marketing Fact: Specifics Sell; Generalities Repel
 

What we find most often is that many ads are too general. Most PPC advertisers are so afraid of scaring off prospects that they cast too broad of a net.

Making money on the web is about niche, niche, niche, ie, specifics, specifics, specifics. While your clickthrough rates may decrease, your conversion rates will increase the more specific you are in your ads.

Note: PPC, as with every other type of marketing is a test, test and retest form of advertising. When you change ads, you always run the risk that they will perform worse. But the only surefire way to get them to perform better is to tweak them.

Marketing – any type of marketing – is not a “set it and forget it” strategy. As for Pay Per Click (PPC), one of the most common mistakes many online marketers make is failing to continuously and consistently tweak their campaigns.

Seven Do’s and Don’ts For Google Adwords Campaign Success:

#1 Make sure your unique selling proposition distinguishes your product or service from the competition - try to incorporate benefits into your ad.

#2 Conduct market research - understand the search habits of your target audience and analyze your audience demographics.

#3 Set budget limits for your campaign costs (daily, weekly or monthly) - don’t spend more than 10 percent of your average sales amount.

#4 Bid on keywords that your target audience uses - don’t make the mistake of bidding too high for popular terms. 

#5 Build extensive keyword lists – review where/how your target audience searches, analyze your website traffic and study your competition. Use online keyword generation tools to save time.

#6 Give viewers a reason to click on your ad – copy should include a ‘call to action’ and create a sense of urgency to move the viewer. Use your search terms in the headline and/or ad text and make sure to test multiple ad variations. Incorporate product/brand names, discounts and free trials into your ad message when possible.  

#7 Create optimized custom landing pages – make sure your ad copy is relevant to the keywords on the destination page. 

And remember to always monitor and analyze your ad results - check the conversions/click through rates of your ads and keywords often. 

We hope 2009 is off to a great start for you! In 2009 we look forward to bringing PPC Summit, the premier Search Engine Marketing educational conference, to Chicago: April 22-23, New York: June 16-17 and Los Angeles: Sept. 23-24. During two-days of comprehensive training, PPC Summit offers laser-focused educational sessions to help online advertisers increase their ROI and maximize their Pay Per Click marketing dollars.

Experts from Microsoft, Google, and others lead hands-on workshops, panel discussions, training sessions and more. Sessions cover keyword development, customer conversions, bidding strategies, web site analytics and tracking, quality score & site rank, search engine copywriting tactics, B2B & B2C ad techniques, web site & landing page development and deployment and more!

Here’s what past attendees are saying…“My sales are up 350% and cost-per-sale is down 48.3% after applying the PPC Summit expert strategies.” David Wagner, PPC Summit Los Angeles attendee.

PRE-REGISTER NOW and SAVE $400 for PPC Summit:
>Chicago: April 22-23
>New York: June 16-17
>Los Angeles: Sept. 23-24

For more info visit, www.ppcsummit.com or email marketing@ppcsummit.com
Just 160 seats available at each conference!