Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, despite mounting competition, remains a sound proposition when it comes to affordable advertising campaigns for your website. Anyone who runs a business of any kind can take part, save for certain prohibited industries such as pharmaceuticals, where Googles regulations are tight. Advertisers only pay for their ads when someone clicks on the ad, sending the viewer to the advertiser’s website. Therefore, a business gets exposure to their site without having to spend a lot of money up front. But, just like with any type of online advertising, there are right and wrong ways to create a campaign.
Planning Your AdWords Campaign
You can’t just go willy-nilly throwing PPC ads out onto the Internet and expect a result. Organisation and planning is key to getting people to click on your ads. There isn’t a lot of room to put in a message to grab interest, so you need to figure out how to do it in a short and sweet way that says everything you need to in a few words.
Focus on what it is you want to promote. Is it the business in general, or is it an item that you think is the next big thing, and you want to draw attention to it? Whichever it is, you need to narrow in on what you want to promote.
PPC Keywords
Keywords are as old as the Internet itself.
It’s how people find things, plain and simple. Think about it: when you have a vague thought or idea, you go looking it up in a search engine using words or terms you think are relevant to the item you’re looking for. Just about everyone who uses the Internet has done this at one time or another.
Identify the PPC keywords that best represent your business or product, and create your campaign around them. When someone searches for these words, the search engine returns your ad with them for people to view. The reader makes a decision about how relevant your ad is to their search, and clicks through based on that process.
Understanding the Competition for PPC Keywords
You may have a product that has a lot of competition, or you may have something unique that few others are selling. Depending on which scenario you are in, you may find yourself bidding for ad placement with your keywords. The more money you put out for your advertising translates into higher visibility for your ads.
Remember that you always have the option to pay as much or as little as you can afford because the payment is only delivered when someone clicks on your ad. So if you have a low budget at the start, you’re not going to be able to compete well. It’s better to ride it out and start advertising now rather than wait to get enough money up front.
Starting advertising now, even if you don’t have the funds for high placement, does raise awareness of your site, and can draw in a customer or two. You can pay for better placement as your income starts growing.
Deliver the Goods
Make your site relevant to your ad. Think about the times you’ve clicked on an ad, only to land on the site and what you thought would be there, wasn’t. Don’t do that to your potential customer. Instead, lay out the site to match what’s in your ads so the customer immediately views the offer that brought them to your site. You stand a better chance of turning the viewer into a buyer by taking this step.