Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC)

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC) can be VERY expensive.  You may be bidding against big companies with deep pockets, or the huge popularity of your best keywords can really drive up the price you pay if you don't know the methods to minimize your Google Adwords costs.

GOOGLE

• Pay less for your Google Adwords

• Cut your bid prices almost in half

• Test new product ideas quickly and easily

• Use Google to prepare your marketing rollout

"Survival of the Fittest" (Pay less for Google Adwords)

There is one key central idea that you should understand about Google's Adwords (PPC Advertising) service and if you get it right, Google will give you lower prices on click-throughs.  However, if you get it wrong, you'll pay way to much for clicks and your Adwords campaigns will be disabled.

What is this one thing which matters so much on Google?  It's relevance.  Google rewards you for being relevant and your relevancy is determined by the people searching on Google.  People who search on Google essentially "vote" for you by clicking on your ad link.  If your ad gets clicked on, it's relevant and if it doesn't, then it's not.  Pretty simple.  You need to get 0.5% (5 out of 1000 people) to click on your ad or Google will disable your ad.  In addition, the higher your click-thru rate, the less you have to pay for the position you want.  Google's theory behind this is to weed out bad (irrelevant) advertisers and reward the good ones.

A good web marketing person will know what matters when it comes to creating relevancy when using the Google Adwords service.

 
Cut your bid prices almost in half!

• You pay 1 cent above the position below you, not the maximum you bid
• Your Click-Through Rate (CTR) is more important than how much you bid
• The CTR is the percentage of people searching who click on your ad.
• A high CTR decreases your bid prices, increases your position and increases traffic to your site

A good web marketing person can help you maximize your CTR to drive more traffic to your site for less money than you might otherwise pay.  

By the way, Overture (another PPC advertising service) does not work this way.  On Google, your ad is ranked higher as your CTR increases; in Overture, the highest bidder always wins.  This means Overture rewards people with more money instead of the people with better marketing, so for smart marketers, Google is MUCH better.

Test new product ideas quickly and easily

There's a lot of ideas out there people will spend money on, so don't waste a lot of money developing products that nobody wants to buy.

A good web marketing person understands how to use Google Adwords to quickly and easily (and at minimal cost) test new ideas.  This process will validate whether or not you're solving a worthwhile problem, help you fine tune your ideas to they are in line with the real problems people are having and will help prevent you from throwing money into a lousy product idea.

Use Google to prepare your marketing rollout

Properly set up a Google Adwords campaign and fine tune your web site until the traffic profitably converts to sales.  You'll learn important things during this process.  Experiment, test and perfect your sales process.

Google ppc provides a steady, predictable stream of highly targeted traffic every day.  You have no real control over free search engine listings and PR so those means are not as effective. 

You have total control with Adwords, so use that to get it right, THEN rollout your other online and offline marketing efforts.  You don't want your other things (e.g. email campaigns, affiliates, press releases, direct mail, print advertising, etc.) to be the guinea pig.  If it works on Google Adwords, then you can feel more comfortable investing in other marketing and be pretty sure it will work.

Getting traffic isn't enough

Keep in mind, however, that what matters more than any particular way of getting traffic to your web site is the ability of your web site to get people to act (to buy, to call, to opt-in, etc.)  Adwords can be the fastest, easiest and sometimes the least expensive way to get traffic to your site, but once they are there, it's up to your site to get people to act. 

So, when building or redesigning your web site for optimal sales or "conversion" (action) you should seriously consider consulting with a professional marketing copywriter as well as with someone who understands "online merchandising."  The online merchandising consultant will work with your web developer to structure the content on your site to best elicit action from site visitors.