If you’re not careful, Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing campaigns can be the undoing of your internet business. There are so many people that launch into an PPC campaign without really knowing what they are doing. The big downside to this is that you end up spending hundreds to thousands of dollars advertising your product or website with very little return.
All of the advertising that you see in relation to MSN, Yahoo and Google advertising is that it’s a simple process and easy to make money. Well, that can be true and if you get the campaign settings, keywords and target market right then PPC campaigns are the quickest way to make money online. But, if you don’t? Spend, spend, spend and a low conversion rate.
You may think that you have an awesome product that will be very easy to sell. The only thing with finding a product that you like is that you may be the only one who likes it. ClickBank is an ideal marketplace to monitor products, their popularity and the number of other affiliate marketers that are also promoting the product. This is called gravity. If there is a large number of affiliates promoting the product then it is more than likely to be profitable.
When you are starting out with a PPC campaign, it’s important to know the size of your intended target market. How many other people are selling the product you like? Is the market saturated? For example, take the “make money” niche. It’s huge. There are literally thousands of internet marketers pumping products that will teach you or help you to make money online.
All you have to do is start researching “make money” in the Google keywords tool to see that there are billions of searches for this keyword monthly. Well, it’s not surprising given that there is a recession – the point is, make sure that you can still find a profitable product in a niche that still gives you room to move with low competition buying keywords. By buying keywords, I mean keywords that will convert into sales.
It doesn’t hurt to spy a little either. Providing you aren’t copying another persons adcopy, it’s good research to pay attention to what others are doing in your niche. Set up a spreadsheet (or any other recording method you prefer) and monitor which ads in your chosen niche are lasting the distance and which ads are up one week and gone the next. If the ad is performing, it will be sustainable and profitable. Try to emulate those successful ads by creating an ad that elicits similar emotion and action from your chosen market.
Before you choose to promote any product, don’t forget to look closely on the return rate. If the product is a high seller but frequently returned, it will be a great limiting factor when it comes to your bottom line. A high return rate does not necessarily mean that the product won’t be profitable but it is certainly an indicator that you should do some further research. Google search is always good to get an idea but there are also survey sites where you can ask members questions about the product which will be more relevant.
Here are some quick tips for when you start your campaign:
- Make sure the keywords you choose are relevant to your target market, adcopy and sales page
- Check the performance of your campaign (daily at least) to see if you need to add or delete non performing keywords
- Target your campaign to your customers wants
- Cap your daily budget
- Run a couple of campaigns at once to benchmark for campaign performance
- Run two-three ads in one adgroup as a benchmark for ad performance
- Don’t be afraid to ask for assistance from support staff if you see something isn’t working
PPC campaigns are profitable and effective if you do your research and keep a close eye on performance data. Be creative and adventurous. Would you click on your ad?
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