Pay Per Click Advertising – The Basics

Of all the marketing techniques out there, I would consider this to be the most rewarding and time-effective. The problem, though, is that PPC is often looked upon as being a little too expensive for the average affiliate marketer. But the truth is that you can leverage PPC advertising even if you only have a few bucks to start out with. The key here is strategy.

While there are plenty of PPC providers out there today, I don’t think any of them even come close to the big 3: Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Most people find that traffic from Google AdWords generally provides higher ROI (return on investment) than the other two. And I definitely recommend that you start out with it and then branch out to other providers once you make enough money to reinvest in your business.

Just in case you didn’t know, Google’s AdWords (http://adwords.google.com) starts off by letting you create an ad for your website, and then select keywords that you want to target. When people search for these keywords, your ads appear on the right hand side of the regular search results, in the “sponsored results” section. When someone clicks on your advertisement, you pay Google a certain amount.

The Best Bang for Your Buck

To make the most of your PPC campaigns, there are three vital things you must do:

#1: Choose the right keywords.

I consider pay-per-click advertising to be a step up from regular print advertising because it lets you choose whom you want to target. What you want to do is reach real buyers and not just window-shoppers, or info-seekers.

For this reason, you should never target big terms like “bodybuilding” or “golf” or even better focused ones like “physical training” or “golf equipment”. If you remember, we already covered keyword research in some depth in the Market Research section at the beginning; make sure you use that and generate plenty of long-tail keywords to use in your campaigns. This is where the money is at.

An example: I plugged the phrase “fishing supplies” into the Google Keyword Suggestion Tool. Look at just a few of the juicy long-tails that Google came up with:

Fly fishing supplies
Saltwater fishing tackle
Salmon fishing supplies
Fishing boat supplies
Salt water fishing supplies
Fishing rods and reels
Daiwa fishing rods
Fishing tackle UK
Collapsible fishing rods
Fishing rods for kids
Fishing supplies San Francisco
Antique fly fishing rods
Mitchell fishing gear

I’ll bet you I can build a whole website around each of these keywords! Why? Because each is a whole niche in its own right.

#2: Include campaign-negative keywords.

Google (and many other search engines) have a handy feature that help you include negative keywords in your selection. These negatives will be ones that you want to avoid displaying your ads on, and any searches that have these words in them will not display your ad.

For example, if you’re marketing a product on army fitness training, you might want to include “free” as a negative keyword. It’s obvious that anyone looking for free information isn’t likely to make a purchase and should be filtered out of your campaigns. Negative keywords are marked with a – (minus sign) before them.

#3: Write compelling ads.

The key to really being successful when it comes to pay-per-click marketing is to treat it just like you would a regular print advertisement. Remember that regardless of your advertising channel, you are looking to reach real people.

On most PPC programs, you are usually limited to about 25 characters in the title of your ad, and 35 characters in the body. This is much like a classified advertisement, only much shorter. Think as if you were paying a premium price for a classified ad in a print magazine. What would you write to make sure you have the maximum impact on your prospects?

Here are a few sample advertisements. Remember that at the end of the day, it’s always the most creative marketer that takes away the gold:

Regular, boring ad example:

Cheap Fishing Supplies
Quality fishing rods
Massive discount upto 50%

Creative, high-performance ad example:

Fish Are Smarter Than You Are
Outsmart those little
Dweebs with our supplies!

Another boring ad:

Military Training Manuals
Excellent army training
Ebooks by expert authors.

Another creative outperformer:

Army Training Will Kick Your Ass
Unless you come to us.
Then you’ll do the kicking.

I might have missed the character limit somewhere but these are the type of ads that really sell when it comes to PPC. The key: get creative.

When you starting out with pay-per-click, I highly recommend that you read the respective company’s user manuals which you’ll find on-site. They’re always very helpful and rival the best PPC guides on the market today.