Simple Pay Per Click / Cost Per Click Strategy

Simple Pay Per Click / Cost Per Click Strategy

In a Nutshell, Pay Per Click or PPC is a search engine marketing technique which is used by search engines and advertising networks to generate clicks. In this, advertiser uses potential key phrases and bid for their position in the sponsored links section to generate leads to their website. The major service providers in the area are Google Ad words, Yahoo – Overture program, MSN Ad center. Apart from these BIG 3, there are many smaller programs which comprises the PPC universe. Setting up PPC sounds simple, but it requires certain practices and constant monitoring as improper biddings can make an advertiser bankrupt overnight.

Below are the simple strategies, which can make your PPC campaign more result oriented.

• Keywords research: Always do good keywords research and come up with as many keywords / key phrases as possible, related to your product / Service. Come up with more and more secondary keywords which are relevant to the service / product offered by you. A secondary keyword may not have good search volumes but can certainly improve your conversion rates.
• Create proper landing page: A landing page is the page on a website where the traffic generated through PPC program lands. Always make good. Attractive landing pages. A home page can not be a landing page as it is the identity of your website. Home page is used to present corporate identity, its more on “Who you are” whereas a landing page should focus on “what service / product you offer” and “why customer should buy from you”.
• Write Relevant Ad Copy: The ad copy should clearly mention the product / service on offer for a particular campaign and the pricing for it. Any deviation from this will make you lose the space. An ad copy with pricing catches attraction of the visitor, thus making CTR (Click Through Ratio) value high.
• Conversions: Incorporate conversion tracking code. Without this, you will not be able to know the exact ROI. One must measure the leads coming through PPC programs, this helps in utilizing the budget effectively.
• Bidding: Test the ROI, conversion for various places in the sponsored link category by varying the bids for 2-3 weeks. This will give you the optimal position where you can safely bid and get desired CPA (Cost per acquisition) and can stick to your allocated monthly budget without much hassle. One you do this, you will understand that bidding for top positions is not good always.
• Check competition: Look at the ad copy used by your competitors, analyze them and if required, make changes in your ad copy. Use promotional “HOOKS” (offers) to increase CTR.
• Branding: Do not let your affiliate to use your brand name for making their ad copy. This may affect your branding.
• Monitoring: Constantly monitor your campaigns, there is nothing like AUTO PILOT in PPC campaigns. The competition is cut throat and you will need to adjust your bid in order to optimize your ROI.
• REALISTIC expectations: Have realistic expectations with your campaigns. You can not increase your business 10 folds overnight using PPC campaigns. It’s a market where you are selling goods and services. You can get the leads but if your website is not up to the mark or your pricing does not suit visitor, you will not get final CONVERSION. So ideally first step before setting up PPC programs is to do proper home work. Make your website up to the mark, create good landing pages, provide information in great detail so that the visitors get a complete idea about your services, products, pricing etc.
• Last but not least, do monthly tweaking in bids, ad copy, remove non performing ads from your campaigns. This is life weeding, removing unnecessary items from your campaigns.

Himanshu Singh is the owner and founder of Bangalore based Internet Marketing firm Himshilp