Why PPC Campaigns usually not be up to snuff

What happened? You started thinking about your Pay per Click Campaigns. Well I am not going to write a lecture note on this topic. I have few simple points to remind and little schoolwork to show.

Basically I categorize PPC in three parts. One is for Branding; other is for Leads and Viral Marketing expansions. There is also another class of Pay per Click advertisement that is Counter PPC.

Branding:

This is one of the typical types of Pay per Click model. This is a broad campaign in which we should use huge inventory of keywords and placements. The Ad Copies should be generic and discussing about product features and specification rather than offerings and promotional schemes. We should be aware of placement in this scenario as huge inventory may cause negative branding. Simply we should understand what model will entertain and engage the end user rather than showing you’re……….

Leads:

This model is little more sensitive towards business investments. My personal experience has taught me that we must segregate our Campaigns on the basis of leads. Because return from advertisements are not for sure. Hence we should focus on the source of leads. In case of pay per advertisements keywords are our assets. Hence we should separate our High ROI keywords in a different campaign so that we have a fix ratio of online leads then after we can improvise it for better CTR and lowest possible bid. The Ad copy in this campaign’s adgroup should be very specific, more of the offers, product USP(unique selling product) and other value association. But never forget counter Ad copies for your competitors. Focus on the placement network with more selected Placements and your genuine Image Ads. Better to make it in flash so that you can use maximum of your allotted space. One interesting thing about Placements that don’t let it be on default bid, you can save a lot here.

Viral Marketing:

Viral Marketing via PPC is little bit more confusing (not to me). This is basically contextual Ad targeting. Like if you are offering Fruit Juice you can target Cinema Halls, Multiplexes, Shopping Malls and even Health sites. Because it’s where your target audience are roaming. In case of PPC you can create a campaign with those contextual keywords and broadcast them same with image ads. You can choose respective placements with appropriate Image Ad Copy. Flash can work better here.

One thing to be noticed in these type of marketing campaigns that Normal Keyword targeting campaign may cost you higher because of irrespective keywords and landing page. Hence Image Ads and display ads are good to go with.

Synchronizing Campaigns with other Marketing Activities:

After you design your campaigns you should learn or find the way to synchronize your other marketing activities like e-mail marketing, hardcore marketing and event, webinars. Because you should sound unique with your campaign. Your unique selling points and value added services are weapons for online ad campaigns so never hide them. Learning from your competitors is best way to beat the competition. Hence write your ad copies keeping your brand and marketing efforts in mind.

Most Important: Landing Page

So, Finally you have launched your campaign. But who will going to be your customer? Search engine or your competitor. So never keep these two in your mind.

While designing landing page keep Target audience profile in your mind and minimize the number of pages and deep navigations. Study has shown us the one interactive page converse more than a website. So keep promotion, form and USP on a single page. This will help you a lot. Add feedback and comment buttons on your landing page prominently to get direct response if possible.

Statistics show that you have got exactly 6 seconds to convince a visitor to stay on your site. If the visitor does not instantly find what he or she is looking for, your budget will not translate into business or leads. It is critical for your website to have the following characteristics:

Enticing images

If you offer a service, pictures of happy people will give the impression of satisfied end users. If you are offering a product, make sure that your images are clear and represent your product in a true manner.

Good web copy

Remember that less is more when it comes to web copy. Don’t clutter your site with unnecessary text. Good web copy should fit in one frame.

Call to action phrases

Tell your visitors what you want them to do. Examples of good call to action phrases are: “Call now!”, “Buy today!”, “Contact us!”.

No scroll bars

Wherever possible, fit everything into one screen or frame. The more a user has to scroll, the more chance you have in loosing the visitor.

Site design in HTML

Flash websites might look great, but are a killer for any SEM campaign. You may incorporate some flash images to enhance your site’s look and feel, however keep your site predominately HTML.

Remember: Unless your site is ready, your traffic will not convert into sales or leads.

Analysis

Do not forget to verify the clicks and conversion rates, not only for each ad, but also for each keyword. If you notice that some keywords are not resulting in any selling operation, you can chose to put them on standby or make some changes in order to improve their conversion. This can mean the implementation of a new ad group and the creation of new ads more focused on individual keywords. This can result in implementing new ad group and creating new ads more centered on individual keywords, or maybe just a simple adaptation of the offer

fdqivt9h7m

PPC Search Engines to Try- New in Pay per Click Trends

When pay-per-click (PPC) advertising came on the scene nearly 10 years ago, it changed how companies promoted their products and services for the better. PPC remains one of the default ways to generate traffic, but many advertisers ( to their own detriment) routinely limit their promotions to the big three; Google Adwords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft AdCenter. Savvy advertisers understand that the inherent value proposition is not in clicks, but in return on advertising spend. Let’s look at five pure-play search engines and why you should add them to your paid search engine advertising mix.
First let’s explore why so many Internet marketers shy away from these networks.
One of the most pervasive and damaging misconceptions about most ad network providers is that traffic alone (number of clicks) is the best sign of value. That’s a mistake. Just because a network like AdWords is sending lots of traffic, that doesn’t mean it’s the best quality. However, advertisers should focus on other very important issues concerning second-tier, pure-play PPC search engines before funding any account.

• Conversion rates will vary (just as they do with Google and Yahoo!) as the traffic from partner sources are different for each network and vary based on time of day. Investing in a longer term campaign will provide a consistent view into how the individual network performs over the long term – not just on one day.
• PPC networks often specialize in topical areas, not all areas (as do larger networks). That’s not limiting however, it’s actually quite a refreshing change. Much like you would make a media buy on a high profile site, PPC networks like those mentioned below should be treated in the same way – as one providing you with an opportunity to get in front of the network’s partners (the network may never in fact ever be seen as most are just middlemen providing a valuable service to both publishers and advertisers).
• The cost per action and return on ad spend, not total spend or total traffic, should be the reason to engage in second tier PPC advertising. Advertisers routinely look at their total number of sales or the total amount of traffic sent from networks to determine quality. What advertisers should be doing is engaging in granular measurement of their return on total advertising spend. There is no other way to know for certain which network provides the best ROI unless you look at campaigns in this manner.

Where Does Second-Tier PPC Search Traffic Come From?
Another very important question advertisers have about second-tier search engines is where these advertising networks get the traffic they send to the advertisers. The answer in short is… their partners including other search engines, niche content portals or individual Web publishers that integrate advertisers from the network into their own sites (through contextual advertising for example) or their own search result listings. It is important to note that this practice is completely standard in the online advertising industry.

Selecting just five pure-play pay-per-click advertising networks is like choosing a favorite child – impossible, but you wouldn’t want to even if you could. In addition, the summations of the networks themselves are intentionally brief. Each of these networks is more robust than can be expressed in just a few words.

Let’s look at five of the top pure-play PPC search engines now though, their unique value propositions and the traffic they receive to their individual sites (data from Compete.com). If you would like to add the pure-play PPC advertising engine you use to this list, simply sign in and comment below. Again, it’s exceedingly important to remember that most of the "clicks" these networks generate come from their partners and not from the actual sites themselves – measuring them in this way is a disservice to them and to the advertiser paying for the clicks.

---

7Search: One of the original second-tier PPC search engines, 7Search specializes in serving website owners of “low profit margin” categories of business. Features of the service include fraud detection, geo-targeting, keyword suggestion, campaign conversion tracking, custom per-keyword listing modifications, email outbid notifications, direct navigation advertising and quite a bit more. Often referred to as the "little engine that could," 7Search is known in SEM circles as providing a medium traffic volume but of high quality (the majority of which comes from natural listings on popular search engines).

ABCsearch.com: Part of the Internext Media Corp, ABCSearch is another provider using the classic pay-per-click advertising model. The network features geo-targeting (available for the US and Canada, as well as local markets), a proprietary click fraud solution in ClickShield, flexible bidding and many other features standard in second-tier providers such as auto-rebilling. The company’s focus seems to be on distribution, featuring network partners such as Search123 and its own Scour property, publishers networks such as Bravenet Media, and direct navigation.

Findology: Founded in 2000, Findology Interactive Media is one network that many advertisers have tried at one time or another. The company’s Pay-Per-Click Search network offers a minimum deposit of $25 with a minimum bid of $0.03, real-time click fraud prevention and some decent traffic reporting tools. Findology also has a contextual advertising program where bids start at one cent, offers URL/Keyword and category targeting, geo-targeting and a bidding auction model.

Marchex: Local search and advertising company Marchex is known for making waves. The company purchased over 170,000 domain names for use in its OpenList local search platform. The ad solution provides advertisers with the ability to geo-target specific areas and topics of interest. A pure-play PPC search engine, Marchex has an impressive list of distribution partners including TheMotleyFool and RealtyTrac, advertising resellers such as YellowPages.com and agencies.

Miva: Pay-for-performance provider Miva (formerly Findwhat) is known as much for its PPC service as it is for its e-commerce shopping cart solutions. Miva has been around in some iteration or another for many years and actually has two pay-per-click networks, the Core network features the company’s standard bid-for-position technology, and the new Miva Precision Network enables advertisers to concentrate on specific business verticals. Miva has several interesting features including AdAnalyzer, to track the actual ROI on advertising investments.

Are you ready to try the second tier of PPC?
Should you opt to use second-tier pure-play ad networks such as 7Search, Miva, Marchex, Findology, ABCsearch or others, know at the outset that you will need a decent sample to determine statistical validity. That means you will probably be disappointed if you only fund your account with the minimum and expect big things to happen – much like any first tier engine. The best course of action is to leverage the keywords, titles and descriptions from existing campaigns and make modifications for each individual ad network that you add to your marketing mix. 

PPC-Pay Per Click Ads

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser’s website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser’s keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser’s ad may be shown. These ads are called a “Sponsored link” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to or above the “natural” or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster/blogger chooses on a content page.

Pay per click ads may also appear on content network websites. In this case, ad networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network attempt to provide ads that are relevant to the content of the page where they appear, and no search function is involved.

While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators as of 2007. Minimum prices per click, often referred to as Costs Per Click (CPC), vary depending on the search engine, with some as low at $0.01. Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Arguably this advertising model may be open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against this.

Categories

PPC engines can be categorized into two major categories “Keyword” or sponsored match and “Content Match”. Sponsored match displays your listing on the search engine itself whereas content match features ads on publisher sites and in newsletters and emails.

There are other types of PPC engines that deal with Products and/or services. Search engine companies may fall into more than one category. More models are continually evolving. Pay per click programs do not generate any revenue solely from traffic for sites that display the ads. Revenue is generated only when a user clicks on the ad itself.

Keyword PPCs

Advertisers using these bid on “keywords”, which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of the amount bid. Keywords, also referred to as search terms, are the very heart of pay per click advertising. The terms are guarded as highly valued trade secrets by the advertisers, and many firms offer software or services to help advertisers develop keyword strategies. Content Match, will distribute the keyword ad to the search engine’s partner sites and/or publishers that have distribution agreements with the search engine company.

As of 2007, notable PPC Keyword search engines include: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, Ask, LookSmart, Miva, Yandex and Baidu.

Internet marketing, also referred to as online marketing or eMarketing (or e-Marketing), is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. The Internet has brought many unique benefits to marketing including low costs in distributing information and media to a global audience. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of instant response and in eliciting response, are unique qualities of the medium.

Internet marketing ties together creative and technical aspects of the internet, including design, development, advertising and sales. Internet marketing methods include search engine marketing, display advertising, e-mail marketing, affiliate marketing, interactive advertising, online reputation management and also Social Media Marketing Methods such as blog marketing, and viral marketing.

Internet marketing is the process of growing and promoting an organization using online media. Internet marketing does not simply mean ‘building a website’ or ‘promoting a website’. Somewhere behind that website is a real organization with real goals.

An Internet marketing strategy includes all aspects of online advertising online activity that promotes a company online, including websites, blog sites, article and press releases, online market research, email marketing, and advertising, as appropriate for the promotion of ones’ business.

Business models

Internet marketing is associated with several business models. The model is typically defined by the goal. These include e-commerce, where goods are sold directly to consumers or businesses; publishing, or the sale of advertising; and lead-based sites, where an organization generates value by getting sales leads from their site. There are many other models based on the specific needs of each person or business that launches an internet marketing campaign.

Internet marketing refers to the placement of media along different stages of the Customer engagement Cycle, through Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, Banner Ads on specific sites, email marketing and Web 2.0 strategies. In 2008, The New York Times working with comScore published a first estimate to quantify the user data collected by large Web companies. Counting four types of interactions with company sites plus the hits from ads served from advertising networks, they found the potential for collecting upwards of 2,500 pieces of data on average per user per month.

Advantages

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive. Companies can reach a wide audience for a small fraction of traditional advertising budgets. The nature of the medium allows consumers to research and purchase products and services at their own convenience: An internet marketing campaign puts an organization’s message in front of consumers precisely when they want it.

However, internet marketing isn’t a panacea. It still requires intelligent planning and careful execution. Emphasize business goals and use methods such as CVP analysis when determining strategy and the overall effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

There are a few important characteristics that differentiate Internet marketing from “off-line marketing”:

– One-to-one vs. one-to-many approach: The targeted user is typically browsing the Internet on their own, and the marketing messages reach them personally. This can be very clearly seen in search marketing, where the users find advertisements targeted to specific keywords that the users asked for(1).

– Demographics targeting vs. behavioral targeting: off-line marketers typically segment their markets according to age group, sex, geography, and other general factors. Online marketers have the luxury of targeting by activity. This is a deeper form of targeting, since the advertiser knows that the target audience are people who do a certain activity (upload pictures, have blogs, etc.) instead of just expecting that a certain group of people will like their new product or service.

– Measurability: Almost all aspects of an online campaign can be traced, measured, and tested. The advertisers either pay per banner impression (CPM), pay per click (PPC), or pay per action accomplished. Therefore, it is easy to understand which messages or offering are more appealing to the audience.

– Response and immediate results: Since the online marketing initiatives usually require users to click on the message, go to a website, and perform a targeted action, the results of campaigns are immediately measured and tracked. On the other hand, someone driving a car who sees a billboard, will at best be interested and might decide to get more information at some time.

Internet marketing, as of 2007, is growing faster than other types of media.[citation needed]Since exposure, response and overall efficiency of Internet media is easier to track than traditional “off-line” media, through the use of web analytics for instance, Internet marketing can offer a greater sense of accountability for advertisers. Increasingly, however, marketers and their clients are becoming aware of the need to measure the collaborative effects of marketing, i.e. how the Internet affects in-store sales, etc., instead of siloing each medium. The effects of Multi-Channel Marketing can be difficult to determine, but are an important part of ascertaining the value of media campaigns.

Effects on industries

Internet marketing has had a large impact on several industries including music, banking, and flea markets, as well as the advertising industry itself. As Advertisers increase and shift more of their budgets online, it is now overtaking radio in terms of market share.[3] In the music industry, many consumers have begun buying and downloading music files (e.g. MP3s) over the Internet in addition to buying CDs.

More and more banks are offering the ability to perform banking tasks online. Online banking is believed to appeal to customers because it is more convenient than visiting bank branches. Currently, over 150 million U.S. adults now bank online, with a high growth rate. The increasing speed of Internet connections is the main reason for the fast growth. Of those individuals who use the Internet, 44% now perform banking activities over the Internet.

Internet auctions have gained popularity. Unique items that could previously be found at flea markets are being sold on eBay instead. eBay has also affected the prices in the industry. Buyers and sellers often look at prices on the website before going to flea markets and the eBay price often becomes what the item is sold for. More and more flea market sellers are putting their items up for sale online and running their business out of their homes.

The effect on the ad industry itself has been profound. In just a few years, online advertising has grown to be worth tens of billions of dollars annually. PricewaterhouseCoopers reported US Internet marketing spend totalled $16.9 billion in 2006.

Ingredients of a Search Engine Friendly Site

We live in a day and age where people use search engines on a daily basis to find information, products or services. Web site owners who offer these things want to be found in the number 1 spot for a particular keyword phrase or at least on the first page of results. In order to obtain these prized positions, the engines have to make the decision that your site deserves that prestigious place. As web site owners or those who are responsible for the overall success of a site, how do we help the search engines come to this conclusion? While there may be many pieces of the puzzle to accomplish this, one of the foundational things that can be done is to make sure your site is “search engine friendly“.

What does that mean anyway – search engine friendly? Does it entail having an all text site because search engines love content?

Does it mean sacrificing aesthetics because graphical components get in the way of search engines? Does it mean stuffing your pages with repetitive keywords or employing sneaky tricks?

Actually none of these things are ingredients for a search engine friendly site. Additionally many are under the impression that one has to sacrifice the end user if they are to please the search engine. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let me give you some basic ingredients that constitute a search engine friendly site but in doing so, always keep this principle in mind – your web site is for the end user, not the search engines! What do I mean by that? It is quite simple. Search engines are not going to buy your products or hire you to perform a service. In other words, they are not going to pay your bills or allow you to earn an income. The end user will. It is the end user that you want to attract and as a result, covert to a customer. Therefore you should always design and market your site with the end user in mind. This involves the aesthetics of your site, its usability, the way it communicates and ultimately its ability to convert. Keeping this very important principle in mind, lets look at some key ingredients that make up a search engine friendly site.

Make Sure Search Engines Can Find You In The First Place Seems simple enough, right? However, there are still people that launch a brand new site and then go searching for it on Google or Yahoo but are unable to find it. They submitted their site through one of those “add URL” forms or through a submission service but still do not show up in the search engine’s index. You will never get your site listed, at least long term, in a search engine by simply submitting it. Rather you need to get a link from a site that is already in the search engines and then the engines will find the link, visit your site and add it to their index. How does one go about getting a link on another site? The easiest way is to submit your site to free directories like GoGuides, JoeAnt, Skaffe or Wow. Search engines regularly crawl these and other directories and will find your site once it is listed. Another thing that we do is add a link to the client’s site in our client list, portfolio, press release section or even in one of our own directories. Either way, the preferred method of search engines is to find your site on their own.

Search Engines Crave Content It is true that search engines like content or plain old html text. They do not recognize how aesthetically pleasing your site is but rather will digest the content of your site to understand its subject matter. That is not to say that you should sacrifice design for content. You can actually have the best of both worlds. There is a myth that one has to have all their content appear on the page before graphical components. That is simply not true. As long as there is good content within your pages, it doesn’t matter where it is – search engines will find it. So the challenge then is not “where” to place content but simply to have it in the first place. In having content it is imperative to then have the best content. This is where creativity in presenting information comes into play. If your site offers information on a subject, then make sure you have the best info available on the Internet.

If you sell a line of products, make sure you provide content describing the products whether that be in the form of convincing sales verbiage, product reviews, testimonials or all those combined. Make sure your content is written in a natural language. In other words, make sure it is written for the end user in mind. Who is your target audience. Men? Women? Teens? Business owners? A geographical region? Whatever it be, write for that target audience. This is where a good copywriter that has some basic understanding of SEO will be worth their weight in gold. “What about my keywords?” you ask. There is no reason why your site cannot contain well written content designed for your target audience and at the same time represent your most important keywords. Is Your Site Crawlable? I am probably stretching the English language using the word “crawlable”. What I am referring to is simply making sure that a search engine can find other pages within your site beyond your home page. This may sound simple enough but I come across many sites that in one way or another have stopped a search engine dead it its tracks at the home page. There are a variety of situations that can stop a search engine from reaching the sub pages of your site. One of the most common is when a site uses a JavaScript navigation system such as with dynamic menus. While Google is working to overcome the inability to understand JavaScript, the other search engines simply cannot crawl links in these types of navigational systems. What should you do then? Get rid of the JavaScript? Certainly not. Rather, provide an alternate way to navigate the site such as a set of text links in the footer of your site.

If your site has too many pages or sections to include a set of links in the footer, then build a site map with text links to every page or at least every major section of the site and then include a text link to the site map from your home page. You can also link to sub pages within the regular copy of your pages as well. Another thing that will stop search engines from finding the sub pages of your site is requiring cookies or setting session ids. Sure cookies and/or session ids may be necessary to track visitor activity but you can make an exception for search engines. Search engine crawlers are like old browsers in a way. They do not like cookies. Don’t require them to accept them or they will simply leave. Search boxes and forms are another obstacle to search engines. They cannot add a zip code into a form field or a keyword into a search query box. If these are the only ways to reach the inner contents of your site, then you will shut the door on search engine crawlers. The basic idea of allowing a crawler to find the inner pages of your site is that each page should be unique to a specific subject, product or service. Therefore in most cases the more pages you have indexed in a search engine, the greater visibility you have because you have a better chance of showing up well for multiple keywords and phrases.

Use Unique Title Tags and Meta Description Tags How often I come across sites that have the same title tag on every page. Usually it is simply the company or web site name. It is also very common in product database sites that use a run of site title tag or an include file for the info that goes between the opening and closing head tags in the html. Whether your site is static or dynamic, it is of the utmost importance to have unique title tags for each page. Each page should be different, right? Then why not make sure your title tag coincides with the subject matter of the page? The title tag is probably the most important thing a search engine looks at out of all the other elements of your site. So make sure you are capitalizing on this by having optimized, unique title tags for each page. While you are at it, each page should have its own unique meta description tag as well. Sure Google rarely displays the meta description tag as the description of a listing that might appear in the SERPs but they still index it and Yahoo does use the meta description tag (at least at the time of this writing) as the description that appears in the SERPs. Make Your Site The Very Best It Can Be All search engines want to do is to be relevant and help their users find the very best sites related to their search queries.

While some people do “trick” and “cheat” their way to the top, the web sites that ultimately earn the top positions and stay there are the web sites that are the best in their field. Never stop working to make your site better than all the others you are competing against. This is the best strategy in obtaining long term success not only in regards to search engine positioning but with your end users as well. So in conclusion, having a search engine friendly site simply means having a site that they can find, that they can understand, that provides a wealth of good info and that is the best in its field.

If You Like Then Add to: