Pay Per Click Advertising

When you type a search into Google, you’ll see you get a list of links down the right-hand side of the results page and often one or two at the top. Each of these sets of links has a heading “sponsored links” over it.

If you click on one you’ll be taken through to whatever web-page the advertiser wants you to look at. The advertiser pays only when you click on the ad and the amount they pay depends on how much they “bid”. And what they bids on is the keyword you typed into Google.

So if you typed in “entrepreneur success” all the AdWords ads you’ll see are from people who want their ad to appear when someone is looking for information on that subject. And (in general) the more you’re prepared to pay every time someone clicks your ad, the higher up the list it appears.

There is a more to it than that to getting a good placement for your ad, and Google don’t make the details of their algorithms public, but that’s a good rule of thumb.

Now, it’s true the basics of PPC are simple and anyone can get started and have an ad for their business in front of large numbers people within just a few minutes; but it’s also true that if you get it wrong you can end up spending a lot of money on it and get precious little in return.

And it’s this “problem” which makes a lot of business owners wary of it.

But this isn’t a fault with PPC at all — it’s exactly the same for any kind of advertising. In fact, PPC has the edge here because a typical ad in a local paper or magazine can cost you hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pounds to place, hundreds (sometimes thousands) of pounds to have created by some funky Graphic Designer, and you get the “privilege” of paying all this even before your ad sees the light of day.

And if you get no responses? Tough.

But with PPC… if your ad doesn’t work and no one clicks on it… you don’t pay a penny.

Pay-per-click’s success is a result of its laser-like, focused, precise model of reaching people who are interested, right now, in what you have to offer.

Let’s look at an example of how it works in real life.

Suppose I own a hotel in London. My target customers are people who are looking for a hotel in London while they are on holiday or visiting on business. Ten years ago the only way I could find these people was to book big, expensive ads in publications I hoped people coming to London might read.

That resulted in a lot of wasted money.

Nowadays, though, people search for hotel accommodation online. They’ll typically go on Google and type in “hotel London” or “vacation London,” or, “business trip, hotel London”

And if I can get my ad to appear at or near the top of the results when they do that, I have a way of reaching these highly qualified customers – and I pay for the ad only when someone clicks on it and is sent through to my website.

It’s unbeatable for getting highly qualified traffic to your website.

OK, so that’s how the system works in a nutshell.

But what about the detail?

Well here are my 7 guiding principles for making sure you are using effective PPC ads in your business:

  1. Make your ads relevant to the topics people are searching for. Include your main keyword in your headline and then follow up with a benefit and an offer in the second and third lines of your ad. Using your company name as the headline and then saying “we give great service” is not a good idea. It will bomb.
  2. Users clicking on your ad should NOT be surprised by what they find when they get to your site. Not only is it bad manners, but it’s really bad for your business. Make the page you send them to immediately relevant: don’t send them to your home page and expect them to hunt around for the onward links to what you’ve already promised them. They won’t. They’ll leave your site with a click of disgust and the money you paid to Google for the click is wasted.
  3. Instead of trying to sell them something the instant they hit the page you’ve directed them to, begin a relationship with them by giving: offer them some free but valuable information in return for their email addresses and names. You can then email them and make the sale happen at a more leisurely pace.
  4. Use specific keywords accurately describing your products and services. Remember, you’re PAYING for clicks and the more “niched” your keywords are, the more targeted your traffic will be and the cheaper the clicks will be.
  5. Use the power of “negative keywords”. If you’re using the keyword “builder” in your ads, then you don’t want to be picked up by searches for “Bob the Builder”. You can set your ads up to exclude these spurious hits on your keywords.
  6. Test. Google’s free tools allow to test and measure your advertising like never before: within just 10 minutes your ad can be in front of 100 million people and you can have real test-data not long after that.