http://www.business.com/

Reasons why you should use PPC advertising and best practices for pay-per-click advertising

BIO: Matt Gussin is a Marketing Consultant at Business.com

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi, I’m Matthew Gussin, Senior Marketing Consultant at Business.com, and today we’re going to discuss what pay-per-click advertising is, how it helps your small- to mid-sized businesses, and where to get started.

Pay-per-click advertising’s important to all small businesses because it can generate immediate traffic and results for your website. Pay-per-click advertising is a text- based ad system, where you’d actually be able to show up when you bid on certain keywords or keyword phrases. Your ads will only be charged when they’re actually clicked on. And, over 60 percent of online viewers that actually do searches online click on one of the top ads on the first page. Why would you use pay-per-click advertising? It’s simple and plain. You can get immediate traffic and immediate results today. Unlike organic listings, which can take months of optimizing, you actually can bid on keywords and start seeing the results immediately. You also have the direct response effect, where every person that clicks on your ad is actually a potential customer, which is fantastic for you. Actually, over 36 percent of all people that do a search that find you on that top first page in the top three results actually find you to be the most relevant and the standard of what’s the best in the industry.

So, moving on to the top four points of what’s important for your pay-per-click advertising. The first thing that you need to figure out is your budget and risk, and when you’re thinking about budget and risk, I don’t want you to just say, “I want to start advertising, and I only want it to be up a day. If it doesn’t work after a day, it doesn’t work.” That’s the wrong way of thinking. You need to actually put aside some money and really invest, say three to six months at an absolute minimum, to figure out what works for your campaign. So, after you’ve figured out where you feel comfortable, the next thing you want to do is figure out your keywords. For example, if you’re an auto shop, you want to come up with words that are related to your business. For example, “car repair,” “auto repair,” you even want to do some misspellings of some words, but there’s another way of doing some searches. If you’re a Honda dealer or a Honda repair shop, you want to use those branded keywords in the same search that you did above but add the word “Honda” to it so you stand out that much more. Those are some great ways of thinking to find some keywords. Some additional ways to add some keywords to your bucket list is look through your website as well as your competitor’s website to see what you find that’s relevant to your industry. Those are great ways to add the keywords to your bucket.

So, the next thing that you want to do is come up with your title and your ad copy description. When you’re coming up with your title on ad copy, it’s really important to make sure that you include the keyword or key phrase in bold sentences. What you’ll notice is that you’ll have an over 50 percent higher click-through rate when both those words incorporated. Some bad ad copy will just have some just initial, low-level information and not telling somebody what to do. But, some good ad copy — you’re actually really going to state what makes your industry and your particular product specific by including how you stand apart from the rest of the online marketplace and then adding a call to action. A great call to action, for example, is “buy now” or “download a whitepaper,” “request a quote.” How would you use that?

So, after you’ve figured out your keywords, your ad copy, how much you feel comfortable spending, it’s really to decide what search engine’s right for you. There’s a lot of search engines out there. The most common ones that are used are the big three, which are commonly referred to as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing. So, when you’re thinking about which works — very important — you have to figure out, “I need to monitor my campaign,” and when you’re monitoring your campaign, that’s how you’re going to optimize it. When I use the word “optimize,” that’s making tweaks and adjustments because you can do that immediately to your online campaign. It’s very important to make sure you get a free tool. A lot of companies out there use it. There’s Google Analytics, Business.com offers their own in-house tool, and you can track up from anywhere from 30 to 90 days worth of your results and optimize only down to the keyword level. If you want it to be a sale, make sure that the words that you’re bidding on are turning into a sale. If not, then focus on new keywords or remove those keywords or even change your ad copy.

Duration : 0:5:3

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Technorati Tags: advice, campaign, entrepreneur, expert, Guide to Advertising Networks, marketing strategies, online marketing, pay per click, search marketing, Small Business, solution, strategy

http://www.business.com/

Reasons why you should use PPC advertising and best practices for pay-per-click advertising

BIO: Matt Gussin is a Marketing Consultant at Business.com

Duration : 0:5:17

[Read more...]

Technorati Tags: advice, campaign, entrepreneur, expert, Guide to Advertising Networks, marketing strategies, online marketing, pay per click, search marketing, Small Business, solution, strategy