It wasn’t that long ago that an entrepreneur could generate some good money using an affiliate program and Google Adwords. That is just not the case anymore but there are still some questionable “make money from home” courses on the market that continue to perpetuate that myth.

The challenge behind what they say is that in order to get those cheap clicks the would be marketer must select search phrases that don’t get a good volume of traffic and are fairly low in competition.

As a result, that would be marketer who just bought that program is doomed before they even start.

There are two reasons for this.

To begin, the only way to generate sales is to get your message out to lots of customers. There is no way around it. In the world of online marketing, traffic is king.

Assuming that your content is of high quality the more people who see your sales pitch the more sales you will make. So if you are forced to use keywords that only have low monthly searches then your chances to earn a commission are already minimized if not doomed.

Next, reasonable costs per click are relative to the quality of clicks they can attract. When a so called PPC GURU makes a statement like “finding 30 cent costs per click is a bargain” but fails to inform you that a poorly targeted audience only leads to wasting your money then that GURU is doing a disservice. The new person to internet marketing, hoping they have stumbled upon a legitimate source of income, will probably not see any sales and be so frustrated that they just stop trying.

What is needed are ad servers with quality traffic and excellent volume at profitable costs per click. And not just that, but for those ad servers to have easy to understand and follow rules that don’t limit the individual from being as creative or as simple as they choose. If a small affiliate marketer wants to save some money and have their ad point directly at their vendor’s sales page – why shouldn’t they be allowed to do that? THEY SHOULD! Adwords has failed US in that sense alone.

Fortunately (and contrary to what Google would want you to believe), we have more choices than simply Adwords.

Introducing Philip Mansour’s Confidential Conversions.

I found Philip’s course a short while back and it is, without reservation, a change in the face of PPC forever. He demonstrates real results from actual campaigns running right now and he is consistently achieving .05 cent per click with keywords in topics like debt consolidation. He makes no sacrifices in his choices of search phrases. A lot of the keywords are getting millions of searches every month. All of his results are current and they tackle the first problem of high traffic keywords at low costs.

Philip has spent thousands upon thousands of his own money and years of research in overcoming the second issue. During his research he identified many advertising servers that provide billions of ads served annually (both in impressions as well as click throughs) and he even identified those ad servers who QUALIFY their TRAFFIC so you only present your ads to those who are interested in what you are selling! There is at least one host that doesn’t charge for clicks if your ad was mistakenly displayed to a non-targeted audience.

How excellent is that?

When you consider the volume of traffic as well as the quality, Confidential Conversions has really knocked it out of the park.

So if you have had enough of unreasonable costs and regulations and need to make money today using the Pay Per Click model and affiliate marketing then I urge you to take action and sign up now. Philip has made his offer risk free with, not only $75 in FREE advertising credits, but also a no questions asked – any reason you want – 100% money back guarantee. Sign up, put it to work an hour form now, see the results and start making money today!

In short, “pay per click” is an Internet advertising model where advertisers only pay when their ad is actually clicked. Typically, advertisers will bid on keywords or phrases relevant to their target market. PPC can also use the “affiliate” model, where financial incentives (a percentage of revenue) are offered to affiliated partner sites that host the ads. Google Content Network is a good example of this. The system is actually pay-for-performance as far as affiliates are concerned; if they don’t generate clicks or impressions, there’s no cost to the merchant. Sponsored links will show up next to or above organic results on search engines, along with relevant content or search results. Thus, the actual cost per click will vary according to the demand for the keyword and the search engine itself (pricing models differ). Google and others have automated systems to head off abusive clicks from competitors and other types of click fraud.

FLAT-RATE PPC
On a flat-rate PPC setup, the advertiser and publisher arrive at a fixed amount that will be paid per click. Usually the publisher will have a rate card for cost-per-click. It’s a common setup for comparison-shopping engines, with sites that are compartmentalized into narrower categories. Page content that generates more traffic and more valuable, interested visitors will generally have a higher cost per click than more esoteric or obscure content. Sites such as Shopping.com, Bizrate.com and Pricegrabber.com use this method.

BID-BASED PPC
Bid-based pay per click has advertisers competing with each other for keywords in an advertising network. The auction is done online in an automated system, with each advertiser having set a top-dollar amount that he is willing to pay. The auction takes place according to how many times an ad spot is part of a search engine results page, whenever users are looking for the given keyword. Factors like ad quality and relevance often figure in as well.

Publishers and advertising networks also place ads on 3rd-party properties in a “content network.” Ads on content networks are referred to as contextual ads, as they are placed on pages that have relevant keywords on them. As third parties sign up to host ads, they receive a portion of the ad revenue, which can range from 10% to 30% of the gross revenue for the ad. Ads on content networks (which can also include newsletters and emails as well as websites) have a lower click-through and conversion rate, and are generally cheaper and have less value. So, advertisers pay on each click, with the auction setting the actual amount paid.

Automated bid management systems are usually deployed, with the system taking into account goals such as maximizing profit and traffic. Bid management systems are tied to the quality and amount of data they have available to them — low-traffic ads have a scarcity of data that can make bid management difficult to near impossible.

The most effective Pay per Click Strategy is reviewing the data carefully and making optimizations based on keyword research, trends, goals and conversions. The keywords, ad text and landing pages must be all relevant for optimum conversion rates and ROI. While third party software and automated systems have some usability, the human factor is very important with PPC.

If you seek effective results and positive ROI from your PPC Campaign, contact us.

PPC: Pay per click marketing is a method by which you pay for clicks. I know that sounds simple, but if you’ve never done it then it can be daunting to figure out. Anyone can setup a pay per click campaign to market their products. The major search engines and social networking sites all provide a way to implement a pay per click campaign on their sites. When creating pay per click campaigns use caution. Make sure you set your budget at a reasonable level. You can choose a daily budget for your campaign. Understand that clicks have a different price depending on what keywords you are targeting. Some keywords will cost you 0.25 per click where others will cost $25.00 per click. Next time you are on Google, Yahoo, or Bing. Take a look at the sponsored ads sections. Then tend to be at the very top of the page and along the right hand column. The top spots are worth more and ads are shown based on what keywords you have just searched for. The much more to say about this, but this is enough to give you an idea.

CPA: Cost per action campaigns are usually implemented by advertising networks like Commission Junction or ClickBank. There are many networks that will execute CPA campaigns for you. So what is this? Cost per action campaigns allow you to pay when a desired action is completed. Suppose you want to sell your book online. You can create a website, submit the site to an advertising network and only pay the network when a book actually sells. These are usually more expensive per action then a click campaign, but you also only pay for actual sales or leads. So the other option for CPA campaigns is using them to generate leads. Let’s say you are a realtor who would like generate an interest list for a specific property using the internet. You can have a web development company create a lead generation site for you and pay only when a person actually fills out the interest form in reference to the property. Leads may cost you any where from $3.00 per lead up to $30 per lead. It really just depends on the product you are generating leads for. When using CPA marketing beware of fraud. CPAwatchdog.com is a company that helps to fight CPA fraud.

CPM: These are cost per impression campaigns. With this sort of advertising you can place your ad on a website and pay to have it shown a pre-determined amount of times. So let’s say you want to buy 100 impressions on a website. You would pay a fixed dollar amount to have your ad shown on that site 100 times. Usually sites that have this option will rotate your ad through the system with other ads so it won’t all be spent in the first 5 minutes that the ad is up on the site.

SEO: Search Engine optimization is not really a direct advertising technique. It actually is more of a long term solution to getting your site to consistently show up in the search engines. The reality is that internet users spend less then 5% of their time on search engines so SEO is important, but will only get you so far. SEO is really about making sure that you site content is relevant to what you expect you customers will be searching for. In addition to achieve higher rankings in the search engine you want to make sure you have back links to your site. A back link is when another site links to your site. This adds to your ranking score because the more others link to you, the more likely it is that you have content that others truly value. Technically it is free to optimize you site if you have the skills to do so. If not it is possible to hire companies like 4squared media to optimize your site for you. When hiring a company to perform SEO service for you be sure that they are providing reports for you. These reports will be the proof to show that the SEO techniques implemented by said company are actually working.

In summary there are many ways to advertise you site online. Ideally you want to implement a variety of online advertising techniques to drive traffic to your website. As you drive traffic to your site make sure that you are tracking the effectiveness of the advertising and eliminate or refine those that are not performing as expected.

Forget clicks, page views, and impressions; the only way to effectively track your online marketing ROI is through Cost-per-Action (CPA) analysis.

As the online advertising market is poised to grow nearly $10 billion over the next six years, it’s essential that we remember the importance of measuring the effectiveness of that spending. There’s no point undertaking any marketing or advertising campaign unless you can measure its results. And results are best measured in terms of return on investment (ROI).

Unfortunately, in the world of marketing and advertising, many businesses seem to be losing touch with their general objectives. The tools may have changed, but the principles remain the same – Your advertising campaigns are only successful if they meet the objectives you set out to achieve. So if you’re after increased sales, you need to measure the cost of each sale generated to determine your return on investment.

Fortunately for advertisers, tracking ROI for online advertising is much easier than it is for traditional forms of advertising, such as TV, Radio, Newspaper, Magazine, and Billboard. When you market online, every advertising campaign can be tracked and measured all the way down to the penny. This is why more and more advertising dollars are being spent online every day.

Why Not Cost-Per-Click or Cost-Per-Impression?

When it comes to tracking campaign effectiveness, many businesses rely on Cost-per-Click (CPC) and Cost-per-Impression (CPM) statistics. But what many people forget is that for most businesses, clicks and impressions don’t earn you money. So by tracking clicks and impressions, you’re not really tracking return on investment. The same is true of page stats.

If you’re like most businesses, impressions, clicks, and page views are simply a means to an end. (In fact, without corresponding sales conversions, they’re nothing more than unjustifiable expenses.) If you only earn revenue from sales, you need statistics linking costs and sales. In other words, you need to measure cost-per-action (CPA).

Cost-Per-Action (CPA)

In a CPA campaign, you run an online ad on third party sites and they charge a commission when a lead is generated or converted. It’s performance-based pricing. This means the publisher wears most of the advertising risk, as their commissions are dependent on good conversion rates.

Perhaps the most widespread use of CPA is affiliate marketing. With affiliate marketing, you determine what actions you will reward and how much you’re willing to pay per action. For example, you might engage an affiliate site to promote your business. If they generate sales for your business, you can pay them a commission. Your cost-per-action would then be the cost per sale or lead generated.

Tips on Conversion

The following conversion tips will help you plan your CPA campaign and avoid some common pitfalls.

1) How are sales and leads recorded?

For many businesses, the obvious result which constitutes a conversion is a sale. If your sale is recorded or registered online (e.g. e-commerce), it can be considered a measurable action. This means you can choose a sale as the desired action in your CPA campaign.

Depending on the aim of your campaign, you may want to measure other outcomes in addition to, or instead of, sales. For instance, you might measure leads in the form of membership registrations, newsletter subscriptions, software downloads, or just about any other activity beyond simple page browsing. So when your customer clicks register, or subscribe, or download, etc., the conversion is automatically registered and the details are fed back you’re your CPA campaign.

In either case, at any time, you can log in and view your campaign results in real time.

2) Set up a landing page to capture lead contact details

If you’re paying for leads, you obviously need to know when a lead is actually generated. Generally a lead becomes a lead only when the customer supplies you with their details (name, contact numbers, email, etc.). This means you need to set up a landing page on your site capture these details. Your capture page can be collect contact information or it can be as simple as a signup for a monthly newsletter.

3) Get your CPA provider to set up your landing page

If you don’t have the time, inclination, or resources to set up the necessary forms and database on your own site, the CPA provider can do it on their hosted server. They collect the leads and calculate the statistics. For many businesses, this is the ideal option because it saves them time and money, and there are no tracking discrepancies.

4) Find a CPA provider you can trust

If your CPA provider will be collecting leads and calculating statistics, you need to know you can trust them. There are plenty of trustworthy providers out there; you just need to find them. A trustworthy provider will find out what your exact needs are and spend time researching your niche market online. By performing this marketing analysis, your provider will be able to tell you exactly how much business they can bring you on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. If they can’t provide you with this important information, then this is a good indication that you are not speaking with a professional internet marketer.

Just as importantly, with a trustworthy provider you’ll be able to personally speak with the internet marketer who will be working on your project. This person will be an expert in the field of internet marketing, not just a sales rep.

5) Avoiding excess fees

WARNING: Some CPA providers charge a setup fee ($2,500 to $10,000) and/or a network fee (20% to 30%) for each sale or lead that is generated. Before committing to a provider demanding high fees, make sure you are getting more for your money. Most of the time high fees simply mean the sales rep is getting a higher commission!

6) Measuring your conversion rate

The Formula for measuring CPA is by dividing the total cost per advertising campaign by the total number of actions (conversions) that were received from each ad campaign. For example, if your online ad campaign costs $1,000 and generates 50 sales or leads, your cost per action (CPA) is $20.00 each.

7) Improving your conversion rate

A high conversion rate depends on several factors:

Visitor Interest Level – The interest level of the visitor is maximized by matching the right visitor, the right place, and the right time. Offer Attractiveness – The attractiveness of the offer includes the value proposition and how well it is presented. TIP: Small, impulse items typically have a higher conversion rate than large shopping items. Ease of Process – The ease with which the visitor can complete the desired action is dependent on site usability. Important considerations here include intuitive navigation, contact info capture page, “Buy Now” or “Apply Now” buttons and fast loading pages.

In summary…

Because CPA allows you to identify exactly how much it will cost to acquire a customer, there’s no guesswork involved. You have the ability to precisely calculate your ROI. And because online tools and ad serving technologies allow you to monitor effectiveness in real time, you can even tweak campaigns while they’re still running. If you can master effective online advertising, you’ll not only save thousands in implementation costs, you’ll also reap the rewards of a far higher return on investment.

If you have a site or other business on the internet, you need customers. With all the competing sites, how do buyers find you? If you plan to be an online business success, you need to have some good marketing strategies.

One of the commonly used strategies for marketing an online business is discovering how to get a high search engine ranking. If you don’t rank highly it will be very difficult to find you. Ranking high has some key methods. One of them is to keep everything on your sitesignificant to the subject. This makes good sense because once the customer find you, you want him to stick around. Selecta domain name and website title that match well with your business keywords. One’s title must be easy to remember. Contactwebsites that offer information that matches your website and inquire for reciprocal links for these links matters greatly in search engine rankings. Writing well keyworded articles is one of the best ways to obtain links to your website. There are quite a number of article directories online that can give one way links back to your site. This is the most effective method to gaining a page rank. Widely used now is article submission software which makes it easy to submit to these article directories. There are, of course,businesses out there that do this for you for a small fee.

Using pay-per-click advertising is another effective and quick method to get listed high in the search engines. There are several providers of pay-per-click advertising. A few of these examples are Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN adCenter. You can experiment with your ads to know which are most effective when you sign on to a pay-per-click advertising campaign. You can delete the rest of your ads when you find a good ad that has a high click through rate. It pays to take a look into a variety of pay-per-click advertisers to see which suits your needs best.

Another way of marketing an online business is by using Weblogs also known as Blogs. They tend to rank well, and consumers enjoy them. Make use of your blog to discuss about your trade and offer links to your website. Now that everyone has a blog there are problems that have come up though. But measures have been taken to bring an end to spamming. For example, “Blogger.com” ,the popular free blog host, has been cancelling accounts used for spamming. The best way to prevent this problem from happening is to host your own blog on your server. A publishing feature in Blogger permits you to publish to blogspot or your own server. Utilizing this feature to publish to your own FTP server is a way you can put whatever you like on your blog and not be penalized for spamming.

Last of all is the use of traffic exchanges. Considered by many to be ineffective,a stylish and satisfactory splash page or squeeze page which has an information gathering form can convert surfers into consumers and even repeat buyers. When looking for traffic exchanges make certainthat the traffic exchange your joining is a well-known, high ranked program.

Marketing an internet business is vital for success and using the necessary marketing strategies will ensure increase in your website traffic.

If you have a website or other business on the web, you need customers. With all the competing websites, how do customers find you? If you plan to be an online business success, you need to have some good marketing strategies.

Knowing how to get a high search engine ranking is one of the most used strategies for marketing online. If you don’t rank highly it will be very difficult to find you. Ranking high has several key methods. One of them is to keep the whole thing on your websiterelated to the subject. In so doing, you attract more repeat buyers. Takea domain name and website title that match well with your business keywords. The title must be easy to to keep in mind. Contact sites that offer information complementing your website and request for reciprocal links for these links matters considerably in search engine rankings. Writing well keyworded articles is one of the best tactics to find links to your site. Article directories that you find online can provide one way links to your website. This is the most efficient way to attaining a page rank. Generally used now is article submission software which makes it easy to submit to these article directories. There are, of course,companies out there that do this for you for a small fee.

Another valuable and quick method to get listed high in the search engines is via pay-per-click advertising.There are numerous providers of pay-per-click advertising. Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter and Google Adwords are some of them. You can try out your ads to find out which are most effective when you sign on to a pay-per-click advertising campaign. Then when you discover a good ad that has a high click through rate you can cross out the rest. To know which you like best, look into a variety of pay-per-click advertisers.

Another method of marketing an online business is by using Weblogs or more commonly known as Blogs. Blogs are apt to rank well, and customers enjoy them. Make use of your blog to write about your trade and present links to your website. Since everyone has a blog spamming has become a problem. But measures have been taken to bring spamming to an end. For instance, “Blogger.com” ,the popular free blog host, has been cancelling accounts used for spamming. If you don’t want your accounts to be terminated better host your own blog on your server. Bloggers publishing feature lets you to publish to blogspot or your own server. You can put whatever you like on your blog and not be penalized for spamming if you use this feature of publishing on your own FTP server.

Last but definitely not the least is the use of traffic exchanges. Though considered ineffective by many,a well-made and suitable splash page or squeeze page that has an information gathering form can change surfers into buyers and even repeat customers. When searching for traffic exchanges make certainthat the traffic exchange your joining is a well-known, high ranked program.

Promoting an online business is essential for success and using the necessary marketing strategies will ensure increase in your website traffic.

Depending on the type and scale of your campaigns, advertising online can cost you anywhere from nothing at all to many thousands. Like traditional media, advertising online can be done using many different models and strategies and the prices of these online advertisements vary widely from service to service and site to site. Being able to develop and implement an effective online advertising strategy which fits into your firm’s budget depends on knowing the factors which drive these costs.

Many websites sell advertising space on their sites to subsidize the costs of operating their sites. Paid advertising space on websites is one of the more established methods of advertising online. However, the more popular the website, the costlier their advertising space will be. If your budget permits, it’s a solid investment. Websites which have a large audience which matches up with your target market guarantee your business a large number of impressions on exactly the consumers you’re trying to reach.

You’ll get the best return on your investment in advertising online when you have a detailed knowledge of your target market and their online habits. By targeting your advertisements to exactly where your prospective
customers are most likely to be, you’ll get more results at a lower cost. Study the site yourself and ask the owners for in-depth data on how their visitors behave on the site. Keep in mind that some ad placements will be more expensive than others (since they have more prominence).

Normally, buying advertising online in the form of placement on websites will be aimed at every visitor. However, a growing number of sites allow your adverts to be geo-targeted (displayed to visitors from certain locations). It’s generally a little pricier, but can be valuable to local businesses and for reaching highly targeted micro-markets. Another factor in the cost of advertising online is your content and format. Larger size, graphics, video and other multimedia content will usually mean a higher price.

Now, let’s have a look at the contextual models of advertising online. There are adverts sold on the basis of cost per 1,000 impressions (known as CPM – a model also seen on websites as well as contextual search engine based advertising) and cost per click (CPC, also known as pay per click or PPC). Both are inexpensive and available for a flat rate per a certain number of clicks or impressions. CPC advertising can cost anywhere from a few cents to several dollars per click, with larger search engines like Google being more expensive, but very effective.

There is also the cost per action (CPA) model -very cost effective, since you only pay when you get exactly what you want; but also far more expensive than CPM or CPC advertising. What approach should your business take to advertising online? Always take advantage of free advertising before investing in paid advertising. For instance, forums allow you to post links and even small banner ads in your signature – if there are active forums in your niche, make the most of them! Start small and ramp up your online advertising step by step, making a careful cost-benefit analysis as you proceed.

Pay-per-click ads like those available through Google Adwords can be a powerful, regular source of prospects for your products and services. However, whenever new clients have asked me to look at their Google Adwords campaigns, I begin to understand one element in Google’s growth to more than a $6 billion market value.

Many entrepreneurs fail to take advantage of Google’s mechanisms for making sure that their search engine ads get shown only to those who are logically potential buyers and that the ads encourage such people to click through. As a result, they pay much more than they have to for the exposure, get discouraged about the return on their investment and yet leave the ads running for lack of ideas about how to improve performance.

Don’t let it happen to you! Use these tips to keep your costs down and your rewards high.

1. Eliminate countries and languages that do not match what you offer. For instance, if you sell U.S. foreclosure listings, your ads should show only to Google users in the United States and probably only in English. On the other hand, if you have a translation service whose clients can live anywhere in the world, define the countries and languages your ad gets shown to much more widely.

2. Activate Google’s ad tracking. It costs you nothing, and enables you to keep an eye on not only your cost per click and click-through ratio, but also which keywords and which ads best lead to your desired result, whether that’s a sale, an inquiry for your services or a signup for your newsletter. That way, you can eliminate or try to improve elements that get a lot of clicks or cost a lot but do not get results.

3. Set up negative keywords. If your goal is selling something, why pay for tire kickers and freebie seekers? By defining “free” as a negative keyword (Google has a special button for this), you can keep many of them from clicking on your ads.

Equally important, think through alternate and unwanted meanings of your keywords and add negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing to wildly inappropriate visitors. For instance, type “cattle branding” into Google and you’ll see ads for business branding services. Those advertisers’ click-through rates will improve when they add “cattle” as a negative keyword.

4. Delete keywords and ads that are not working. Because Google’s system rewards a better click-through rate with higher ad placement and lower costs, you are paying Google more than necessary when you leave poorly performing elements running. Periodically clean out your losers.

5. Send people to a landing page that makes perfect sense. People click on search engine ads to learn more about whatever was featured in the ad. It seems logical that they’d look around from your home page for whatever interested them in the ad, but that’s wrong. Searchers are impatient. So if your search engine ad mentions a software demo, do not send them to your company’s home page. Send them to the exact page from which they can access the demo.

When you manage your Google Adwords campaigns according to these guidelines, you’ll be paying less to get a much more satisfying response.

Did you find this article helpful? Visit http://www.effiliatecity.info/how-to-copy-and-paste-your-way-to-profits.php

If you have a website or other business on the web, you have to have customers. How do buyers find you amongst all the competing websites? If you desire to be an internet business success, you ought to have some good marketing strategies.

Knowing how to get a high search engine ranking is one of the commonly used strategies for marketing online. If you don’t rank highly it will be very difficult to find you. Ranking high has some key methods. One of them is to keep all on your websitepertinent to the subject. This makes good sense because once the customer find you, you want him to stick around. Go fora domain name and website title that fit well with your business keywords. The title must be easy to remember. Get in touch withwebsites that offer information which complements your website and request for reciprocal links for these links matters greatly in search engine rankings. Composing well keyworded articles is one of the best tactics to acquire links to your site. Article directories that you find online can provide one way links to your site. This is the most efficient way to attaining a page rank. Submitting to article directories is made easier by employing article submission software . For a small fee, there are businesses that offer such services.

Utilizing pay-per-click advertising is another effective and quick method to get listed high in the search engines. There are numerous providers of pay-per-click advertising. Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter and Google Adwords are some of them. You can test your ads to know which are most effective when you sign on to a pay-per-click advertising campaign. Then when you find a good ad that has a high click through rate you can remove the rest. To see which you like best, look into a number of pay-per-click advertisers.

Weblogs also known as “Blogs” are a newer method for marketing an internet business. Blogs tend to rank well, and consumers like them. Utilize your blog to write about your industry and provide links to your website. Because everyone has a blog spamming has become a problem. But measures have been taken to bring spamming to an end. For example, “Blogger.com” ,the popular free blog host, has been terminating accounts used for spamming. If you don’t want your accounts to be cancelled better host your own blog on your server. A publishing feature in Blogger lets you to publish to blogspot or your own server. Making use of this feature to publish to your own FTP server is a way you can put whatever you like on your blog and not be penalized for spamming.

Last but definitely not the least is the use of traffic exchanges. Though considered by many to be ineffective,a well-made and satisfactory splash page or squeeze page that has an information gathering form can change surfers into buyers and even repeat customers. Choose a high ranking traffic exchange if you wish to join one.

One must make use the needed marketing strategies to market your internet business and increase website traffic as well as edge out the competition.

Reducing your Google AdWords costs and increasing response rates requires a range of creative, trading and technical skills that few possess:

Creative skills are needed to increasing your clickthrough rate (CTR) by writing compelling and focused ad copy that more searchers will click.

Trading skills are needed to keep costs per click down by managing your bid amounts and bid types.

Technical skills are needed to effectively organise the keywords you bid on into different ad groups with matching ad copy and landing pages.

Offline, the equivalent work is often done by specialists. A creative department or agency might look after ad copy and design; a media buyer might be the trader negotiating price for media space and time; whilst techies look after the production of print, radio and TV adverts.

With AdWords, most of us have to do the lot

Although they maybe quite different in the real world, most AdWords users become either Creatives, Techies or Traders – personnas that match just one of the required skill sets. The result is that most people play to their strengths and neglect their weaknesses. They fail to use all tools and metrics available to create higher clickthrough rates, lower costs and better response.

Below we’ll look at some techniques to help you develop your creative, trading and technical skills.

Google Adwords comes with Clickthrough Rate (CTR) and Quality Score (QR) – two key metrics you can use to measure your development.

Clickthrough rate (CTR) is the % of those that see your ads and click on them. It’s a measure of your ads attractiveness and appropriateness to searchers.

Quality Score (QS) is based on your advert’s click clickthrough rate, the relevance of your ad’s copy to the search terms you’re bidding on and the relevance of your landing page.

Google gives lower costs and higher positions on its results pages to ads with higher clickthrough rates and Quality Scores. So let’s have a look at how you can increase them by developing your creative, trading and techie skills

Develop your creative skills

The most important creative technique to practice is writing ad copy that matches the keywords you are bidding on. It’s as simple as this …

If the Search is green tea then bad ad copy might look like this:

Despite the search being for green tea but keyword is not there. The text is too general. A good ad reads more like this:

The keyword green tea is in the ad title, the body copy and the URL. There’s is a call to action (‘Buy’), a promise of good tea (‘Quality’), you will find what you want (‘Specialist’), at a good price (‘From $0.99′) and with great service (‘Free Next Day Delivery’)

Develop your trading skills

By becoming a better trader you’ll get more value for your clicks. You can gain greater control of your bids and you lower your bid costs by mastering AdWords different match types. Each match type uses its own punctuation to let AdWords know your bid type:

Broad match keywords have no punctuation like this: keyword
Phrase match keywords are surrounded by quotation marks: “keyword”
Exact matches are shown with square brackets: [keyword]

A positive broad match will show your ads for the greatest number of possible searches. With a broad match your ads will match any search containing your bid keyword. For example, if you bid on brew tea your bid will match (and your ads show for):

brew tea
brew loose tea leaves
brewing a cup of tea

However, broad match contains a little sting in its tail – it includes ‘expanded match’. Expanded match will display your ads for plural versions of your bid keywords and any relevant keyword variations. For example our brew tea broad match bid might match with:

brewing teas
brew teas
brew tee

Those examples seem harmless enough – perhaps even useful. But expanded match can find matches that don’t even contain your keywords and you might think are little to do with the product you’re selling. For example brew tea might match with:

tea infuser
brewing coffee
brewing iced coffee

For this reason, broad match bids are us usually accompanied by negative match bids.

Adding negative keyword bids stops your ads showing for irrelevant searches, allowing you to greatly increase your profits by … … increasing your clickthrough rate (CTR) which leads to a better Quality Score and paying less per click (lower CPC).

A negative broad match will stop your ads showing for any search containing the negative keyword. For example, if the negative keyword -coffee is added to an ad group then your ads will not show for any search containing coffee and therefore including:

coffee
brew coffee

However negative broad match bids do not ‘expand’ like positives so you have to add plurals and related keywords. For -coffee this might include:

-coffees
-grind
-grinds
Develop your techie skills

Only if you first organise the groups of keywords you’re bidding on can your ads and landing pages match your bid keywords. Ad groups are the techies tool for this job. An ad groups is a group of keywords you are bidding on, with matching ad copy and the landing pages those ads link to.

The most important thing to do with your ad groups is keep the keywords focused on a very narrow subject. The diagram below shows poor ad group with a wide range of keywords, very general ad copy and landing page (how else could they be with so many different keywords to satisfy).

By contrast, the strong ad group below is focused on a small set of keywords about one subject (green tea) with closely matching ad copy (all about green tea) and a landing page also all about green tea.

Only by organising your keywords this efficiently can you use your trading and creative skills to increase clickthrough, reduce costs and increase response.

Summary
To save money on Google AdWords you need to develop the differing skills of a Creative, a Trader and a Techie.
As a Creative make sure your ad headlines and body copy use the keywords they serve. Do this and your ads can move higher up Google’s results pages without the need to increase bids – that means less cost and more profit.
As a Trader you will master both exact match and broad match types. With broad match you bid on all keywords containing the specific word you are bidding on. As broad match can include irrelevant keywords that will deliver no response, you must combine it with negative keywords to stop your ads showing for those irrelevant searches.
As a Techie you can learn to segment your keywords into tightly-themed ad groups with different match types, bids, matching ad copy and landing pages.