msdanielle - just another ego blog site

My mentor and I had another great sit-down the other day. We discussed the question, “How do you make money online with PPC?” The simple answer: Target. No, I don’t mean become an affiliate marketer for Target, although that could make money, too. Locate your product and keep narrowing your target goals while increasing your profits. Sounds simple, right? Well try to imagine a group of 100 people in a crowd, and you know that on average in your market, 10 people in the crowd will buy what you have if you can get their attention, tell them what they want to hear, and give them an offer they can’t refuse. Once you’ve gotten 10, try for 11, or get 10 for less ad spend. Rinse, and repeat.

Here are the general elements to beating out your competitors who are marketing similar products as you, as you must have an over-arching plan when executing any new PPC campaign.

Choose Your Keywords Wisely

Keyword research is going to determine much of the direction of your advertising campaign. Narrow your keywords down to a few specific terms and go from there. Taking a shotgun approach and having too many keywords in the beginning will dilute your testing efforts, so only target as many as you can handle from the start. Jane May wrote a great article on keyword research that might help you guys out. Check it out here before you start your campaigns. I also use this keyword research tool which gives more information than just the standard Overture tool. Keyword research involves knowing what your competitors are bidding on, and what your customers are looking for.

Create a Landing Page That Converts

Having the best ad taglines and targeted campaigns means nothing if you can’t convert your clicks. Your landing page conversion rate should be monitored each time you make a change to your ad tagline, or to elements on the landing page itself. I think of the process of conversion as involving common sense steps. If someone searches for “free seo ebook,” sees an ad saying “Free SEO eBook,” and lands on a page that states, “Get Your Free SEO eBook by entering your name and email address here! It’s free!” then there is a pretty high chance they will convert. I recommend reading Gary Lee’s article on building landing pages that convert for tips on how to shape your main landing page points (I guarantee if you set up a newsletter landing page like his example, it will convert). And don’t be afraid to test Google’s Web Optimizer. You can continually test multiple landing pages at once and increase conversion rate systematically.

Optimize Your Ad Campaigns Taglines

You should always be testing new taglines in order to maximize conversion rates. Raising a 17% conversion rate to 18.5% could have major benefits to your overall ROI. Always attempt to squeeze out another quarter, third, half, or whole percentage to your conversion rates, if possible, especially in the beginning phases. There is much room for dramatic results in the early phases of your campaigns.

Increase CTR Without Sacrificing Conversion Rates

Depending on your market, a click-through-rate (CTR) of 1 in 1,000 (.001) clicks may suffice for reaching your desired return, depending on your cost-per-action (CPA). In other markets, a CTR of .01 may suffice. Make sure that your CTR is manageable, meaning, don’t increase your CTR so high with outlandish promises just to get the impulse click. For example, stating, “Lowest Price Guaranteed and Free Overnight Shipping” without delivering both could result in increased impulse clicks and a lower overall conversion rate. Is it worth it to increase your CTR from 1% to 5% if that extra 4% will not convert? Your goal should be to achieve a high CTR while still maintaining your target conversion rate.

Minimize Excess Spend (i.e. Remove the Fat)

If your conversion goal is too low, it may be time to lower your CPC which will result in a lower CPA. Of course, one quick way to conserve ad spend is to pause or remove under-performing campaigns altogether while you analyze your test results, and begin the cycle of optimization again. A rule of thumb that I follow is to never stop campaigns completely unless it’s absolutely necessary. You must decide if it’s detrimental to your business to either stop a campaign or temporarily reduce the CPC to lessen traffic (and spend).

Think of PPC like golf. Golf is an endless pursuit of perfection, which in reality will never be reached but will always be sought after. The same goes for PPC. There will always be a better performing tagline, more long tail keywords to introduce, a better conversion rate goal to reach, a higher CTR, and more excess to cut. The better you target each of these elements, the more likely you will see an increase in your overall ROI. When it comes down to it, it’s optimizing these separate factors which make it possible to make money online with PPC.

[If you enjoy reading MsDanielle.com, please feel free to subscribe via RSS or get free email updates.]

Check out these related articles:

• What a Wild Ride It’s Been
• So Evil, It’s Inspiring…
• I OWN Page One!!
• Make Money Online vs. Get Rich Quick