Making PPC Pay

I was pretty irked today.

You see, a friend of mine owns a business installing carpets in Dallas...and, like many businesses, he desperately needs to generate more leads online. More leads = more business for him...

He called me & asked me flat out: "Hey man, how can I get more visitors to my site."

I sighed. It felt like the movie Ground Hog day, where the same situation plays out over & over. I've heard this a million times & I knew EXACTLY how the next 10 minutes of conversation would go.

I recommended looking into Pay Per Click (PPC for short) advertising. He, of course, said, "What is that? I want rank in the top 10 of the search engines for my keywords...Tell me the secret to getting there!"

"That's called 'search engine optimization,' or SEO, for short. And, SEO still is a great traffic generating strategy. But, free search engine traffic & rankings take time to develop. Months in most cases," I said...Then I asked him, "Hey man, ever see those little ads on the right hand side when you search for something in Google?" He said "Yes."

"Those are PPC ads & depending on how sophisticated your market is & what your target market's research & purchasing cycle is like, those ads may work well for you," I continued.

I told him the big benefit to PPC is that could drive traffic to his site IMMEDIATELY...However, he needed to learn that there is a LOT more to PPC than meets the eye...A million things need to be researched, tested & tracked in PPC: keyword combinations, ad placement days & times, the level of sophistication of your competitors (and non- competitors depending on the keywords), geography, bid amounts, click through rates, landing page optimization, & DOZENS of other things...

...He was interested after I finished...But, somehow I knew that my phone would soon be ringing again. Especially after he invests $1000 & only gets 2 or 3 customers out of his efforts. A typical result for 99% of PPC amateurs...

Why PPC is a VITAL Traffic Source

Pay per click (PPC) was developed for several reasons (including the reason why my friend called me)....

1. The search engines wanted to "monetize" their visitors somehow & PPC was implemented as the solution.

2. PPC was also partially developed to reduce the amount of search engine spam that the engines were dealing with. The thinking being: "If people want this traffic so bad, let's sell it to them!"

3. Pay per click also serves an important market desire...it generates targeted traffic FAST. It's like getting a VIP pass to the top of the rankings...you pay extra, but you get your traffic quickly.

PPC is a vital traffic source because, if you bid high enough, your traffic is virtually guaranteed...

However, PPC is VERY tricky to master, especially since it is a market with low "barriers to entry." As in any market with easy entry, competitors flood in & the market's overall profitability rapidly decreases. This may have something to do with sophistication of the sellers...some people just have to make a sale it seems, at any price...

The PPC market is like this, but in reverse. Since the barriers to entry are low to start a PPC campaign, a lot of keyword terms get bidded up way too high & thus end up not being profitable...for anyone..!

Building A Solid Foundation

The key to making a PPC campaign profitable really lies in RESEARCH...Before anything else, you need a solid research foundation...

And the base of that foundation is targeting the right combination of keyword phrases. Without making this topic too complex, the phrases that you really want to target are probably NOT the ones you'd think.

This may be for two reasons:

1. You, and the rest of your competitors, may be overlooking boatloads of relevant keywords. Phrases that are overlooked only because of sheer lack of imagination...

2. But, the bigger problem is that the really obvious keywords often have wayyy too many unsophisticated bidders bidding them up to unprofitable levels.

The trick is to find the right keyword terms & "scooting around" your competition.

Stop bidding on keywords that are impossible to profit from...Even if you are only able to discover just one solid keyword a day...After just few weeks, you'll see how profitable PPC really can be...