It seems like everyone I’ve talked to has a bad pay-per-click advertising experience.
“I tried that once and nearly lost my shirt!”
“It only took me 5-days and I had lost $500 on Google Adwords with nothing to show for it!”
Another common complaint is that Google places your cost per clicks so high that you were not even wanting to play the game at those outrageous cost per clicks.
Yet, what we don’t hear are the success stories of people spending $1,000/month and seeing $3,000 in profit returning as a result of their testing or successful use of pay-per-click testing to find highly profitable keywords that served to lay the foundation for your future SEO and internet marketing plans.
Why the discrepency?
What could so many people be doing wrong that leads to losing money with pay-per-click.
As we use pay-per-click for launching, testing, refining and profit generation within the information marketing systems outlined inside Info Product Marketing Zone, we have seen 5 very common mistakes that are directly impacting most people’s profits when using PPC.
1. Poorly written headlines. How much you will pay for clicks to reach the top listings for your keywords and campaign will heavily depend on 2 things — 1) The relevancy of your ad to a high quality landing page and 2) The ability of your ad to attract attention and illicit a click through. In the first few days of a new campaign you must have the highest degree of relevancy between your ad (and its headline is very important) and your landing page. Once your campaign is rolling, your click through rate plays a strong roll in what you will pay per click for your keywords. Headlines need to grab attention, tap into interest and make a big promise to fulfill the desire of your visitors. Of course, this must all be done with relevance to your offer – it’s great to get 100’s of clicks, but we ultimately want conversions (list sign-ups and/or sales).Â
2. Configuration of your campaign. A common mistake when setting up your campaign is to sellect either “All Countries” or “All Languages” – do not do this! Most countries outside of US, Canada, UK, and Australia will not lead to sales and will simply reduce your profits.Â
3. Failing to split test your ads. Running a single ad against a keyword is just crazy when Google Adwords gives you the ability to setup multiple ad options and automatically split-tests your traffic across those ads. Use these to try out subtle (or not so subtle) ad options to discover which ones ultimate pull the best click through rate and conversions for you.
4. Going small and grouping your keywords into one Ad Group. Starting with 10 or 20 keywords lumped into one Ad Group with one landing page and one set of ads is NOT the right way to go. Instead, we have been much more successful starting wide – 200 or 300 keywords at least, organizing them into separate Ad groups per keyword, writing ads against themes (as opposed to one ad for all) and having separate landing pages across the multiple themes. This not only keeps your cost per click way down, but it makes testing and tracking much easier and improves profitability sooner. We outline all the steps over at The Information Marketing Zone.Â
5. Crappy, boring, plain, irrelevant or unrealistic landing pages. Yes, if you have had any experience with pay per click advertising or any traffic generation for that matter, you’ll know the importance of your landing page and its ability to turn visitors into action-taking subscribers and customers. Most important is that your landing page is completely in-line with what your ad promises AND is crystal clear about what you want them to do (opt-in, click-through or buy something) and what the benefit for them will be once they take that action.Â
6. BONUS TIP — I only said 5 didn’t I…but here is a very important one. You must have a system for finding, testing, refining, dropping, analyzing and accelerating the profit potential for the traffic that keywords generate to your websites. For example, not all keywords have the same commercial value…some have “clues” that they will be used by more aggressive buyers to find your offerings. Another example, you can judge a keyword’s profit potential within 70-100 clicks 90% of the time if you know what you are looking for. That way, you can either spot a winner or eliminate a loser within days of launching your campaign instead of letting them milk you dry for days and weeks to come.
Until you have been through in-depth, pay-per-click training and have lots of experience with different products and campaigns, it’s tough to know the little things that will make the difference between losing $1000 and making profits two or three times that amount.Â
Exclusively to help our information marketing experts at InfoMarketer’sZone we put together an SEO Process GuideBook that goes through the entire pay-per-click profit maximizer in depth…if you are ready to start your next campaign, it really is worth a review and can make the difference between losing and winning campaigns. Get it here.
