PPC Marketing On Search Engines

Introduction

In our next few lectures we will be looking at PPC Marketing On Search Engines. This first lecture in this Course Module I will outline the general principles and strategies, an overview of PPC Marketing On Search Engines. From there, we will look at specific campaign management strategies in the upcoming lectures. You will learn how to effectively sell your course products and promote your business opportunity by using PPC Marketing On Search  Engines technique for fast quality traffic..

Definitions

The term "PPC" stands for "Pay Per Click." This defines a type of advertising charged for on the basis of the number of clicks that you receive from the advertiser’s site, rather than on the amount of exposures or the length of time your ad appears. This form of advertising on the search engines is referred to as "PPC." The custom now is to refer to advertising on PPC Marketing Search Engines, with your ad placed according to the terms used in a search, as   "PPC Marketing On Search Engines " or "PPC Search Engine Marketing" or “PPC Marketing”.

We will be discussing specifically Bing! Search Marketing and Google AdWords, and similar advertising programs on the major search engines.

Note

The PPC Marketing On Search Engines is constantly evolving. Those who read these lessons in the future may find that many things have changed. But, as always, we will look at the lasting principles. We would be discussing the specifics of today, even though they may change tomorrow. So let us cover some of the lasting principles and strategies of PPC Marketing On Search Engines.

Why PPC Marketing

PPC Marketing On Search Engines has become extremely important to Internet marketers though it is now too costly. As competition for PageRank and search engine position has skyrocketed, PPC Marketing is now, in many cases, the only realistic way to get traffic for your site quickly. You can still achieve a good search engine positioning for your new Website, but it takes more time and effort now. Most of us want some fast results after putting forth the effort to build a new Website. We want to begin testing the effectiveness of our new site right away. The way to get these immediate results is through PPC Marketing on Search Engines or PPC Marketing. You can get targeted traffic to a new Website by just creating PPC Marketing accounts with the search engines.

Basic PPC Marketing On Search Engines Strategy

PPC Marketing On Search Engines is for those who have some money available and budgeted for advertising. Even if you cannot afford it right now, however, it is wise to begin to learn it now. As you begin to earn money from your content advertising like blogs, you can allocate some of those earnings to PPC Marketing to increase your results. Whether you have money from other sources or whether you earned it with your content advertising efforts, everyone who goes into PPC Marketing On Search Engines should be careful to spend their money wisely.

It is very important to have a sound, well-thought-out strategy, carefully followed in your PPC Marketing On Search Engines campaigns. PPC Marketing is very expensive now, you may be able and willing to throw money at it, but if you do not know what you are doing or lack a clear strategy, you can lose a lot of money very fast. That is, if you are not careful, you can spend a lot of money on PPC Marketing in a short period of time and have no results to show for it. It is crucial that you carefully develop a clear and effective strategy before you ever spend any money, and that you carefully follow that strategy until you have sound reason to change it.

For example, it can cost several dollars per click to have the first position for some of the very competitive keywords. Only a small percentage of the people who visit your site will result in conversions (i.e. actually buy your course products or sign up for your training programs). If you have to spend $100 to get one conversion that is only worth $10 to you, then you are losing money and losing it fast! Set your sites on getting the most return for your investment and not on getting first position on search pages.

So what is the secret of effective PPC Marketing On Search Engines? It is to maintain a position that will bring you enough traffic to have conversions, but at a low enough cost per conversion to allow you a decent return on your investment.

 

PPC Marketing On Search Engines 101

Some practical to help you understand what we are talking about when we say "PPC Marketing On Search Engines." Go to Bing. Type in a search for whatever comes to your mind like Apple or Samsung latest phone and click enter. A search results page comes up. On the top of the left hand column of the results page, there will be zero to five links with a darker background. If there are no links here with a darker background, you have chosen some pretty obscure search terms. The absence of any links with a darker background means that no one has selected your search terms in an active PPC Marketing campaign. Usually there will be at least two or three. (If there are no links with a darker background resulting from your search, try more popular search terms until you do get links with a darker background.)

Now look over to the right hand column of the search results page. There may be some more links there. If there are links in the right hand column, those are also advertising links and the Webmaster will incur a charge if you click on them. If there are links there, it will say at the top of the column "Sponsor Results."

Now look back at the left hand column and scroll to the bottom of the page. Here again, there may be some links with a darker background. These, like the ones at the top of the left hand column and all those in the right hand column, are also ‘sponsored links’. The Website owners will pay if those links are clicked.

The numbered links in the left hand column without the darker background are your actual search engine results. There will be no charge to these Website owners if you click on these links. Those Websites have earned their position in the search results due to an evaluation of all the factors that Yahoo considers in awarding search position. These links are there to serve the users of the Bing search engine. They are there without charge because Bing has determined them to be quality sites that are very relevant to the search terms used by the visitor to the search engine. Thus, the search engines balance the need to provide relevant, quality links for their users with the need to earn revenue from those who are willing to pay for clicks to their site. They also attempt to make the sponsored links relevant by tying them to specific search terms. Their guidelines will not let you tie your links to keywords that have no relevancy to your landing pages.

Now, pull up the Google search engine in your browser. Search for the same terms you used in Bing!. Here you see pretty much the same setup—the only possible exception being that Google doesn’t appear to put highlighted links at the bottom of the left hand column. Otherwise, everything we just said about the Bing! results is also true regarding the Google results.

Then, go to Ask.com and you again get similar results on the left column (darker background on sponsored links at the top and bottom of the page), but a little variation on the right column. Instead of individual sponsored links in the right column, Ask.com has category links, which lead to full pages of sponsored links for that category. The categories listed in the right column are related to the search terms used, of course, but give a broader coverage by linking to category pages rather than individual sites.

There are several other search engines that also allow you to bid to appear as sponsored links for specific search terms. Your bid is the amount you are willing to pay when your link is clicked by a visitor. You pay nothing until someone actually clicks on your link and visits your site, regardless of the number of times your link may appear but go unclicked. Hence, the term PPC (pay-per-click).

Your position in the sponsored results (i.e., whether you appear 1st, 2nd, or 50th, in the list of sponsored links) depends upon the amount of your bid. The higher bids appear higher in the list.

Having a link to your Website appear in the sponsored results (either on the left side with a darker background on in the right column – or on a category page linked to from the results page on Ask.com) in search engines when certain keywords are searched is the subject of PPC Marketing On Search Engines.

Things You need to Know And Skills Needed

When you sign up for a PPC Marketing account with a search engine, you are then asked to create headlines and descriptions for your links (often called "ads"). These ads link to certain pages on your Website, referred to as "landing pages." You then tie these ads, in turn, to certain keywords that people may use in their searches on the search engine. You then set "bids" or amounts you are willing to pay when clicks result from your ads showing up when people search for specific keywords. 

You can set different amounts for different keywords. In most search engines, you can also set daily and monthly limits on the amount spent for these clicks. Your ad will run until your daily limit is reached each day. It will then show up again the next day and run until the daily limit is reached again. This will continue each day until your monthly limit is reached. When your monthly limit is reached, your ad will be retired until the next month when the process will start over again. In other cases, you make a deposit into your account and your ads run until your account is depleted. Your ad is then retired until you replenish your account.

Remember that your goal is to get the most conversions (people clicking to your site and actually buying something or joining your program) for the least amount of advertising costs. To reach this goal, you need to develop some skill in PPC Marketing On Search Engines.

The key skills you need to develop to be successful at PPC Marketing are:

• Keyword Research and Generation—Strategies for identifying which keywords or key phrases to use for your subject matter and how many keywords or key phrases to use at a time.
• Effective Copy Writing For Headlines and Descriptions—Your ads have Titles and Descriptions. You want to write titles and descriptions that will "qualify" your visitors. That is, you do not want the idly curious to use up your funds by clicking and then leaving. Instead, you want to write your ads to be attractive—but only to those most likely to buy your products or join your programs once they click to your site. 
• Designing Killer or Effective Landing Pages—Designing pages specifically for a particular ad or keyword and then directing your Search Marketing clicks for that ad or keyword to that ‘landing page’ in a way that will create the most conversions. (Remember that by ‘conversions’ , we mean getting people to buy your products or sign up for your programs.)
• Bidding Strategies or Techniques—Keyword bidding is highly competitive. You are in competition with many others for the business of those who search for your chosen keywords. You must develop good strategies to get these customers at the least cost.
• Tracking and Testing Strategies—How to tell if your campaigns are working. What to test, what to track, and how to analyze this data to get results by reducing your cost per conversion.
• Understand the Guidelines—Knowing how to get your listings approved by the search engines for the keywords you want to use.
• Campaign Management—Knowing what ads to use when, what keywords to use when, how much to bid, what limits to set, which landing pages to use with which keywords and which ads, and how to manage these settings in the interface when you log into your PPC Marketing controls in particular search engines.
• Competitors’ Intelligence—Here you would be taught on how to use certain tools to gather information on what your competitors are doing and succeeding.

In this Module I lectures, you will work on developing these skills. Your goal is to develop these skills to the point where you make significantly more money from the conversions resulting from the advertising than you spend for the advertising. When you reach this point, the more money you invest in PPC Marketing On Search Engines, the more money you will make. Your online marketing system will then be a true money-making machine. Put $10 in and get $20 out! Put $150 in and get $300 out. It will take some work to get there, but when you do, just imagine how profitable it will be!

In Conclusion

Even though PPC Marketing On Search Engines changes constantly, it is important to begin now to learn the skills necessarily to do it effectively. With the proper knowledge and skills, you will be able to obtain traffic to your site that will result in conversions. When your skills are sharpened, you will be able to do the above while spending less to obtain the traffic than you make on the conversions resulting from the traffic. That is, you will be making profit! The skills needed are:

·         Platform Guidelines Compliance

·         Bidding Strategies or Techniques

·         Effective Copy Writing For Ads Headlines and Descriptions

·         Keyword Research and Generation Techniques

·         Killer Landing Page Designs

·         Tracking And Testing Techniques

·         Competitors’ Intelligence

These set of skills will allow you to engage in effective Campaign Management, resulting in a profitable online business. The next few lectures will focus on helping you to develop those skills.