5 Principles of Pay-Per-Click Advertising That Actually Works
Traditional advertising wasn’t particularly effective even during its golden age – i.e., most of the 20th century. Most traditional advertising methods work according to ‘spray and pray’ method – they try to cover as many people as possible and hope for the best. When compared to that, pay-per-click offers fantastic value for money – especially today, when people are getting more and more indifferent to advertising they are too used to.
1. Delegation
If you are a business owner, it may be a good idea to hire a Pay Per Click specialist to handle this direction, at the same time using every possibility to learn more about this trade. Don’t just give the man you hire a free rein – ask questions, seek out alternative opinions, improve your knowledge. Ideally you should have a specialist who will deal with most issues on his own, make meaningful decisions and alter your campaign so that it works better without your direct interference – but at the same time you are supposed to know enough to understand what is happening without having this specialist to tell you.
2. Very Specific Landing Pages
Your landing page or pages should be extremely specific. When you select keywords, you should have a very clear image of a problem they symbolize and the question the seeker looks to answer. The landing page should contain an immediate answer to this question, without vagueness and trying to serve several different audiences. It is better to have several specific landing pages rather han one that tries to be universal – statistics show that your average visitor makes a decision whether to stay or go in a matter of seconds; if you can’t grasp his attention, you’ve lost.
3. Concentrate on Search Traffic
Let’s face it: contextual ads on publisher sites usually perform rather poorly. They usually lead to a large number of clicks by people who are simply curious and don’t intend to become anyone’s clients. Some can make an impulsive decision, but they are rare. People you are really after are those who actually look for your product or its alternatives. Try opting out of non-search traffic from Google and compare the results.
4. A Lot of Testing
No advertising campaign is ideal from the outset – even professionals make many mistakes, even within one campaign. The difference they have from amateurs is that they constantly test their results and immediately dispense with what performs poorly. General rule of thumb is this: wait for at least 200 impressions per keyword and ad text and check its Click-Through Rate – if it is lower than 1%, get rid of it immediately.
5. Don’t Try to Sell on the Landing Page
On seeing a sale offer on a landing page most people (including you) would smile sardonically and immediately close it. You know this, we know it, everybody knows it, yet a lot of people keep repeating the same mistake. You shouldn’t sell you product on a landing page – you should offer something free and valuable instead, like a free e-book, a video manual with something pertaining to your topic, this sort of thing.
Don’t listen to those who say that pay per click is inefficient – they simply don’t know how to use it.
Thumbnail image from shutterstock.com
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