An Affiliate Marketer from the Ground Up

PPC (Pay Per Click) marketing is one of the most popular methods of advertising on the Internet.  It  is sometimes referred to as pay for position, cost per click or pay for performance. Regardless of the term used, PPC marketing is the online advertiser’s medium of choice for promoting products and services to online consumers. Advertisers using PPC marketing only need to pay for the actual clicks on the links in their ads.

When an online consumer searches for a specific product or service on the Internet, corresponding PPC marketing ads are triggered to be shown (impressions), and they are displayed alongside the organic results generated by the search engine. This forms a highly targeted consumer group that is more likely to purchase a specific product or service. In addition, websites get to limit their advertisement costs with the use of PPC marketing. PPC marketing is truly a winning combination for the consumers, advertisers and merchants. Never before has it been so easy to get a product or service shown to so many targeted consumers so quickly, and so cost effectively. If the advertiser has done his job of producing quality ads, and quality sales information for the consumer to click through to, the profits can be quite substantial, and sometimes realized very quickly.

Possible drawbacks of PPC marketing

Despite the obvious advantages of PPC marketing, there are possible drawbacks that can cancel out its benefits. One of the most common problems associated with PPC marketing is the inexperience of many people attempting to use this potentially profitable advertising method. Simply submitting ads to a search engine such as Google, does not ensure that the advertiser will have a successful campaign.

PPC marketing requires a calculated and systematic approach to setting up ads. PPC marketing involves the use of keywords and bids on those keywords in hopes of getting a page one placement on a search engine’s results pages. Getting high search engine placement helps boost traffic to a website that can easily translate it into profit.

Without the necessary experience and knowledge to put together a successful campaign, it may turn into an expensive proposition that can lose a large sum of money very quickly. A PPC marketing campaign can get your ads in front of many people, but it also must convert these consumers into paying customers. When there is competition for the same keywords, it’s extremely important to get the traffic that’s needed for sales, but to make sure that the costs required for the clicks doesn’t get too high.

Bidding on keywords can be quite costly, as the growing number of websites on the Internet struggle against each other to bid on the most profitable keywords for their PPC marketing ads. Obviously, small business websites are at a disadvantage here since big business sites are able to pay more for popular keywords related to their business. This is because most small businesses only set aside a small portion of their capital for advertisement, putting them at a potential disadvantage. It becomes even more important to have an optimized campaign.

Running an effective PPC marketing campaign

There are a number of things that an advertiser should consider when running an effective PPC marketing campaign. It is important to develop a marketing plan in order to get the most return on investment from PPC marketing. Selecting the most appropriate keywords that relate to the site’s business is essential in PPC marketing.

However, simply choosing the most popular keywords does not necessarily translate into profit. Selecting more specific keywords that will put a site within the first ten results of a search also gets greater awareness from online consumers. Most advertisers don’t like to be in the number one spot, but seem to favor the number three to four spots. Any spot that isn’t on the first page of the SERPS (search engine results pages) are nearly useless.

It is also important that the advertiser constantly monitor the performance of their campaign. This will be necessary so that changes can be made quickly if the campaign should start to lose money. Any ad that has not proven effective can be immediately discontinued. Altering PPC marketing ads is a continuous process that the advertiser should do in order to get the best (ROI) return on investment of their advertising budget. Campaigns often need to have keywords added or deleted, or the corresponding bids changed.

If one advertiser has a poorly thought out campaign, and is competing against another campaign that has been setup properly, there can be hugh differences in the cost per click on the advertisers ads. It’s important to have a fully optimized campaign from start to finish.