Are
The Pay-Per-Clicks Paying You?
Copyright ©
2004 Steve Shaw
Using PPCs (pay-per-click engines) to get visitors to your web
site can be a very effective way to drive traffic to your web
site and increase your profits.
If you do it right, the profits you receive will far out-weigh
the costs.
But if you do it wrong, you can end up spending a lot of money
for zero profit.
This article demonstrates the correct way to use PPCs for maximum
benefits and high profit levels for your web site.
There are three golden rules for using PPCs effectively, and this
is in common with all online advertising - track, track and track.
Seriously, you need to track absolutely everything scrupulously.
You need to know exactly how many sales, and therefore how much
profit, each link from the PPC generates for your business. This
is the only way to know whether a particular keyword is bringing
you a profit or not.
You'll need some software to help you do this. The software I
personally use at http://pro-analyzer.com
allows me to set up any number of tracking links (eg. one for
each keyword in each PPC), and for each one I can see detailed
statistics on click-throughs, sales, and even 'actions' such as
subscriptions.
It gives me detailed reports on which campaigns are profitable,
tells me what my ROI (return on investment) is on particular campaigns,
and even allows me to do split- testing by sending traffic to
differing URLs.
This allows me to maximize the effectiveness of all my PPC expenditure
(and I can use it for all my other tracking purposes too).
It's fairly unsurprising that different keywords and keyword phrases
can have a huge difference in the number of sales they generate,
and therefore their profitability.
Perhaps more surprising is the fact that different PPCs can bring
you very different results even when you are using the same keywords.
This only underlines how important tracking is for your business.
To use PPCs for the maximum profits, you simply focus on the profitable
campaigns, and stop those that aren't profitable.
But tracking is only one side of the coin - you also need to maximize
the profitability of every click.
One way to do this is to try to capture the details of as many
of your visitors as possible, via the use of popups (with certain
exceptions) and subscription forms on your web page, with proper
incentives for your visitors to hand over their name and email
address to you.
This not only means you can follow-up with them in order to drive
more sales home; but you are also increasing what can be a very
targetted and therefore profitable list, and you'll be able to
make other targetted offers to them in the future.
If you have popups on your site normally, and are using, or you
intend to use, Google Adwords or other PPCs where popups are not
permitted, the easiest way to remove the popups just for these
particular PPCs is as follows:
Copy your main page (eg. 'index.html') and save it as a separate
file (eg. 'index_nopop.html')
Remove all trace of popup code from your new page
Send the PPC traffic to this popup-free page
And remember, it doesn't matter if popups are elsewhere on your
site, the only restriction with PPCs like Google is on the page
that the visitor arrives at (the 'landing page') after clicking
on the PPC link.
This means that you could also use a technique where the landing
page is just a teaser page for the main site, containing some
information directly related to the ad, but its primary focus
is to encourage visitors to click through to your main site, where
of course you can use popups as normal.
Another option would be make lead generation the primary objective
of the landing page - try using a mini sales page that simply
invites visitors to leave their name and email address, rather
than trying to directly sell them anything, and then direct them
to your actual sales page via your follow-up messages.
In brief, to maximize your use of PPCs, track carefully, and maximize
the value you get from visitors that do click through - remember,
you're paying for them to visit your site, and it's up to you
to recoup this investment and make it work for you.
Steve Shaw creates systems and software for effective
e-marketing. His ListInferno.com site allows you to get thousands
of 100% 0pt-In leads for your list - for free. For more details visit:
http://ListInferno.com
|
STOP the confusion
and get EVERY service and product you'll ever need
to make money online
in one place.
The
best all-in-one internet marketing solution on
the net!
Click
Here to Learn More...
|
Simple
step-by-step internet business system
to find joint venture partners, testimonials
and to recruit super affiliates to make
money online.
Click
Here to Learn More...
|
|
