Can Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) really help your business? How does it work?
PPC advertising is a simple method of using search engines like Google to deliver qualified prospects to your website. It is cost effective, simple to use and can be started with a very small budget. This article is designed as a simple introduction to PPC advertising but if you would like more help in setting up your own PPC campaign, please check out our services page.
Pay per click advertising is an online advertising model where you only pay when someone clicks on your advertisement and visits your site. It doesn’t matter how many times people see your ad or how often it is displayed – if nobody clicks on it, you pay nothing.
The most common PPC advertising example is Google Adwords. When you type something into Google it searches the web and then displays the pages it thinks are most relevant based on the terms you typed in (your keywords). For example, if you type in ‘tropical fish’ it will give you a list of pages that use the term ‘tropical fish’ in order of relevance and importance.
There are lots of thing that you can do to get your website to the top of the list for keywords and phrases that are relevant to your business – you can find a good introduction to these in our free report on Search Engines in Plain English.
However, search engine optimization takes time and you might be up against some pretty big players.
Google’s PPC advertising lets you buy your way onto the first page of the results in the form of the small text advertisements that you see along the right hand side of the screen, and under the heading ‘sponsored results’.
Opening Your Account
To start a pay per click advertising campaign you will need to set up an account. With Google, you can do that at the Adwords Sign Up Page. Once your account is opened you can create a simple text based advertisement – usually a headline plus two additional short lines, using select keywords, of course.
This is the ad that will be displayed next to your chosen search terms. You will also be able to select which countries your ad will be displayed in. In fact, if you sell to a local market only you can even select a county or city.
Choosing Your Keywords
The next step is choosing the search terms that you want your ad to appear next to. Using our tropical fish example, you might want to show up when someone searches for ‘tropical fish’ or ‘Japanese fighting fish’ or any number of terms.
Before you start typing them in, do your homework and find out the terms that people are searching for – Google has tools to help you do this.
Setting a Budget
The next step is to set a budget – both for the total amount that you are prepared to spend and the amount you are prepared to spend per click. For example, there may be 10 businesses that would all like their ads displayed next to the term ‘tropical fish’. So whose ad does Google put first in the list? Google ranks the ads by combining two factors:
You can decide how much you are prepared to ‘bid’ for your terms starting from a few cents. Based on your business, select an amount that you are willing to pay – it can always to be changed later. At this stage Google will show you your estimated position and the average number of people you will attract each day. If you’ve ‘bid’ $0.10 per click for the term ‘tropical fish’ and attract 10 clicks per day, that’s means you will have spent $1 per day on your ads. If nobody clicks you will have spent nothing. Based on these estimates you can set the maximum amount that you want to spend in any day or month. Once you have reached your budget your ads will simply stop getting displayed.
You will be charged by credit card or direct debit each month for the number of clicks you had.
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Would you like more targeted traffic to your website? Contextual advertising could be the answer you’re looking for, especially if your business targets a specific niche.
It is an online advertising model where relevant ads are displayed on websites or other online media, based on the content that is on that web page. The advertising network searches the page for keywords and then delivers an advertisement that matches those keywords. For example, if you were reading a website about sports – and they use contextual advertisement – then you would only see ads related to sports.
For the advertiser it means that their ads are being displayed on pages related to their products or services. Chances are, if someone is reading that page, they may be interested in that topic – in this case, sports. That increases the chances that they will also be interested in your product or service.
No, pay per click is a model of how you pay for advertising, not how it is displayed. However, in many cases PPC is used alongside contextual ads – for example, Google Adwords and Adsense. When you type something into Google it searches the web and then displays the pages it thinks are most relevant based on the terms you typed in (your keywords). For example, if you type in ‘tropical fish’ it will give you a list of pages that use the term ‘tropical fish’ in order of relevance and importance.
On the right hand side of the results page Google also displays what it calls ‘sponsored results’ – this is Google Adwords and is a perfect example of a contextual ad. The ads that are displayed there are relevant to the keywords that you typed into Google. In this case you would expect to see advertisements related to ‘tropical fish’ – fish tanks, pet shops and the like. Each advertiser chooses the keywords that are appropriate to their advertisements and will only show up when those terms are searched for – i.e. contextual. They only pay however, when someone clicks on that ad – that is PPC.
Google Adwords combines the two – contextual advert and PPC – to great effect and has become one of the world’s largest advertising networks. Adsense is based on the same concept. Adsense allows website publishers to put small bits of code onto their website that deliver Adwords-style ads based on the text that is on the website page. So a page about boxing would have small boxing-related text ads appear on the page. When someone clicks on these ads, the revenue generated is split between Google and the website owner.
Google is certainly not the only advertising network that uses contextual ads and contextual advert does not have to use PPC.
The purpose of contextual advert is simply to make any advertising more relevant to what is on the website. That should mean that advertisers get a better response (and more targeted leads) and customers are not annoyed by irrelevant ads.
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Contextual Advertising & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Website Marketing Strategy
If you’re like most businesses you’re probably looking for effective ways to:
Of course getting it right is what counts.
For example, you may need advice and assistance in:
You may want to outsource all your lead generation needs or simply need to get some occasional advice and support when you need it most.
Either way, we can help …
Custom lead generation programs – a full-service solution, from marketing planning and research to site promotion and reporting, we have everything you need to drive sales to your business.
Private Consultancy – One-on-one advice on any aspect of your online marketing strategy or lead generation needs.
Developing a website marketing strategy is a must for any business that wants to succeed online…and it doesn’t matter what kind of business you run. Here are a few things you should consider when you’re deciding when and how to promote your website.
1. Research
To develop a marketing strategy that is effective, you need to know a few things about your business and your customers. Research other businesses – both your direct competitors and successful businesses outside your industry – to see what’s working for them. Find the answers to these questions:
Research your customers to learn how they use the Internet. Do they get information from doing a Google search, or do they ask their Twitter followers for help? Do they look for video tutorials on YouTube? Are they participating in forums or blogs? Know where your customers are, and make sure they can find you there.
2. Methods
When you’ve finished your research you’ll need to choose the methods you want to use, and make a plan for success within those methods. Online you should consider search engines, directories, social media, and placing ads in the “content network”, meaning on other websites that are relevant to your product or service. If your research shows that your customers do their research in the search engines, for example, you’ll have to create a step-by-step plan to succeed in the search engines that will probably start with an attractive, user-friendly and search engine-friendly site design. Then you’ll have to learn how to drive traffic to your website (see my FREE eBook to learn all about this!), and you’ll need to constantly test for maximizing conversions.
Don’t forget to promote your website offline too! Print the url on all business literature, and include it in any offline advertising.
3. Media
Once you know the kinds of marketing and advertising you’ll use, you need to choose the particular media – i.e. which website or what directory? Obviously it should be relevant to your business but more importantly, it needs to be relevant to your customers. For example, if your research shows that your customers are very active on YouTube, your plan of action should start with a video marketing strategy.
Keep your goals realistic and measurable. Don’t try to conquer the whole online marketing game at once, or you’ll quickly get overwhelmed. Instead, tackle the most critical media first, then move on to others one at a time. But don’t just jump on the next media that sounds good; make sure you are moving strategically, based on what you learned in your initial research.
4. Test, Test, Test
Effective marketing always requires some trial and error. Put Google Analytics on your website (it’s free!) to get data on user behavior on your site. Track the results you see, make changes and keep tracking. Over time you’ll find a mix that works for you. Make small bets when testing new ideas so that you can afford for some of them to fail.
Every business wants the perfect strategy and every marketer wants to promise results every time. Unfortunately marketing – especially online – just doesn’t work like that. However, if you plan well and ask yourself good questions before you start, you can raise the chances of succeeding.
Be willing to test ideas, track results and make changes and over time you’ll see the results you need. It just takes a little time.
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Articles & Online Marketing Services & Website Marketing Strategy
Every business with a website wants to make the best use of online marketing tools to help them attract new leads and visitors to their website. Of course, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of internet marketing tools that you could use. So how do you choose the best ones for your business?
Finding the right tools depends as much on your business and your goals as the tools themselves. But generally online marketing tools can be lumped into one or more groups, including but not limited to:
Advertising online is much like advertising offline – you need to choose the best places to advertise based on your target market. Once you’ve chosen the best places to advertise, you’ll also have a choice of advertising types – largely split into display advertising and pay per click advertising.
Display advertising is exactly what it sounds like. Your advertisement gets displayed on a page and if people are interested they can click through to your website. The amount you pay will either be based on a flat fee or on a cost per impression.
Cost per impression means that you will pay every time your ad is displayed to a website visitor. This is usually expressed as a cost per thousand (CPM). For example, if you agree to pay $10 CPM then you will pay $100 for every 10,000 times you advertisement is displayed on screen.
Pay per click can look identical to display advertising but you only pay when a person clicks on your ad to visit your website. If nobody clicks, you pay nothing. Google runs the most popular pay per click advertising network called Adwords.
Further Reading:
Online content comes in many forms but in most cases you will be talking about written content either on your own website or created for other websites but linking back to you. Good content helps you perform better with the search engines (read our free report on search engine optimization basics). It can also help demonstrate your expertise or the quality of your products.
Further Reading:
Email can be a very effective online marketing tool provided you use it in the right way – otherwise you run the risk of being classed as a spammer. The right way is based on permission marketing. Permission marketing starts with you asking potential customers to provide their contact details, usually in return for some kind of information or special offer. The prospective customer will know and accept that they will receive future marketing communications from you.
Email can be particularly useful as it can help you automate a lot of your marketing and lead generation systems. In particular, you can use auto-responders, small software programs that send pre-written emails at set times, to help you follow up with prospects and deliver useful content.
Further Reading:
The Internet allows even the smallest businesses to use a variety of media to market themselves. It is now easy for businesses to use everything from video to recorded audio to live webinars to market themselves. The possibilities are endless.
Further Reading:
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Contextual Advertising & Email Marketing & How to Buy Leads & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Website Marketing Strategy
Do you want to develop leads online? The Internet can be a great place to develop and grow your business. In particular it offers a perfect opportunity to attract customers, build your prospect list and ultimately help you close new business. The good news is that internet lead generation is not all that different from traditional offline lead generation.
Yes, the Internet changes the way that people look for information. Yes, the Internet allows you to automate lead generation. But, ultimately the steps involved in good lead generation are the same:
Let’s take a look at each step:
Imagine your website as if it were a store. Your first job is to attract people to your store using effective marketing techniques. You can’t sell anybody anything until they’re in your store. Some of the marketing techniques to consider include:
It’s also worth remembering that you can still use effective offline strategies like direct mail to drive traffic to your website as well.
Once you have started to generate traffic to your website then the next step is to turn some of that traffic into a list of prospective new customers to follow up with. Usually this will involve you creating an incentive for them to provide their contact details, the first part of any good permission based marketing campaign. That incentive could be a special offer, or, more likely, further useful information.
What form this information takes is up to you. You could consider a blog that people can subscribe to, a free newsletter, or a webinar that people can take part in, for example.
Once you start building a list the next question becomes, ‘what do I do with this list?’. The goal has to be to move people from being interested to being willing to buy your product or service. Of course not every prospective customer on your list will end up becoming a customer.
That’s fine.
However, it is important for you to find ways of separating those with a genuine interest from the ‘tire kickers’. Tools like newsletters and autoresponders can help you automate much of this process.
Of course the final step is to close the sale. You can create online marketing tools that will encourage customers to buy from you. But unless you are actually selling a product via your website, you will almost always have to close the sale through direct contact with your prospective customer or client.
However, if you set your lead generation program up effectively; the advertising you use, how you build your list and what you do with that list can all help ensure that the people you actually spend time selling to are the most qualified prospects you could hope for.
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Articles & Contextual Advertising & How to Buy Leads & Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & List Building Strategies & Online Marketing Services & Pay Per Click & Qualified Lead Generation & Website Marketing Strategy
Lead generation content is the most important, but most overlooked, part of a lead acquisition process. It’s easy for most businesses to focus on things like email marketing, advertising and buying leads. These can all be effective lead generation strategies but…
They all focus on outbound marketing – you taking your message out to prospective customers and clients. Lead generation content focuses on bringing business to you.
It is content in any form that is designed to educate or entertain and that encourages people to find you and engage with your business.
It can include:
The focus is on education or entertainment – rather than selling. When people search for products and services online they want information that they can use to help them make better decisions. Great content is that kind of information.
Creating great content has three main benefits for businesses:
When someone searches online for a product or service, their first port of call is often the search engines. Search engines scan the Internet to find the most appropriate content – not advertising – to display in the search results. If you create content that is based on the kinds of questions and keywords that your prospective customers are searching for online, you will do better with the search engines and get found by more prospects.
We cover this in more detail in our free lead generation report on search engine optimization. In addition to the search engines, your content can also be displayed in directories, on other people’s websites and in social media – all encouraging people to check out your website and your business. You can use the same ideas to make your content work offline too.
If you use your content effectively – and provide useful information – you encourage visitors to your website to want to find out more. As part of a smart lead generation strategy, you can use this as a way to ask your prospects to provide you with their contact details. For example, you could use a free report, a monthly newsletter or a special webinar to gather contact details. Once you start building this list of interested prospects, you can focus on lead management to help turn interest into buying.
People are often confused by the amount of information and competing claims of different businesses. Ideally they want to do business with someone that they trust and have some kind of relationship with. You can use great content to demonstrate your expertise in your area and show how your business can help them achieve their goals. This helps make you a trusted resource in the eyes of your prospects and it’s only a short step from being a trusted resource to becoming a trusted supplier.
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Lead Generation & Lead Generation Techniques & Website Marketing Strategy
Blogging for business…
Chances are that you’ve heard about blogging. You might even have read a few. But can business blogging really be an effective marketing strategy?
It can!
Blogging for business can be a great way of delivering your content and attracting new visitors to your website. Business Blogs do well in search engines and help you build up the content on your website. Blogs for business also allow people to subscribe to new updates – keeping prospects coming back to your site again and again.
But, blogging also requires a big commitment. There’s no point in blogging if you don’t think that you can keep it up or put in the time and effort to promote your blog.
The best way to decide is to spend some time reading blogs before you start you own. Find ones that you like or ones that work well in your industry and take inspiration from them.
Blogs for business generally have a more relaxed tone than articles or the rest of the content on your website. This can be great for bringing a little personality to your business and letting people get to know you as a person. However, blogs don’t have to be like that at all. Blogs for business can be whatever you like. Again, read other blogs to find a tone that you think would suit your business and your goals.
Blogs started out as personal journals (weblogs) but over the years have been adopted by a growing number of businesses. Naturally businesses don’t tend to write about what their cat had for breakfast, but rather business related topics. It’s reasonable to blog about things that are happening at your business occasionally. Occasionally. If you write about your business all the time nobody will be interested. A safe bet is to start with a simple list of the kinds of problems that your customers are facing and write answers to those problems. You can also find inspiration from other blogs, from comments and feedback you get, from trade magazines, from customers and from suppliers. Inspiration is everywhere so long as you are looking.
If writing isn’t your thing you have a few choices. Instead of blogging you could try running a video blog (vlog) or audio-based blog (podcast). The equipment to record and play audio and video on your blog is easy to find and relatively inexpensive.The other option would be to pay someone to either blog for you or to help you blog. Finding a keen blogger willing to help shouldn’t be too difficult (there are plenty of services online). You should expect to pay anything from $15 to $50 per post depending on the blogger, the topic and whether or not you would like them to help promote it as well.
If you are happy to do the writing then make sure you schedule some time into your week to do it. To get a blog going, one post a day would be a good target, three a week pretty good and once a week a suggested minimum. Of course, it’s not just for one week. You need to commit to blogging for the long term. Which is why many business bloggers look for help – either other people in your business that can contribute, or people associated with your business like suppliers or professionals.
There’s no point in having a blog if nobody reads it. So, in addition to writing the blog you will also need to promote it.
Here are a few quick ideas:
A blog can be a highly effective tool but it needs commitment. Ask yourself these questions before you get started and you’ll be on the right track to make blogging work for your business.
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