Choosing Keywords for Pay Per Click

                You’ve got your catchy advertisements written. All you need now is to select some keywords- but this is the most difficult part about pay-per-click advertising. There are analysts who spend all day figuring out which keywords to use, but you don’t have that kind of time!  You’ve still got a business to run, so we’ll simplify the keyword selection process.

                Google Adwords and Microsoft Adcenter both have excellent keyword tools, where you can type in a keyword and get similar keywords. If you’re a local bakery selling cupcakes, you can use the keyword “cupcakes,” but you could also use “sweets” and “desserts.” This can be helpful in finding customers who might not type in the exact word of the product you sell, but are still looking for a yummy treat for dessert.

                Keyword tools also help reduce the price of pay-per-click advertising. When a potential customer clicks on your advertisement, you pay a certain amount of money based on how much you paid for the keyword. If the keyword “cupcake” costs $3.75, then you pay $3.75 every time someone clicks on your advertisement. But “desserts” may cost $1.74, and “sweets” may be $6.72. You can use the keyword tool to estimate how competitive a word is. If a word has high competition and costs a lot of money, you may not want to use it. If it’s a word that has low competition and doesn’t cost much, you definitely want to include it.

Most importantly, you want to think of words that relate to your business that aren’t commonly used. People will still search for them. These are called “long tail” keywords, because they are less frequently used and therefore inexpensive, but still effective. Examples for the bakery would include “frosting” and “cupcake ideas.”  Someone searching for cupcake baking ideas or recipes could see your advertisement and decide to buy them instead of bake them from scratch.

You can set up an automatic bid for keywords, in which Google tries to get you the keyword for the lowest value, but you can also set up a manual bid. If you’re in a field with expensive keywords- and some keywords can cost $10 or $20- you can always bid manually. If you bid low, Google won’t show your ad on the first page of search results, but your ad will still get shown. Many small companies choose this option because it is less expensive.

Similar to running two ads at the same time, you can also run groups of keywords against each other and see which perform the best. This way you’ll know what the most effective keywords are. Match up the best keywords with the most effective ads, and you’ll have a great pay-per-click campaign!

Over and out,

The New Billionaires

Revenizer “Grow Faster” series: Key metrics | pay-per-click

This is the first in Revenizer’s Grow Faster series on top performance metrics.

Elisa Gabbert from Business2Community.com surveyed 17 PPC experts for their picks on the top three Pay Per Click (PPC) metrics. See http://bit.ly/Top3PPC for the full article.
 
The top results are below.

1. Click through rate (CTR)
2. Cost per conversion (CPC) / Cost per action (CPA)
3. Conversion Rate

Why are these important?
-    Click through rate (CTR)
A good CTR means that you are in the game. Your ads are encouraging the first action – the click – but this does not indicate the quality of the click throughs.
 
-    Cost per conversion (CPC) and cost per action (CPA)
These metrics tell you whether the cost of each conversion (e.g. sale) or action (e.g. signup) is acceptable given the value generated.

-    Conversion rate
Having a great CTR does not mean much unless you are converting any of those clicks.  This is closely linked to the quality of the click throughs.

This good news is that these three metrics give you a good start in monitoring and improving your advertising campaign.

Pay Per Click is Dead

Internet users have become more critical of media advertising. When people do searches on Google and other search engines, many are aware of the existence of paid advertisements at the top, bottom and along the sides of search results. In fact, they have become aware enough to ignore these advertisements, acknowledging that these advertisements may not necessarily give them what they are looking for.

So what can you do? Get listed. What Google does is essentially a form of listing. But when you’re a new start-up, it may be a challenge getting ranked high on Google searches. Instead, get listed on ‘locations’ where your target market is. It could be in social media, forums, online directories, etc. With the proper use of keywords, any business can increase their brand circulation without traditional online advertising. Naturally, all marketing sources have pros and cons.

Social media can be a fantastic tool with an effective network of circulators. However, social media can make, or break a business. It all depends on your ability to interact with your customers. Forums on the other hand are mostly free-for-all which is awesome for bootstrapping. Although the readers are rather targeted, you will have to compete with everyone else for online real estate. Online directories are a different story. Their readers are targeted and you have less to compete with. And some directories offer services to customize their marketing services.  

If you’re offering a class, seminar, workshop or course in Singapore, give Twofold a buzz and we can see what we can do to extend your marketing.