Maybe you have an online business that markets a hot product that you are selling on your website; but you find that you are having trouble bringing customers into your site. So instead of gaining money, you are actually losing money because of the monthly rent that you’re paying to have your website hosted in cyberspace.

The best solution to this problem is to advertise. Let people know that you are here and ready to do business. One of the quickest and most effective ways to advertise your website on the net is to come up with a great PPC campaign management plan. PPC is an abbreviation for Pay Per Click.

Certain keywords or phrases that people type into a search engine lead to hundreds and hundreds of search results that pertain to that specific keyword. Businesses that want to advertise on the net using a PPC campaign have to come up with a plethora of keywords that is associated to the business that they are running; so when potential customers type in these keywords, it will lead them to their business site.

This is pretty much the whole concept that operates behind PPC.  This is how a PPC campaign brings in traffic to your site, with the selection of the right keywords that people can search through the net.

Some keywords tend to be more expensive than others, especially popular ones. It is vital to select the right keywords, in order to get your money’s worth. This is why it is important to manage you PPC campaign wisely. Sometimes you are better off opting for the less popular keywords that are not so expensive, especially if you have a limited budget. Some businesses even hire the help of a consultant to manage their PPC campaigns.

There are a lot of experts that specialize in PPC campaign management. They come with strategic plans, and assess the need of their clients. They then come up with a PPC campaign that caters to their client’s specification.

This is why big online businesses seek the expertise of a professional to run their PPC ad campaign, because the right set of plans, can potentially bring in a large amount of profits. The more keywords you have, the more you increase the chances of customers clicking these keywords that would lead them to your website. There are also some software you can purchase, such as GoToast, or Bid Rank. These software track down your keywords listing.

If you are running a business online, and are planning to run a PPC campaign, it is advisable to purchase keywords that are extremely related to the theme of your business. This way, people know what they are getting, and don’t get confused about the content of your website. The secret is to use keywords or phrases that are searched frequently, but cost very little.

The chances are, the longer people stay in your site, the likelihood of these potential customers making a transaction.  But first thing is first. You must lure them into your turf.

This is why a lot of entrepreneurs spend a large amount of their budget on advertising, because they know that the right advertising campaign can start the ball rolling.

Also, you should do some research before you start your PPC campaign. There are a lot of PPC search engines to chose from. Those who are less renowned charge less for the same keywords that you’d find in the bigger PPC search engines.

The great thing about PPC campaigns is that you can reach a worldwide audience. Advertising online means global marketing.

Most PPC search engines require a monthly payment in exchange for their services. But if you fail to make payments, they will automatically take your listings out  of their search engines. So make sure that you pay your monthly bills, so all the efforts that you put into your PPC campaign don’t go to waste.

The potential earnings that can be generated by starting a  pay per click campaign is significant. That’s why a lot of online businesses now are trying to get in on the act. Now,  with the right set of keywords, and a smart PPC campaign management plan, more than ever, online businesses are bringing in the big bucks.

But with millions of websites out there being visited by millions of computer users, how can you make sure that your ad can be seen by your target customers and that your leads will be followed by these users?  Here are a few tips.

1.  Place an ad on the websites frequented by your target customers.  Before doing this, you need to define who will be your target customers.  Placing an ad on sites that they usually visit will increase the possibility that your ad will gain the attention and will be followed your target customers.

Also, consider the website’s search engine placement, traffic, external linking and the other ads placed on it.  External linking will determine if there are other sites that link to this site.  This will mean that people can get to the site where your ad is placed, even if they are browsing a different site.  Check if many of your competitors have ads on this site.

2.  Placing ads on some sites cost some money.  However, there are also sites that can place a link to your site, product or service in exchange of having their link being displayed on your site.  This is also true about the newsletters sent by site owners to its mailing list members regularly.

Also, having helpful links placed on your site and having sites link to your pages help in boosting search engine ranking.  This is similar to making a statement that your site’s content is important that other sites have links to your web pages.

3.  Pay-per-click (PPC) is also a good method in Internet marketing.  You will only need to pay for the ad if the link is clicked.  If you prefer this method of advertisement, make sure that you are using services that set limits on daily expenses.  There are also services that help you determine effective keywords and monitor the PPC results.

4.  Choose your domain name wisely.  It is still being debated if domain names matter when it comes to search engine placement.  Whether it does or not, having product related domain names help consumers remember your domain, that they can go back to your site even without the links.

5.  Make sure you have useful content on your sites.  While keyword density is important in search engine placement, having useless information or annoying repetition of keywords will not increase your customer’s confidence in your site.  It may even affect your sites traffic and can get your site removed from search engines.  So make sure that keywords are used strategically.

6.  When thinking of keywords, think like your target customers.  What do you think are they going to search so they can get to your site?  Also, use specific keywords or key phrases.  Submitting a single word or a very general phrase to a search engine will not get you to the top of the search results compared to submitting specific keywords that describe your product and services perfectly.

7.  Track your ads.  Always check how much you have spent on placing links on frequently visited sites and on PPC.  There are services that allow you to monitor PPC transactions and how many of these end in sales.  You always need to consider if the ads that you have placed on these websites are getting you to your target consumers and if these ads can lead to revenue.

One final tip on marketing products and services, sell the benefits.  It will help your marketing strategies a lot if you highlight the benefits of choosing your products and services instead of merely discussing the product specifications.  Product specifications may not mean much to customers, unless they know what these stand for (how these specifications affect the quality of the product or service).

Many people say getting to the top of search engine results is difficult since millions of websites exist, which can be using the same keywords.  While this is true, this doesn’t mean that your website has to stacked under your competitors’ websites when presenting search engine results.  Strategic advertising and linking, together with useful content, can also get you to the top of the search results.

With traffic comes a potential customer which basically means sales which in turn means profit. While many sites have collapsed in the past with the downturn of many internet based business, many smaller sites have generated good money by concentrating on a certain niche and some subniches.

This is a reason why e-commerce site laser target certain groups of people and drive them to their site to showcase their sites and products. Precision marketing is essential so that you could count on all the traffic on your site as potential customers.

Using Money to Make Money

It’s a common business notion that if you want to make money, you have to spend money. One good way of spending money for business gain is through advertising. Advertising brings in the people because through advertising, they know that there is such a company or product in existence. With the right type of advertising, you can see the spurt of traffic growth to your site. With a high volume of traffic, even if only a small portion or percentage turns out to be buying customers it is still a good average of profit generating income.

Right now, there is no other advertising scheme that would be worth every cent than using Google’s Adwords. The surge in popularity of Google’s Adwords is very evident as you can see so many sites sporting this ad scheme.

In using Google’s Adwords, you pay a certain fee depending on the number of keywords your ad is keyword sensitive to. Each time a person does a search in Google, the keyword or keywords use generate ads in the side of Google which are generated by the keywords they have assigned for their ads.

This method laser targets the traffic a site wants for their site. This also ensures that you are readily visible in the first page of a search result. Paying Google for this ad scheme ensures that your target group of people sees your ads. You drive your laser targeted traffic to your site which provides for their needs and wants. You can also be sure that you can meet their demands and needs.

Aside from Google, you can also be featured in their other search networks, these includes sites like, AskJeeves, AOL Search and Netscape. These sites also show Adwords ads that react to searches done by visitors. There are also content networks, non-search engine sites that feature Google Adwords, which will also carry your ads. But this is subjected to the niche the site features. Your chosen keywords will determine which content network shall feature your ad. The frequency of your ad shall also be determined by your allowed budget.

Laser Targeting your Traffic

To get a good number or estimate of the traffic to buying customer ratio it is good to laser target your traffic. Knowing that your traffic are all potential customers and are interested in your products and company provides you with a more accurate statistics. This will show you how effective your utilizing of Google Adwords is.

Drive laser targeted traffic to your site by using keywords or keyword phrases for your Goggle Adwords that pertains to your company and to your products. There are many online internet tools that can help you in choosing keywords and keyword phrases that are currently in demand that could help drive laser targeted traffic to your site.

With your Google Adwords ad, you are ensured that every click to your ad is a potential customer that is precisely looking pr interested in what you have to offer. Make sure that your Google Adwords ad has the right keywords so that you can drive you’re laser targeted traffic to your site.

Using Google Adwords to help boost the drive to increase laser targeted traffic will prove to be very beneficial as many other companies can attest to. The benefits are high with the cost relatively justifiable.

Search engine optimization, “seo”, is a much-debated topic and there is a lot of misinformation on the net. Let’s cut through the muck and discuss seo dos and donts.

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However, because they aren’t sure how it all works, or perhaps unconvinced that it does, many have yet to take advantage of the medium. With that in mind, I’m going to explain how you can benefit from PPC search engines, and spend as little as possible in the process.

In the PPC model, you write your own title and description, select a keyword searchers must enter for your listing to appear, and bid against other site owners for its rank in search results. Your bid equals the amount you will pay for each click on your listing.

I use several PPC search engines. Widely acknowledge to be the best performer, GoTo brings me more traffic – and sales – than all the rest put together. Being the most important, I will focus on it here, although the same techniques apply to any PPC SE.

#1 Secret To Big Returns On A Shoestring Budget

Bid prices for good rankings on very popular, common keywords are often high. However, the vast majority of advertisers *only* bid on these obvious terms. They ignore THOUSANDS of other keywords. Because few people are bidding on those overlooked keywords, the bid prices remain low. You and I can get good listings here for just a cent or two!

Of course, less popular keywords aren’t searched for as often. But that *does not* matter. Play smart. Bid on LOTS of keywords. Hundreds, thousands even. Here’s an example of how it works:

*Assume all listings have the same ranking, say the #3 spot.

As you can see, listing under 200 keywords, each of which is only searched for 100 times a month, can bring you the SAME amount of traffic as 20 listings for much more expensive, popular keywords that are searched for 1000 times each month.

Researching Your Keywords

Once you’ve opened your account, start researching your keywords. You will probably already have several relevant words and phrases in mind. Write them all down and head over to the GoTo Keyword Suggestion Tool with your list.

The Keyword Suggestion Tool tells you how many times in the previous month people have searched for the keyword you input, or any phrase containing it. Results are listed in order, with the most popular searches at the top.

Type your first keyword into the tool’s search box. When the results come up, select “Save As” on your browser, and choose to save as “Text.” This will save your results in a small plain text file that can be opened by any text editor (like NotePad). Use the keyword as the file name.

Do likewise with all of your keywords, phrases, and other potentially important terms within phrases. For example, one of your main keywords may be “marketing” and one of your phrases “marketing courses.” In this case, search for “courses” as well. Although the majority of results will be inappropriate, you will usually find a handful of new terms that you wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

When you’ve finished your list, open the first file saved. Delete all irrelevant terms. From the remainder, identify potentially good words that you haven’t yet investigated. Input these into the Suggestion Tool and repeat the process. Do the same for every file and you will soon have hundreds of terms.

For even more suggestions, try JimTools Keyword Generation Tool at http://www.jimtools.com . Bear in mind however that these are terms found in Web pages, and therefore not necessarily keywords used by searchers.

Get Databased

Create a simple database for your listing details – it will make managing your account much easier. You can use Excel or similar; I personally prefer FileMaker Pro for PPC accounts (Vicki at http://www.sitesell.com/info.html provides a basic template for affiliates).

Essential headings you will need are:

• Search Term
• URL
• Title
• Description
• Current Bid Amount

Optional headings Include:

• Number of Searches per Month (from GoTo tool)
• Title Length (auto calculated function)
• Description Length (auto calculated function)
• Listing Status (New, On, Off, Pending, Rejected)
• Product (helpful if advertising various products)
• Current Rank
• Top Bid Amount (time consuming to update: select terms only)
• Minimum Bid Amount (as above)
• First Page Minimum bid amount (as above)
• Date Last Modified (suggest auto function)

I also have FileMaker assign a serial number, so that it can mark terms as ‘original’ or ‘duplicate’, making the latter easy to delete.

Once you have your database, paste in the search terms from your collection of text files (if you have a good text editor, use ’search and replace’ strings to batch process, deleting unwanted information, and tab-delimiting the remainder for direct import, either individually or merged into a single file).

Your Titles And Descriptions

Next compose your titles and descriptions. Remember you are writing an ad. Make your title catchy. Incorporating the search term within it usually increases clickthroughs. Beware however that more clicks doesn’t always equal more sales (or more targeted visitors).

Some searchers will click on the first title they notice containing the term searched for, thinking it more relevant. What you are offering may be an exact match to the keyword, or it may be related. If the latter, think before you automatically include the term in your title. In addition, writing a different title for every search term is very time consuming.

Make your description as comprehensive and benefit-laden as you can within the space allowed (with GoTo, this is 40 characters for the title and 190 for the description. Other PPC engines vary, but most have higher limits).

If your budget is tight and you simply wish to sell something, consider making it obvious from your description. Unless you have a secondary strategy (like collecting email addresses) save money by filtering out those least likely to part with any cash. Concentrate on attracting your perfect prospect: one open to the possibility of making a purchase.

Your Maximum Bid Price

How much should you bid? Ideally, calculate your maximum bid limit based on the average conversion ratio of the page you are linking to. If you don’t know what that is, I suggest you initially base your limit on a 1% conversion ratio (1 in every 100 visitors buys).

Lets say you make $20 on every sale. That means – on average – for every 100 visitors, you get $20. To be in profit, those 100 visitors must cost you less than the $20 you make. It therefore follows that one visitor must cost less than $20/100, or $0.20. This is your break-even point. Always bid below this figure.

With a bid of $0.04, the 100 visitors required for a $20 sale will only cost you $4. You make $16 profit. If your conversion ratio is in reality 3%, at $0.04 per click you will make $56 for every $4 you spend. That’s a 1400% profit!

Use coded (tracked) URL’s for your PPC listings, or if feasible link them to specific pages that cannot be accessed by a surfer on your site (can be duplicates with no inbound links). You will soon have a good idea of your real conversion ratio.

Bidding Strategy

The idea is to bid as little as possible for the highest number of targeted visitors. Being first on the results page will bring most visitors. However, as I mentioned earlier, simply getting more clickthroughs is not necessarily a good thing.

In the top position, you are more likely to attract ‘lazy’ searchers that simply click on the first thing they see, and others who automatically assume that since your listing is at the top, it must be the most relevant (like a regular search engine). Although your listing may be highly relevant, it might not be what THEY had in mind.

How important or not this is, depends on the cost of the listings and your budget. If the current top bid is, say $0.10 and the second $0.05. It makes more sense to bid $0.06 and get the number two position, than pay $0.11 for the top spot.

The further down the listings your ad appears, the less likely it will be seen. This is not only due to the behavior of searchers. Web sites that partner with GoTo seldom display all of the listings. AOL for example only displays the first three. Others display the first five, ten, or possibly twenty listings.

With this in mind, create various ‘cut-off’ points in the listings, in relation to your budget. Can you afford to be in the top three listings? If not, look at the top five, then ten.

Don’t overly concern yourself with individual positions within these groupings. Your exposure and – all else being equal – the number of clickthroughs you get will be almost the same whether you are at, say, number 7 or number 10. The difference in bid price however can be substantial. Pay as little as possible to get into the highest group within your budget. That notwithstanding, increasing your bid by 2 cents to jump five positions in the top half of the page would be worthwhile.

On popular terms where bids are high, simply try to get into the first half of the results page (the top 20 on GoTo). If that is still beyond my budget, I aim for a cheap position right at the bottom of the page.

My theory is that most searchers who have bothered to scroll more than halfway down the page will continue to the end. In addition, most people tend to scroll in ‘chunks’. This makes them likely to miss listings in the middle, as their eyes are naturally drawn to the white space at the bottom of the page.

If you can’t afford page one at all, try and get within the first five or ten listings on page two.

Getting Your Listings Online

GoTo have a good account manager, and I would suggest using it to submit your first listings. However, like most online tools, it can become extremely tedious when you have a lot of work to get through.

GoTo will happily accept bulk submissions in an Excel spreadsheet they have available for download. If you don’t have Excel, you can send your listings in tab-delimited text format (other PPC engines operate the same way, but some don’t advertise the fact, requiring you ask).

Use the account manager to get your first few listings online. GoTo check all submissions for relevancy (good for your conversion ratio) so it will be 3-5 days before they go live. Meanwhile, work up a list of several hundred keywords. Instead of spending hours inputing these yourself, email them to GoTo and let them do it for you.

If you’re not yet using PPC search engines, now is the time to start. You won’t regret it. Follow these guidelines and it’s impossible not to profit!

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