Pay-Per-Click Advertising sounds so simple when it’s explained to you. You post your ad somewhere, and you pay the advertiser every time someone clicks on your ad. The idea is that you convert enough of those clicks into sales that you turn a healthy profit. Popular advertising networks include Google Adwords, Bing/Yahoo, and Facebook.
But there’s a little more to it than that…
Have you thought about what goes into an ad? Generally there’s a headline then a couple of lines of text, designed to encourage the viewer to click on the ad. Here’s a few tricks you might not have considered:
- Sometimes, a question means more clicks. So don’t say “Great Cream for Bald Men” – try “Are You Sick Of Being Bald?”. This evokes a more emotional response from the viewer.
- Did you notice how I Capitalised The First Letter Of Each Word? Do you know why I did that?
- Are you trying to get as many clicks as possible – or do you want to pre-qualify your visitors?
Pre-qualify your visitors
Pre-qualifying visitors is a great idea. Instead of getting every man and his dog to click your ad, you’ll word it to screen out the tire-kickers. So you’ll get less clicks, but each click is more likely to buy from you. You’re also paying for less clicks, so it’s cheaper.
Coming in for a landing…
Have you considered where your visitors end up once they click? Do they go to your homepage? Or do they go to a special page, specifically written for them? A well optimized landing page tailored for the specific search phrase can convert a much higher percentage of your visitors.
Um.. what did I just pay for?
Did you ever hear the joke about the marketer? He’d say “I know that half of my advertising works – the problem is that I don’t know which half!”
Don’t be that guy – make sure you’re tracking your conversions, so that you know which ads attrack the most clicks, and which ads convert into the most sales.
A little of this, and a little of that
If you’re running ads, then you should be doing something called A/B Testing. That’s when you show “Ad A” to Bill and Sarah, and you show “Ad B” to Derek and Jill, and see which ad performs better. (Only you show the ads to a much larger pool of viewers).
So once we determine that Ad A is converting 10% more sales, we’ll create a new Ad C and see if we can do better.
Wow – that’s a lot of information!
We’ve just given you a lot of information for free. And you can get even more detailed information if you’re willing to spend some searching the web for articles, lessons, how-to’s, and guides. You’ve probably also realised by now that it takes a lot of time to run an advertising campaign properly, and get the best results.
