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03.13.07
Proven Ways To Waste Money With PPC Advertising
 By
John Grant
Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is the biggest lead generation breakthrough to come about in a long time.
For the small and midsize company in particular - and thanks to its ability to narrowly target prospects, tightly manage spending and precisely measure results - PPC is one of the most efficient lead generation tools ever developed.
It does however, have a downside. Because PPC campaigns are so quick to set up and so easy to get started, a business owner can easily waste thousands of dollars in a matter of weeks, before learning some hard (and expensive) lessons about what works and what doesn't.
The purpose of this brief report is to point out the most common mistakes made with PPC, so that your efforts begin generating results as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Mistake #1 - Use your Home Page as the Landing Page
When you set up a PPC ad, whether it's with Google, Yahoo or any other search engine, it's up to you to decide where to direct the people who click on your ad. By default, most companies simply send clickers to the company home page. After all, they reason, if the home page is the digital equivalent of the company front door, shouldn't we bring prospects here as a starting point?
No, and here's why: Most company home pages cover too many subjects and have too much going on to work as effective landing pages. Simply dropping a searcher here in the hope that he finds what he's looking for almost guarantees frustration and failure. Remember, a person who initiates a web search is looking for something specific. Tossing him to a generic home page (with the implicit message, "Here, you figure it out") will work against your intention of converting ad clicks into leads.
Instead, the most effective PPC ads take clickers to a tightly focused landing page - a page specifically developed and matched to the subject of the search, with minimal distractions, a strong call to action and a well thought out process for moving the searcher to the next step, whether that's requesting information, signing up for a newsletter or making a purchase.
Fix #1: Always take clickers to a well-crafted landing page, distinct from the company home page.
Mistake #2 - Don't Bid Enough to Secure a Top Spot
PPC works on an auction model, giving you, the advertiser, the option of deciding how much you want to pay for a particular search term. In effect, you can choose how high up in the ad listings you want to appear. All else equal, the more you pay relative to other advertisers, the higher up your ad will be.
Popular search terms can have a dozen or more ads listed in order on search results pages, giving the impression that anyone can drive clicks with PPC. But consider this startling statistic: 85% of all PPC clicks are on ads in one of the top three positions. The remaining ads - whether there are five more or fifty - share the scraps.
In practice, that means that unless you bid high enough to get into one of the top three spots, you're wasting your time. You're not wasting money since if nobody clicks you pay nothing, but if you choose to be hidden further down the list, you'll have trouble generating the leads you want to close the sales you need.
Fix #2: Choose search terms and manage bids in such a way that you'll consistently appear in one of the top three spots.
Mistake #3 - Don't Make Your Ad Copy Specific
Yahoo allows you 190 characters (including spaces) in your text ad. Google allows just 70. No pictures, no colors, no company logo just a few words.
Continue reading this article.
About the Author:
John Grant is President of Take Aim Search, a search engine marketing company specializing in pay per click lead generation for small and medium sized companies.
Copyright © John Grant 2006. All rights reserved.
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