Posts Tagged ‘internet advertising’
If you just started your own online business, you probably experienced what we all do. The excitement associated with the possibility of making big money on the internet, is quickly followed by the frustrations of trying to get your first profitable sale. Advertising your business or product is a lot more complicated than most imagine it to be.
Lets face it, the potential for making big money drives our excitement level over the top. Add to this our desire to have the money start rolling in the door today or tomorrow, and we have the basic formula for failure. In this mindset, advertising campaigns are usually not executed in a business like manner. Our emotions cloud our judgements.
What you should never do is advertise blindly without a clear plan as to what you want to accomplish with the advertising. Let’s say that John, the owner of a small pet gate business is just starting out. He signs up with Google Adwords and sets up a campaign to advertise his business.
John does a great job of writing his first ad. He identifies the benefits of his pet gates and chooses ten very relative keywords. John is so excited that he tracks the campaign results every hour. His first setback is that his keyword bids seem to be too low, so he isn’t getting any clicks. John doesn’t let this stop him, so he doubles his bids.
Now he starts getting clicks (traffic), but no sales on his website. His first thoughts are that there must be something wrong on his website, so he spends days making changes while the traffic continues to pore in. At the end of the first week his website has seen 200 visitors, his advertising costs are $250 and he has no sales.
After one week and no success, what seems obvious about John’s first advertising campaign?
a) his expectations were unrealistic
b) he had no advertising plan
c) he had no clear advertising budget
d) he had no form of measurement
e) he had absolutely no idea why he wasn’t getting any sales
Starting out is never easy, however even the beginner needs to understand that you should never advertise without very clear expectations about what you want to achieve with your first campaign. Every dollar spent must be considered an investment towards a specific outcome. The initial campaign should never target sales as the expected outcome. The first campaign needs to be all about testing the market and testing consumers responses to your ads and your website landing pages.
Before even considering an advertising campaign, John should be checking to see if other companies are advertising in that market. If the same companies are advertising week after week in that market, then they must be able to turn a profit with their advertising.
Once John has established that there is a market, he should review the ads that appear at the top of this list. How are they selling the product benefits, and how are they encouraging the consumer to act.
Equally important, John should visit the landing pages for these ads to see what the value propositions are for his competitors websites.
Knowledge of your competitors and what is providing them success, should help John determine how we wants to differentiate himself and what testing he will need to do to maximize the success of his advertising.
John should then set up an advertising plan with a specified maximum budget and identify the outcomes that he would like to test (click through rate, landing page bounce rate, which keywords are performing best, and finally which combinations are resulting in sales).
A Successful test usually requires approximately 1,000 clicks. Early results for most campaigns can often be skewed one way or another. Make sure that there is sufficient traffic to represent the broad market.
Spend your advertising dollars wisely, so that the ned result is a profitable one. As the old saying goes however, you will need to spend money to make money.
If you are not certain that you can do this yourself, don’t worry. The online marketing world is full of coaches and mentors that would be willing to help you through the early days and at an affordable price.
The excitement associated with starting your own internet business is often matched with the frustrations of trying to make it successful. Getting quality traffic to our site is the first thing we all focus on.
With your excitement level at an all time high and your hopes of instant wealth clouding your judgement, most of us fail to think in a business like manner. Instead we jump into advertising with both feet, not really knowing how deep the water is, or whether there are sharks lurking just below the surface.
Without a clear advertising plan, our advertising campaigns are purposeless. Let’s look at John, an online business beginner with a pet gate business, who is setting up his first campaign using Google Adwords.
For this example case, we are going to assume that John does a pretty good job with his ad. His ad clearly states the benefits of his pet gates and his choice of keywords are all very relevant to his product. The first thing that John encounters is that his ad is not showing up on the first page of paid advertisers. Google tells him that he needs to increase his bid to get higher in the paid rankings. John doubles his bids.
With the higher bids, John begins to get a good flow of daily traffic to his website. After several days, John has received 200 visitors, but none of them have made a purchase. His advertising costs have reached $250.
I’m sure many of us have experienced this, I know that I have, so what just happened?
a) his expectations were unrealistic
b) he had no advertising plan
c) he had no clear advertising budget
d) he had no form of measurement
e) he had absolutely no idea why he wasn’t getting any sales
Starting out is never easy, however even the beginner needs to understand that you should never advertise without very clear expectations about what you want to achieve with your first campaign. Every dollar spent must be considered an investment towards a specific outcome. The initial campaign should never target sales as the expected outcome. The first campaign needs to be all about testing the market and testing consumers responses to your ads and your website landing pages.
Before even considering an advertising campaign, John should be checking to see if other companies are advertising in that market. If the same companies are advertising week after week in that market, then they must be able to turn a profit with their advertising.
Once John has established that there is a market, he should review the ads that appear at the top of this list. How are they selling the product benefits, and how are they encouraging the consumer to act.
To differentiate himself in this market, John should visit the landing pages for his competitors ads, and ask himself what makes his website different.
With all of this competitive information John should have a better idea how to start advertising, what ad testing he would like to try, and what he should be testing on his website in relation to engaging his customers.
John should then set up an advertising plan with a specified maximum budget and identify the outcomes that he would like to test (click through rate, landing page bounce rate, which keywords are performing best, and finally which combinations are resulting in sales).
Depending on the number of test situations you want to evaluate, you are going to need sufficient traffic in each to ensure that the results are not skewed, and can accurately predict future traffic. Most advertisers will suggest a test plan of about 1,000 clicks to cover all scenarios.
Unfortunately we need to spend money to make money. However, every dollar you spend needs to have a purpose, or you are justing throwing money out the window.
If you are nervous about spending this kind of money without really knowing what you are doing, then I would suggest that you engage an online marketing company to help you through the first few months. Getting your marketing program aligned to your website is no simple task, but when you get it right, it can be very profitable.
Search marketing via pay per click advertising can be an outstanding source of immediate income for your web based business. Or, when mishandled, pay per click is a perfect way to burn loot like a teepee of dried up Christmas trees on fire. When you are seeking broad traffic like marketing florida keep in mind that more targeted phrases like internet marketing in florida will turn into opportunities at a much higher pace and be much less of an expense. If you have experimented with paid online marketing and have had less than total triumph, the cause can be explained by one of the following two causes.
The first is that your site is not transferring your web traffic effectively into profits or the second possibility is that mistakes were made in keyword research, ad copy, and/or ad placement. There are lots of methods that can be used with pay per click that cost very little yet drive tons of eyeballs to your site and company. Purchasing advertising space for very detailed targeted key words is highly profitable. In fact, it is these long tail key words that generate the greatest return on your ad spends.
For instance, a local car dealer in Gainesville Florida, is smart to be buying the more targeted phrases that are more likely to actually end up in a customer. Phrases such as used cars gainesville fl will convert those searchers into actual car deals at a far faster pace than the far more expensive and broader terms like “cars” or “trucks.”
Do you recall the Christmas trees on fire? Yup, that’s your loot when you’re advertising with the broadest keywords. It is impractical to attempt to convert such broad web traffic at profitable rates as these are the most expensive words you can buy.
With the correct strategy and the right words, your paid advertising campaign turns your pennies into dollars. When your advertising campaign is targeting your most profitable words and phrases with influential ads, the more you spend the more you make. Right then is when you must exercise self control. When you are making money with the long tail key terms you naturally want to purchase the broader ones. Don’t do it. Those broad terms are no more than your personal Christmas tree on fire.
It is important that you know which keyword phrases to use as you begin creating and writing compelling ads for your Google Adwords campaign, so that people can easily find your ads. Perry Marshall (a Google Adwords expert) teaches pay-per-click users and advertisers to utilize the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool when creating their ads. This free resource will allow users to uncover the best keywords in a niche, and may also assist in locating other related phrases for your campaigns, or in your keyword research. Google’s Keyword Tool is very helpful at focusing your efforts if your ads aren’t working; if your ad is only using low volume keywords, there’s a possibility that your Adwords ads won’t be clicked on enough to make your ad profitable.
Here are some more ways to use the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool effectively for your Adwords campaign:
1. Start with a broad search. Most people use very specific keyword phrases when they first begin conducting research with Adwords, and this might be a mistake because it will typically leave you only with average results. Begin with broad search instead and drill down your results using the ’synonyms’ tool that offers suggestions and variations as part of the results.
2. Create different ad groups using a set of similar keywords. Make sure you are creating an entirely new ad group for every campaign so you can keep track of what is working – and what isn’t. You can also make use of the ‘relevant keywords’ feature already built into the Google Adwords Keyword Selector Tool that helps you narrow down your search with ease.
3. Use a ‘negative keywords’ strategy. Optimizing your Adwords campaign can sometimes involve taking out the words that don’t work in your niche, the Google Adwords tool can be adjusted to not show certain words that don’t fit in your market. An example of this would be, using the negative keywords to eliminate the word “free” from triggering your ad, thus improving your ROI by only displaying your ad to people who are looking to potentially buy. The Adwords Keyword Selector Tool will now only show you phrases that exclude the word “free”.’
4. If you aren’t sure where to start, you can use the Site Content feature. Google can scan your web page and offer suggestions of keywords based on your site’s content. For example, if your website displays info about trends or services in your niche, these might also be good keywords to use in your market. After the search process, you will be given a list of targeted keywords related to these concepts and areas in the search results.
5. Location, location, location. Many people fail to realize how important adding a location – whether it’s a town, city or state – to your key term or keyphrase really is. This can be important if you provide products or services that are geographically specific; the visitors you get from these types of phrases might be better than a less specific search, and will provide more qualified traffic to your site. Consider appending a keyword or keyphrase with a location to determine the best combinations for your ad campaign.
Marketing with Google Adwords is an effective technique that most websites can use to attract more customers. Creating quality Google Ads is one of the most important skills to have when using Adwords – and there are many quality training resources available online. .