What problem does your website solve for its users?
Does the answer to that question fly off your lips? Did you have to think about it? Can you answer it even after thinking about it?
How about this - fill in the blanks in the following statement:
“I give my users _________ and I get ________ in return.”
Am I overstating things if I say the key to success with any website is found in those two blanks?
A couple of examples…
On my ecommerce site: “I give my users a variety of trailer hitch accessories and I get money in return.”
On my wife’s personal blog, she would say: “I give my friends and family updates on my life (and about eight million pictures of our 11 month old son) and I get a feeling of connection and happiness in return.
On CourtneyTuttle.com: “We give people simple insights into how they can get traffic from the search engines and we get coaching clients, membership website subscribers (until recently ;) ) and joint venture offers from other businesses in return.
If you don’t have a written plan for your site, you should at the very least be able to make a clear “I give this and I get that in return.” statement. If you don’t have that mantra in your head every day, how can you expect your business to progress?
I don’t do a lot of blog reading, but often I’ll click through to sites I find in comments here on the site. I’ll read a post or two, and all too often I find myself saying “What’s your point?” On most of the sites I visit I don’t see any clear message of “The author is giving me this, and hoping to get that in exchange.”
Now you might not care if your users/readers see an obvious “give and receive” message on your blog, but think about this: In the last 30 days, I have spent over $5,000 just on information. The crazy thing is I’m GLAD I’ve just shelled out five grand for knowledge, because I know I’ve purchased some really high ROI solutions to a few of the problems we face in our business.
If you want to make money, you have to be the provider of a solution for which a large enough group of people is willing to pay.
I don’t think that sentence reads very smoothly, but I’m leaving it alone. Go back over it a couple times and let it sink in.
What problem (faced by a large enough group of people) does your presence on the web solve?
Your primary goal, maybe even your obsession, should be to answer that question.
If you can’t fire off the answer, stop whatever else you’re doing and start figuring it out. Our experience at Court’s Internet Marketing School is the earning power of a site really takes off after a) the author discovers what problem he/she can solve for the audience, and b) the audience agrees.
Let’s Brainstorm Together
Maybe we can help you get started today by going through a little exercise in the comments section. Here’s how it will work: anyone who feels like they have a clearly defined “I give this and receive that in exchange” statement, please leave it in the comments. It’s some free advertising and a branding opportunity for your site. :) For those of you who aren’t quite sure yet, make your best attempt.
Everybody else, click through to the sites behind a few of the comments, then come back and reply to the site owner’s statement. Did the site match the give/receive statement? Leave some POSITIVE feedback. I’m putting everyone on notice now that any sarcastic and/or critical comments will be immediately deleted. Court and I have very thick skins; you can feel free to call us morons all day long. We’re not in the business of setting other people up for that same treatment though, so if you can’t say something nice…
source:courtneytuttle.com
Showing posts with label ppc. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ppc. Show all posts
Jun 21, 2009
Jun 10, 2009
The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success
The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success
Whether you're looking to do Paid Search Advertising yourself or to hire someone to do that for you - you should know what makes a Pay Per Click campaign successful - or you will end up suffering.
Paid search advertising may look deceptively easy to do. Countless times small business owners decide (and correctly so) that PPC is going to do wonders for their business and 'dive' right into it...
Unfortunately most of them don't really educate themselves enough on what to do and how to do it, and then they end up spending a helluva lot of money, with little to no results. Next they declare that Paid Search Marketing doesn't work and then they're out!
Alternatively, the small business owner hires an overpaid, over-promising PPC management firm, and lets them do whatever they like - not knowing what to be aware of in order to make sure he's getting the best possible results for the best price...
Well - despite the doom and gloom scenarios above, I'm here to tell you that PPC works for most businesses!
It works very well, and can be one of the best, quickest, most cost effective and best tracked medium of advertising/promotion there ever was... Sure, there are other ways you can market your business, but if you know how to, and if you want almost immediate results that are fully tracked - then PPC can't be beaten.
OK, let's get to the top 10 essentials of Pay Per Click marketing:
1. Know your market place
It's as obvious as daylight, but people still go into PPC without doing their research. Bear in mind that you may know your market place offline, but when you consider the internet - it may be a whole different environment. So make sure you look into it - even if you have to pay for professional research - it will be worth your while.
If you're letting an agency manage your paid search, then make sure you ask them about your market - make sure they have done their homework thoroughly.
The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success
2. Know your target audience
Again an obvious one - and yet again people don't do this step properly. Don't just list out a bunch of demographics about your prospective customers. Get into character - engineer 'real-life' people profiles (avatars), describing everything about them.
Creating about 3 customer avatars for your business, will help you understand your customers, and thus you'll be able to anticipate how they behave. Knowing how they are likely to behave, will allow you to setup a VERY effective PPC campaign process, that will guarantee you success.
Remember - your customer just wants to feel understood, then if your product/service is good - they will buy.
3. Know what you want your visitor to do
In other words decide - do you want a prospect visiting your site to:
- call you to make an appointment?
- email you with more info about themselves, before setting up a consultation?
- click on the "Buy Now" button on your landing page?
- sign up to your membership site?
- sign up to your free newsletter?
- download a free report?
The clearer you are about what you want visitors to do, the easier it will be to entice them to do just that. If you don't tell your prospects what it is they need to do to progress this visit to something that is of benefit to them, they will click away, most likely to never be seen again...
4. Know how they look for you & your product - i.e. understand searcher intent
This one's not so obvious. Only very good paid search marketers know that keywords have different intent behind them. In other words, if a searcher on Google types in "running shoes" they are highly likely to be doing some preliminary research on what types of running shoes there are.
If the same searcher typed in "running shoes reviews" - then they are likely to be still researching - but they now know that they will buy - when they find the shoe that appeals to them.
A prospect with 'buying' intent, however, will likely type in "buy asics gel kayano running shoes" or "asics gel kayano stockists". You get the idea...
5. Start small - grow big later
This simply means that it is better to find the most suitable keyword phrases for your business, and run with that small group first. This will allow you to test the 'waters' and it will help you keep control of your budget.
Later on, when you know what works and what doesn't you can add other phrases to your heart's content.
6. Split test your ads
It is amazing how many people don't take advantage of this feature on Google AdWords. Split - testing will give you a constant way of improving on your ads. Your ad is the 'window' to your sales... so you cannot afford not to be constantly trying to make it better converting than before.
7. Use landing pages (LP)
Landing pages are powerful when using them correctly. They allow you complete control of what your visitor experiences. I always recommend that if you are only wanting one result from your prospect you should use LPs. But if your resources and knowledge are limited, then at least make sure you are leading the searcher to the most search-relevant page you have on your site.
8. Track everything
This says it all - even if you don't know how to, or with what - find someone that can help you. Outsource this job, or simply head over to Google and read all there is on their Analytics service. In some cases this is perfectly sufficient.
9. Listen to your stats
Once you have your tracking working, make sure you look at your stats to see the results. I recommend you look at them once a day in the beginning - depending on the size of your campaign, the amount of traffic your keywords are getting, and the amount of money you've budgeted to spend.
Once your campaign is working and making you profit, you can start looking at it less often, but at least once a week. Also make sure to optimize it regularly on the basis of your stats.
10. Learn consistently and constantly
Learn from your successes, your failures, your competitors' successes and their failures too... I have a document template that I use for all my campaigns called - Lessons Learned. It's only through experience that you will be able to progress and optimize any paid search campaign.
Well - hopefully you'll find the above list of PPC essentials very useful. Of course there are a lot of other important points to consider, like daily budget, competitive research, and return on investment requirements, but the above 10 will be able to start you off in a very strong way.
Bear in mind that whether you're managing your own PPC campaigns, or you're hiring a professional to do it - you can use the list above to make sure you're getting the best out of your campaigns.
source: Entireweb.com
Whether you're looking to do Paid Search Advertising yourself or to hire someone to do that for you - you should know what makes a Pay Per Click campaign successful - or you will end up suffering.
Paid search advertising may look deceptively easy to do. Countless times small business owners decide (and correctly so) that PPC is going to do wonders for their business and 'dive' right into it...
Unfortunately most of them don't really educate themselves enough on what to do and how to do it, and then they end up spending a helluva lot of money, with little to no results. Next they declare that Paid Search Marketing doesn't work and then they're out!
Alternatively, the small business owner hires an overpaid, over-promising PPC management firm, and lets them do whatever they like - not knowing what to be aware of in order to make sure he's getting the best possible results for the best price...
Well - despite the doom and gloom scenarios above, I'm here to tell you that PPC works for most businesses!
It works very well, and can be one of the best, quickest, most cost effective and best tracked medium of advertising/promotion there ever was... Sure, there are other ways you can market your business, but if you know how to, and if you want almost immediate results that are fully tracked - then PPC can't be beaten.
OK, let's get to the top 10 essentials of Pay Per Click marketing:
1. Know your market place
It's as obvious as daylight, but people still go into PPC without doing their research. Bear in mind that you may know your market place offline, but when you consider the internet - it may be a whole different environment. So make sure you look into it - even if you have to pay for professional research - it will be worth your while.
If you're letting an agency manage your paid search, then make sure you ask them about your market - make sure they have done their homework thoroughly.
The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per Click (PPC) Success
2. Know your target audience
Again an obvious one - and yet again people don't do this step properly. Don't just list out a bunch of demographics about your prospective customers. Get into character - engineer 'real-life' people profiles (avatars), describing everything about them.
Creating about 3 customer avatars for your business, will help you understand your customers, and thus you'll be able to anticipate how they behave. Knowing how they are likely to behave, will allow you to setup a VERY effective PPC campaign process, that will guarantee you success.
Remember - your customer just wants to feel understood, then if your product/service is good - they will buy.
3. Know what you want your visitor to do
In other words decide - do you want a prospect visiting your site to:
- call you to make an appointment?
- email you with more info about themselves, before setting up a consultation?
- click on the "Buy Now" button on your landing page?
- sign up to your membership site?
- sign up to your free newsletter?
- download a free report?
The clearer you are about what you want visitors to do, the easier it will be to entice them to do just that. If you don't tell your prospects what it is they need to do to progress this visit to something that is of benefit to them, they will click away, most likely to never be seen again...
4. Know how they look for you & your product - i.e. understand searcher intent
This one's not so obvious. Only very good paid search marketers know that keywords have different intent behind them. In other words, if a searcher on Google types in "running shoes" they are highly likely to be doing some preliminary research on what types of running shoes there are.
If the same searcher typed in "running shoes reviews" - then they are likely to be still researching - but they now know that they will buy - when they find the shoe that appeals to them.
A prospect with 'buying' intent, however, will likely type in "buy asics gel kayano running shoes" or "asics gel kayano stockists". You get the idea...
5. Start small - grow big later
This simply means that it is better to find the most suitable keyword phrases for your business, and run with that small group first. This will allow you to test the 'waters' and it will help you keep control of your budget.
Later on, when you know what works and what doesn't you can add other phrases to your heart's content.
6. Split test your ads
It is amazing how many people don't take advantage of this feature on Google AdWords. Split - testing will give you a constant way of improving on your ads. Your ad is the 'window' to your sales... so you cannot afford not to be constantly trying to make it better converting than before.
7. Use landing pages (LP)
Landing pages are powerful when using them correctly. They allow you complete control of what your visitor experiences. I always recommend that if you are only wanting one result from your prospect you should use LPs. But if your resources and knowledge are limited, then at least make sure you are leading the searcher to the most search-relevant page you have on your site.
8. Track everything
This says it all - even if you don't know how to, or with what - find someone that can help you. Outsource this job, or simply head over to Google and read all there is on their Analytics service. In some cases this is perfectly sufficient.
9. Listen to your stats
Once you have your tracking working, make sure you look at your stats to see the results. I recommend you look at them once a day in the beginning - depending on the size of your campaign, the amount of traffic your keywords are getting, and the amount of money you've budgeted to spend.
Once your campaign is working and making you profit, you can start looking at it less often, but at least once a week. Also make sure to optimize it regularly on the basis of your stats.
10. Learn consistently and constantly
Learn from your successes, your failures, your competitors' successes and their failures too... I have a document template that I use for all my campaigns called - Lessons Learned. It's only through experience that you will be able to progress and optimize any paid search campaign.
Well - hopefully you'll find the above list of PPC essentials very useful. Of course there are a lot of other important points to consider, like daily budget, competitive research, and return on investment requirements, but the above 10 will be able to start you off in a very strong way.
Bear in mind that whether you're managing your own PPC campaigns, or you're hiring a professional to do it - you can use the list above to make sure you're getting the best out of your campaigns.
source: Entireweb.com
May 29, 2009
Pay Per Click Advertising in Plain English
Pay Per Click Advertising in Plain English
Perry Marshall, in his Guide to Google AdWords, says this about PPC advertising:
“[It] is about getting in front of people who are looking for what you sell right this moment and get them to respond.”
You have the ability to reach your target market instantly, and get them to make a
decision on your product/service. And that’s not just it.
It takes just 10 minutes for you to set up an ad campaign in Google AdWords -and
immediately after your ad is ready, it will start bringing in traffic to your websites. No matter
what you’re selling, you have a chance, in 10 minutes, to start making sales.
What other advertising platform let’s you make a sale that fast?
Better question -how can YOU use this speed (of getting an idea to the market and testing
it almost instantly) to your advantage?
The biggest advantage of PPC advertising is that you can test new business ideas quickly
and cheaply by running an ad campaign for a few hours and monitoring its results. This
alone can save you thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in advertising and
product creation -but only if you do it right (I’ll show you how to in the next 6 chapters).
Pay-per-click advertising operates on two simple premises:
•
You pay only for visitors that come to your site (no upfront costs -every “click” while
being an expense is also a chance for you to convert that visitor into a customer).
You pay a certain amount “per click” on your ad. If nobody clicks on your ad, you
don’t pay a dime… and also get no visitors. The goal is to get many TARGETED visitors,
while paying as little as possible per click.
•
Your ads are displayed in the search engines according to what people are
searching / looking for. (i.e. If someone search for “weight loss” and you’re bidding
on the term “weight loss”, your ad will be displayed when someone searches for that
phrase.)
There are two major PPC ad engines:
1. Google AdWords
2. Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture).
While they are both very effective in pulling in traffic, I exclusively use Google AdWords
(and I’ll explain why in just a minute).
Having said that, I don’t discourage you from using YSM. In certain niche markets the YSM
network is still not hyper-saturated (unlike AdWords, where the competition is higher) and
you may be able to realize serious short-term gains if you play the PPC game right.
What I would discourage you from is to using a PPC ad network other than AdWords or
YSM. Beyond these two the situation is pretty bleak with poor traffic quality, click fraud and
lack of a sizeable user base all contributing to an abject failure.
source: superearn.net
Perry Marshall, in his Guide to Google AdWords, says this about PPC advertising:
“[It] is about getting in front of people who are looking for what you sell right this moment and get them to respond.”
You have the ability to reach your target market instantly, and get them to make a
decision on your product/service. And that’s not just it.
It takes just 10 minutes for you to set up an ad campaign in Google AdWords -and
immediately after your ad is ready, it will start bringing in traffic to your websites. No matter
what you’re selling, you have a chance, in 10 minutes, to start making sales.
What other advertising platform let’s you make a sale that fast?
Better question -how can YOU use this speed (of getting an idea to the market and testing
it almost instantly) to your advantage?
The biggest advantage of PPC advertising is that you can test new business ideas quickly
and cheaply by running an ad campaign for a few hours and monitoring its results. This
alone can save you thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of dollars in advertising and
product creation -but only if you do it right (I’ll show you how to in the next 6 chapters).
Pay-per-click advertising operates on two simple premises:
•
You pay only for visitors that come to your site (no upfront costs -every “click” while
being an expense is also a chance for you to convert that visitor into a customer).
You pay a certain amount “per click” on your ad. If nobody clicks on your ad, you
don’t pay a dime… and also get no visitors. The goal is to get many TARGETED visitors,
while paying as little as possible per click.
•
Your ads are displayed in the search engines according to what people are
searching / looking for. (i.e. If someone search for “weight loss” and you’re bidding
on the term “weight loss”, your ad will be displayed when someone searches for that
phrase.)
There are two major PPC ad engines:
1. Google AdWords
2. Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture).
While they are both very effective in pulling in traffic, I exclusively use Google AdWords
(and I’ll explain why in just a minute).
Having said that, I don’t discourage you from using YSM. In certain niche markets the YSM
network is still not hyper-saturated (unlike AdWords, where the competition is higher) and
you may be able to realize serious short-term gains if you play the PPC game right.
What I would discourage you from is to using a PPC ad network other than AdWords or
YSM. Beyond these two the situation is pretty bleak with poor traffic quality, click fraud and
lack of a sizeable user base all contributing to an abject failure.
source: superearn.net
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