The main goal for any individual running an internet marketing campaign is, of course, to achieve good positions within the search engines results for a number of relevant keywords that are known to convert into sales. This means that when an internet user searches using your specified keywords, they should find your website towards the top of the list. In an ideal world, everyone would be able to achieve this through natural / organic search using good search engine optimisation (SEO) techniques. However, as a result of the degree of competition inherent in many sectors and the many months required to attain strong rankings — even when you do everything perfectly — many are driven to use pay-per-click (PPC) marketing either as an interim solution or indeed as a strategic long-term approach for a given site, thus appearing as paid or sponsored listings on the relevant search engine results pages (SERPs). So what is involved?

Any campaign must drive relevant traffic to your site which converts into revenue. In the case of affiliate sites, this will primarily be through commission paid via the merchant or affiliate network for sales generated through click-outs via affiliate links on your site. Whilst in principle this may sound a simple enough task, the devil is in the detail!

The Right Keywords
Let’s start with the basics. Keywords are king in a PPC campaign (and indeed in a natural search campaign which we will cover in other articles). What keywords will actually drive traffic that will convert well? What keywords can you afford? These two questions often have conflicting answers. The very keywords that will drive the best quality traffic are often going to cost so much that only merchants and high volume affiliates with special deals will ever actually make a margin on them. But not always.

It is incredibly easy to lose money on a PPC campaign. Almost anyone who has ever run one will have made a loss at some stage. So, back to keywords — try to find a ’sweet spot’ between relevance and cost / level of competition. It may also surprise some of you to discover the generic keywords really don’t generally convert particularly well. Perhaps you have a niche site selling ‘Solid Oak Wardrobes’. Buying traffic searching for ‘wardrobes’ will attract everyone looking for high street MDF cheapies through to designer wardrobes costing thousands from a central London boutique. ‘Oak wardrobes’ is here a far more realistic term.

However you also need to look at volumes. Most of the major PPC engines will offer some kind of guidance as to likely search volumes for a given keyword. You need to look at volumes and your daily / monthly budget and work up a list of keywords that you reasonably believe will drive sufficient, relevant traffic at a sensible unit cost. You will need to monitor the campaign and adjust the number and scope of the keywords, constantly refining it to stay within the parameters you have set.

Click Through Ratio and Position
The major PPC engines now rank adverts, even those with significant different bid prices, based in no small part on the click-through ratio (CTR), in addition to keyword bid prices. Thus a well designed ad, correctly targeted, can potentially drive good volumes of traffic even if the bid price for the keyword is relatively modest. Equally you can be paying top dollar for a keyword and driving little traffic because your CTR is too low and your display position has thus drifted down. Again this is all about selecting the right keywords and of course crafting the best possible advertorial (see below).

Brand Bidding
This is now a major driver in keyword selection for a PPC campaign. Many merchants have now imposed constraints on bidding for their brand names. The reason is simple: if an affiliate bids on the brand and drives traffic and sales, the commission paid to the affiliate will generally outweigh the cost of the merchant driving the same traffic through direct PPC advertising in a well managed campaign. After all – why else would the affiliate bother! Affiliates bidding on brands thus drive up a merchant’s costs which, together with other effects on brand value and perception (and a strong desire to control these) is why many merchants have restrictions in place. Failing to adhere to the restrictions is likely to result in commissions being reversed or not paid and in removal from the affiliate programme in question.

Budgeting
The key here is to set a budget and to stick to it. Harder than it may sound. It is tempting to turn a trickle of traffic into a torrent by upping your daily limits with the PPC engines — but make sure that it is REALLY converting and that you have the financial resources to cover the costs.

Selecting a PPC Engine
Google Ad Words is probably the best known. For precisely this reason, unit PPC costs are frequently higher in Google than elsewhere although few engines can match Google’s coverage or indeed their campaign management and reporting facilities. There are a myriad of niche and sector specific search engines which may provide relevant traffic at a far lower unit cost. Other commonly used engines include Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture), MSN AdCenter and MIVA. As with most things, a mix of engines is better than a single source although it can make sense to start slowly with one engine and add more.

PPC Bid Tools
If you are running volume campaigns involving a large number of keywords and / or multiple search engines, you may also decide that you need some automated help in the form of bid management and campaign management tools. Whilst each search engine will provide some of this functionality as part of its user interface, most will only work on keywords managed within that particular engine. There are number of excellent software applications and online tools that use the search engines’ APIs (interfaces) to extract and manage the keyword and bid / cost data in one place. We may review these separately at some point here at lammo.net.

Quality Scoring
In addition to brand bidding constraints and the wider economics of choosing the right keywords for your campaign, many of the search engines, particularly Google and Yahoo have strict quality guidelines with respect to the landing page for your campaign and will massively elevate your PPC unit costs if your page fails to meet these criteria — or indeed may not authorise the bid / campaign at all. This is designed to eliminate pass-through, redirect and arbitrage approaches which adversely affect user perceptions of paid advertising. You need a good quality, information-rich site with relevant landing pages to which to direct your PPC traffic.

Advertorial
Entire books have been written on creating effective PPC advertorial – the text to appear on your PPC ads. In essence, keep it simple and ensure that you emphasise the right points including price where applicable. Also ensure that the landing page URL displayed in the ad makes it clear that the site and page IS relevant to the ad. Ask yourself a question: if you were looking for an Oak Wardrobe, would you click on this ad? Also use the work of others as input – you can be sure that they will have been through a similar process and will have fine-tuned their ads accordingly. Don’t simply plagiarise but do take valuable pointers from the efforts of others. Be prepared to continually fine tune your advertorial.

Making it all Work
Perhaps the greatest joy of pay per click advertising is that the results are almost instant. Not only does this contrast sharply with the many months often required to achieve organic search results, but it provides instant feedback and input that allows you to constantly adjust and in some cases experiment with bids, keywords, advertorial and of course your landing pages themselves. In addition to the key factors above, also ensure that you are targeting the right country and audience. For example, consider switching off UK ads overnight so you don’t pay for US traffic!

If you approach your PPC marketing campaign in the right way it can be a cost effective strategy. With so many factors to accommodate, you should always start slowly and carefully and build experience before making major financial commitments to a given campaign. Good luck!

Further Pay per click Affiliate Marketing Information

Wealth City – A list of home business options with reviews and tips on how to make money online…..  
wealth-city.com

Online Home Business Ideas and Opportunities – Start your own online home business and get legitimate online business ideas and work at home income opportunity tips. Find extensive details on home income resources, home internet business websites and internet income training….  
cyns-home-biz.com

Pay-Per-Click Advertising – More Pro`s Search Engine Marketing (Pay-Per-Click) services allow you to achieve the maximum number of qualified visitors for the least amount of money through keyphrase research, statistical visitor analysis, pricing strategies and years of experience. Get help with Yahoo! Search Marketing, Google Adwords, MSN adCenter and other PPC engines….  
morepro.com

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!

You might also like to read...