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Six PPC Bidding Strategies that Will Help You Get the Most Bang for Your Advertising Buck!

March 28, 2008 | By admin In Bidding Strategies |

A lot of people think the only way to develop a successful pay-per-click campaign is to get the highest ranking with a popular keyword in the top two PPC search engines, Overture
(http://www.overture.com) and Google AdWords (http://www.google.com/ads).

Now, it’s true that a top-ranked ad with either of these two industry giants will guarantee your site a lot of exposure (as long as you’re bidding on keywords that a substantial number of people are searching for).

The problem is that you often have to pay more for these
#1 spots. And in the case of the more competitive keywords, this can means bids of $1.50 to $5.00 (or more!) per click.

If you want to be successful with the PPC search engines, you need to bid on keywords that attract clicks from “qualified”
buyers (as opposed to “tire-kickers” who will drive your costs
up) while keeping your bids as low as possible.

Here are some tips that will help you accomplish this:

1. FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD TO BID

This might sound obvious, but it needs to be said: Don’t bid more than you can afford! A lot of businesses make this mistake.

Before you pay for advertising of any sort, calculate the value of a single visitor to your web site. Once you know what ONE visitor is worth, you’ll know the maximum amount you can afford to pay per click.

2. “NUMBER ONE” ISN’T ALWAYS BEST!

You don’t always need to be ranked #1 for keywords to attract visitors. Sure, it helps if your ad appears in the top 10 results. But people click on listings featured on the second and even third page of results for competitive keywords.

So run some tests! Vary your bids so that your listing appears higher and lower on the page and see what effect the ranking has on your profits. You may actually find that for more costly keywords, a slightly lower ranking is more profitable.

3. BID ON LOW-COST VARIATIONS AND COMMON MISSPELLINGS

Frequently, you will see businesses bidding as much as $5.00 a click for popular keywords — while NOBODY is bidding on common misspellings and similar keywords that cost just pennies per click!

Use Wordtracker http://www.wordtracker.com to locate keywords that relate to your business and are frequently searched by your market, but that none of your competitors are bidding on.

4. BID ON HIGHLY TARGETED PHRASES WITH LESS TRAFFIC

Rather than bid on a handful of “general” keywords, which tend to be more expensive because they get the highest number of searches, bid on dozens — or even hundreds — of highly “targeted” keywords, which tend to be cheap.

For example, instead of bidding on “pet supplies,” you might bid on “red dog leash,” “oversize dog kennel,” and “cat toys with bells.”

You’ll see better sales conversions on the more targeted keywords because they attract more qualified buyers. And since no one is bidding on these keywords, your advertising costs associated with this traffic are extremely low!

Another benefit of this strategy is that you can direct these qualified visitors to a page that gives them exactly what they’re looking for. In the above example, your listing for the keyword, “oversize dog kennel” could link directly to your dog kennel catalog page, rather than the home page of your pet supply store.

5. CREATE SEPARATE ADS FOR EACH PRODUCT OR SERVICE YOU SELL

This is an extremely effective strategy, but very few businesses are using it: Write ads specific to each keyword and phrase you bid on.

For example, instead writing an ad for “sporting goods,”
write one for “quality leather soccer balls,” another for “discount ladies’ tennis shoes,” and so on.

These customized ads will attract more attention (and clicks!) from qualified buyers. And of course, you’ll be able to convert more of these visitors to buyers if you direct them to a page on your site with the exact product or service they’re searching for.

6. GET LISTED IN RELEVANT SPECIALTY SEARCH ENGINES

Did you know that there are specialty PPC search engines that target different markets — like brides, pet owners, antique collectors, car owners, etc.?

Check out http://www.PayPerClickSearchEngines.com to see if there are any relevant to YOUR business that might be worth getting listed in.