Introduction To Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

PPC, whether it's Google's AdWords or any other similar program, allows advertisers to bid for positioning of their ads on the search engine results page. To a limited degree, the higher your bid, the higher your ad will be positioned, although there are other factors, such as the quality and quantity of information you have on your landing page.

For just about anyone starting a new website, PPC is the fastest route to generating traffic. In most cases, you can begin seeing traffic within minutes of starting your PPC campaign.

There are several advantages to PPC -

1) You only pay for traffic that actually clicks on your ads.

2) You don't have to spend time with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), trying to show up at the top of the search engine results pages.

3) You don't have to wait weeks or maybe even months for the search engines to find and index your website.

4) You can have traffic to your website within minutes of starting your PPC advertising campaign.

5) It's easy to split test ad copy, make refinements and test again.

6) You can start out small, then increase your exposure after you've fine-tuned your campaigns for maximum results.

There are also some drawbacks to PPC advertising -

1) Usually, you only have a few words with which to convince potential customers to visit your website.

2) Keyword selections, which are extremely important, can be quite a chore to compile. Research and understanding of your target audience is required.

3) Costs, if not properly managed, can quickly deplete your advertising budget.

There are horror stories of marketers that have spent thousands of dollars in PPC advertising without generating much at all in the way of sales.

There are many factors to consider -

As with most business matters, there are many considerations you'll need to ponder before you run out and fire up your new PPC advertising campaign.

First of all, just exactly what is your goal? Are you trying to attract subscribers to your newsletter, or are you actively trying to sell a product? How you structure your PPC ads will be dictated to a large extent by your goal.

If you're building a mailing list, you'll probably want to offer a free, downloadable report or ebook, maybe even some free but useful software. If you're trying to sell a product, you may want to offer a free ecourse in order to educate your prospects. Of course, you can also go right for the sale immediately if your product has enough instant appeal.

PPC ads are quite short - sort of like the classified ads you see in newspapers. In most cases, like with AdWords, you have a title that consists of 25 characters maximum, followed by 2 lines of text that can contain no more than 35 characters each.

Since you have so few words to work with, you'll have to make sure that each and every word augments the performance of your ad. You want your ad to catch the viewer's attention, spark interest and finally, turn the reader into an actual visitor to your website. That's a pretty tall order for only 15 - 20 words, so every word has to count in achieving the final goal.

When composing your PPC ad, remember - its only job is to generate enough interest to get the click. Never try to sell directly in the PPC ad, that's a task best left for your salespage where you can use all the words you need to state your case!

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