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Pay-Per-Click (Ppc) Advertising

Posted by BlogPostman under Pay-Per-Click

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Pay-per-click is one of the most cost-effective advertising programs available today. Offered by many search engines, pay per click programs allow you to bid on keywords relevant to your site. When those keywords are searched on, the search engine would display your ad (i.e., a link to your site) on the results page along with natural (non-paid) search results. If you do a keyword search on Google, you’d get the natural results on the left column along with paid ads on the right. Advertisers are charged only when their ads are clicked on. Some search engines display paid advertisements above non-paid search results; others, like Google, devote more distinguishable sections of the page to paid and non-paid results. Generally, the higher you bid on a keyword, the higher your ad will be placed in search results for that keyword. The two major players in pay per click are Google Adwords and Overture, a Yahoo! company. Unlike the usual URL submission process, which could take several weeks or months for your site to be listed, pay-per-click will allow your site to appear in search results almost immediately (ah…the miracle of money!). We routinely use pay-per-click to bring instant traffic to a new site while waiting for the search engines to index it. This site, for example, is getting around 200 visitors a day just from our Google Adwords campaign alone. For this site, we might target such keywords as “website promotion”, “search engine optimization”, and “URL submission”.  The only problem is, our competitors are willing to pay up to $5.00 a click on these keywords.  Since this site contains mostly free content and is likely to generate minimal revenues, there is no way we can compete with them.  We could bid $0.05 a click on these keywords on Google, but chances are, our ad won’t be shown very often as Google can make a lot more money by showing our competitors’ ads. Alternatively, we might target less popular keywords like “free website promotion tips” or “free URL submission”. True, there will be fewer searches on these keywords, but there’ll also be fewer advertisers competing for them. Overture has a nice Keyword Selector Tool for estimating how often a particular keyword will be searched on.  Another excellent tool from Overture is their View Bids Tool, which allows you to see how much people are willing to pay for a keyword.  We use the  Keyword Selector Tool in conjunction with View Bids Tool to find less popular keywords that have low or no bids from other advertisers.  Google Adwords requires a minimum bid of $0.05 a click on a keyword, and Overture sets the minimum at $0.10.  For a non-commercial site that generates little or no revenue, it is hard to justify paying  $0.10 or even $0.05 for every visitor you get.  Fortunately, there are smaller companies offering lower minimum bids.  WebLaunch.us, our very own PPC program, offers keyword bidding starting at just $0.01 a click.  A potential disadvantage of using smaller pay-per-click search engines is that they do not have the reach of the 900-pound gorillas.  For best results, we recommend that you use a combination of both  large and smaller PPC programs to get the most out of your investment. Oudam Em     http://scrnch.me/oqi7d Thanks for reading and I wish you all the success! JanuszJanulis © 2003-2010 World Marketing Media, Inc. JanuszJanulis© 2003-2010 World Marketing Media, Inc. Article Source

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Pay-Per-Click (Ppc) Advertising

2010 MarketingSherpa Social Media Marketing Guide

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One of the most trusted sources of marketing research and information is MarketingSherpa. I’ve been a subscriber for many years and always look forward to the reports on Search Marketing, Email Marketing and B2B Marketing. Last year MarketingSherpa started conducting research and publishing a Benchmark Report on social media marketing. The new Social Media Marketing Benchmark Report (affiliate link) was recently released and I’ve had a few days to take a look and will provide a review for our readers. As you can expect, this guide is a “meaty” 250 plus pages of research, charts & tables, examples and well written advice. Over 2,000 marketers participated in the survey covering a myriad of topics ranging from strategy to forecasting & budgeting to integration with other marketing channels to specific research on social applications such as Twitter, Facebook and blogs. MarketingSherpa emphasizes strategy with this edition and has coined an acronym similar to a phrase we’ve often used here on Online Marketing Blog, “ Social Media Roadmap “. What MarketingSherpa introduces in this report is “ROAD” Map, which stands for R esearch, O bjectives, A ctions and D evices.  The ROAD Map guide along with determining what phase a company is in with it’s social media maturity, helps determine next steps, planning and execution. Based on my personal experience with a variety of companies at different stages of the social media maturity model, I think this emphasis on strategy is warranted. There has been an overemphasis on “strategy before tactics” as of late, but without any useful model to act on. This most recent guide from MarketingSherpa offers a methodology many “social media gurus” are lacking. For a while, social tactics and the latest “shiny object” captured marketers attention. Then came more business minded advice suggesting the need for a social strategy.  Most companies have heard of and had staff use a variety of social tactics.  That initial familiarity brings companies to a stage of “I get it, but what next?”.  That’s where a Social Media Roadmap, or in the case of this report, ROAD Map come in to play. Companies’ used of social media is in transition from trial to strategic and the five chapters dedicated to ROAD Map offer more than enough data and examples for most companies to make confident next steps. Besides the strategy, tactics, technology and tools that are covered in this report (plus research findings), there are several special reports which offer sage advice on consumer social media experience (Social Media Friends, Followers and Max Connectors) and integration with other marketing channels such as Email and Search Engine Optimization (did I hear Social SEO anyone?). There are also chapters dealing with social media and agencies, regulating employee use of social media, social media and IT, and the inevitable comparisons between business and personal use. On the research findings, social media budgets will be increasing substantially over last year. Most will go towards people resources and the rest to technology and services. Many companies do not plan to outsource much of their social media marketing activities so many of the survey respondents did not indicate much budget going to hiring outside agencies. One interesting stat was that social media budgets (11%) edged out SEO (10%). Is this the sign of a trend? It’s more complicated than that because the lines between SEO and Social Media are very, very blurry. The trend we’ll see is that social media (like SEO a few years ago) will draw budget away from other channels until it matures and gets it’s own cost center and budget. Another interesting observation was that “B2C marketers lead their B2B counterparts in the formulation and consistent implementation of social marketing  practices.” I’ve said many times that social media is a platform, not a tactic. That means it touches many other communication and marketing channels in an organization. It’s not a stand alone discipline.  According to the MarketingSherpa Guide, Social Media integrates best with Web sites, Email, Search Engine Optimization and Public Relations. How are organizations measuring social media success?  The Business.com Social Media Benchmarking Stud y shows companies are surprisingly unsophisticated in this area, relying mostly on Google tools such as Alerts or Yahoo Alerts. That spells a HUGE opportunity for social media monitoring service providers as these companies mature in their use and expectations for measurement. This is a very hefty report and I would recommend it only if you’ll actually read it and implement the suggestions. If you read and use only 10% of the insight in this guide you will have paid the approximate $450 cost many times over. I understand many companies are still feeling tight budgets but I have to say, you probably can’t afford NOT to get this guide. You can get more information on the guide from the Marketing Sherpa web site (affiliate link).