About PPC Advertising:
Part 6: Savvy and Smarts
Adwords Savvy
On one level, Adwords is a game, spending as little as possible to get as many clicks as possible. Learning what to offer Google for your keywords is not rocket science - you try for a while, see what happens, and adjust.
What Bids Can Buy
- Pay more per click => your ad appears higher up
- People see your ad first => they click it first
- More ad clicks => more visitors to your landing pages
To play the "spend as little as possible" game properly, however, bids are not enough. As the preceding pages have explained, the amount Google charges you per click is a function of the competition for keywords, but also the connection between your keywords, your ad text, and your landing page.
How Adwords Savvy Helps
- Pick better keywords => get seen more often
- Configure the campaign better => get clicked more often
- Ad copy matches keywords => pay less per click
- Landing page copy matches keywords => pay less per click
Marketing Smarts
Bidding budgets and Adwords savvy means you pay less, but do not guarantee returns on your investment. If your landing page visitors bounce. you are getting a great deal on the chance to make a bad impression on the very people you need to build a relationship with.
The more people you compete with, the harder it is to win. Anyone can take a photo with a digital camera, so photographers have to market themselves much harder. The same is true of pay-per-click advertising. You need to get good to get good results.
Why Marketing Smarts Matters
- If keywords are well chosen, you get the right clicks.
- If your offer is compelling, you get more clicks.
- If your landing page design is compelling, you buy fewer bounces, more sales
It is easy to lose a lot of money on Adwords, buying expensive clicks for pages that do not sell. If you have a marketing budget, you can afford to hire an expert to make sure you make money, even if you'll sharing it with him or her.
How much should you budget for PPC ads and marketing help?
