Pay per click (PPC) marketing is one of the best ways to get instant targeted traffic. PPC is amazing because it allows you to do so many things with ease. You generate affiliates, test out landing pages, test out sales pages, test keyword variations to target for SEO, and more. It's an amazing way to promote products online and it's unique because it's ability to get fast results.
The 2 biggest PPC search engines are Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Google Ads is bigger (as it's owned by Google), and Microsoft Ads is owned by Bing. You will get most of your traffic from Google Ads, but Microsoft Ads can get you high quality traffic also. You just want to be more specific with the targeting of keywords, your budget, and your keyword cost per click (CPC).
I know these abbreviations and terms may be a lot to remember, but I assure you that they're very simple. Pay per click is so great because of it's ability to let you predict the results you can get. If you know the math of your business in advance, and you're getting certain results on pay per click networks, you can tweak certain aspects of your campaigns so that the numbers work out in your favor.
But there are a lot of other pay per click search engines out there. Now you should know that I don't typically recommend these other PPC networks. This is mainly because they're synonymous with click fraud, and poor traffic. You will find that the cost per click for keywords is amazingly cheaper than those on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. While you may pay $1-$3 for a click for a particular keyword on Google and Microsoft Ads, on lower tier PPC networks, you might pay 5-10 cents per click for those same keywords. Don't expect to get good results with those networks.
The only time those networks have decent traffic is when you're promoting something illicit. That's as far as I'll go regarding downplaying the other PPC networks, but this is something that you need to know before you start investing hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on these other programs. You may say to yourself, "Wow, I have no competition on these other networks!", but you should know you have no competition because no one else who knows what they're doing knows to stay away from those sites.
You will be bidding against yourself. And you will be losing every time. You will invest your money into these low grade PPC networks convinced that if you just "tweak" some aspect of your campaign that you will get leads and sales. Unfortunately, it won't happen like that. You can tweak things as much as you want, but you will be unable to get any leads and sales that you're looking for. So it's best if you stick with Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, and make sure the math in your business works with the bidding of keywords that you're targeting.
So once you're on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, what kinds of strategies should you be implementing so that you can get the best results as possible? Well I'm going to give you a few tips that you can use to gain the upper edge and advantage over your competitors. Let's get started with this first tip. This is something I stumbled upon when doing a different form of marketing that involved email marketing:
1) Target tier 1 countries
If you sell globally, it doesn't make sense to sell to an audience that doesn't have the financial capabilities to buy your products. Also, if your primary language is English, you want your prospects to be able to speak English. Therefore, you will want to target the top 5 countries who have the most financial capabilities to buy, and who also speak English. These countries are: USA, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that these are the only countries that have people who speak English and have the financial capacity to buy. Many people in countries around the world meet this criteria, but these 5 countries are the top ones that you will want to target for overall campaign effectiveness. I'm not trying to disrespect other countries, but if you want to get virtually bonafied results, you will want to stick to these 5 countries. Here's another pay per click marketing strategy:
2) Don't put all your keywords into 1 ad group
It's best to have multiple campaigns, and more importantly, more than 1 ad group. Me personally, I have to 2 sets of PPC keywords that I bid on. I have those keywords that I bid $1-$1.50 cents on, and then another set of keywords that I bid $0.50-$0.75 cents on. I do this because I've found that the high costing set of keywords convert better for me, and the lower costing set of keywords convert well - but not as good as the higher costing ones.
So for the lower costing set, I get more clicks, but the conversion rates are lower. So to compensate, I lower the cost of those keywords so that they can equal out to the same conversion rates that the higher costing keywords give me. Other people have their own reasons for creating multiple ad groups for the same campaign. When you get started, you will also have your own reasons. This is what I do, and I've found that this works best for me. Here's the last PPC tip I want to give to you:
3) Never bid on broad match keywords
Don't ever bid on broad match keyword terms. Broad means bidding on a keyword raw. For example, if I wanted to bid on the keyword "bicycle tires", here's how broad match, phrase match, and exact match keyword types would look:
BROAD MATCH: bicycle tires
PHRASE MATCH: "bicycle tires"
EXACT MATCH: [bicycle tires]
When you bid on broad match keywords, you will get clicks on your ad for anything search query that contains the word "bicycle" and "tires". This is a virtually guaranteed way to blow your budget and destroy your campaign. It's been my experience that phrase match keyword types has worked best for me.
Exact match keywords are great, but they're very expensive and very competitive - and they don't necessarily guarantee sales or lead conversions when you bid on them.
These 3 pay per click marketing strategies are tips that you should keep in mind before spending a single dime on ads. Follow my advice and you'll be on the right path to success.
