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Pay per click -PPC- Tips for Newbies

There are many Pay per Click (PPC) "newbies" or beginners out there who burn through their advertising budgets with little equitable return for their advertising investment. If you are new to PPC, take notice! Advertising is an investment and not just an expense. PPC advertising should always be regarded as such. Many new PPC advertisers who may be unfamiliar with running a successful campaign may benefit from a few beginner tips. Here are several pay per click tips which can help beginners turn their expense into an investment:

1. Use a keyword research tool to help generate search phrases that your audience is looking for. There are many keyword tools out there that work well and most of them are free. You will develop your own preference over which one you prefer, try these free tools: Google’s keyword tool, Yahoo Search Marketing’s (Overture) and MSN Research Labs. Wordtracker is also a good tool, probably the best in regards to the paid tools available.

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2. Organize, organize and organize! Don't put all of your eggs in one basket. You will want to organize your adgroups or categories by keyword relevancy. If you were selling tattoo equipment, you shouldn’t create one adgroup with a host of keywords related to all of your products. You will want to create a separate adgroup or category for each item you are selling. In this case, an adgroup or category named "tattoo kits", "tattoo needles", and "tattoo artwork". You get the idea.

3. Put your keyword or search term in your ad’s title. When you organize your keywords by centralized themes as above, you will better target your ads to reflect the keywords they represent. This will help increase your quality score, and lower your average cost per click, as allowing your ad to better target your visitors (Could be worded better). Also remember, Google bolds keywords listed in your ads. Don’t overdo it, but you must have your keyword in your title at a minimum. When your keyword phrase is longer than 25 characters (Google’s limit), truncate the phrase to identify what you are advertising. For example, if you are targeting the phrase "Tattoo equipment supply kits", for your tattoo kit product, the selected keyword phrase would not fit within the title. Here it would be best to use your product that you are selling in the title, "Tattoo Kit" or "Quality Tattoo Kit". This identifies what you are selling and matches nicely with the lengthy keyword phrase you are advertising with.

4. Turn the content network off. Yes, I said off. You will reduce your overall reach, but you need to keep quality traffic related to what you are offering in mind. With content network you will often get people who are clicking your ads for curiosity’s sake. Most beginning PPC advertisers lose money on the content network, so turn content network off if you are new to PPC.

5. Be conservative with your conversion estimates. Because you are probably the owner or directly involved with your product or service, you may overestimate how many people will buy your product or signup for your service. You should spend enough per click to make money, while ensuring you don’t lose money. A one percent conversion estimate is very conservative across the board. Your actual conversion rate may be higher or it may be lower, but one percent provides a good starting point.

So, at a one percent conversion rate this means that for every 100 clicks reached, you will receive one sale or conversion. To find out what the maximum cost per click should be in order to break even, you will need to divide your profit per sale by 100. For example, let’s revisit "tattoo kits." If your profit is 40% on your $150 tattoo kit, you shouldn’t spend higher than $0.60 per click or you will lose money. Here is the math:

First calculate your profit per sale. In this case, we earn $0.40 for every $1.00. So, $0.40 X $150 gives you $60.00 profit per tattoo kit sold at $150.00 with a 40% profit margin.

To tie the profit margin into what is the maximum cost per click. We take $60.00 divided by 100 for Profit / (conversion rate). This gives us a break even figure for a maximum cost of $0.60 per click. We would lose money if we paid higher than $0.60 per click with a one percent conversion rate.

To summarize, this is five tips to guide a beginner in the right direction for earning a profit or breaking even. The key here is to provide you with the enough know how, so that you don’t lose money. Be aware that there is a lot to learn to master the running of a successful PPC campaign. While printed materials are limited in regards to how to achieve a successful PPC campaign, you should research articles and online guides to help expand your expertise. If you have a large, complex campaign and not enough time to properly research how to run a profitable PPC campaign, look into hiring a search marketing agency or certified professional.

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