Simplify the Web

So you want to start a Pay-Per-Click Advertising campaign. Pay-Per-Click is a great way to drive traffic to your site without having to wait for your natural listing to bring traffic. However, should you start it? Are you ready to start it? I heard a client ask a few of those questions recently and figured it would benefit all to make a post about it here.

One question was Which engine do I start with? I usually suggest Google, for obvious reasons (they're a majority leader in searching on the Internet), and it's easy to start in and get a feel of Pay-Per-Click before branching off into other engines and other online marketing techniques. So, without further ado, here are a couple of questions and their answers:

How much is the average monthly spend? I have heard this question many times, and I have heard the answer so many different ways. Well we work off an average monthly spend of 'X' so you have to spend at least that... or In order to be competitive you need to be in the top five results and based on suggested outlines and estimates it's going to be 'X' dollars.... I'm not sure I truly agree with that approach. Let's face it, you're a small business and costs are tight. Going to a company that expects you to spend X amount of dollars in Pay-Per-Click is probably not what you're looking for when trying to start a Pay-Per-Click campaign. Instead ask yourself this question: How much do I have in my budget to spend in online marketing per month? If you answer that question, then the rest is just details. If you answer that question, then you know how much you can spend monthly in Pay-Per-Click and you don't have to ask what the average spend is...it's not your worry, you know how much you can afford to spend and thus don't have to worry about what other people are spending.

Should I really start Pay-Per-Click? Ultimately, it's an answer only you can figure out. Pay-Per-Click is a great venue for advertising on the web, however; realize that the nature of Pay-Per-Click is to send you traffic, what you do with it is up to you. I have a relative who spoke of his mother in-law that threw up a site to sell children's books. She heard of Google and signed up for an account. In one day she had $700 worth of traffic sent to her site. She panicked and shut down the campaign and wondered why so many people came to her site, yet no one purchased. That seems to be the conundrum for many out there; why pay so much to get nothing in return? Google and other Search Engines don't contract to get you results, they promise to send you traffic...it's up to you and your site to convert. Before you start a Pay-Per-Click campaign; make sure you can handle the traffic and do something with it. Making sure you have a call to action on your landing page or some visible way for people to continue to where you want them to go is crucial to a successful campaign. If all of your traffic goes to the home page and there isn't something on that page that is relevant to your search terms...then people just won't spend the time to find it...you have to give it to them.

In Conclusion Entering Pay-Per-Click Advertising wth a game plan is like entering the site design phase with a plan. If you know where you're going then you know where you will end up. Check your site and its functionality for what you want it to do. Is it able to convert people? Drive traffic through to a measurable metric? If so, then start looking into Pay-Per-Click Advertising and how it can help you. Otherwise, spend quality time on fixing your functional issues before you go spend a lot of money on traffic that won't help you. ~Thomas

• Do you want leads from the site?
• Do you want to sell on the site?
• Do you just want your site to legitimize who you are?

2. Who's your demographic?
Another way to say this is who is your perfect customer? If you had a customer walk up to you looking for your services, what would they need to know or have to be perfect for you? The advantages to the web is that you tend to get away from the standard demographics that traditional media types have, like race, age, etc.

You should know who you are looking for. Knowing who you are looking for and what you want your site to do for you will help to keep control of the situation of your site development and help to make sure you get what you are looking for not and a So-So site.

3.What's your marketing plan?
Let's face it; as much as we would love to tell you that Internet is the way to go...that's not always the case. Analyzing what your marketing has been like in the past, and taking in suggestions from others in your market may help you to see if building a site and then spending thousand of dollars in online marketing is worth it.

Many people run out and get a google adwords campaign the moment they get a site up. You should step back and see if your site is ready for that. Sure, you could probably spend a lot of money and get a lot of traffic; however, if you don't have a clear call to action on the landing pages then the effort to drive traffic to your site would be a waste, as no one would know what to do on that page.

Step back assess the situation; are you trying to reach a target market of people that may not be technically inclined; then perhaps mailers and direct email marketing would work fo you better than link building on technical websites that they wouldn't know how to get to.

In conclusion:
Ultimately it is your call and your site. Don't feel like you're turning your site and online presence over to someone who knows how to make a site. They may know how to make a site, but you know how to reach your clientele and should have a strategy going into things. Take a few minutes answer some of the questions above and you will be miles ahead of your competition!