Did you know you can use PPC to upsell your clients on your product lines? It’s not bait and switch if you do it the right way. Let’s say you have a Super-Duper Widget that you just have to get out to market, but customers are still hot on your old Widget style. Obviously, widget is your keyword and the product that you are marketing. So let’s play it up.

You write your keyword-optimized ad and send ad clickers to a landing page optimized for the popular Widget that your company sells. There are three ways that you can upsell them to your Super-Duper Widget, the new and improved version. Here are four ways to upsell from your Widget landing page:

• After discussing the benefits of Widget, include a link to the new Super-Duper Widget, which will take clickers to a new landing page
• After the buyer clicks on “Pay Now” for the Widget, ask them if they want to learn about the new and improved Super-Duper Widget and give them a link to click on for more information - they can opt to buy that one instead of the Widget
• Redirect clickers to the Super-Duper Widget landing page instead with a message at the top of the page that says something to the effect, “I know you wanted to see the Widget but I thought you might like the Super-Duper Widget instead; if not, click here” and you can send them to the Widget landing page with one click
• Send your buyer to the Widget landing page, but include a pop-up for the Super-Duper Widget with a way to close the box if the clicker isn’t interested

Which of these ways is best? It depends. This is where you have to know your customers. Some marketers swear by pop-ups, but some don’t like them. It’s up to you. Any of these ways of upselling can be used and different marketers have tried them all to varying degrees of success. Any way you look at it, however, you can use PPC to upsell your customers to the latest product offerings your company has.

We saw this coming. Google AdWords has now added landing page loading time to its quality score analysis. You can also see how that is affecting your AdWords campaigns in the keyword analysis page within your account. That’s good because it means that advertisers won’t be operating in the blind. It will allow you to tweak your landing page so that you can actually improve your landing page’s load time more easily.

What this really means for advertisers is you have the opportunity to beat your competition not only on relevant information and keywords, but on quality landing page optimization and less code bloat. Because items like Flash, lots of Javascript, and other heavy-code elements on the page tend to slow down load time, you can work on improving your landing page and see the results of that improvement in your Google AdWords account.

Load time grades are based on landing page as well as keyword so you’ll have to look at it from both angles. And domains that have multiple landing pages will each be graded on all the landing pages on that particular domain. So you have multiple chances of getting right. You can learn more about landing page load time in the AdWords Help Center.

Google AdWords is adding a new TV ads seminar. The made the first offering and more people were interested so they’ve added another seminar that you can sign up for. If you have an interest in TV ads and have a Google AdWords account - or even if you don’t and you are thinking about starting one - then you might be interested in this seminar.

Microsoft is trying to get your Mother’s Day business.

And Yahoo! is trying to educate its customers on phishing scams. The “sign-in seal” that they are discussing is actually a good idea. For some reason, people are still clicking on these false e-mail messages that the receive and end up on a different website than where they thought they were going, giving phishers and scammers all of their private information. Word to the wise: Don’t click these e-mails! They’re not real.

But if you are taken in by a phisher and you have one of these seals that Yahoo! is talking about then won’t see the secret message that your programmed into your seal.

You know, it’s still not too late to get that Mother’s Day Pay Per Click advertising campaign off the ground. You may be a little later than your competition, but you’re not too late. The beauty of pay-per-click is that you can start a campaign the week before a holiday or special day and drive targeted traffic to your website. It just takes a few minutes to set up a campaign and to set your budget. So why not start now?

If you already have a Mother’s Day Pay Per Click advertising campaign in the works and you aren’t satisfied with the way that it is going, maybe you should tweak your keywords a bit. Or perhaps your ad. An evaluation from a third-party eye might not be a bad idea.

Here are a few tips to help you make the most of your Mother’s Day Pay Per Click  advertising campaign:

• Use “mother’s day” as a part of your targeted keywords to appeal to online searchers specifically seeking Mother’s Day gifts
• Optimize your landing page to attract Mother’s Day shoppers
• Write targeted ad text that mentions your specific products by name
• Offer gift cards and run Pay Per Click ads specifically for Mother’s Day gift cards
• Extend your shipping and delivery options to include overnight shipping or free shipping to appeal to last minute shoppers
• Some people are still leary of using credit cards online; appeal to them through other means such as PayPal and Google Checkout

If you hurry, you can still get your Mother’s Day Pay Per Click  campaign off the ground before the end of the week.

(Source) For example, people searching with terms like “prom dress” usually want to be able to browse a variety of styles and colors, and may not click on an ad that promotes a “red floor-length strapless prom dress.”

I don’t agree with that statement at all. Most searchers in 2008 still don’t know how to conduct a search properly. But I do agree with the principle that this statement is being used to back up. You do want your PPC ads to point to a page that is geared toward selling the specific item your ad mentions. It’s more about keywords and optimization best practices than anything.

Let’s take that prom dress example again. Suppose you have a web page that is beautifully written and ready to take order for corsages. You don’t really want to write an ad that attempts to draw traffic from people looking for long evening gowns. You want your own to be optimized for the keyword “corsage”. Otherwise, why advertise?

If you are just looking for general traffic related to prom dresses and such then by all means write your ad toward that mindset and send the traffic to a general web page related to prom dresses. It could be your catalog to allow browsers the opportunity to find the dress they want. But the bottom line is keyword optimization. Without it, you are shooting yourself in the PPC foot. And that hurts.

Now that Microsoft has withdrawn its offer to purchase Yahoo!, the No. 2 search engine has started looking for other opportunities, one of which is to run Google AdSense ads on its network of websites. If that happens, what would that mean for Google AdWords advertisers?

First, it would mean that Yahoo! Search Marketing is bowing gracefully out of the PPC advertising market and that would leave a large number of advertisers in that network out in the cold. They’d have no alternative but to start using Google AdWords as their primary source of PPC advertising, if they aren’t already. It is not likely that many of them would migrate over to MSN Live, though some may.

But the real issue for advertisers would be the price of clicks in Google Adwords. The additional demand and competition for key advertising terms would drive up click prices in a heart beat. That in turn would lead to greater revenues for Google AdWords and Yahoo! This is no doubt what both companies are hoping for.

An antitrust lawsuit might eventually lead to Google AdWords being spun off as a separate company from Google, but it would still remain that advertisers would be paying more for clicks. The big question would be how Google AdWords would improve its services for its advertisers in the long term.

What kind of analysis is necessary before you start your pay per click campaign?

It’s a good question and there is an answer, though I’m sure that every PPC advertiser does his own analysis a little differently. But we probably all agree on what kinds of analyses are necessary prior to the launch of your campaign. I’ve narrowed it down to three areas:

• Keyword analysis
• Land page analysis
• Competitive analysis

Don’t take these three kinds of pre-PPC campaign analysis lightly. They’re all important and it doesn’t really matter which order you put them in as long as you engage in all three analyses before you start advertising.

Keyword analysis involves keyword research as well as analysis to determine which keywords are most important for your campaign and whether or not you need to narrow your match types for your campaign. This is important because if you do not choose the right keywords or get your match types correct then it could cost you in clicks. Your quality score could be affected, which will increase your bid per keyword and it could also mean fewer clicks in the long run.

Landing page analysis is very important. You must make sure that your landing page is optimized for the right keywords and is targeted toward the right audience. Your PPC ads will need to match the landing pages so that’s another reason this is important. And a badly optimized landing page could hurt your quality score as much as improper keyword analysis.

Before you kick off your Pay Per Click campaign you’ll need to see what the competition is doing. What ads do they have running? What keywords are those ads optimized for? What do their landing pages look like? This is important for a couple of reasons. No. 1, you want to see if there is any way you can capitalize on a competitive weakness. Secondly, you may find a hole in the competition’s strategy that will give you a niche to focus on. Both competitive weaknesses could mean strengths for your PPC campaign. A competitive analysis can give you a good base for starting your own Pay Per Click campaign.

Before you start your next PPC campaign be sure to engage in these three pre-campaign analyses and be as thorough as you can.

Internet marketing has branched off into a wide variety of specialties. Among them are pay per click, social media marketing, search marketing, SEO, display (banner) advertising, video marketing, article marketing, viral marketing, etc. etc. But do these marketing efforts have anything to do with each other? Can you use them to compliment each other? Absolutely.

In fact, that’s precisely what you should be doing. pay per click advertising allows you to reach your target market through inexpensive advertising that you pay for AFTER you reach the market. It’s a post-pay system as opposed to pre-pay, which is what many offline marketing efforts are. Many online marketing methods don’t require any pay at all. So how should they work together?

Effective online marketing is centered around driving targeted traffic to one page that makes an offer. Whether that offer is a free download, a newsletter subscription, a product for sale, or something else, it must a focused effort and measurable. The beauty of online marketing is that you can drive traffic to one page, close the sale, and pay for an action based on its value to the end goal. PPC does that well.

When you set up your marketing campaign, it’s important to use a squeeze page, or landing page. Then you can use both free marketing methods as well as pay per click methods to drive traffic to that page. When you do that successfully, you’ll reach some members of your market through social marketing, other members through pay per click, some through SEO, and still others through article marketing or other methods. The common element is a well-optimized landing page.

First Google AdWords said they were going to start publishing print advertising campaigns. Then they said they were going to publish audio ads. Then they started talking about video ads. Now, advertisers can manage TV ads through Google AdWords.

This is one exciting announcement. It looks like you can produce your own TV ads and publish them through Google AdWords. But, if you’re like me, you’re probably wondering how it’s going to work.

From the looks of things, you’ll need to have your own commercial already made. That means hiring a big production company to produce your TV ad, unless you want to take a chance with creating your own ad the way you did for your YouTube video. Next, you’ll need to set up a campaign through Google AdWords. Oh, and if you don’t have a video or know a production company then you can find one through Google’s network. How convenient.

Just like other Google AdWords ads, you bid on cost per thousand impressions and when your ad airs on TV stations that match your demographics, you pay for those impressions. This ought to be interesting. Google TV ads.

When it comes to optimizing your website for PPC, you need to pay attention to certain factors and get your website ready for taking orders. As the Google Analytics Blog notes, the difference between website optimization and search engine optimization is that website optimization is focused on preparing your website for sales while SEO is about achieving high rankings. Note that difference. It’s important.

The first step to website optization is to know your customers. What are they looking for? Have you analyzed your traffic patterns to see where they go and how long they stay there? You need to. And you need to know why they leave.

Don’t spend time on useless activity. If you have a page that gets 100 visitors per month and another that receives 10,000 visitors per month, you need to focus on the high traffic web page. Where are visitors going on that page, and why? When are they leaving? Are they buying what you have to offer?

In a word, know which page on your sites are high value and get the traffic. After you’ve determined that, set some goals for that page. What do you want it to do? After a little goal setting, you are then ready to start driving targeted traffic and to get it ready for converting sales. You need to establish your sales funnel. How do you see the sales process working?

Get the answers to these important questions then begin your testing. You’ll need to test different elements on those high value pages to see which ones work best. As you do your testing, note what visitors respond to the most and give them what they what.

Website optimization is a long process. Don’t expect it to take place overnight. It is very important and should not be left out. If you do your website optimization correctly, you should see real results as you develop your website more.

Should you stick entirely to search advertising or incorporate display advertising into your marketing plan? Should you do one or the other, or both?

I believe you should be doing both. Search advertising is very effective, but you cannot successfully brand yourself without also including some banner, or display, advertising.

First, you need to know your target market. Who are they? Where do they hang out? What are they looking for? If you know the mindset, the language, and the preferences of your target market you’ll be a lot more successful in online marketing no matter what kind of advertising you employ.

Secondly, establish your goals. Knowing your goals is important because if you don’t define them then you can’t reach them. Do you know what you want your advertising to do for you? Advertising is generally done to qualify leads and send them to your website. Both search advertising and display advertising are effective in doing this.

It is easier to write your search ads before designing your display advertising. Your graphic designer will need to know some things before he or she can design your display ads. By writing your search ads first, you define your marketing campaign and give your branding team a frame of reference from which to start.

If you have search ads and display ads on the same website, put them in the same general area of the site. You will be much more effective this way.

Finally, the key to all kinds of advertising is testing. Don’t be afraid to try different things. Some things you think won’t be successful will be very successful. Other things that you think will be quite successful won’t make the grade. Be sure to test different ads, different landing page, and different placements for your ads. You can be successful with online advertising if you incorporate search advertising with display advertising.

Let’s face it, some keywords just aren’t popular enough to have a year-round PPC campaign behind them. You know you’ve seen them. They’re popular at Christmastime, but you get no use from them for the rest of the year. Or maybe you see surges in popularity in the summer, but drops in other times of year. Maybe the keyword popularity goes up or down throughout the year based on holiday schedules or other influences within your industry. How do you capitalize on that?

Good question. The first step, of course, is to know and understand what causes those spikes, dips, and surges. You should also be tuned in to when they occur. It isn’t enough to know that baseball gloves are more popular just before little league season begins. You need to know when (generally) the interest in them starts. By knowing this information, you can time your ads to hit when people will start looking for what you have to offer.

Don’t start your advertising campaign when interest spikes. That’s too late. Kick it off a couple of weeks before that. You want to be the first to have your advertising in place so that you can capitalize early on when shoppers first begin to go looking for a product. Then, when the competition enters the field, you’ll already have a leg up. That will count for more than just sales. It will also make a difference with optimization and quality score.

You also don’t want to leave out keyword research. Don’t shortcut it just because it is a short-term campaign. Run it just as you would any other campaign. Start at the beginning, do your keyword research, and bid according to the value of the keywords. You can also use match types for your short-term campaigns. Run it like you would any other advertising campaign.

But you don’t have to use the spikes and surges for short term advertising campaigns. They are also useful in your long-term campaigns. The ones you run year-round. Those keywords that are a part of your campaign can have bid adjustments based on the season. You might even run a long-term and a short-term campaign simultaneously based on the seasons and times of year.

One more way to use this information is in your choice of negative keywords. Use those spikes to determine when to make a keyword a negative keyword and when to focus in on it through your bidding strategy or match type focus. The bottom line is to increase your revenues. You can do that by increasing your sales or by lowering your bids on keywords that don’t quite make the cut - even if it’s on a seasonal basis.

If you find your PPC campaigns reaching their daily or monthly budget caps sooner than you’d like then perhaps you should tweak the settings on your campaigns to make them run longer. Here are a few ways you can stretch your budget our further:

• Budget Per Day - If your monthly budget is running out too soon then try setting a budget per day. If your monthly budget is reached in the middle of the month and you’d like your ads to run all month long then a daily budget can stretch that out. You’ll have fewer ads running each day and when you reach your daily budget the ads will stop running for that day. But they will run every day throughout the month.
• Set campaign settings to stretch the budget out - You can also set your campaign settings to pace your ads throughout the budget period instead of pausing the campaign when you reach your budget. If you set your settings to pause when your budget is reached then your daily budget might be low enough that you reach it mid-day. Your ads will then stop running at that point when you hit the budget mark. But if you set your campaign settings to run your ads throughout the day then you’ll miss some opportunities in the middle of the day but your ads will not pause until the end of the day. They will be paced throughout the day based on your keyword bids.
• Use negative keywords - By including negative keywords in your campaign settings, you’ll keep your ads from appearing for keywords that you do not want to bid on. This will cut down on unwanted clicks.
• Narrow your match types - Instead of setting your campaigns for broad matches of your keywords, narrow your match types. This will also cut down on the number of times that your ads run and eliminate unwanted clicks.
• Establish a time of day - Is your peak conversion time in the evening or the middle of the day? You can set your campaign settings to keep your clicks active during your peak conversion times. Establish a time of day that your ads run and eliminate unwanted clicks. This will also save your budget for that time of day.

If you want to make the most of your pay per click advertising then you need to start tracking your conversions. Google AdWords makes that easy with its free conversion tracking tool.

As explained on the Inside AdWords blog, by tracking your conversions by keyword you can narrow down which keywords are converting better for you per landing page and per product. Then you can use that information to bid on keywords that deliver more ROI. You can actually bid higher on those keywords that you know convert more sales and bid lower on those keywords that don’t. It’s a very powerful tool for the serious advertiser.

Google AdWords has recently updated its conversion tracking tool to help advertisers do a better job of watching their conversions and increasing their ROI (isn’t that good news?). You can now define and track types of conversions. Just click on the Conversion Trackink link in your account to use the tool and start optimizing your landing page and your ads for better conversions.

You may notice from time to time that your minimum bids move. If you’ve had a PPC campaign that all of a sudden stopped because your ads no longer met the minimum bid for the approval process then you’ve likely been frustrated by that. Yahoo! Search Marketing has a solution for you that will help you keep an eye on that minimum bid.

When you log into your account you should see a notification that lets you know your ads no longer meet the minimum bid. Let’s say you bid 10 cents for your keyword and the minimum bid is 13 cents. On your user interface within the advertising management system, you’ll see your actual bid and a red note one field to its left telling you that your bid is too low. Right below the red type you’ll the the actual minimum bid necessary to keep your ad active for that keyword.

What you do is log into your account and click on the Keywords tab. If you haven’t seen that before, it’s because that’s a new tab. But it lets you see all the keywords for your PPC ads no matter which campaign they are associated with. That’s a cool tool. Now you can see the minimum bid information described in the last paragraph. You can either raise your bid or let your ads pause for awhile. An easy way to manage all of your keywords at a glance.

Another cool feature of this new tab and new reporting tool is that your ads do not automatically go inactive right away like they do with Google AdWords. Instead, you have a grace period during which if you raise your bid to the minimum then your ads will never pause. You won’t lose a beat. If you do not raise your minimum bid, of course, then your ads will pause, but you at least have the grace period.

While your ads are pending inactive, you can raise the bids for your keywords to the minimum necessary to keep them active, but the minimums are just that. They are not minimum bids for competitive purposes, only minimum bids to keep the ads active. So be sure to remember that.