Did you know you can use Pay Per Click 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 Pay Per Click to upsell your customers to the latest product offerings your company has.

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.

Is your landing page loaded with free Pay Per Click offers? Are you closing sales?

There have been some internet marketers lately saying that free offers are just giving away information and that this doesn’t lead to sells. I think it does. It just depends on how you do it. But even more importantly, should you pay good money on Pay Per Click advertising to drive traffic to your landing page just to give away free information?

Again, some people would say no. But if the offer is right, you can do it. The real benefit you get is a list that can prove to be valuable over time. By getting names and e-mail addresses, you have a list that you can market your products to over the long term. Just think about what it might cost you if you don’t build that list of 1,000 names. It will cost you future sales.

But spend $10 in clicks for every name you acquire and that $10,000 list could turn into huge profits long term. Let’s say you can turn that 1,000 names into a 10% conversion for every future product you offer. That 100 sales at $10, $20, or $100, whatever your products sell for. Even a low end product, say $10, can make you money. Ten products and you’ve made your money back. 1 product at $100 will break you even quicker. The power, and the money, is in the list.

That’s why I say free offers still make you money. You don’t want to give away everything you know. But you do want to give away what you can to get that list. Then market to that list like crazy.

Pay per click has gone social. Both Facebook and StumbleUpon offer Pay Per Click advertising and the click prices are really low. At SU, you’ll pay only 5 cents a click.

There are some benefits to advertising through StumbleUpon and Facebook. No. 1, with these ads you are likely advertising to your friends and friends of friends. Both sites will allow you to target your advertising toward people’s interests and Facebook will even display your ads on your friends’ profiles.

The primary difference between regular Pay Per Click advertising and social Pay Per Click advertising is that with Pay Per Click your ads are usually optimized around certain keywords. Social Pay Per Click ads, however, are targeted towards particular interests, topics, or tags. For that reason, the targeting may not be as precise, but it has the potential to be socially relevant because the people viewing your ads will be friends or friends of friends. At StumbleUpon, your ads will be viewed by people with similar interests.

I wouldn’t start off advertising through Facebook and StumbleUpon, but after you’ve identified your typical target through Google and Yahoo! then you can supplement those advertising efforts through social Pay Per Click.

The lingo can be confusing: Click fraud, arbitrage, Pay Per Click, PPV, PPA, pay per this, pay per that, click bid, click through, CTR, landing page, blah blah blah. I know, I know.

There is a lot to learn about pay per click. Where I do you start?

I recommend first learning the lingo and once you understand what things are called then you can dig in a little deeper. I DO NOT recommend just jumping in and learning by trial and error. You could lose a lot of money that way. Some advertisers have done just that.

It’s easy to get lost in Google AdWords, or one of the other Pay Per Click company’s system, if you don’t know your way around. That’s why I recommend that you take it slow. Is your site even ready for pay per click?

One mistake many beginners make is to start advertising through Pay Per Click before they are ready. The landing page isn’t optimized, they don’t know their budget, and they haven’t done their keyword research. Don’t do it until you are ready!

Here is a short list of key terms that you need to be familiar with before you start advertising:

• Keyword - You’ve likely heard of keywords. They mean the same thing for PPC as they do for SEO. Keywords are the words that are important to your advertising campaign and which you want to be ranked for when searchers input them into a search engine query. Usually, your Pay Per Click keywords will correspond with your SEO keywords.
• Landing Page - Your landing page is the page that you send people to through your Pay Per Click ads. When they click the destination URL in your ad they will land on your landing page.
• Click Bid - You are allowed to bid on each click when you set up a Pay Per Click campaign. How much you bid on the click is your click bid.
• CTR - Called Click Through Rate. This is how often searchers click on your ad. Calculated by dividing the number of clicks for your ad by the number of times it is shown.
• CPM - Click Per Thousand Impressions. With this advertising model, you pay for every thousand impressions of your ad and that’s what you base your bid on.
• Conversion - A conversion is a sale, sign up, or some other desired action that you want to occur as a result of someone clicking on your ad.
• Match Type - A keyword match type is a way you can specify when you ad will be displayed for certain keywords. There are three different match types and a negative keyword match type. Broad match is your keyword or keyword phrase in its broadest sense. Phrase match is putting your keyword phrase in quotation marks and narrows the scope of your keyword phrase to any search query that uses that exact phrase along with any words before or after it. Exact match is denoted with brackets instead of quotation marks and is used to tell the search engine to display your ad only for search queries that match your exact phrase and nothing more. The negative keyword match is used to tell the search engine NOT to show your ad for specific keywords.

These are basic terms and definitions you should be familiar with. There are other terms you can know, but many of them are more advanced. I’d recommend you open up a Google AdWords account and go into their help feature to learn more about Google AdWords Pay Per Click advertising. Don’t start any campaigns until you have studied for a few weeks.

So you’ve set up your pay per click campaign and you’re all set to go. How can you ensure that potential customers get the click?

One thing you want to consider is that you don’t just want anyone and everyone clicking on your ad. You’ll be paying for traffic that isn’t converting. So you want to ensure that so many customers don’t click on your as well. How do you do that?

The surest way to target a particular customer that you want to click on your ads versus someone you don’t is to target the right keyword. Make sure that the keywords you are targeting in your ads correspond with what is on your landing page and, even more importantly, make sure the keywords you are using on your landing page and your pay per click ads correspond with what you are selling.

For example, if you are selling tube socks, you don’t want to target the more general keyword “socks” as your primary keyword. Tube socks are much more specific that simply “socks.” Make sure that you narrow your targeted keywords to the right keyword for each of your campaigns. Match types will help you do this a lot. Learn how to target the right keywords with match types.

Another thing you have to pay attention to in order to reach the right customer is to write your headline in such a way that it encourages the click. You want your keyword in the headline, but you also want to spark some level of curiosity, fear, greed, or one of the basic human emotions. Use trigger words that get people to notice your ad.

The last thing to do in your pay per click ad to ensure you get the click to write a description that is specific, narrowed, and, like the headline, sparks an emotion. Your description must state precisely what your customer expect to find on your landing page. You should include a benefit in that description using a trigger word that sparks one of the basic emotions.

If you do these things in your pay per click, you’ll target the right customer and get the click - every time.

Should you use pay per click to drive traffic to your opt-in page even though you get no immediate return on investment?

This might seem like a waste of money, but you can actually sustain long-term income by paying for traffic that you get no immediate return from. It’s called list building.

It’s a long known truth that the value of an e-mail list in the list itself. For that reason, many marketers are not at all uneasy with spending money to acquire names and e-mail addresses. While you can purchase or rent a list, it is far better to pay for the names you acquire through pay per click ads than it is by using other paid methods.

No matter what you pay for your clicks, for every new subscriber you get to your opt-in newsletter or e-zine, that’s a name you can market your products and services to over and over again. All you need to do is offer a freebie to get them to join your list. Then you can market to those subscribers over and over again. But to do that effectively, you’ve got to add numbers to your list. You’ve got to get subscribers. Pay per click advertising is one way to drive traffic to your opt-in landing page so that you can start building that list.

SEO News ran a great article on pay per click advertising for beginners in today’s issue of its online news journal. I’d like to expand on some portions of it just a little.

In the early days of the Internet, website owners sold banner advertising to other webmasters. Banner advertising was the best form of advertising available then and just about anyone who wanted to make money on their website was doing this. Banner ads were all over the place and many webmasters built their businesses by exchanging banner ads with other website owners.

The flat fee model of advertising didn’t work for many website owners because it didn’t take long to figure out that most website visitors didn’t click on the banner ads. That meant that website owners were paying a large amount of money for each click to their websites from those banner ads. That’s why pay per click became such an attractive model when it was first developed. In 2000 and 2001, webmaster forums were hotly debating which model of advertising would win out in the end. A typical discussion was centered around the question, “Which advertising model is better for webmaster: Pay per click or banner ads?” It looks like PPC won.

When Yahoo! purchased Overture in 2003, it looked like Yahoo! would become the dominant player in PPC advertiser. Google was just getting started after having made its reputation with search results. Kalena Jordan’s history of PPC is very interesting, but she leaves out a lot of recent developments, including Yahoo!s demise and Google’s rise. While Yahoo! is still a competitor in PPC, though it is far from being so in search, one can’t help but notice that the search portal is losing ground there as well. Google seems to be much more adept at improving its products and Yahoo! seems to be better at falling on its face. I consider that a management problem.

Management issues aside, however, Yahoo! is still a player in the PPC industry. I highly recommend using the Yahoo! Search Marketing product simply because your ads will be seen by more people in more places than if you advertise with Google AdWords, though Google AdWords is a bit better in terms of helping you target your ads. It remains to be seen whether MSN adCenter will improve its PPC product enough to compete with Yahoo! and Google, but it is possible. I think the smaller companies are the ones you will need to watch in the next few years. Google will likely become the PPC company of choice for deep pockets. Smaller businesses that can’t afford the high bid prices at Google AdWords will have to go to Yahoo!, MSN, or one of the smaller companies.

The best that I can tell, companies with smaller budgets today are better off using long tail keyword bids at Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Miva. It won’t be long before anyone wanting to break into PPC advertising will have to hire an advocate to run their campaigns for them. It is becoming more and more difficult to run your own campaigns without losing money on the learning curve. But it will be worth it as organic search is increasingly becoming a game that costs more than the returns will produce.

AdBrite isn’t new to PPC advertising, but they are coming up in the world.

For advertisers, features include the ability to choose your ad formats (text, banner ads, or full page), targeting features that include real-time traffic estimators, online ad creation feature, and conversion tracking. For publishers, you can choose your own ad formats - again, text, banner, or full page - recruitment of your own advertisers through your website, and the ability to review potential advertisers before their ads go live on your website.

AdBrite is not expensive. You can get relatively low bids on your ads. If there is a downside it is that there may not be enough advertisers in your niche. You have the ability to choose advertisers across a broad spectrum or keep it limited to your niche specialty by focusing on certain keywords. If you choose the latter and there aren’t enough advertisers then the ads that appear on your site are “Advertise Here” type banners that allow you to recruit your own advertisers. You can even set bid or flat fee prices for the ads.

AdBrite offers you one more option for PPC, but I’d still start with Google.

Another WebProNews article - this time the topic is mistakes that beginners make. Are you making any of these mistakes?

• Use too many keywords in one ad group
• Don’t opt out of the content network
• Use only broad match keywords
• Fail to use negative keywrods
• Not split testing their ads

I also like the discussion that Christine Parfitt goes into concerning no real idea what their goal is. It’s very important, before you begin your PPC campaign, that you understand the entire search process. What does the customer think before searching for information? Why does she search for that particular information using the keyword or phrase that she is using? Make sense of the process. When you can do that then you’ll be a lot more successful at running a PPC campaign. If you don’t understand the search process from the customer’s point of view then you shouldn’t be running PPC campaigns.

Non-profits can advertise for free with Google through a Beta service called Google Grants. I don’t know how long the program has been available, but I just found out about it today. It looks like a good program.

To qualify, you must have a current and valid 501(c)3 designation from the IRS. The program is available to non-profit organizations within the U.S. and outside of the U.S. in certain designated countries. But if you are a religious or political organization then you need not apply. Google Grants does not support those organizations.

According to program guidelines, Google notifies recipients of the grants every quarter and promises to let non-profits know whether they qualify within six months. But if you are a current advertiser through Google AdWords then you don’t qualify. Furthermore, the following limitations are placed on non-profits that take advantage of the Google Grants program:

• Maximum $1.00 bid per keyword
• $10,000 cap on each campaign
• The $10,000 cap can be stretched to $40,000 if you consistently reach that limit

For more information about the Google Grants program for non-profits, head to the program’s details and policy guidelines pages.

Some pay per click advertisers go crazy on keywords. By that I mean they select a list of keywords loosely related to their ad and make sure all of those keywords are used in their optimization efforts. It’s like a “wish list” of words you hope searchers will find your ad by. But that isn’t the best approach.

You’ll do better, especially if you are new to pay per click, to pick just a handful of keywords that are directly related to the content in your ads and use only those keywords. Make all other keywords inactive. For instance, if you are selling blue widgets and your pay per click ad states that you have blue widgets made in China then you likely want to keep your keyword list small and related only to blue widgets. Useful keywords might include:

• widgets
• blue widgets
• widgets made China
• widgets in China

That’s your starting list. Next, take your list and make the keywords more specific by narrowing the match types, like this:

• [blue widgets]
• [widgets made China]
• [widgets in China]

You might also throw in a few, only a few, variations, such as:

• Chinese widgets
• Chinese blue widgets
• [Chinese widgets]
• [Chinese blue widgets]

Don’t get carried away with this. The idea is to keep your keyword list small and to use only keywords that are related directly to the words in your pay per click ad. You can expand on this list later.

Before you go full force into an ad campaign you might want to split test your ads to see which ones are more effective. This is a rather simple process, but it’s detailed and time consuming. If you rush through it you could end up spending thousands of dollars trying to run ads and getting clicks outside of your target market. Split testing can save you the headache.

First, to split test your ads, you need to make sure they are comparable. Only slit test ads that use the same keyword. If you are running a PPC campaign, for instance, where you are trying to sell Champion spark plugs then you don’t want to split test ads that use “Champion” and “spark plugs” as keywords, respectively. You want the same keyword for both ads - “champion spark plugs” or just “spark plugs.”

Next, make sure all other elements are the same and only test one thing at a time. In other words, either give both ads the same headline and a different ad description or vice-versa, but don’t each ad their own headline and ad description. That won’t tell you anything. Let’s say you want to find out which headline produces the most click throughs. You’ll write two headlines that use the same exact keyword phrase and make every other element in each ad exactly the same. Run the ads for a week, or three days at least (it’s vitally important that you run both ads the same length of time), and see which one gets you most click throughs.

After you’ve tested headlines and chosen the one that is most effective, go on to test the ad descriptions using the same method. Continue this process until you’ve tested each element of the ad to see which pieces work best together. After your split test is done, go ahead with your full-fledged ad campaign.

You might be tempted to place Bidvertiser ads on your blog or website. If you are then consider a slight difference between Bidvertiser and Google AdWords that gives Google AdWords an edge.

Bidvertiser allows you to select categories that you put your blog or website into. By selecting a category you are telling Bidvertiser that you want ads in that category displayed on your website. If you have a niche website then that is fine. But if your website is of a general nature and you discuss items that are outside of that category niche then you’ll have non-relevant ads on your pages.

Google AdWords, on the other hand, is capable of finding out what keywords your pages are optimized for and displaying ads that are relevant to your pages. The AdWords system can do this no matter what your blog is about. If you have a niche blog it will display ads that are relevant to your niche. If you have a blog or website that discusses a wide variety of topics then no matter what topic you are discussing, Google AdWords will display appropriate ads on your pages. This is why I prefer Google AdWords. It’s also why I prefer Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.

You may be too late for any new SEO efforts, but you’re just in time for new pay per click advertising campaigns.

According to the Google AdWords Retail Industry Newsletter, 117 million online shoppers spent $33 billion last year at Christmastime. That was a 21 percent increase over 2005 and it’s highly likely that more people will spend more money this Christmas than last. The newsletter also reports that the heaviest online days for shopping last year were December 13, December 11, and December 4. All this means that online advertisers are approaching the best time of the year to start their new pay per click advertising campaigns. There’s no time better than now.

Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.