This is really nothing spectacular. A lot of small businesses are using AdWords and other PPC advertising models to turn a profit. You don’t need a big budget to make money on your PPC campaigns. You just need a good plan.

On another note, Mayes makes an interesting point about simplicity. PPC advertising can be complicated, but it doesn’t need to be. Sometimes, the simple solution is the right one. Don’t be afraid to experiment and tweak your campaigns from time to time.

Twain has always made people laugh, but his insight is apt. Every good writer knows that it takes time to write short, terse, concise content. It takes more time than writing long and verbose content because good editing requires cutting stuff out that isn’t necessary. With pay per click ad copywriting, you’ve got to make sure that every word counts. You don’t want fluff. You want real content. And it has to sell.

You have a one-line headline and two lines of content. Not much space. Everything must propel the reader forward to make the click and visit your site. Your ad is not the sales tool. It’s the lead generation tool and it’s one job is to deliver targeted traffic to your landing page. If you try to do anything else with it then it will fail to do its job.

The best advice I can give you regarding quality pay per click ad content is to focus on one keyword and to make that keyword work hard to drive traffic, get the click, and reach your target audience. Your headline must contain the keyword once - not twice - once. Your ad copy should contain your keyword once. In both cases, make sure that your keyword is used as effectively as possible and that you have a call to action in that ad. It’s not easy, but success is worth it.

This is something we’ve touched on before. It pays to hit the consumer every way you can. If you ignore PPC advertising then you’ll effectively shut out 20% of the searchers who click on those ads. MSN acCenter’s blog makes this bold statement:

The fact that you can increase brand association by 16% if the top search ad and the top organic listing are from the same brand goes a long way to enhance what some search marketers believe is an important strategy.

16%. That’s a pretty significant number. Why then would you not pay for clicks when there is a high degree of likelihood that you can convert those clicks into sales? Organic search listings are nice and, yes, it’s really nice if you can rank at the top of them, but if you can snag an additional 16% of targeted traffic just by adding a PPC campaign to your marketing strategy, why turn down the extra business

We’ve given this advice before, but it still stands. Whether you use Google, Yahoo!, or MSN adCenter, grouping your keywords into a tight keyword group and matching them will relevant ads is still the best way to go about PPC advertising. This is good advice for novice advertisers as well as veteran advertisers.

There is no limit to the number of keywords you can have in a group. But you need to make sure that your groups are relevant and tight. Make sure that every keyword in your group is relevant to the ad that you are running. You will get much better traffic that way and spend less on your advertising, which will lead to higher click-throughs and ROI. The overall performance of your advertising will improve and your potential customers won’t get frustrated.

One cool feature of the new keyword research tool at MSN adCenter is Audience Insights. With this tool you can get a little more detail about certain demographics that you are planning to target with your pay per click campaigns. That’s always good news. But the catch is it’s only giving feedback based on MSN adCeneter, where your pay per click ads will run if you choose to use that tool.

Another downside to the keyword research tool is it’s a beta add-in for Excel. In other words, unlike Google’s keyword research tool, which is web-based, you have to install it. That’s going to turn some advertisers off. And why would you want to download a tool that you have to use with Excel when you can use a free one that is a stand alone? Of course, if you use Excel to analyze your keyword lists then it may make sense for you. Some people download the CSV list even on Google AdWords. Having the MSN adCenter keyword research tool will make it easier for you to analyze the difference between Google adWords keywords and MSN adCenter keywords. It’s up to you as to whether it’s worth it or not.

A lot of people focus on Google, but you can build a solid business just on Yahoo! and MSN Live and never rank in Google. I’m not suggesting you should; I’m just saying you can. And you can drive great, targeted traffic to your website if you only use Google AdWords, but you’re leaving out all of those people who use MSN Live or Yahoo! exclusively. You’ll never get them. They may be great customers for you. Why deny them?

Bottom line: When it comes to reaching the right customers, does it matter if you spend 5 cents per click versus $1.50 per click if you are only going to reach 1/10th the people? That’s less money to spend. In the fewer numbers of prospects you might end up finding the one customer who will do more business with you than any other. I think you should diversify. It’s a good business strategy.

This obviously has to do with increasing pay per click bid prices. Google wants you to spend more money. Don’t buy into the hype. It is just important now, in fact it may be more important than ever, to watch the bottom line. The most important thing is still ROI. Will getting on page 1 increase your conversions? It might increase your traffic, but you will still need to optimize your landing page for conversions and if your landing page won’t convert then more traffic won’t help it.

This change will definitely help Google, but will it help you?

1. It should deliver targeted traffic to your website
2. It should deliver targeted traffic at a price that you can afford
3. It should return your investment and then some
4. You should be able to expect a reasonable CTR based on your targeted demographic

Without targeted traffic, no amount of advertising is worth it. Be sure that, with whatever advertising platform you are using, you can reach your most targeted demographic. Also, be sure that you can reach them for a reasonable price. If you have to pay too much to get traffic to your site and can’t get a return on your investment then it isn’t worth it. A reasonable CTR may be different for a variety of campaigns, but generally it means that you are reaching targeted visitors who are interested in what you have to offer. Converting the visitors into sales is up to you and your website!

Pay Per Click advertising is one quick way to become visible very quickly but without the right guidance can be overwhelming. The eBusiness Symposium Event held in Boston is a Boston internet marketing event dedicated to helping local business owners in the greater Boston area learn and apply different online marketing strategies including pay per click advertising, search engine optimization and local online marketing to help reach out to an audience that you might have been invisible to up to this point. This event is not at all limited towards Boston business owners only but can also be taken advantantage of by business owners nationally.

Hosted by Brick Marketing president and SEO expert Nick Stamoulis he will go over all topics such as the ABC’s of SEO and local internet marketing to help boost local awareness of your product or service. Nick Stamoulis brings 12+ years of online marketing experience to this event only offering good quality information that is guaranteed to help improve your company’s visibility. Nick Stamoulis has personally handled multi-million dollar pay per click campaigns for fortune 1000 companies. Nick has personally helped grow many organizations through his strategic search engine optimization and pay per click strategies.

The ABC’s of SEO is designed to teach SEO techniques along with other online marketing techniques and strategies to those who are looking to increase overall visibility and business growth in all the major search engines including Google, Yahoo and MSN. This is a judgment free event for all those beginners that might be timid to attend an event such as this. This Boston internet marketing event is constructed for those who don’t know where to turn for help and advice. At this event all questions are good questions. Not everybody has the ability to learn the popular SEO techniques that many are using so now is the time to learn as much as you can from an expert in the field. This event will teach you not only the basics but also some advanced programs such as social marketing website building and newsletter marketing. This event is a one stop shop to hit all angles of your online business. This program will teach you how to successfully tackle up to date online marketing techniques to further your knowledge and help grow your online business the right way.

Don’t wait until the last minute, early bird registrations going through September 12th. Save $25 per registration by doing it now. For more information on how to register please visit the website today and pre-register for your space.

• Experiment Pruning
• A/B Offline Validation
• More Intuitive Reporting

Experiment pruning allows you to disenable elements or combinations on your web pages and stop receiving data on them. Pruning is a double-edged sword because once you disenable an element on your web page you can’t re-enable it. That means you’d better be sure. So why would you do it?

Well, if you’ve already got the data that you need from your testing and research to decide whether a certain element in necessary on your web pages then you can disenable that element and stop tracking it while you continue your experiment to test other elements and combinations. Great tool.

The A/B Offline Validation allows you to make sure your pages are tagged properly for testing and you can upload your pages without them going live on your site.

The intuitive reporting feature is simply more detailed reports to help you make better decisions.

If you’ve never used Website Optimizer, I highly recommend it. It’s a fabulous testing tool and will save you a lot of money on pay per click campaigns by allowing you to tweak and test your landing pages before you start driving traffic to them and throwing money out the window on low conversions.

AdWords 101: For beginners. If you’ve never done any pay per click advertising, and if you are new to Google AdWords, then this is for you. It shows you how to set up an account, how to navigate through Google AdWords, how to set up an advertising campaign, and a little bit about optimization.

AdWords 201: An intermediate training level. With this course you get a little deeper into optimization techniques. The AdWords team covers bidding options, Google Editor, Google Analytics, how to write ad copy, and Website Optimizer.

AdWords 301: The advanced course. You definitely need to take the other two courses first. If you already understand the basics then this course is for you. You’ll learn advanced optimization techniques, split testing, the best practices for managing an ad campaign, advanced bidding strategies, and the Content Network.

The Google AdWords seminars are great learning opportunities. They cost $249 per seminar and you get a $50 credit in your Google AdWords account, which is cool, but you have to wait for a seminar to come to your area. Meanwhile, why not find a trustworthy and experienced account manager to help you with your Google Adwords campaigns?

ExactSeek works on a flat fee pricing where you can actually purchase a keyword for a duration of time and have a featured listing placed in Exact Seek’s network of search engines for a certain allotted time depending on how long your featured listing is set to run for. Limiting the amount of featured listings that can be placed under a certain keyword allows for you and your competitors to have equal advantage for visibility. No more bidding for keywords! Purchase a keyword for 3 months at $12 dollars. You will receive guaranteed top 10 exposure on 100’s of search engines in Exact Seek’s network of engines. Each listing comes with a title, a 100 character description, your URL and a keyword phrase you are targeting. Each keyword only allows a certain amount of advertisers to not dilute the effectiveness of your ads. Visiting the website you can use ExactSeek’s tool to see how many space are still available for a certain keyword or keyword phrase. With over 150 million searches per month this product is well worth the initial cost.

It is at no surprise that many advertisers have felt the steady growth of cost with pay per click advertising. Companies across the board are looking for ways to be seen and cut down their advertising spending all in the same effort. For those of you on a budget now is the time to take advantage of Exact Seek’s low cost flat fee featured listings. By taking advantage of purchasing listings for multiple keywords you can reduce your costs even more. ExactSeek is quick at work once you purchase, within 6-8 hours your listings will be submitted to all search engines and ready for viewing. Come to the site and take a video tour to learn more on exactly how this product works and how your business will benefit from multiple featured listings through Exact Seeks network of search engines. For companies that are in competitive industry’s who have high click costs in all the major search engines and have lost the ability to be able to properly execute their existing pay per click ads ExactSeek is a great website to pick up where they left from. No other website online allows for this much visibility for the proposed cost.

For more information on how ExactSeek can help your company and also your budget come to the website and take the video tour and learn how easy taking advantage of this service is.

To make the first option work you actually need a website that is geared toward mobile users. You can actually take your existing site and modify it for that use. Then start running your advertising.

For the second option, you don’t even need a website. You just need a phone. And you can run mobile ads that allow clickers to call you directly from the mobile phone. Google has that capable, but so do a few other service providers such as Superpages, which pioneered the capability.

Mobile advertising is a new and effective way to reach a specific target audience that might be in your scope.

The negative keyword feature is to tell the search engine that a particular keyword match is not right for your campaign. It’s best used when you have a broad match or a phrase match, but there are exact matches when the broader category that you don’t want included. For instance, if you sell rotating widgets in ever color except yellow then you might do this:

“rotating widget” = phrase match
yellow rotating widget = negative keyword match

You can do the same thing with “rotating widget” as a broad match. But I would use “yellow rotating widget” as a broad or phrase match then include it as a negative keyword. Use the negative keyword list to narrow your keyword matches within a broader array.

Here are three things you can do to increase your ad quality:

• Choose the right keywords - There is nothing like using the exact keyword necessary to reach someone interested in your product. Know the keywords most appropriate for your business or ad campaign and use those keywords.
• Keep your budget in mind - Don’t spend too much or go overboard. You’ll end up spending more on lower value keywords and destroying any ROI you hope to get.
• Place your keywords in tight ad groups - Make sure that your highest converting keywords are together in one ad group.

Implement these very simple ad campaign management strategies and you’ll see your ad quality improve.

1. Split your forms into two parts
2. Use more than one lead generation form
3. Don’t ask for the lead too early
4. Use PPC effectively
5. Be aggressive in your optimization

This is all great advice and I’m particularly intrigued by the last three. While all five of these are great suggestions, Nos. 3 and 5 should be intuitive for anyone using landing pages as lead generation tools. But No. 4 isn’t so intuitive. I like the persona marketing idea presented in the Jenny Craig ads.

If you’re going to use pay per click ads to drive traffic to landing pages that target market using the persona marketing strategy, make sure that your ads appeal to the same target market as the landing page. In other words, infuse your ad copy with the same persona language. Otherwise, you’ll be paying for untargeted clicks. People who don’t fit into your target mix will know that ad was not meant for them and they’ll bounce.

In some sectors, a long landing page can be beneficial. Financial analysts, for instance, like lots of figures. So if you are asking for thousands of dollars in investment money and you expect to close the sale then you might need to provide a great deal of information in order to satisfy the needs of your target audience. With other sectors, that long landing page and minute details could be detrimental. It behooves you to know your audience.

But it’s more than just target marketing too. There are other factors that should determine the length of your landing page. What are you asking for? If you are just asking for subscribers to a newsletter then your landing page doesn’t need to be that long. If you are asking for a big commitment or a long-term commitment then your landing page might need to be longer. However much detail is necessary for a person to make a reasonably informed decision should be your guiding principle. If a good decision requires lots of information then maybe a long landing page is necessary.

PPC Summit is an event that is held every year that allows you to interact with pay per click experts in the industry and learn helpful tips and tricks that will allow you to become an expert in the field. This interactive two day event will introduce you and teach you how to catch up to your successful competitors and move past them in the PPC race. This two day even is designed to teach you how to make more money using your pay per click campaign. Everyone from webmasters to creative directors can benefit from this amazing two day event. No other pay per click event can bring this much knowledge and expertise under one table and allow you to walk away with this much information on how to better your online game.

PPC Summit will guide you how to effectively set up PPC campaigns in Google, Yahoo and MSN. It is important to know all three search engines and not just Google because you will generate traffic from all three search engines. It is important to keep your options open as a business. PPC Summit will also help with the process of identifying the right keywords for your ads to attract only the most qualified visitors. It will also help you with different management strategies such as bidding on keywords and maximizing the potential with effective landing pages.

This event brings a certain knowledge and expertise that you will not be able to acquire at any other training event. This event clearly highlights and A to Z agenda on every aspect required on creating and managing a successful pay per click campaign. If you have in an in house pay per click manager this would be an ideal training to sharpen the blade on your PPC approach.

Pay Per Click Journal is now offering a 10% off discount for anybody interested in attending this event. By using Pay Per Click journals coupon code, PPCJ, you will receive a 10% off discount at check out. If you have an organization that has had very little to no success using pay per click than it is time visit this summit and expand your knowledge before you burn through any more of your company’s money.

There are several ways, actually. But just to highlight some of the useful features of Google Insights, here’s a list of some of the cool things you can do:

• Compare search volume for your key terms
• Study keyword trends over a period of time
• Analyze regional interests for specific keywords and websites
• See which search terms are rising in popularity (or falling)

There’s plenty more, but I like the way PPC Hero has broken down the ways you can use these tools:

• Geo-targeting (very useful for local businesses)
• Budget planing (corresponds to our post yesterday)
• Research before your research (”pre-keyword-research-research”)

It’s true. You can use Google Insights for all of these uses, and a whole lot more. I’m particularly intrigued by the budget planning. As stated yesterday, wise advertisers create a budget and adjust it based on expected sales volume or revenues throughout the year - essentially, paying attention to your seasonal trends. Google Insights can help you identify those seasonal trends more easily, not only for sales, which you should have an idea of anyway, but for search terms, which is highly valuable.

Let’s say that you know your peak season is Christmas. For most retailers, that means between Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. But what if you could find out that people start searching for Christmas gift ideas in August? If your gift shop’s keywords experience search spikes during your off season then you’d want to know that, right? Technically speaking, it’s more important to advertise during peak search times than during peak buying times. By the time consumers are ready to purchase, they’ve already done the research and if they are making their purchase online then they already know where they want to buy from. Since the majority of Internet users research their purchases online before actually making a purchase - whether they purchase from an online store or a brick and mortar store - it makes sense to find out when your keywords are most popular in the search engines. Google Insights can help you do that.

If your peak season is Christmas, for instance, you know that you can count on a certain amount of business based on the economy and the mood of the marketplace. But if you don’t advertise to bring people to your shop then you likely won’t get as much business as you would have. You probably have a budget to help you stay on track, and that’s a good thing. But what about your slow seasons?

Do you keep spending the same amount of money on advertising during your slow seasons? If so then you are probably losing money.

No matter how much money you spend, there is no guarantee you’re going to get new business based on that advertising spend. Therefore, it makes sense to scale back on your advertising during the slow season and use that money for advertising for your peak season. But you don’t want to stop advertising altogether. What you want to do is spread your budget out across the entire year.

Here’s what it looks like: Let’s say your advertising budget is 15% of last year’s revenue, which was $100,000. So you know you’ll spend 15,000 on advertising in the coming year. You can do it in one of two ways:

1. Month-to-Month Comparison - Your advertising budget is set at 15% of the revenue for the same month last year (i.e. June 2009/June 2008).
2. Monthly Adjustments From The Whole - You take your 15% and move it up or down for each month depending on your expected revenue

There are advantages to doing it either way, of course. If you choose the first method and your revenue in July of last year was $5,000 then you know you’ll spend $750 in advertising for that month. It’s an easy way to keep track of your spend. By the end of the year you will have spent 15% of your total yearly revenue from the previous year on your advertising efforts.

On the other hand, if your base is 15%, using the second method, what you want to do is figure out your average month. Take your total revenue - $100,000 - and divide it by 12, which comes to $8,333.33. That’s your average revenue for any given month so for months that you earned that much, or close to that much, in the previous year you’ll spend your 15% of total advertising revenue for the year during that month. In other words, you’ll spend $1,250 on advertising for any month during the year that hits around that revenue figure for the corresponding month of the year before. Example:

Last year you brought in $8,050 in January, $8,290 in March, $8,445 in May, and $8,300 in August. For each of those months you’ll spend $1,250 in advertising. But what about months that are above or below those revenue figures?

You’ll need to establish a window for each percentage of ad spend. For instance, you’ll spend 15% for expected revenues between $8,000 and $8,500. Make percentage adjustments for each $500 window above and below that. The percentage can be any figure you want but make it the same for both above and below. So if you adjust the ad spend by 2% for each $500 window, do that for the window below $8,000 ($7,500-$7,999) and the window above ($8,500-$8,999). Based on these windows you’re ad spend will be 13% and 17%, respectively.

How much you adjust for each window and the size of each window above and below your average revenue figure is up to you, but you want to be consistent in your approach. It’s a little more complicated doing it this way but it’s a good way to control your ad spend.