What You Need to Know About Google PPC Advertising

Google pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a great way for small businesses and start-ups to acquire sales. After all, Google owns 70 percent of the search engine market, and your prospective customers are likely to us it to hunt for a product or service just like yours. While PPC advertising can help your company, there are also major pitfalls to avoid.

Let's start with the major advantages:

• You can gain instant Internet visibility while your Website bubbles up in organic search engine rankings.
• Your ads appear right at the moment someone is searching for your product or service!
• You are only charged when someone actually clicks on your ad…otherwise, it’s free!

But to take advantage of PPC advertising, you have to really understand how it works. In short, Google PPC advertising is not for novices. Trust me, if you just follow Google directions and recommendations, you can blow through a lot of money really fast with minimal results.

The major mistakes small businesses and start-ups make when using PPC advertising are:

• Not setting objectives, a strategy or computing break-even economics.
• Failure to perform keyword research; bidding primarily on popular (costly) keywords.
• Not using negative keywords to optimize your budget.
• Poorly written or misleading ads which result in ineffective clicks.
• Failure to incorporate keywords in your ads
• Clicking on an ad takes the user to your Website Home page where they get lost and quickly move on. Either take the clicker to a specific page in your site or (preferred) a landing page related to the ad content.
• No lead capture or purchase mechanism.
• Failure to actively manage campaigns.
• Unable to measure return on investment.

And you can't master Google PPC advertising without devoting considerable time and, yes, money in the process. The industry is full of horror stories about first-timers who tried it and were shocked at the bill they received on their credit cards. Hiring a knowledgeable, experienced person to launch and manage your PPC campaigns is worth every penny. In the long run, you'll save money while profitably grow your sales.

If you wish to proceed on your own despite this advice, for God's sake set a minimal budget so you can play with the PPC variables and learn the Google ropes without breaking your bank. If you want affordable professional assistance, give us (http://www.smallbizsmartmarketing.com/) or a knowledgeable consultant a call. You won't regret it.

Creating Market Awareness for your Products or Services

Public relations ("PR") is not a black art. It is as essential for small businesses as it is for large corporations. Let's face it - it's hard to sell your product or service if the market you are targeting has never heard of you.

Of course, you can blanket your target market with expensive advertising in magazines, the radio, television or newspapers. But did you know you can accomplish much the same thing through effective PR programs? In many ways, PR is "free" advertising and often much more effective than expensive alternatives.

Public relations takes many forms. It can be a press release that takes on a life of its own on the Internet, placing an article about your company in a widely read publication, having a published interview, winning an industry award, or briefing industry analysts. These activities spread your message in an effective, credible fashion.

Online press releases and articles contain embedded links back to your Website. Since these get picked up by other Websites, newsletters and blogs, interested readers often follow the embedded links to your Website. This increases your Website traffic. Also, having incoming links from other Internet entities drives up your organic search engine ranking. It's a win-win situation!

Use Google PPC Conversion Tracking to Determine Advertising ROI

Google PPC advertising (Adwords) is effective, but can be a very scary proposition. if you don't know what you're doing, you can burn through a lot of money very quickly with little or no results. In short, it really, really pays to employ a knowledgeable person to set up your Google PPC advertising.

Google Adwords has a neat feature that allows you to track the business results from your online advertising. Essentially, it works like this:

• Set up your Google ad campaign
• Each Google ad should go to a separate "landing page" where you present your sales argument and have a lead capture form or "buy" button.
• When a prospect clicks on the "Submit" or "Buy" button on the landing page, you should have a "Thank You" page to which they are automatically transferred. The only way anyone can get to the "Thank You" page is by clicking on a button on the ad landing page.
• Google Adwords provides a conversion tracking feature that generates specific code which can be inserted on the Thank You" page for each landing page. This code notifies Google when someone arrives on the "Thank You" page.

Thus, Google will record all arrivals at each "Thank You" page as a lead or sales conversion for the landing page tied to a specific ad. This data is displayed in your campaign summary by Google Adwords. In effect, this tells you how well an ad and its associated landing page is performing in converting ad click-throughs into either revenue or sales leads. This is your "return on investment (ROI)" for Google advertising.

Knowing your ROI for Google advertising is essential. Without it, you have no way of measuring how much a lead or purchase is costing you in terms of advertising dollars. If it's too high, PPC advertising may not be the answer for you. A high ROI figure can also alert you to the need to improve your conversion rate by tweaking your ads and./or landing pages.

Need help with Google PPC advertising? Contact a professional at Small Business Smart Marketing: (866) 284-4955 or via email at info@smallbizsmartmarketing.com.

Have a Great Idea? Sell It on a Single-Page Website!

Do you have a great idea? Did you come up with a better "widget" that you know will knock the world dead? Well, now you can begin marketing your widget worldwide within just a few days.

A great way to give your idea life is to launch a single-page Website as a 24x7 marketing machine that has but one purpose - to generate widget sales or capture leads. And you can accomplish this for under $4 monthly!

If your widget really is a great idea, you will be surprised how effective a single-page Website is. It is easier to optimize for the search engines too. For example, if you get a pertinent domain name, such as http://www.widget.com/, implementing the right meta tags and keyword densities is much simpler than a normal business Website. And you can have this for under $4 monthly in hosting fees!

The good news is that you don't have to understand how to put up a Website, how to write persuasive site content, how to create and insert order forms or set up online payment. We can do all that for you. Moreover, your "great idea" can be transformed into a dynamite Internet marketing machine within just a few days. Throw in some targeted pay per click advertising and watch your sales grow.

Contact us to learn just how affordable it is to launch your better widget.

The Evolution of Online Advertising

There are changes occurring in online advertising. Google is experimenting with pay-per-conversion advertising, wherein advertisers will only be charged when a prospect actually takes a desired landing page action (e.g., filling out the lead capture form) and winds up on the site's thank-you (i.e., "conversion") page. This will take of click fraud. It is also a more meaningful way of charging for online advertising. Expect Yahoo and others to follow Google's lead on this.

Another innovative approach is "pay per call" advertising introduced by Ingenio. It works in much the same fashion as current PPC advertising. You create an ad, set your bid price for calls, and then your ad appears across the Ingenio Advertising Network which includes AOL Search and other sites. However, you are only charged when an interested prospect actually calls you!

Search engine advertising, which is the fuel driving Internet marketing, is evolving. Just look at recent innovations in local PPC advertising. What's exciting is that this change is being driven by both technology and customer demands. I think this is a good thing. It will benefit all small businesses by letting us get more "bang for the buck."