Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Checking Your PPC Ads

By Brian Basch

A common cause for concern in any PPC advertising campaign is the quality and effectiveness of an ad. You need an ad that will not only draw people to your site, but will also lead to sales.

Construction of the ad for your PPC campaign is very basic. It is in fact a small classified ad. There are 3 parts to it; first the headline, second the body and thirdly the call for action. The headline should be eye catching and memorable. The reader should be attracted to the headline right away and it should compel them to read more. The body of the ad should have one or two benefits of the product and service. Lastly there should be a strong call for action with a link to the sales page for your product or service.

In order to achieve optimal ads, you should use split testing. This will allow you to test ads against each other and find the strongest ad possible. The first thing you will want to do is set up 2 campaigns for the same product. These campaigns will use separate ads and link to separate landing pages for easy data tracking.

Tweak the second ad until it out performs the first, then take down the first ad and replace it with a new one. Adjust this ad until it can out perform the second ad. You can continue to do this until you achieve maximum performance from your ad. This part of PPC management can be somewhat time consuming but will be well worth it when you see the additional profits.

Your ad will be based around your main keyword for your business. It can be used either for an affiliate program or your own products and services. Google Adwords allows affiliate programs but not all PPC engines do.

You will want your ad to be as targeted as possible. Since you are paying per click, you want as many sales as possible to be generated from the traffic coming to your site. A broad keyword can draw traffic but will not bring in much sales.

In order to keep potential customers coming to your site, you will need to keep making adjustments to your ads. In order to help you do this, Google Adwords offers a variety of tools and tutorial to aid in the management of your ads and your entire PPC advertising campaign.

A lot of people, while focusing on their keywords and bidding very intensely, will post and ad and then forget about it. This is extremely unwise. Your ads are what will herd your customers to you. If you do not continue to maintain a strong ad your campaign may end up failing.

About the Author:

No comments: