Avoiding Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Disasters! Don’t be a Google Victim

If you are thinking about using PPC to drive traffic to your site… this is a “must read!”

It happened again, I received a frantic call from an associate saying, “Help, I was charged $7,650.00 on my credit card for Google AdWords® charges and didn’t make any sales!”  I said, “John, I warned you to take the time to learn how to use PPC or hire someone with experience.”

You see, John and his staff were not experienced with PPC and didn’t want to hire someone like me, who is trained in Google AdWords and a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador… they wanted to save my fees and just set up their PPC themselves.

Now, in hindsight, my fees for PPC services would have been well worth their money, but many people just think it’s easy to use Pay-Per-Click advertising. 

Well, it’s easy to set up an account and get started, but it’s also easy to spend a ton of money without knowing what you’re doing.  For this blog posting, I’m mainly referring to PPC with Google Adwords® and Yahoo Search Marketing.

Here are a 5 (over-simplified) tips if you’re considering using Pay-per-Click. 

1. First you need to calculate your Value-Per-Visitor (VPV).  An easy way to find your VPV is to take the total value of the sales you receive during a certain time period (gross), and divide that figure by the number of visitors on your website during the same time period.  For example, if you get 10,000 people a month to your site and sell $ 2,500, then you’d have a VPV of .25.   This is a benchmark that you can use to improve the performance of your site and it helps you decide how much you can afford to SPEND to bring in new customers. If you know that each visitor is worth .25, then you could spend up tp .24 and still make it profitable. Of course, you’ll aim for much better than that, but you need to start with VPV.

2. Do your Keyword Research.  Create an Excel spreadsheet of the keywords and key phrases that you think that people would search for that you want to use to attract new prospects to your site.  

3. Set up your “landing pages” that tightly match your Ad-group, Keywords and Ads.   Your goal is to create a compelling ad using very few words that when shown entices the right prospects to CLICK on your ad. Then you need to take them to a web page (landing page) that closely matches what your ad offers.  If your ad is about “How to Make Money on the Internet” and then takes them to a landing page selling something else, you’ll lose your prospect in a nano-second.  If it says, “how to” then give them the how to stuff.  How you design your campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ads, and landing pages are critical to the success of your PPC advertising.  This requires the ability to write effective headlines, benefit copy and proper action steps.

4. I suggest using Google AdWords PPC first, getting everything setup with profitable campaigns, then duplicate them using other PPC sources, like Yahoo Search Marketing.  Again, learn from John’s mistake… Get qualified help to set up your account. Do this by yourself only if you’re committed to learning how the system works and then how to best apply PPC to your particular products and services.  This step cannot be taken lightly.  Google and other PPC sources have their “default” settings to drive the most traffic to you, which costs you the most money. The problem is, it might not be the most targeted or qualified traffic.  

The reason John spent $7,650 in a month was because he didn’t understand the difference between the “Search Network” and the “Content Network” options and by default, both were automatically checked. He also didn’t understand or implement the use of negative keywords.  He also had the option checked to “optimize” his traffic and stay in the top positions on search results making his bid the TOP fee… not a good strategy for him.

He’s a professional speaker that uses humor and focuses on motivational keynotes.  He was bidding on the keyword “speaker” that he thought would be good…. the trouble was he was getting traffic for stereo speakers, speaker repair, and a whole host of other impressions and clicks that were totally useless and very expensive.  

5. Make it profitable or focus on other forms of driving traffic to your site.  “You don’t go broke making a profit” — Ford Saeks.    Hey, I’m just saying that unless you’re willing to invest many hours learning how to use PPC, you’re better off getting professional help and focusing on the other things that you do best to add value and make a profit.

I’ve spent thousands of dollars on PPC training, participated in several “How to” events, read books, blogs, listened to countless teleseminars, tutorials and invested in PPC coaching from Perry Marshall and Brian Todd. Perry and Brian are considered some of the best sources for PPC training.  Why?  Because I wanted to use PPC to grow my business and help my clients make more money! 

Hopefully, if your considering PPC, you’ll avoid the horror stories that I hear so often from people who through good money away on bad marketing efforts.

PPC is very effective and a fantastic way to drive targeted traffic to your sites—just make sure you know what you’re doing or hire a PPC expert!