Manage PPC Spending With Bids, Not Budget

Many companies take advantage of the Budget control in Google AdWords to limit their daily and monthly spending to their desired goal. What not everyone realizes is that this can result in higher cost per click (CPC) and fewer clicks! This is because the way that AdWords ensures you don't exceed your budget is by limiting the number of times your ad is displayed (which limits clicks).

Here's a simplified example to illustrate the point. Say you have only one keyword and it has the following monthly cost and volume data (hypothetical data):

Position	Bid	Clicks	CTR	CPC	Cost
1	$11.39	1,600	4.0%	$8.30	$13,280
2	$7.14	1,100	2.8%	$5.20	$5,720
3	$4.52	800	2.0%	$3.43	$2,744
4	$3.91	700	1.8%	$2.95	$2,065
5	$3.27	600	1.5%	$2.44	$1,464
6	$2.64	500	1.3%	$1.94	$970
7	$2.03	400	1.0%	$1.47	$588
8	$1.40	300	0.8%	$1.02	$306

First, imagine you have a bid of $7.14 (since this is an important keyword, you want to rank high) and your monthly budget is $2,750. In this case, your ad will show up at position 2, but only $2,750/$5,720 = 48% of the time. This means you get 48% x 1,100 = 528 clicks. Your cost per click is $5.20, which brings your monthly spending in right under your budget of $2,745.60.

Now, imagine that your bid was $4.52, with the same budget of $2,750. Here, your ad shows up in position 3 but shows 100% of the time. Now, you get 800 clicks at a cost per click of $3.43 for a total cost of $2,744, coming in right under your monthly spending target.

Comparing these two cases, in the first one you were budget limited and got 528 clicks, and in the second case, you used your bid to achieve your spending target and got 800 clicks for the same cost. That's why managing PPC spending using your budget results in higher CPC and fewer clicks.

PPC Management Software Makes It Easier
Of course, it can be hard to estimate which bid will result in what cost, especially when you are dealing with 100s or 1000s of words instead of just one. However, this is exactly what we designed Marketo's pay per click management software to help you do. You simply tell the tool how much you want to spend each month (at the campaign or ad group level), and the software optimally allocates that spending across all your keywords to drive the most conversions and calculate the bids that will achieve that target spending. You can check this out yourself, and please tell us what you think.

Watch Marketo's Bid Management Software Demo.
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Jon Miller is VP of Marketing for Marketo, a provider of affordable, easy-to use-marketing automation software that helps B2B marketing professionals drive revenue and improve accountability. Jon's blog, Modern B2B Marketing, explores best practices in business marketing, ranging from pay-per-click management to lead nurturing to marketing accountability. The Strictly Business column appears Wednesdays at Search Engine Land. For more information check out http://www.marketo.com or http://blog.marketo.com.

Tips For Cost Effective Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click advertising is one of the fastest ways to targeting prospective customers to your business products or services. A website can contract with one of the search engines, such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN and bid on keywords. When a person using the search engine enters one of the keywords in the search box, their ad pops up on the search results page as a sponsored ad. Here are some tips to make sure your ad is seen above your competition.

Know Your Niche
Knowing your niche when it comes to pay per click advertising involves knowing what search terms surfers are most likely to type into an internet search engine when looking for a site such as yours. Coming up with as many phrases that describe your website or your product or service is your most handy tool. With this basic list of keywords that describe your niche market you can then proceed to use the internet to help you find more words or phrases that you might not have thought of to add to your list. You can also find derivatives of the main words you thought up to give you a broader scope of keywords to bid on. To find free tools to use online to assist you simply type in "keyword too" into any search engine.

Pick Low Competition Keywords
The world of pay per click advertising is very competitive and the words you might want to bid on can be out of your budget. The key is to find the low competition variations of your main keyword that are less popular and therefore will cost less.

The best tool one can have when looking for low competition keywords in their niche is a keyword analyzer software which can be purchased or found for free online. Some keywords tools are very good for doing pay per click research because they not only give you a list of alternatives for any search word you enter, they will also display the number of searches for that keyword and the number of campaigns already running for the keyword phrase you entered. This gives you a good view of what words you can bid on without going over budget, and also allows you to find keywords to bid on that are uncharted, meaning they get a good number of monthly searches but there are no campaigns running for that keyword. Without a keyword analyzer tool you can also find out how many campaigns are running for any keyword by simply typing the word into in the search engine and counting the ads.

Write Engaging Ads
Pay per click ads are typically less than 125 characters. You don't get lots of ad space to sell, so the object is to get into your customers head and ask yourself how they will benefit from your product or service. Listing a benefit in the form a question is a good way to engage those who view your ads. Some search engines such as Google allow you to score points through relevancy to search terms. Meaning the more relevant your ad is, based on how many times it is view verses how many it is clicked, the higher your ad will be on the list of ads bidding for that keyword. Using your main keyword in the title of the ad and in the ad itself will show your ad as having the exact phase that surfer searched for and thus increases the likeliness that they will click through to your web page.

Test Your Ads
Once you've written an add and included the keywords you'd like to bid on, your next step is to write a different ad and run it along side your first ad to test which one gets more click through's or sales. Once you've found this out, write another one and try and beat your previous stats. This will eventually lead to you having the best ads possible. Most pay per click companies will allow you to run two ads simultaneously, sharing the account funds to each and displaying each ad the same number of times.

Once you have a few pay per click campaigns under your belt this system for choosing the right keywords and creating relevant ads will become routine. Done the right way pay per click advertising can be a very cost effective way to promote any online venture you are involved in.

Lowering Your Google Adwords Minimum Bids

Why does Google Adwords Want $10 Minimum Bid? This is a question I hear all of the time.

You've spent time and money researching a market, more time and money putting a website together for that market and your ready to go live. You decide to give Adwords a shot because you've heard so many great things about it.

You sign up and begin creating your account, getting excited with anticipation off all that high quality traffic your

about to get. You put in the keywords and Boom! Google adwords gives you this message "Increase quality or bid to
$10.00 to activate" What is going on here!!?? What a scam.

The thing about Google is they reward relevancy and
penalize websites that are irrelevant. Who decides whats relevant and what's not? Google does based on it's
algorithm from Google Bot. I have used $10 minimum bid as an example, it could be $5 or a $1 minimum bid. Your
minimum bid should be cents not dollars.

How do you make Google Bot your friend? Make your website relevant in Google's eyes. This is done by a 3 pronged attack. First make sure your ad groups are "themed" around 1 keyword with variations.
For instance adgroup name

-------------------------------
Discount Laptops
-------------------------------

Keywords:


discount laptops

cheap laptops

affordable laptops

really cheap laptops


By doing this your account is organized into a tightly knit group of keywords that makes it easy for you to write
ads for. When you write your ad Google loves it when you use the keywords in your ad and so do searchers. This is
an essential step in lowering your minimum bids.

Cheap Laptops

Discount laptops to fit

your budget. Free shipping

http://www.example.com/

Google will consider this ad highly relevant to your ad group's keywords. Google will also bold any keyword that
the searcher typed, in your ad. Which will catch your prospect's eye. In the above example if a searcher typed the keywords 'cheap laptops' all instances of the words cheap and laptops in your ad would appear in bold.

Using the keywords on your landing page

Google and searchers love this also because you are focusing your landing page around the keywords that have been searched both Google Bot and the searcher will consider this very relevant, provided your supporting content stays on topic. This technique will increase your Quality Score which in turn will lower your minimum bids.

Lets recap the three pronged attack for lowering your minimum bids.

1. Tightly "themed" ad groups

2. Keywords in ad

3. Keywords used on landing page


Robert Walter has been successfully marketing online for over 6 years. Learn how to master Adwords with his reviews of Killer Adwords Guides. Shop for discount inkjet cartridges

How to Make Money Online for Free: Pay Per Click

Now I'm sure you're thinking that you can't make money for free from pay per click. To a point, you are right.

However, when you're first starting off with this marketing technique, it's possible to get free credits from many of these search engines. Just do a search in your favorite search engine for "free pay per click" or some other similar phrase. You'll find plenty of smaller search engines out there to get you started.

Also, check with both Yahoo and MSN. Yahoo frequently offers a free promotion, and from time to time so does MSN. The point is to find as many of these free offers as possible so that you may test and track your offers. Also, it is less expensive to advertise in many of the smaller pay per click search engines and sometimes these sites are just as effective as Google. (You may also want to check Ebay. It's possible to find sites that are offering free coupons for Google Adwords, etc.)

Once you've found the sites you want to market on, here are the steps you need to take to start making money as soon as today:

1. Read the guidelines for the site you are marketing on.

I know. You want to jump in and start making money. The problem with that is you need to understand what you are doing first. Although you will start off marketing for free, once you have several successful campaigns running, you will have to pay for those clicks.

That's why you want to learn everything you can about marketing on these sites. They want you to succeed, and so they will offer you plenty of resources to help. In fact, Google has an extensive training center that now offers video. Do your homework. It will save you money and make you more money.

2. Do your keyword research.

Keyword research is one of the most essential elements of your campaign. You want to make sure you target the right keywords. Long tail keywords, i.e. keywords with four or more words work best because they are more targeted.

There are tons of free keyword tools out there to help you get this right. Check the site you are marketing on to see if they have a tool to help you.

3. Find the products you want to sell.

Clickbank is a good place to start because you can make good commissions selling products from their website. There is also a large selection of products available. Just make sure you look for products that don't have too high a gravity (one of the ways Clickbank measures sales). Otherwise, you may end up trying to sell a product that is too popular.

Check other affiliate program directories like Linkshare, Commission Junction, Share a Sale, Clix Galore, and others to help you find lucrative affiliate programs on your topic. You may also consider doing a search in the search engines if you can't find what you are looking for.

4. Write your ads.

By now you should be ready to write your ads. If you have read the guidelines and terms and conditions for where you are submitting, then you know how long your ad may be and what to include in it.

Remember, your headline is important here. This is how you will get others to click on your ad. Also, make sure you include your most important keyword in your ad. Some sites like Google Adwords allow you to add variables to your ads so the keyword will change based on what the reader is looking for.

5. Test and track your ads.

To find out which ads work, i.e. which ones are getting the clicks and sales, you will need to test and track.

Most of these sites will tell you how many clicks the ad got. The next step is to log into your affiliate stats for the product you are promoting and see how many sales you have made. If you're building a list, you will need to see how many subscribers you have.

There are many ways to test and track your ads. Scripts you install on your website, as well as link cloakers are two. No matter what tools you choose to use, just make sure you use tools that will help you effectively track your campaigns.