A-irco.org

Effective Advertising with Pay Per Click

By Scottie Claiborne ©2006   

Get More Business for Dollars a Day

Are you confused by the options out there for website marketing? It's not surprising. Most people get emails every day promising them thousands of visitors to their websites for just $29.95 a month. It's hard to know what to believe!  However, paid search advertising is an amazingly affordable way to get your ad in front of potential customers in your area.  It's worth taking the time to learn more about it.

Paid Search Advertising Programs

The only "real" paid search programs out there worth your money are Google AdWords or Yahoo Local Paid Search.  The rest of the pay-per-click engines out there are not worth joining, even if they cost less.  If you've never heard of it, chances are, neither has anyone else!

Should You Use a Professional?

Some of our members have been contacted by firms offering to set up and run a PPC program at no charge. They can do this because Google typically pays an agency fee to them to run these programs, so it's not bad if you want to give it a shot. 

However, remember that firms are paid based on how much you spend, so it's in their best interest to get you to spend more.  If that increased spend gains you more clients, then it's worth it. A good firm will continue to find top converting phrases and track them for you, however unless you have a big budget, it's not likely to be cost-effective for them to give you detailed service.

Setting Up Your Own Campaign

• Pick Your Keywords
  What are people likely to be searching for who would want to hire you?  Moonwalk, bounce house, concessions, popcorn, inflatable slide, etc.  Use the Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool or Keyword Discovery's Free Trial to give you a relative idea of the more popular keywords. 


• Set Your Budget
  $5 a day or $50 a month?  $5000 a month?  Whatever your budget, no matter how low or how high, you can control what you want to pay for each click.  The highest bids will be the ads shown first, but in most markets, your bid prices will be pretty low as very few moonwalk rental companies are really involved in PPC advertising yet.  You can get clicks for as little as 5 cents.


• Narrow Your Campaign to Local Searches
  THIS IS CRITICAL!  You only want your ads shown to people in your delivery area, and today's PPC providers allow you to set that.  If you don't limit your campaign, people across the country will click your ads and waste your money.  Sure, it's possible that Grandma in Peoria is researching a moonwalk rental for little Bobby in Pasadena, but not enough that you want to pay for useless clicks to get the occasional worthwhile click.  Listing in the Moonwalk Rental Directory will help catch those people as well as optimizing your site for "editorial" searches.


• Write Your Ad
  You have very few words to work with here, so make them count.  Consider writing different ads for different search phrases... if someone is looking for an Obstacle Course, you want your ad to say something like "We Rent Obstacle Courses" instead of just "Bob's Fun Hoppers".  You want your ad to BE exactly what the searcher is looking for.  This takes more time, but it well worth the effort.


• Link the Ad to the Most Appropriate Page
  Sure, it's a heck of a lot easier to link all your ads to the home page, but why make customers work to find what they want?  If they want an obstacle course, link them straight to the obstacle course page.  If they want a popcorn machine, link them to the popcorn machine page.


• Measure, Test and Adjust
  The coolest thing about online advertising is the ability to measure the response.  And yet most people don't bother to do it!  Use the tools provided by the PPC providers to determine what the most popular phrases are, which phrases get the most conversions (IE, calling or filling out a reservation form) and which phrases are costing you money but not bringing business.  Try different ads and see what works better!  It's simple to change your ads and you can do it any time. 

If you are intrigued about PPC advertising and want to learn more, read PPC- Buying Your Way In, a simple overview of getting started with PPC.