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Expanding Your Reach With the Big 3 in Pay Per Click 
By: Josh Prizer
It's time to ratchet up your pay per click advertising and you are looking for the most effective way to use your ad budget. Maybe you've just begun PPC advertising and need help. Let's take a look at the most effective ways to optimize your search marketing ad campaigns using Google, Yahoo, MSN and others.
The Big Three in PPC
Google, Yahoo and MSN provide the best results these days. They've morphed into more or less the same sort of PPC services. You can geo-target ads, you can set ads to turn on and off during peak times, you can split test ad copy, you've got complicated quality scores to optimize, etc., etc. Google still holds the lion's share of the search traffic, but each has something to offer.
AdWords From Google
Quality traffic is important and Google AdWords remains on top in delivering high-volume clicks that count. However, don't sleep on Google's success -- you still need to monitor your results with frequency. With enough the time, knowledge and the right tools, you can do this yourself, or you can outsource all that to a professional PPC management company.
One of the main problems with Google is that it is not only becoming more and more competitive, it is also getting more and more difficult to master. With "Quality Scores" playing a more important role these days and more bids coming up "Inactive for Search," it introduces more variables into the equations. If you are willing to put in the time to continually test and monitor your keywords, you can maintain a healthy Google account. If you don't, you get penalized. You'll see bid minimums raised or forced to pay higher prices, or even be purposely priced out. The good news is that with consistent effort, you can actually fine tune and tweak your ad campaigns to the point where you are actually paying lower prices, but getting higher ranks than your competitors.
With any of the PPC engines, you need to make sure you separate out your content network advertising from your search advertising and track those separately. If you don't in Google, bad keywords are probably leaking your account right now.
Again, Google produces results, but you must be constantly vigilant, especially if you are an advertiser with a high-end budget. Spending more time, dedicating more staffing and hours or outsourcing your PPC campaign to a professional management company will pay off.
Yahoo Search Marketing: Still Essential
In response to what Google had done in the PPC marketplace, Yahoo Search Marketing (which used to be called Overture, and before that, Goto.com) re-tooled their network early in 2007 with its Panama update. While Yahoo is no longer on top of the pay per click field as they had been in the past, it's still a worthy place to invest.
Similar to Google, Yahoo has a "Quality Index" ... and again, this is something that you have to pay attention to. Continual testing is a must. Yahoo won't hit you as often and as strongly as Google, but your campaign will suffer if you don't frequently split test to fine tune your ad quality.
We recommend focusing on the three C's when it comes to testing that ad copy: Customer, Competition and your Company. Why are you better than your competition? Why are you more relevant to your client or consumer? Try varying your approaches with your ads. Once you've discovered one that really works, use it as a control and tweak your ad with little changes. For best results, continue the testing to drive up that Yahoo Quality Index.
MSN AdCenter
Even though MSN was late to the party with pay per click advertising, they shouldn't be ignored. We've noticed some high quality traffic to go along with their very useful targeting capabilities. You'll be able to utilize the same geo-targeting type of local PPC campaigns as the others. Additionally, however, is the ability to target the demographics of users. For example, if you see high conversions on your website for a specific type of visitor, MSN will allow you to raise your bids when it finds those potential clients or consumers using the MSN search network.
MSN also recently launched a new method to import your campaigns from Google AdWords. This will make your expansion easier than before. Word of caution when you do this: Make sure your Google account is as fine tuned and optimized as possible, or you will be simply repeating the same mistakes. If you have large Ad Groups with large lists of keywords, you need to break those down into smaller, more manageable ones. This will allow you to target the searches with more relevant ads. Again, test, test and re-test that ad copy.
The Rest of the Pack
We've found inconsistent results from Ask and Looksmart. Some traffic will pay off for a short term, then tank with bad results a week later. As a result, your Earnings Per Click will die off...sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Another hit or miss, is Miva. Keep your bids low and your management constant. A poor job managing your other pay per click accounts can be deadly with any of these others. You can find some good traffic there, but you have to boost your efforts on tracking and watch your results closely since things can turn bad fast. We recommend avoiding all the other pay per click engines.
You'll find that the PPC programs of Google, Yahoo, and MSN are probably more than enough work to keep you occupied -- especially if you are playing the game correctly. If you are not doing daily ad split tests, if you aren't keeping track of sales results down to the keyword level, if you are not searching for the money-making keywords that your competition is using, then you are not using the Big Three to the fullest potential. Invest your time, effort and money there before pushing on to others...you will get a better return on your investment.
Protect Your Investment
Ignoring the daily management needs of your PPC accounts will most likely result in bad keywords depleting your funds. On top of that, good keywords are getting more and more expensive because your quality scores are slipping compared to your competitors. Under-performing campaigns cost advertisers a huge chunk of potential business. It's up to you to protect your investment with effective, intelligent supervision of your in-house PPC marketing or by outsourcing this essential work to a professional pay per click management company.
Article Source: http://www.uberarticles.com/articles
Josh Prizer is a Senior Account Executive and PPC Expert for Zero Company Performance Marketing, a pay per click management company. Visit his website now to discover more info on improving your PPC advertising campaigns and results.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which means you may freely reprint it, in its entiretly, provided you include the author's resource box along with LIVE links (without "nofollow" tags).
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