5 Things Necessary for Successful PPC Advertising

• Test Ad Copy – Your PPC ad gives you 95 characters to convince web surfers that your ad is the answer to their need.  The words and phrasing you choose can make the difference between getting a click-thru or getting ignored.  Test your PPC ad copy to fine-tune it for the best click-thru rates.
  
  
• Geo-Targetting – If your business operates locally, you don’t need to pay for clicks from another province.  Indeed, unless you operate globally, you get more mileage from your PPC ad budget by concentring your campaign only in the geographic areas you serve.
  
  
• Keywords – When customers enter a search term, they are looking for a “green light” in the results to tell them where they should go next – which link they should choose.  The keywords you place in the copy of your PPC ad could be the green light they are looking for.  When customers read the term they searched in the ad copy, the light goes green for that link.
  
  
• Positioning/Bid Prices – When is number one not the best position in search rankings?  On some PPC ad campaigns.  There are many studies that show that the first position does not always produce the most click-thrus to your web site.  Customers tend to check a few ads before making a selection.  Coupled with the sometimes exponentially higher cost of the first position, you might find that a somewhat lower PPC ad position produces a better return on your internet marketing investment.
  
  
• Specific Landing Pages – Even as web surfers become more sophisticated, the foibles of the internet still mean that we can become lost.  When a consumer is looking for a solution, he or she needs constant reminders that they are on the right trail.  If they search for “blue jeans” and end up on a clothing manufacturer’s homepage that doesn’t list blue jeans off the top, surfers might lose the trail to their solution.  Make sure customers know they have found the right place by reinforcing the search terms they used on the page they land on when they choose your link.  If they searched for pink elephants, make sure your landing page is about pink elephants.

PPC advertising is a powerful medium for generating new business. It also lets you track and measure a number of variables that will help you get more bang for your web advertising dollar.