First position is the best place to rank… Right?… Wrong! Being in position 1 does not necessarily mean success, especially in Google Adwords. The funny thing is not everyone clicks on the first advertisement, they often click on lower positioned ads depending on how relevant they perceive the ad to be.
This is great news for you because it means you can save a ton of money on your bids.
Now, if that isn’t good enough, then get this… There is often a significant gap between the bid prices paid for first, second or third position bids for Google pay-per-click ads.
This is a great money saving tip; Let others pay the top dollar to be listed firstor even second or third. By stretching your advertising dollar this way you will not only save money on your pay-per-click bill, but you may very well get better traffic to your website by being further down the list of Google ads in the search engine. Go figure!
A good feature of Google’s keyword tool is the cost per click option in the search results. Simply choose for the cost per click column to be displayed and you will see a small box above the search results where you can input a (hypothetical) maximum bid price. All of the keywords in the search result will then show you what position your maximum bid will buy you. You now have an idea of what bid price you will have to pay to be in a particular position. Simple stuff that can save you some dollars in the beginning stages of a campaign.
To help you achieve success with you Google PPC campaigns, I urge you to study your competitors. Lets say your advertising an affiliate product using Pay Per Click, you will no doubt have other affiliates promoting the same product, therefore competing against you for the same traffic. Take a look at the type of landing pages they are using and there ad copy. If they are running their ads over a long period of time, more often thn not this would suggest they have a profitable campaign… (or like losing money) So study your opposition.
Don’t waste time by researching your competition and niche manually. You can, but you should be using one of the many PPC tools that are available to save you time and money. One of the latest and greatest PPC spy tools is Google Cash Detective 2, this one tool has been responsible for helping me recognize and set up profitable campaigns right off the bat. I can’t start a new Pay Per Clicks campaign without it.
Using a tool like Google Cash Detective 2 you can easily recognize what your competition is doing: Are they using a pre-sell page or are they direct linking to the product landing page?
Some people might suggest that this is how you can identify the pro’s from the amateurs. Not always the case, but a lot of super successful affiliate marketers do use the power of a squeeze page to maximize there PPC investment by building their lists.
The chances of a first time visitor to your site making a purchase is not that great. Lead capture and follow up marketing can increase conversions on your paid traffic. The theory is that it takes a marketer to contact a buyer 7 times before that buyer makes a purchase.
It’s up to you if you choose to try and capture leads with your PPC campaigns. The benefits of continued marketing is in my opinion well worth the small amount of effort it takes to set up a squeeze page. Capturing contact details gives you two bites of the cherry, and that little bit of effort can be the difference between being a successful or a failing affiliate marketer.
It’s all relatively simple stuff, but I hope this helps you find success with your PPC advertising.
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