| This takes 90% of the risk out of starting a new business or launching a new product!
And the messages that work in your Pay-Per-Click marketing campaigns will usually also work in other media. So PPC is the first place to test your marketing.
As long ago as 1996, forward-thinking people viewed the Internet as the ultimate marketing machine. Of course by 1998, it was so “obvious” that the Internet was a killer marketing medium that millions of investors blindly dumped their money into DOT COM companies and created a huge bubble – and the recession that followed.
Ouch.
Why did this happen? Why was the DOT COM era such a bomb?
It’s basically because thousands of companies were spending $200 to get a $60 customer – and they were too dumb to know it!
Understand this: Advertising is an investment, just like stocks, bonds or real estate. It has to pay for itself, without smoke and mirrors. Direct marketing is the art and science of making advertising pay.
And Google AdWords is the fastest way to become a direct marketing master that the world has ever seen.
So Here’s What’s Going to Happen:
A Simple 5-Step Plan that Sidesteps All That Waste!
Here’s an incredibly simple way to get a website up and running successfully:
1. Put up a web page that tells your visitors what you can do for them – and asks them to respond. The response might be in the form of a purchase, an opt-in to receive a newsletter, information in the mail, a report, guide or paper – but most importantly, get the person to tell you who they are.
2. Generate a list of keywords that your customers would type into a search engine.
3. Write a Google AdWords advertisement, and start buying traffic. Here they come!
4. Monitor your results.
5. Tweak the details and improve your performance – and watch your profits grow.
Why Pay-Per-Click is So Important
Pay Per Click advertising is not a fad or flash in the pan. It’s here to stay – permanently. As a matter of fact, in my professional opinion, history will show it to be the most important development in advertising during this decade.
Why? Because it combines two enormously powerful concepts: 1) You only advertise to people who are looking for what you have right now, and you only pay when they respond and click through to your site; and 2) Pricing is determined by an ongoing, real-time auction based on true market values.
Google vs. Overture
There are two major players in Pay-Per-Click: Google and Overture. I believe Google is far superior for my customers. Why?
Google caters much more to technical audiences, B2B buyers and savvy Internet users. They disable ads that have low click-through rates, and reward high-click-through rates with better pricing. Google is instantaneous – you get instant results and can make instant changes, while Overture has a 3-6 day waiting period while their staff reviews what you submit. And Google lets you market to specific countries if you need to.
Google’s instantaneous capabilities make it the ultimate, highest-speed direct marketing tool ever devised in the history of mankind. I’m not exaggerating. Google is head and shoulders above everyone else in the search engine world.
Learning the Google System
In April 2002, a few weeks after its inception, I began buying Internet traffic on Google AdWords both for myself and for several of my corporate consulting clients. Many people found my website and became my customer or client through this powerful tool.
So I’ve been using AdWords intensively – some might say obsessively – for three years now. AdWords was a very exciting new ingredient to add to the mix.
A Word of Caution:
In using AdWords there’s initially a tough learning curve for the uninitiated. Most people find their Google AdWords experience very frustrating at first, getting keywords and campaigns disabled because they can’t get the requisite 0.5% click-thru rate, or else they overpay for popular keywords that have high bid prices.
Those who don’t truly understand direct-response marketing will have a particularly hard time, considering this is the ultimate direct-response machine.
Why Google Succeeded – and Why it Matters to You
Google was a relative late-comer in the search engine game. When I started marketing on search engines in 1998, Google was brand new, a tiny little player in a world of established giants. Yahoo, Altavista, Lycos, Hotbot, Inktomi, Excite, AOL Search, Northern Light, AllTheWeb and dozens of others were duking it out.
On most of those search engines, it was hard to find what you were looking for. And while most of them were cluttered with ads and links all over the place, Google had just a clean white screen with a search box. And Google’s results were always easy to read.
Eventually Google became my home page. “Who needs ten search engines – if you have one good one?”
You probably felt the same way.
And THAT became the key to Google’s success.
Google’s guiding philosophy is RELEVANCE. Give the people what they’re looking for – as fast and as easy as possible.
Relevance in Advertising
So when Google decided to sell advertising, they had to make sure it didn’t compromise the quality or usefulness of their search engine. Done properly, advertising would actually enhance it.
So when they came up with Google AdWords, they decided to provide up to 8 or 10 spaces for advertisements (“sponsored links”) on the top and right side of the page.
Except for the top two, the listings going down the left are FREE listings, positioned according to Google’s complex, secret and ever-changing ranking formula. The ads on the right are AdWords ads. The advertiser pays every time you click, and only when you click.
And the lowest position, usually a few pages back, is available for 5 cents a click.
Google’s Partner Sites
Google Syndicates their results to other search engines – normally only the top 2-4 results are included. AOL buys the top 3 AdWords positions from Google. Earthlink and Ask Jeeves show the top 4 positions.
This means that being in the top 3 or 4 gives you exposure to a larger audience – perhaps twice as many searches as Google alone, in some cases. It also tends to drive the bid prices up even more, for those special top spots.
What It All Means for You
So when you write an ad and place it in AdWords, you have access to an audience as large as 100 million people – instantly. You get instant feedback. You can test fast, succeed fast, and profit fast from the quality Google experience.
This article was written by our friend and partner, Perry Marshall. He has been a guest on our radio show multiple times, and is the preeminent expert on Google AdWords and Pay Per Click advertising on the web. Perry Marshall helps businesses beat the learning curve and profit from Google AdWords. You can get the skinny on Google AdWords with Perry’s FREE 5-day course via e-mail: Visit http://www.PerryMarshall.com/google |