If you are like most people, you may have limited experience and knowledge when starting your own network marketing business or home business using internet marketing. As you set up your business and apply your first internet marketing strategies you can make a few mistakes that could not only cost you money but also cost you motivation and confidence.
One of those mistakes is using pay per click marketing without adequate knowledge.
When you start marketing your business online, you are likely to use pay per click marketing as it is a very efficient strategy to generate traffic immediately. The problem is that the less you know and apply the right tactics with pay per click marketing, the more it will cost you! I’m not saying that you should become a theoretical pro before you start marketing your business, but you must learn as much as you can as early as you can. Using pay per click as an amateur can be damaging to your budget in 3 ways:
1. Being placed in a good position on the search engines will cost you higher bids
2. You may get a lot of traffic, but leads of poor quality (quantity vs. quality)
3. If your ads are not performing well, you may get limited traffic and in turns no buyers and no income.
When I first started using pay per click, I was pleased to see the amount of traffic I could generate for my website. My ads were ranked well on Google, my click through rates were always increasing, and a good percentage of visitors were opting-in and officially becoming a ‘lead’. HOWEVER, after an expensive month during which I generated more than 1000 clicks and more than 100 leads, I realised that I was talking to the wrong people. Many were indeed interested in learning about my business, products and opportunity, but most weren’t the serious determined entrepreneur-minded leads I was looking for! I did get some great leads through this process, but at the end of the day, it cost me more time, money and energy than it should have. Even worse, the people I was really looking for probably didn’t even see my ads.
There are many resources available to help you learn how to set up effective pay per click marketing campaigns, how to improve your website ranking, and how to generate quality leads by targeting the right audience. Here is the bottom line: The less you learn about it, the more it will cost you and the less profitable it will be.
Here is what I recommend when tackling pay per click marketing when you start advertising your business online:
1. Learn the basics on pay per click marketing – this is a must! Perry Marshall has a ‘Definitive Guide To Google Adwords’ which is easy to understand yet comprehensive, and will help you set up your ads and analyse your results.
2. Learn some basics on how to optimise your website – this will affect how your website is picked up and ranked by search engines. You will need to create your website’s content, title, description, keywords and links accordingly.
3. Continue to broaden your knowledge and apply new strategies step by step. Do make sure you know the basics before you start spending your entire marketing budget (it may be worth waiting another 1-2 weeks to learn more before marketing your business), and then get into the more advanced stuff. Continually analyse your results and refine your marketing campaigns. Remember that the internet is always changing and what works today may not work forever.
4. Identify your target audience. Write your ads to speak directly to them. Consider if your ads could be misleading or unclear – this is how you get the wrong people clicking on your ads (and pay for it). Ensure also that you continue to target your audience on your website; even though you have already paid for the click, you don’t want to waste your time calling the wrong prospects. By delivering the right message and information through the content on your website, people can pre-qualify themselves before signing in to your website and becoming an official lead.
5. Keep track of your leads and analyse the statistics. How many leads were not serious candidates? How many were not even looking for what you are offering? How many leads were high quality leads? What was your cost to generate each lead? Find out if there is a pattern in your results and continue optimising your marketing campaigns.
6. Accept that less traffic (especially the paid one) can be a good thing. You don’t want to spend money on bad leads. Quality brings better results and is more cost-effective than quantity. Hit and miss can be an expensive approach.
7. Until you have sufficient knowledge to create campaigns that generate quality leads for yourself, consider using the services of an expert marketer. For example, you may be able to join a marketing cooperative within your company. However, be cautious about purchasing leads from a third party, as you may not know the origin, nature or quality of those leads.
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