Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay Per Click Search Engines. My ULTIMATE favorites! These search engines work like an auction house and you bid for "keywords". The higher your bid the higher your listing in the search engine. You only pay your bid amount when someone clicks on your website link.

With the competition out there it is becoming more and more difficult to get good listings in the free regular search engines like Google and others. Most of them are starting to charge for their listings now in any case and you are not guaranteed a good listing.

Pay Per Click is instant, (yes it costs you money, but if you sell products where you make R500+ per sale it's WORTH it!) and you can TARGET your market like nowhere else on earth. As long as your ad copy, website copy and ordering process is streamlined and ready to make sales, you will make sales with Pay Per Click Advertising.

Google runs a PPC engine alongside the regular listings called Adwords. Google's Adwords are Fantastic. It's the largest Search Engine in the world and you can have your website up and running within 15 minutes.  You tell Google what keywords you want to bid for, how much you are willing to pay, set your budget, how high you want to rank, which countries you want to show for and there you go!

Best thing is, it is measurable and you are paying for performance.  So if your add is not showing or you are not getting traffic, then you can do something about it as you are paying Google for your listings.

It is the best return on your investment for your advertising budget as the visitors you receive are targeted and you are 100% in control. 

You need to know what you are doing however as you can blow your budget in a single hour if you are not careful and there are MANY considerations.  If you know what you are doing you may end up paying less per click than your competitors, even though you are listed higher than them. The basics are fairly simple, but the details are quite complex.  You get the details right and Pay Per Click may be the best thing you have ever done. 

Here I want to take you back to the question of time and the value of it.  I often ask my clients to decide how much their time is worth.  If you are in a very competitive market example "travel", and you want to rank in the free search results, you can expect a massive input in terms of time and money to get those rankings.  Depending on your niche, you could be competing with some VERY strong players out there.

So if you measure your time that you will have to spend on marketing your website, and convert that into money, you will get an idea of what "free search listings" are going to cost you.

Let me simplify with an example, you may find that to get to the top of the search results is going to cost you R4000 per month in time and services.  It may be worth your while to take the R4000 and budget it for pay per click expenses in stead, where your results are guaranteed and you are paying for performance. Best of all, it is almost instant and you can be # 1 TODAY....

The best solution in my experience is to have a mix of both.  Spend say R3000 on pay per click and R1000 on free rankings and in time, your site will rank and you can decrease your Pay Per Click Expenses accordingly.

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Side Note : Pay per click can make you go broke VERY VERY quickly, you need to focus on it and make VERY VERY sure your website is 100% ready to convert those clicks that you are paying for into customers.

Fortunately with Pay Per Click you do not have to give so much attention to "what the search engines want" but can focus on "what people want" more and concentrate on getting good conversions.

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Now you have the basics of it... the VERY basics, and I tried to explain it in a simple and clear way that I hope everyone can understand.  Website marketing can be very complex, but if you have the skills and experience that comes with actually doing it, then some actions becomes automatic... 

So lets move on... 

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