Click Partners

In times past there was no trouble getting an upper position in those highly searched, general keywords like ‘china’, ‘business’, ‘running’ and ‘headache’ for a nickel a click. When you did a search on Google for one of those terms, you would get only 1 or 2 results, indicating to you that you could bid a minimum price for your clicks.

But advertisers had a very hard time getting a generic term like “running” to stick, especially in the early days before phrase- and exact-match options were available. A person who typed in a keyword like “business” could have any of a thousand completely different ideas in mind for what he was looking for, so he was not only unlikely to click on your ad, but even if he did click on it, he was that much less likely to buy anything from you.

Since that time, there have been changes in the ways to manage PPC. No longer is there a minimum CTR, so keeping your clicks up is a non-issue. Also advertisers have gotten more savvy in the past year or two and are able to make these general terms become opportunities to market lucrative information.

So now it is worth the trouble to bid on general, non-specific, big-traffic keywords. But what is the secret to making them work?

Here is the answer:

Use test runs, try out different copy, tryout others, write new ads till you get one that works. This is time consuming, and you will have failures before you have success. But you will break it down with your tests until you find the winning combination.

Use negative keyword to your advantage.

With your ads you want those who you don’t want clicking to be disqualified. When you offer “Golf Instructions: Free” you will get unsuitable folks clicking. However if you offer “Golf Video $49″ those who are serious and likely to buy will be the ones clicking.

Market information, not just products. Send people to a landing page that collects opt-ins, and offer a free guide, a tutorial, or an e-mail course of some kind, which will establish you as an information source, create longer-term customers, and grow your visitor value to where even the most generic clicks are worth getting.

The New Rules Of PPC Management

Each keyword in your list is actually its own market.

The outlooks of the people searching are represented by the keywords in your list.

Behind each of the words your clients type in while searching is a desire, necessity, inquiry, or premise they have, but may not be aware that they have.

Some keyword markets are bigger than others.

Some keyword markets are more competitive than others.

Not everyone will have the same profits from the same keywords.

An excess of competition for some keywords will cause the bid price to rise unnaturally above actual market value.

At the same time, there are always other keywords that are overlooked but which represent better, more responsive markets and which you can find if you use the right tools.

When you mirror the language playing in your customers head, that is when he is going to buy from you.