How To Avoid Costly Mistakes in Using Pay Per Click Internet Marketing

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by: Justine Simard
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Word Count: 873
Date: Wed, 18 Nov 2009 Time: 9:35 PM
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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 common mistake 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. You may need to pay more per click to have a good position on the search engines
2. You may receive a great amount of traffic, but poor quality leads (quantity vs. quality)
3. You may have poor performing ads which bring no traffic, and therefore no leads 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 plenty of resources to help you learn how to use pay per click marketing effectively, how to improve your website ranking, and how to reach the right audience and get quality leads. The bottom line is, the less you learn about those principles and techniques, the more it will cost you and the less it will pay off.

Here are my recommendations for tackling pay per click marketing when you are starting out in internet or network marketing:

1. Learn the basics on pay per click advertising. This is a must. Perry Marshall's 'Definitive Guide To Google Adwords' is great for this as he provides a lot of knowledge on how to create your ads and evaluate your results.

2. Get some basic knowledge on how websites are picked up and ranked by search engines. You need this so that you can choose an effective title, description, keywords, content and links for your website.

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 market. Build your ads to specifically talk to your audience. Ask yourself if your ads could be misleading or have other meanings - this is how you get the wrong people to click on your ads (and pay for it). Ensure that the content on your website is also targeted at your audience; even though you have already been charged for a click by the time they get there, you don't want to waste more time and energy calling the wrong prospects if they opt-in your website. You can use the content on your website to help people pre-qualify themselves before signing up and becoming a lead.

5. Record and analyse statistics on your leads. How many were not actually looking for your type of product or business? How many were not serious candidates? How many quality leads resulted from your efforts and investment? How much did each lead cost you? Find out what works and what doesn't work and change your marketing strategies accordingly.

6. Consider this: less traffic (especially the paid one) can be a good thing. You don't want to waste money on bad leads. In terms of cost-effectiveness and getting results, traffic quality is better than traffic quantity. No more hit and miss.

7. Consider using the services of an expert marketer until you can generate quality leads yourself. You may be able to join a trusted marketing cooperative for example. Be cautious however about purchasing leads from a third party, as you may not know the nature, origin or quality of those leads.

About the Author

Click here to find out about a Home Business Opportunity with a true path to financial freedom and personal growth. Start your own business and be guided by a group of successful entrepreneurs in learning and applying all strategies to run a profitable home based business within our company.

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