Market and Investment

Many people have limited experience and knowledge when starting their own network marketing business or home business using internet marketing. A few mistakes can be made when applying the first marketing strategies on the internet, and getting poor results can not only damage your finances but also your confidence and motivation.

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. It will cost you more to be placed in a good position on the search engines
2. You may receive a lot of traffic, but only poor quality leads (quantity vs. quality)
3. Your ads may be performing poorly, and therefore you may have no traffic, no leads, and no income as a result.

I was really pleased when at first I saw how many people were driven to my ads and my website: I was getting great click through rates, my ads were performing well, and many people were even taking the next step on my website and entering their details. BUT, I realised after an expensive month generating more than 1000 clicks and more than 100 leads that I was speaking to the wrong people. Sure, people were interested in learning more about my business, products and opportunity, but where were all the seriously determined entrepreneur-minded people I was truly looking for? I did get a few great leads out of these numbers, but the truth is, it cost me a lot more time, money and energy than it should have, and in the process 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.

I have some recommendations for tackling pay per click marketing when you start marketing your business online:

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. Learn the basics on how websites are picked up and ranked by search engines, so that you understand how to create an effective title, description, keywords, content and links for your own website.

3. Continue learning step by step and applying new tactics. Again, get the basics before you do anything (it may be worth studying another week or two before you start to advertise), and then get into the more sophisticated stuff. Never leave your active campaigns fixed or worse, unattended. Test your ads and always analyse your results so that you can improve them. The internet is constantly changing and what works today may not work next month.

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. 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.

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