adwords costs

SUMMARY: Most people view the rising costs of PPC advertising as an awful barrier.  But the truth is, the bar isn’t nearly as high as you think! 

- The rising costs of PPC make it hard for the riff raff to get into the game … so the marketers who remain expose boatloads of free competitive intelligence. 

- More importantly, once you’ve been around for a while you’ll realize that less than one in ten thousand PPC advertisers is using ALL 7 critical ppc methods below effectively, even though they’re incredibly simple to implement!  

 The 7 CRITICAL PPC METHODS ARE: continuous testing, conversion tracking, laser targetting by theme, landing page tests, market surveys, longer follow ups, and lifetime value building

While it’s true that only 3 to 5% of the players in Adwords are making significant money, this is incredibly misleading because

• Probably less than half the advertisers on Google are organizing their keywords and advertising in a laser-targetted, hyper-relevant manner
• Less than 25% split test the right way AND target their keyword groups well
• Less than 13% split test, target AND match their landing pages appropriately
• Less than 7% all of the above plus any kind of advanced testing
• Less than 3% do all above plus set up some type of ongoing feedback loop to get closer to their market
• Less than 1% do all above plus follow up relentlessly with excellent content
• Less than ½ of 1% do all above plus use any kind of method for systematically analyzing the whole page of search results
• Less than 1/10^th  of 1% (about 1 person in 10,000) do all the above AND work to build lifetime value with their customers
• And less than half of these people are making their split testing decisions using the right numbers!
• Taken together, this means only about 1 out of 20,000 PPC advertisers are using this full set of simple skills.  

HERE’S WHAT YOU NEED TO DO:

SOLUTION 1: BE SMARTER

• Split test better
• Be more granular (break things up into smaller groups)
• Deliver more specifically

SOLUTION 2: FOLLOW UP LONGER

Use the “Chinese Water Torture” follow up principle … drip on’m with valuable free content until they buy or die (then keep dripping with MORE valuable free content)

SOLUTION 3: BUILD LIFETIME VALUE

• Cater to customers, not one time sales
• Build continuity programs (vitamin examples)
• Sell high end tickets  (Note: “events” sell for more than products)

SOLUTION 4: USE HUMAN LOGIC MORE THAN YOUR COMPETITORS

• While everyone is trying to get computers to BE their business, you use computers to SUPERCHARGE your business instead.  Remember, the internet is just a vehicle to help you connect with more people in less time … but in the end, it’s still people connecting with people
• PPC fuzzy logic systems are good for helping to expand your keyword targetteing, but ultimately you want to refine this and evolve your system to rely more on exact matches and specific site targets
• Integrate TELEPHONE follow ups where appropriate.  This can multiply your conversion by TEN TIMES in many cases … listen to this FREE audio: http://www.internetstartupguys.com/Conversion.htm

SOLUTION 5:  GET MORE COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE

• Identify successful competitors
• Study their campaigns and use as a starting point for improvement (don’t plagiarize)
• Use inexpensive software to track them
• http://www.AdwordsMarketingMuscle.com/1013.shtml

SOLUTION 6: THINK OF ADWORDS AS WHERE YOU START THE ENGINE AND GATHER INTELLIGENCE

• Expand your Adwords campaigns to Yahoo and MSN
• Then 2^nd tier engines like Miva and Goclick
• Look at other networks (like Adbrite)
• Consider Ezine Advertising
• Blogging and SEO
• Go offline!

Classified Ads

Post Cards

Display ads

Val Packs, etc.

SOLUTION 7: STRIVE TO PAY MORE

• Be able to outbid everyone in your market because of the economics of your business

If you do everything above, you should be able to turn visitors into dollars better than everyone else in your market.  Once you can do that, you can leverage the “Unlimited Traffic Technique”  (In a nutshell, if I can make $3 per visitor from a given keyword and you can only make $1, … I can offer you $1.50 for your visitors and there’s no reason for you to continue trying to service them ‘cause you’ll make more by sending them to me … all the traffic in your market can start to tilt in your favor)

Until tomorrow,

Dr. G

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