Time to Pay Per Click
I first started using Google’s Pay Per Click system way back in 2004 to promote some of the software products that I sell. I signed up and opened an account, used the usual keyword suggestion tools, set up a few campaigns with a whole host on unrelated keywords, set a budget, URL destination and left the account to run on auto-pilot while at the same time hoping that the sales and conversion statistics would jump through the roof.
Alas it wasn’t to be!
The expected hype and sales didn’t materialise, having done everything possible or so I thought. I seem to remember setting up an Overture account and testing that out but that’s probably best forgotten about for the meantime. Anyway for the next couple of years or so I tended to concentrate on the natural organic listings and paid little attention to PPC marketing. I was quite happy to squander the money with poorly targeted ads and poor landing pages.
It’s only in the last few months that I’ve decided to really concentrate on PPC and delve deeper into how it works and how it can convert. Click thru rates, landing pages, quality scores, rank numbers, conversions, perry marshall, split testing ad variations, ppc forums and the rest have been a daily diet and the more I get the more I want.
There’s plenty of mileage left in this, and I’m hoping to become a Google Adwords Professional very very shortly. Running my own campaigns and blowing my own money was a good way to learn how the system works, I’d hate to jump in at the deep end and start running a campaign for a client without prior experience.
Now I’m alot more cautious with my own campaigns and in turn with the one or two clients of mine that invest in PPC and are reaping the benefits.
It can definitely work for certain products and services, and it fills the void left while waiting to rank highly in Google for the more general and popular keyword terms.
Google Adwords is all about experience. The Google Adwords learning center is a great place to start and the digitalpoint adwords forum has plenty of advice from seasoned pros. The longer you wait the harder it’ll get in terms of competition and the costlier your keywords and mistakes.
