How to Stop Wasting Money, Pay Per Click

Measuring the effectiveness of Pay Per Click

Part of my job as marketing manager is to generate as many sales leads as possible, at least so I thought. I once ran a magazine advert that cost $2200, and I got back one solitary sales lead - that sales lead cost me $2200, boy was I mad. When I confided with my boss at the time, he asked me, - what do your other sales leads cost? Guess what, I could not answer him because at that time I had not measured the results, so I started recording the number of sales leads generated per advertisement. He used to tell me - get your ducks in a row!

Consequently, every time I wanted to run a new campaign to try out this or that magazine, I measured the results. I recorded not how many sales leads resulted, but what quality the leads were. Some people just respond to an advertisement as they have absolutely nothing better to do. Some people actually want to buy the product. The ultimate point of advertising is selling the product or service you offer, so measure results.

Pay Per Click advertising is far cheaper than advertising in magazines or through TV, if you don't believe me, take a look at the financial results of Google versus TV and newspaper companies. The Google AdWords system operates as a form of auction, so if you want to appear in number one position, you have to pay the most per click. Every time someone clicks on those little ads you see usually on the right hand side of search engine results, the advertiser pays a small payment to Google or other PPC company.

Focus on niche products to make affiliate dollars

If you are selling ring-tones and mobiles, be prepared to pay a fortune, since everyone else on the planet appears to be selling the same stuff, and therefore the PPC costs are very high. Affiliates are more likely to make money by selling niche products, like personal hovercraft, checkout the Hov Pod affiliate program. If you don't believe me, do this one minute test. Search on Google for Ring Tones, Mobiles and Affiliates, see how many results Google can find, there are millions of websites selling that stuff. Search for leisure hovercraft and see how many results you get, and you will notice that via niche marketing, you will have around 100 million less competitors.

Measuring the effectiveness of Pay Per Click.

I recently ran a campaign that included display advertisements and banners on content advertising. We measured the results, and found that banners ads were 9 times more effective than text only advertisements.

We created a simple excel spreadsheet and recorded the start and end date of each week. On the landing page where the PPC advert sent customers to, we added a Site Meter - you can search for these free meters on the web, and use them to check how many customers reach your landing page.

We recorded from Google, how much we spent in the week on advertising. We then divided the cost by the number of clicks to see how much each click cost. Google show you these stats on the PPC summary page, but what they don't show you is how many enquiries you actually get. The results can be quite staggering.

Example.

We spent $225.06 and generate 7792 clicks, this cost just 2.8 cents per click. Fantastic. However, we counted the number of enquiries, and found that we only received 10 forms. Each enquiry therefore cost us £225.06 divided by 10, so each sales lead cost us $22.51. Not nearly so exciting.

Conclusion?

If you try Pay Per Click advertising, don't be a chump and get carried away with the number of clicks you get back, the real test is how many enquiries you receive. If you sell products that make $20 profit, don't spend $22.50 selling each one. If you are an affiliate, sell niche products that pay generous commission. For more tips on how to make or lose money, marketing products, visit Affiliate School - request our free PPC calculator and start saving money. http://affiliate-school.blogspot.com/