Driving Leads with Pay Per Click Advertising Pay Per Click advertising, or PPC, is a popular way to use the power of search engines to drive traffic to your website and to do so in a way that allows you to control how much money you spend. Read on to learn what PPC is and how you can employ it in your business effectively. What is PPC? Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) is a method of online advertising in which a website owner places advertising on highly trafficked websites, but only pays for the advertising when someone clicks on the ad. In most cases, the PPC is employed on search engines so that people can buy ads when search engine users are searching for terms that are relevant to the services the website owner provides. Increasingly, PPC is being used on social networking sites like Facebook, but for the purposes of this walkthrough, we will focus exclusively on search engine PPC (specifically, Google). Let s use an example. Say that someone wants to buy a new cell phone. Chances are they are going to want to do some research on the newest cell phones available to find out which ones have the best reviews, has the features they want in a phone, and/or the best price. They will likely turn to a search engine like Google and search for something like Cell Phones to find the information they are looking for. Now, imagine that you sell cell phones. From your point of view, if someone is searching for Cell Phones in a search engine, there is a good chance that they are in the market for a cell phone. Since you sell cell phones, it is in your best interest that they find their way to your website. This is where PPC comes in. Google allows you to place ads in the search results for certain terms as a way to match motivated buyers up with the people who sell the things they are looking for. Go back to our cell phone example. If you search for the term cell phone on Google right now, this is what you see:
At the time of this search, there were three slots for PPC ads occupied by AT&T, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile. Now, to the casual searcher, it might appear that these aren t ads but actual search results. This is the way that the advertisers, and Google, intended it to appear. So, our cell phone shopper does their Google search and decides to click on one of the PPC ads, let s say AT&T. This is a new potential customer for AT&T and, in exchange, AT&T pays a small amount of money to Google for serving the ad. Everyone is happy. How Google determines the amount it charges The engine that makes PPC systems like Google AdWords is a bidding system. When you set up an ad campaign, there will be three main questions you ll need to answer: What keywords will your ad run on? How much money are you willing to spend per day? How much money are you willing to spend per click?
We ll go through a more detailed walkthrough of setting up a PPC campaign later in this document, but for now let s use the mobile phone example from above. The top three cell phone companies who found their ad placed were AT&T, T-Mobile and Virgin Mobile. We searched for cell phones, so we know that at least those three companies set up their ad to be served whenever someone used those keywords in a search. Of course, those three companies are not the only cell phone companies that exist. Chances are, in an industry as competitive as cell phones, they are not the only ones who are using PPC as part of their online marketing strategy. So why did the other companies not appear in the paid results? These other companies did not appear in the results because AT&T, T- Mobile, and Virgin Mobile bid more per click. When setting up a PPC campaign, you set a predetermined amount that you want to spend every time someone clicks. If someone else is willing to pay more, then their ad will show up instead of yours. In reality, if we ran the search for cell phones again, we might see 3 different companies appear in the paid area of the search results. Just because one company pays more than another company doesn t mean that the company paying less will never have their ads run, it simply means that their ad will run less often than the company that pays more. Now that you know the basics of how PPC works, let s go step-by-step through setting up a Google AdWords campaign. Keyword Research The first step is to determine what keywords you should focus on. You can do this by using a keyword analysis tool. There are many of them to choose from, but the most common one is the Google Keyword Tool. This tool will help you determine what most people are searching for when they are trying to find real estate information. A good place to start will be to search for [YOUR MARKET] real estate. For this example, we ll use Phoenix. Step 1: Type the phrase Phoenix real estate in the Word or Phrase box.
There will be a Captcha with some randomly generated terms that you ll need to fill out. Google uses this to ensure that you are a real person and not a program built to constantly search these terms. The results for the term Phoenix Real Estate as well as other related terms will appear. Step 2: Sort the results by clicking on the Global Monthly Searches header.
This will reorder the results by most searched to least searched. Step 3: Write down the top 5 most searched terms that include [YOUR MARKET] in the title. These will be the terms you most need to include on your site. Step 4: Repeat the process for other relevant terms. You can experiment with this, but we recommend including the following: [YOUR MARKET] short sale [YOUR MARKET] foreclosure [YOUR MARKET] agent [YOUR MARKET] homes After repeating this process for various terms, you ll likely have a keyword list of 20-30 terms. This will be a good starting point for the keywords that you ll want to use to start your PPC campaign. Setting Up a New PPC Campaign Before you create your first PPC campaign, you ll need to create an AdWords account. If you already use other Google services, you can use that login for your AdWords account. Once you have created your account: Go to http://adwords.google.com. Step 1: The first thing you ll need to do is create a campaign. A campaign is simply a collection of ads that are similar in nature or that target similar keywords. Click the New campaign button located in the middle of the page.
You will be presented with 3 options: Search & Display Networks This option will place your ad in search results and on other websites that employ AdWords advertising (but the audience may not be as specifically targeted as search results). This means more people will potentially see the ad, but also increases the chance that people who click on your link may not be the audience you are trying to reach, costing you more money. Search Network Only This option means your ad will only be placed in search results for the keywords you specify. Display Network Only This option will post your ad only on partner sites that use Adwords. For the purposes of this campaign, we are only interested in placing our ad in searches for the keywords we have determined are important to our campaign, so select Search Network Only. Step 2: Name the campaign and select the features you want. For this example, we ll call it Phoenix Campaign
Step 3: Scroll down to the Locations section on the Campaign Setup. This section allows you to specify what geographic areas you want your ads to run. In this case, we ll want the ads to run in the Phoenix area. Select Let me choose and then type Phoenix into the field directly underneath. A menu will pop up with the options that include the word Phoenix.
The best option to select is the Nielsen DMA region. This is a demographic marketing area as determined by the Nielsen company that will include surrounding areas for Phoenix, not just for people searching within the Phoenix city limits. Step 4: Now it is time to set the budget for your campaign and will largely be determined by individual agents depending on your needs. To start, we recommend that you set a budget of $3/day (this will equal about $100/month). Under Bidding Option select the AdWords will set my bids to help maximize clicks within my target budget option. WARNING: Always fill in a daily budget! If you leave the daily budget blank, you will be charged for all clicks that occur. Step 5: Ad extensions are a way to make sure that basic information about you, your business and your site are automatically added to all ads you place without you having to specifically include them. Options include: Location Create a location for your office on Google Places, and that location will be appended to your ads. Sitelinks If you have specific landing pages that are deeper into your site which you d like people to have the option of clicking, include those here. Call This allows you to add a phone number to your ads Social You can include your Google+ account if you have it. For agents, we recommend using the Call option to include your phone number to your ads. Step 6: Click Save and continue. Your new campaign is created and it is time to start creating ads!
Writing Effective Ads A PPC ad is made up of 4 parts: Headline Description Line 1 Description Line 2 Display URL For the Headline, you ll want to include the keywords that you discovered in your keyword research, but you have a limited number of characters. For this example, we ll use the headline Phoenix Short Sale Agent. For the Description Line 1, you are also limited by characters, but this is where you ll tell them a bit about yourself. For our ad, we ll say, Over 10 years short sale experience In Description Line 2, we ll mention your CDPE designation, so, type, Certified Distressed Prop. Expert into that field. For the Display URL, you will put the URL to your website. In this example, we ll use the CDPE website. When you are done, the ad will look like this: Next, scroll down to the Keywords section. This is where you will tell Google what searches you want your ads to appear on. Take the keywords
list that you created during your keyword research and paste them into the keywords box. Type one keyword per line: Finally, click Save Ad Group at the bottom. Congratulations! You have created your first PPC campaign!