Tips for Decreasing Click Costs

Google received a significant amount of criticism when implementing their PPC program. Critics accused them of straying from their mission of providing quality search results as a means of making a few billion dollars. To assure quality they began rewarding advertisers whose content and ad copy were relevant to the key words they were targeting.

This concept was brought to my attention when I tried targeting the phrase “American Dental Association” to market my client’s medical financing company. The phrase only had one competitor yet Google kept making me increase my bid in order to get listed for the phrase. I called Google to investigate and the woman told me that my site and ad had nothing to do with the American Dental Association so Google implements penalties to avoid abuse of the program.

I was content on targeting this phrase so I changed the body of my ad to something along the lines of “Special Rates 4 American Dental Association Members”. I then worked the key phrase into the copy of the landing page and the meta tags. This strategy worked so well that I applied it to all of my ads. My costs for my old ads immediately went from an average of approximately $5 per click to an average of $3.50 per click.

I noticed a couple of other benefits to employing this technique. My conversion rates increased because the copy was less generic and catered to the exact phrase that the user searched for. I also noticed that these pages earned higher rankings for my organic SEO because they targeted specific key phrases and consisted of unique content.

Social Media Marketing With MySpace.com

Using MySpace to promote a business and/or solicit users is a violation of the MySpace user agreement. However, creating a community for interested parties to come together and express interest in a business or industry is part of MySpace's sole purpose. This gray area defines the difference between an ethical MySpace marketing campaign and an illegal nuisance to the site's users. Having said that, the following are guidelines for creating an ethical MySpace marketing campaign:

Creating a profile that adds value for MySpace users is crucial for a campaign to be successful and ethical. One campaign I recently created was for an Ultimate Fighting gym in the Portland Metropolitan area. To add value to their profile we uploaded videos of their fighters competing in local events. The videos are exciting, allow the gym to display their fighter’s skills, and are free for users to watch.

Using automated friend adding and messaging software and MySpace’s browse feature, we spread the word about the profile and videos to men between the ages of 18 and 35 who live within twenty miles of the gym. We never solicited anyone about joining the gym. We simply let people know that we upload new videos regularly and post bulletins regarding local events. Within one month the profile received over 3,500 views and 800 friends all from individuals who fit within the demographic parameters. The profile began receiving messages from dozens of people interested in joining the gym.

Since this campaign had such strict demographic parameters we eventually ran out of people to add and message. This is where the grunt work began. We started to post bulletins and make public comments on our friend’s pages. Using the bulletin feature we posted messages about upcoming events, new videos and photos, and publicly congratulated the competitors who won their fights the previous weekend. Using the comment feature we sent similar messages to people who contacted us regarding joining the gym. These comments were visible to the profile owner, as well as all of their friends. To avoid seeming like a nuisance we limited our bulletin posts to once a week and our comments to bi-monthly.

For many businesses, being an active member in groups is a great way to promote your profile and your offerings. Find groups that cater to your niche and contribute insightful posts to their discussions. You can also use automated software to message or add all the members of a particular group.

Integrating Embedded YouTube Videos into your PPC Landing Pages

Integrating social media into your search engine marketing efforts is the key to improving conversions and moving up the social media ladder. Take this blog for example. Say you visit my blog, read my content, watch my embedded YouTube video, yet you never return again. My blog doesn't increase in popularity but by watching my video you move me up in the YouTube rankings.

This same strategy can be applied to landing pages for your PPC campaigns. If someone clicks on your sponsored link, reads your content, watches your video, and leaves, your video moves up in the YouTube rankings. Granted the slight increase in YouTube rankings isn't worth the $4 you spent on the click, but regardless you were able to salvage something out of nothing.

Imagine if that same person watched your video, liked what he/she saw, and decided to contact you as a result. Now you've moved up in the rankings and got a lead that you wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Another benefit is that it gives you one more measureable variable. By tracking the number of people who viewed your video, yet don't make a purchase, you are able to write off those clicks as helping you build your brand. Furthermore, it is a method for ruling out click fraud because it is unlikely that fraudulent clickers would be interested in viewing your video.