Not Sold in Stores

If you are like most people, you may have limited experience and knowledge when starting your own network marketing business or home business using internet marketing. As you set up your business and apply your first internet marketing strategies you can make a few mistakes that could not only cost you money but also cost you motivation and confidence.

One of those mistakes is using pay per click marketing without adequate knowledge.

I’m not saying that you should become a theoretical pro before you start marketing your business, but you must learn as much as you can as early as you can. When you start marketing your business online, you are likely to use pay per click marketing as it is a very efficient strategy to bring traffic immediately. The problem is that the less you know and apply the right tactics with pay per click marketing, the more it will cost you! Amateur pay per click marketing can be very damaging to your finances in 3 different ways:

1. Being placed in a good position on the search engines will cost you higher bids
2. You may get a lot of traffic, but leads of poor quality (quantity vs. quality)
3. If your ads are not performing well, you may get limited traffic and in turns no buyers and no income.

I was really pleased when at first I saw how many people were driven to my ads and my website: I was getting great click through rates, my ads were performing well, and many people were even taking the next step on my website and entering their details. BUT, I realised after an expensive month generating more than 1000 clicks and more than 100 leads that I was speaking to the wrong people. Sure, people were interested in learning more about my business, products and opportunity, but where were all the seriously determined entrepreneur-minded people I was truly looking for? I did get a few great leads out of these numbers, but the truth is, it cost me a lot more time, money and energy than it should have, and in the process the people I was really looking for probably didn’t even see my ads.

There are many resources available to help you learn how to set up effective pay per click marketing campaigns, how to improve your website ranking, and how to generate quality leads by targeting the right audience. Here is the bottom line: The less you learn about it, the more it will cost you and the less profitable it will be.

Here is what I recommend when tackling pay per click marketing when you start advertising your business online:

1. This is a must: Learn the basics on pay per click marketing. The ‘Definitive Guide to Google Adwords’ by Perry Marshall is a great tool, straight-forward yet comprehensive, and will help you create your campaigns and assess your results.

2. Learn the basics on how websites are picked up and ranked by search engines, so that you understand how to create an effective title, description, keywords, content and links for your own website.

3. Continually learn a little more and apply your new knowledge. Make sure you get the basics before you do anything (it may be worth sacrificing a couple of weeks for learning prior to marketing your business), and then get into the more advanced stuff. Never stop and just sit on your established campaigns. Analyse your results, make them better. The internet is ever-changing and what works now may not work later!

4. Define your target audience. Design your ads to talk to them. Ask yourself if your ads could be misinterpreted, unclear or misleading - this is how you get the wrong people to click on your ads (and pay for it). Also make sure that the content on your website targets the right people; even though you have already paid for a click, you still don’t want to waste your time calling the wrong prospects. Basically, use the content on your website to help people pre-qualify themselves before signing up.

5. Record and analyse statistics on your leads. How many were not actually looking for your type of product or business? How many were not serious candidates? How many quality leads resulted from your efforts and investment? How much did each lead cost you? Find out what works and what doesn’t work and change your marketing strategies accordingly.

6. Accept that less traffic (especially the paid one) can be a good thing. You don’t want to spend money on bad leads. Quality brings better results and is more cost-effective than quantity. Hit and miss can be an expensive approach.

7. You may consider using the services of an expert marketer until you have sufficient knowledge to create campaigns that will generate quality leads. You may have access to a marketing cooperative within your group or company for example. Be cautious however about purchasing leads or name lists from a third party, as you may not know the nature, origin or quality of those leads.