How to Get Traffic Through Paid Advertising

Note: The following is Chapter 4 of the eBook, Internet Marketing for Complete Beginners. Chapters 1 through 3 were published in previous posts. If you prefer, you can click here to download the entire eBook for free.

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PPC stands for Pay Per Click and refers to the use of ad networks such as Facebook Ads or AdWords in order to promote your website or product. Basically with any of these services you agree to pay a set amount for each time someone clicks on your advert and this way you can avoid spending money on a campaign that is unsuccessful.

Still though you need to think about how you are going to convert the traffic you gain into profit and you need to think about how you can get the right people to click on the adverts. There are a number of tricks to making a successful and most importantly a profitable PPC campaign, so here we will look at what those are.

The Goal of PPC Marketing

This is really the most important thing to bear in mind; that a PPC campaign that gets the most clicks is not necessarily the most successful one, as that means that you’re actually spending the most money. You only want people to click on your adverts if they’re likely to earn you money once they come to your site – if they’re likely to be returning visitors for instance who will click on your ads, or if they are likely to buy the products that you are selling.

One of the best ways to make use of your PPC campaign is to link straight to a landing page where you are selling a product.

Then if you can get the product to sell for say $30 a throw, then you can afford to pay $1 per click as long as you sell to at least 1/3rd of your visitors (this is called a conversion rate). This way you are still making a profit.

PPC ads are shown based on a split-second bidding system. That means that the more you opt to pay per “per click” (you get to set this amount), the more your ad will be shown in the relevant spots. By increasing the conversion rate on your website and by improving the ads, you can spend more money and get your ad seen by more people – scaling up your profits.

In order to work with this then you need to focus much more on the CTR (Click Through Rate) on your page and the quality of the traffic that the PPC ad is bringing you. If you are tricking people into clicking your advert and they are then only spending a minute on your page, then actually you’re just wasting your money.

Likewise if your page isn’t doing a good enough job of convincing people to buy, then again you are actually throwing money away.

Designing Your Ad Accordingly

As such you should be aiming to create an advert that will attract the attention you want it to from the right people, and only if they are likely to make a purchase.

In other words, then you can consider including the price in your advert, the reason being that this will then allow you to drive away people who aren’t willing to spend that kind of money – which is just fine because you don’t want to pay for them to come to your site.

What is important still though is that your advert catches the eye so that the people you want to see it do, and the important thing to bear in mind for this is that your advert MUST look professional if you hope to make sales. Be professional, be honest and be up front and then as long as you focus on the CTR of your landing page you can very reliably generate money this way.

Targeting

Whether you choose to use Facebook Ads or Google AdWords, one of the most important considerations for an effective campaign is targeting. In other words, are your emails reaching the right people – the people who are likely to buy from you. Again, this increases the conversion, meaning that you can spend more money, meaning that you increase your profits.

AdWords shows adverts on Google’s search engines and is based on what people search for. You will pick the search terms you want to target, and when someone looks for that phrase, your ad will appear at the top as a “sponsored result.”

Facebook Ads shows ads on a user’s Facebook home feed based on their interests, demographics, and more. You can this way choose to show your fitness book only to people who have listed “working out” as an interest (but who might also have listed their weight as being a little on the heavier side!).

Which option is better for you? That depends on the nature of your monetization (which we’ll talk more about in a moment). Keep in mind though, that while Facebook lets you target an audience based on a greater amount of information, Google lets you target people based on their intent. In other words, if someone searches for “buy fitness ebook,” then that tells you that they are actually looking to buy an ebook. Thus they might be easier to convert.

If you are trying to make your money from ads though (and again, we’ll discuss this option shortly), you might not be able to funnel as much money into your business plan.

Note: This post is Chapter 4 of the eBook, Internet Marketing for Complete Beginners. Chapters 1 through 3 were published in previous posts. If you prefer, you can click here to download the entire eBook for free.