1. Relevancy

The single most important ingredient for successful pay-per-click advertising lies in making every component of your ad campaign exactly relevant to the interests of the target customer. The search words you select must be the words your prospect is thinking about when your product comes to mind. The words used in your text ads must also be exactly relevant to the way the customer thinks about the product. And the words and offers used on the pages you drive this traffic to must also match the prospects interest exactly. In short, when your prospect is done reviewing your ads and related pages you want them to be thinking:”Yes, these people live only to solve my problem”. This is true even if you have many products and services for a very diverse set of customers and markets.

Using this approach to search advertising will yield many benefits. Because your ads and web pages are focused on a very specific customer and need, you will find that the traffic generated will be from a much higher quality prospect, i.e. much more likely to turn into revenue for you. Very focused campaigns and related landing pages have the additional benefit of scoring more highly with the search service, because they are interested in pushing the most relevant ads to the top of the page in order to improve their searchers experience with their service. As a consequence, the search services will actually reduce the click costs for ads that rank strongly on relevance, saving you money.


2. Target

Internet users are only interested in whether you can solve their problem or meet their need.

Your message has just 2-3 seconds before a customer makes up their mind that this fits them or not. If not, they are gone. Your communications must consequently pass the scan test, i.e. in 2-3 seconds does a reader understand the problem or need you solve and who you serve. To make the connection with web prospects you must be sure that each of your web marketing communications, whether it is a web page, e-mail delivery, search ad, or other vehicle uses words, phrases, offers and images that they quickly create meaning and connection with that micro-customer group about their specific needs or interests.

Similarly, your messages must be very finely targeted (delivered) to a very specific market segment (customer group) and their geography, where regions are important.

If we were to speak about examples, using PPC search ads, your ad message, landing pages and offers must speak quickly about the benefits that prospects are seeking, and all copy about your products must speak in this same way. In short, everything you deliver must answer the prospects question: what’s in it for me?


3. Be Memorable

Most web searchers are looking for information for two reasons: 1. is there someone who has what I want or can solve my problem; or 2. they already know what they need or want and are creating a list of candidates to be narrowed down. For these reasons, they usually won't make a purchase decision now. So you need to be memorable for that time in a few days or weeks when they decide to make the buy, or to make a phone call about their interest.

How do you be memorable in a time when everyone’s sales pitch is about the same? The answer is simple: deliver value. That’s easy to say and challenging to do, but the aim is to provide a web-site experience that delivers value to the prospect, even if they buy nothing today. Here are some examples to help you think about your own business.

If you’re in the technical service business you could have a couple of tips on all of your landing/offer pages that help prospects save money operating their equipment, or that tells them about some new product (not sold by you) that would allow them to get more from their machines. Another example might be a travel service provider that carries links to pages on its site giving advice on little-known ways to have fun in the location being sold. The more you help a prospect get the most out of what you sell, the more likely you are to be remembered.


More to Come

4. Be Specific

5. Know Your Real Goal

6. Ask for an Action

7. Learn

8. Test

9. Persistence