Here are several ways to maximize your traffic for your pay-per-click marketing campaign:

Keyword Research – The first key is to do your keyword research. This may sound obvious, but not many people do this. Keyword research is the core of PPC advertising, because PPC is all about targeting keywords. You need to find out what people are looking for and the best phrases to use for your campaign. You cannot just go in blind, thinking you can earn thousands of dollars, because you are just going to end up being eaten alive. So you have to do keyword research if you are serious about PPC advertising.

Below are the keyword research websites I use:

http://www.spyfu.com – It gives you:
•Average Cost Per Click
•Current Adwords Ads
•Organic Results
•Related Terms and Concepts
•Terms Others Buy With Your Main Term
•Categories
This is a great tool used for serious competitor research.

Keyword Elite – This is a paid keyword research tool that I highly recommend. I personally use it and found it very useful. It is much better than the free keyword research sites:

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/keywordelite

Split Testing – You should always create at least two ads for any particular campaign so that you can run one ad against the other and test to see which performs best and which one has a higher return on investments and click through rates. Google rewards ads with good click through rate by giving you a higher ad placement, so a higher CTR means less cost per click. Once you have created two ads and see which one performs best, the one that performs best becomes the new control and you create a new ad and so on. So you are constantly tracking, testing and improving your ads.

Creating Winning Headlines – If you have a good headline, people will click on it, even if your ad is crap. By split testing, you should be able to create winning headlines.

Global Negatives – By having global negatives, or negative qualifiers, you are able to qualify the traffic and filter out the rubbish traffic. For example, you do not want freebie seekers clicking on your ad when you are selling something. So you can have a price tag in your ad to stop freebie seekers from clicking on your ad, so that you can decrease your cost. You can also filter out the rubbish traffic by telling people what your product: is it a downloadable product? Is it a physical product? Some people prefer downloadable products over physical products.

Benefits - Write the benefits in your ad since benefits can improve your return on investment and click through rates. Use the word “you”, like “you can get…”, “you will discover…”, “you will make more money with this…” etc.

Targeted – Keep your ad targeted, not broad. Do not use general keywords such as “shoes”. You should narrow it down by using terms such as “tennis shoes”. Broad match is usually used by lazy advertisers or advertisers with a huge budget. The problem with broad match is that it decreases your click through rate and return on investment, so you should always try and target and narrow down your keyword market. This may mean that you will have to create one ad per keyword.

Capitalization – Another tip is to capitalize the beginning of every single word so it looks more professional. Would you rather click on an ad that looks like this:

Or like this:

The first one right? So make sure your ad copy looks professional. By the way, capitalization also includes capitalizing your URL.

Ask Questions – Another tip to increase your ad performance is by asking questions. Asking questions creates curiosity.

Avoid Top Paying Slots – By creating great ads using the techniques I have mentioned, you should be able to work your way to the top, rather than stumping up the cash.

Do Not Go Into Bidding Wars – You want to be No.1, but your competitors also wants to be No.1. Do not fight for the first place. The best thing you should do is to take a step back, take a deep breath and consider is it really just that important to be No.1? If you have a better product and a better ad copy, your click through rate and relevancy will help you get to No.1, even though you are still paying the same amount.

Conversion Rates – Track your conversion rates and return on investment. That way, you will be able to work out how much each of your visitors work, and what price you should bid for your keyword. You can work out your conversion rate by calculating how much visitors it take to make a sale.

For example, your website sells video games for $10. And your conversion rate is 1%, in other words it takes 100 visitors to make a sale. Then your maximum click price should be 10 cents. Get it? You can calculate your maximum click price using this formula:

Profit per Sale / Conversion Rate = Maximum Click Price

By using this formula, you will be able to work out how much your visitor worth and what your maximum click price should be.

Call-To-Action – By having call-to-action phrases in your ad copy, it allows the visitor what to expect, meaning your click through rate and return on investment will increase.

Learn From The Experts – My final piece of advice is to learn from the experts. Just follow what the Adwords and PPC experts do. You can get a free ebook which goes into more detail on Google Adwords here:

http://www.stanleytang.com/recommends/beatingadwords

[tags]google adwords, pay-per-click marketing, ppc advertising[/tags]