Advantages of PPC
PPC (pay per click) advertising allows affiliate marketers from all industries to work directly with major search engines and other web giants.
Even a small amount of properly targeted spending on pay per click advertising can yield significant results in a short time. Properly used, PPC can connect you to a large potential market.
Problems with PPC
Although PPC advertising is potentially highly effective, it is not a magic solution, and many affiliates have been left disappointed. Some of the common mistakes include focusing on specific keywords and then overbidding for them. If the bidding descends into an ego driven competition with rival affiliates, the keywords can quickly cease to be cost effective. It is important to set a budget and stick to it rather than overspending. A simple and pragmatic solution is to look for other cheaper keywords and let rivals waste their resources on bidding wars. The only result that matters is bringing paying customers to your partners and collecting your commission. Competing for key words quickly becomes an expensive distraction.
Don’t worry too much about what your rivals are doing. Be confident in your own strategies and marketing materials. If something doesn’t work – think again.
Other Paid Traffic
Facebook has a mixed reputation for advertising. Generally people don’t want to see adds on their walls, and there are also possible issues with younger users abandoning the site.
Adds on Facebook usually attract fewer clicks compared to Google AdWords. The definite advantage of paid ads on Facebook is the ability to target specific demographics. Options include targeting users by age, location, gender, hobbies and interests.
Blogs
Blog specific advertising can also be used to target people who are interested in specific products and services.
Amazon
Advertising on Amazon can potentially be successful. Users have entered the site to shop – or at least to browse products – and may be more open to ads. You can also target general demographics via product pages; if you choose the right product pages you are likely to see some great results.
Yahoo/Bing
Yahoo/Bing Ads offer search advertising, embedding your ad in the actual search engine results on Bing, rather than in an ad that you’d find on Google’s search results page.
LinkedIn can be expensive, but – like Facebook – it allows you to target specific site members according to demographic criteria. This is an excellent tool – but the expense of advertising on LinkedIn means that you may want to take advantage of its option to set limits after a certain number of clicks have been reached per day.
The Importance of Traffic Analysis
As your campaigns start to bring new traffic to your sites you need to analyse the traffic and develop a clear understanding of which adds and landing pages are the most successful in securing conversions. Be flexible and adapt your campaigns according to the results of your testing.If your budget permits, use multivariate (or multi-variable) testing, or at least A/B testing, and monitor your site analytics and metrics. Send a randomized (but equal) amount of traffic to each landing page and follow up on their conversion rates.
No marketing team wants a single affiliate to have a monopoly on traffic. It reduces their bargaining power and can drive up costs. If your campaign is so successful that you put your rivals out of business, your metrics will come under very close scrutiny. If your strategies can be identified they will quickly be passed on to your competition. It pays to always be thinking ahead and planning your next campaign, rather than expecting to sustain a single success.
Don’t confuse site traffic with profits
Your PPC campaign might generate a significant increase in site traffic, but if you are paying for traffic that doesn’t convert, you could be operating at a loss.