3 Ways To Waste Money With Pay-Per-Click

By David Ledoux

A successful Pay-Per-Click campaign is an Internet marketer's dream. I know people who swear by Pay Per Click and others who have horror stories to tell, like the marketer who was charged more than $7600 on his credit card for his Pay-Per-Click marketing ... and he didn't make a single sale! I'm not going to tell you his name because I don't want to embarrass him, but it was a colossal disaster.

That's why a lot of marketers are scared. They've heard the stories about high click-through rates with very low conversions. Pay-Per-Click works if you know what you're doing. You must have copy that attracts your target market, but you need more than that.
If you want to waste money with Pay-Per-Click, here are three ways to do it. Here's what not to do if you want to have a high return on investment.

1. Using the Priceline strategy to bid on key terms. "Mamby Pamby." If you take the advice of William Shatner, you should bid as low as you need to go to secure a hot deal through Priceline. If you think you're going to get more for less with Pay-Per-Click, you might as well open your wallet and toss your money to strangers. Pay-Per-Click operates like an auction, and if you can't secure one of the top three spots, you're wasting your time and money. Bid high to keep your search terms high in the listings. In this case, you get what you pay for.

2. Directing visitors to your home page. Bad idea. When someone clicks on your ad, you've got to take them to a page that has minimal distractions, and for most websites the home page covers too much territory. Your website is a valuable piece of virtual real estate, and you want to walk your visitors through the path of least resistance.

3. Hiding your keywords in a busy landing page. When a visitor lands on your page, the search terms should be visible at first glance. Less is definitely more here. If the buyer is shopping for hammers, he should be directed straight to the hammers not the paint brushes. If he has to search for what he's looking for, he's going to go somewhere else. Save the upsell and cross-sell for when he's checking out.

Understandably, Pay-Per-Click makes a lot of marketers nervous, but that's because they don't understand how it works. Like any marketing method you've got to test to see what works best for you. To review, here are three key factors to consider when you use Pay-Per-Click:
1. Bid high for your search terms to get the best position
2. Direct visitors to exactly what they want
3. Make the search terms highly visible on your landing page
The truth is that Pay-Per-Click is a powerful marketing tool if you do your homework and do it right. Don't let the horror stories scare you. Mamby Pamby. You get what you pay for.