If you have $2,200 laying around then you might want to consider taking the Online Marketing Boot Camp. This looks like one action-packed week.

The boot camp will cover analytics and pay per click advertising, social media marketing, and a host of other must-have information on Internet marketing. Speakers will come from Google, EPIK, and elsewhere from around the world. It looks like the bulk of the training will be on Google Analytics, but there should be some useful information on the other topics as well.

I get no commission if you sign up. The downside is travel and hotel expenses. The boot camp will take place in Burlington, Vermont and run for four days. But the knowledge and information you gain about Google Analytics and Google AdWords (the boot camp is sponsored by Google) from experts like Avinash Kaushik appear to be invaluable. Only 70 seats are being offered so you better get in early because it looks like they’re going to sell quickly.

Get more information on the Online Marketing Boot Camp here.

Nathan Linnell wrote a great blog post at Marketing Pilgrim on the working relationship between SEO and PPC. The bottom line is neither are more important, but they are both necessary for successful internet marketing. While SEO is great at long-range success, PPC is the short-term thinker.

This is a good analogy and it helps to think about it in those terms. Small businesses that have a small marketing budget would do well to start with SEO. You won’t meet with instant success, but get your SEO right and drive traffic to your well optimized web pages through blogging, social media, and articles before you do any PPC. Then, after you are confident you have web pages that will convert, then you can start your PPC campaign. It will do you no good to drive traffic to any landing page through PPC if the landing page won’t convert. You might as well just take your hard-earned money and throw it out the window. So make sure the optimization and conversion rates are where you want them before you try PPC.

PPC, or pay per click, isn´t always an instant success. In fact, there are several areas where you can end up in trouble with PPC and small businesses, with their smaller advertising budgets, are more likely to face these issues. Here are just a few of the most common ones.

PPC Problem #1: Lots of clicks, no sales.

There are two things that could be going on here. One, your landing page may need revising and two, it´s possible that your ad isn´t clear enough. If people think you mean one thing and really you mean another, they´ll click, realize their mistake and leave. This costs you money, so make sure that you are very clear in your ad copy. Likewise, if your landing page isn´t convincing or doesn´t offer what the ad promises, people will leave.

PPC Problem #2: No clicks.

When you aren´t getting any clicks at all, you might need to rethink your ad copy. It might help to hire a professional copywriter to do the ad for you. And, make sure it´s being shown on relevant pages. Sometimes PPC ads end up appearing on random sites that have nothing to do with their real topic, so check that your keywords are clear.

PPC Problem #3: Super high rates for your chosen keywords.

It´s not always a good idea to get that first place with the best keywords. Try using different, less popular keywords, long-tail keywords, etc. You might be surprised to find that you can get just as many hits from much less money spent on several lower traffic keywords. Experiment and determine which is best for you.

Obviously these aren´t all the issues you could face with PPC, but they are quite common. It really helps to make sure you look for a solution long before these issues become a big problem, or you could end up spending all your advertising budget on things that don´t work!

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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PPC, or pay per click advertising, is something that can be a huge help in promoting your business online. But you definitely need to know what you´re doing before you jump into it. The world of pay per click can be a confusing one and if you aren´t sure of yourself, you´ll end up losing a lot of money, with nothing to show for it.

Research is vital with PPC for small business, as it is for any new venture that you are considering. There is a lot of information on the internet about the various pay per click programs available. I´d recommend that you read up on each of the major pay per click services before selecting one that fits your needs.

While there are several excellent PPC programs available, to begin with you should stick with just one. This will let you get a feel for the type of advertising and will be able to see what works most effectively, before you branch out and spend more money.

It´s also a good idea to be careful with the amount of money you spend to begin with. Rather than aiming for the number one position, start out slowly and pay only a little per click. This will get you the experience, before you start risking your entire advertising budget. Learn the ropes, then you can start increasing the amount you pay.

PPC is an excellent method of advertising for small business, but it does require a bit of study in order to learn how to use it. Do your research and you´ll soon be a PPC expert.

Caroline
Small Business Mavericks
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PPC or Pay Per Click is very affordable way for small businesses to advertise. You can set the amount you can afford to spend each day, be that fifty cents or fifty dollars and your ad will stop showing once you have hit that amount. It can be a great method of gaining targeted traffic to your business website . . . if you use it correctly.

The way you craft your PPC ads will directly affect how targeted your traffic is. You want to use your keywords in the title of the ad, but clarify in the next two lines. This helps ensure that people aren´t mislead. When someone is looking for discount children´s books and you don´t specify that you offer used textbooks on your website, you´ll end up paying for clicks that are completely useless.

There is a fine line between enticing visitors to your site and making sure they understand what exactly you are offering. If you are on a tight budget, you really can´t afford to have people clicking on your ads and then realizing that you aren´t what they want! It may seem overboard, but it can really be worth it to hire a copywriter to write three or four PPC ads that you can then test and tweak. The cost is worth it, if you aren´t great at copywriting yourself, as you´ll avoid many useless PPC leads.

PPC is a good method for small businesses on a budget to get the word out. This is one arena where you can compete with the big dogs and still come out on top.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

Even if you don´t do your main business online, but have a website, pay per click advertising is the ideal way to gain more clicks and boost your business visibility. PPC for small businesses allows for careful budgeting and targeted keywords that bring in traffic specifically interested in what you do.

Pay per click advertising is a good choice for local businesses in particular. If you are looking to get people into your brick and mortar store, you can use localized keywords to bring in targeted traffic, people who are looking for your type of business in your area. The advantage of this is that most local businesses are not yet using pay per click options and you have a head start on them.

The downside of pay per click for small businesses is that you could end up wasting a lot of money if you don´t know how to select the right keyword phrases and how to set up your pay per click ad campaign. Copywriting also plays an important part in successful PPC advertising, so if you aren´t a copywriter, you´ll need some outside help. Fortunately, you don´t have to do everything yourself, I offer PPC management for small businesses, so you can just forget about the whole pay per click side of things.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Mavericks
Small Business Mavericks Blog

With the competing search engines not showing any signs of letting up on their innovation, it can feel confusing. Do you do paid search? If so, should you use Google or Yahoo? What are the differences? Are they only for larger businesses, or should I consider it for my small one as well?

Outsell, Inc. recently turned the tables on the two 800 lb. gorillas and had small business owners rank them instead. 58% of small business owners felt that Google’s search is effective, which is healthy compared to the 32% Yahoo garnered. Large businesses were also surveyed, and the numbers were more evenly rated, showing 63% gave google the nod, while 62% also felt Yahoo is effective.

Given that most businesses out there are small ones, this is more important than it may appear on the surface. Small businesses tend to spend more for online advertising relatively speaking, but the largest deterrent and disappointment for this group is the rate of click fraud they claim to see, which reflected 14% for small businesses.

Search is still one of the best ways to drive organic and qualified traffic to your site, and as a small business owner you’re not alone when it comes to evaluating your options! For the full press release describing this survey, go here.

Caroline Melberg
Small Business Marketing Mavericks
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Geotargeting your Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaign in order to find local customers for your small business is really quite easy to do. There are many PPC systems to consider, but when it comes to pinpointing geotargeting at the search system control panel level, the choice really boils down to Google AdWords.

To attract purely local customers through PPC, you need to target them on a local basis. This is where geographical targeting, or geotargeting, comes in. With the Google AdWords PPC program you can focus down to city level. This means that only people searching Google in the particular city you choose to display your ads in will see your ad. Those searching Google and using the exact same keyword in another city will not see your ad.

This works well, but only to a point. Suppose someone visiting New York on the weekend is searching from his or her hometown of Chicago on Monday morning, trying to find a place that does limousine car hire in New York. There may be several such places to be found in their search, but suppose you had used AdWords with geotargeting for just New York. The person searching from Chicago would not see your ad.

There is a workaround to this situation, however. Marketing through local searches, or searches by people who are remote, but want to know the local situation elsewhere, needs one vital element in order to succeed: keyword lists that are targeted to the local area only.

Keywords that would normally be used in a global PPC campaign can, in many cases, be modified for use successfully and used in geotargeting. For example, the keyword phrase, “limousine car hire,” becomes, “limousine car hire in New York,” if that is the area you are curious about. It really can be as simple as that.

This means that you have a choice about how you conduct your PPC campaign. It also means that you are not necessarily tied to Google AdWords, as any competent PPC search system can have geotargeted keywords plugged in to make what you are targeting totally obvious. Of course, you can, and probably should, use both techniques together to eliminate any doubt. The customers you can expect to find as a result will be exactly those you are seeking.

If you are geotargeting your PPC campaign to find local customers for your small business, there are several things you should bear in mind from the outset. They may seem obvious, but perhaps not to everyone. The first thing you should consider is whether or not your goods or service is deliverable. It presumably will be if you are targeting a small local area, but sometimes people don’t properly think this point through.

You also need to ask yourself, if there is a limit to the area where your goods or service can be delivered? And if so, can you define it exactly? In this way you will know precisely how you can conduct business and to what extent.

When geotargeting keywords, you should start off with a general keyword phrase that already gets a lot of searches, if possible. Adding a specific city name to a keyword will lower the amount of searches it gets. If the search amount is already low before you add a city name, the resultant keyword phrase may not get any searches at all. Always check and re-check your keywords before mounting any PPC campaign, especially a geotargeted PPC campaign where you are focusing on the local market for your small business.

Caroline
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