Online Marketing Tips

Marketing online is a
dog-eat-dog world these days. Most Internet searchers are aware of
Google’s AdWords program, they are the ads that appear on the right of
the search results, under “Sponsored Links”. But what about all the
other search engines? Are pay per click programs available there, too?

MSN.com, a search engine produced by Microsoft, offers pay per click
under the name of adCenter. For a low start-up cost of $5 and a credit
card, you can start bidding on ad placement based on the words users
search for. The starting bid, as little as a nickel per click, is the
maximum you are willing to pay for a prime-location placed ad. You can
increase your maximum bid amount for certain audiences or keywords to
help boost your chances of appearing at the top of the page when users
fitting your target audience search for your keywords. Typically, the
higher you bid, the higher your ad placement.

Microsoft adCenter offers a few tracking tools to advertisers. There
is a free conversion tracker (so you can see how many clicks resulted
in purchases, registrations or specific actions on your site),
adTracker (reports the effectiveness of your clicks) and a reporting
tool that allows you to see how much you are paying per click, among
other data.



Microsoft also offers a demographic finding tool. To access this tool,
click on MSN Directory from the MSN.com home page. Then click on
Advertise on MSN under the ‘From MSN’ heading.

Yahoo!, the second most popular search engine behind Google, offers
a versatile pay per click program. You bid on placement, much like MSN.
Yahoo has additional tools, though, like their Keyword Selection Tool,
that will show you how many times a keyword has been searched in the
past month as well as searches related to a specific keyword.

Yahoo! also has a tool, called the View Bids Tool, that allows you
to see what other advertisers are bidding for certain terms and their
titles and descriptions. Additionally, the Price Determination chart
will help you find a happy medium between top advertising spots and
your budget.

To open a Sponsored Search account on Yahoo!, you’ll need an opening
balance of $5. Bids start at $.05. Before you create your account, you
can view all the tools and run a few searches to see the keyword
saturation in your field. To get there, just go to Yahoo.com and click
the Ad Programs link next to the Yahoo! Search button.

goClick.com, a smaller search engine, offers a lower minimum bid per
click, just one cent. There is no set up fee or monthly fee to be a
part of goClick’s network of paid advertisers and the opening balance
minimum is $10.

If your target audience is very specific, web sites they are likely
to visit may offer affiliate advertising. Using this marketing method
you pay a fee for each month you advertise on the site, either via
banner ad or link, or you may pay per click. The cost per click is
typically higher than search engine programs but your advertising
dollar is reaching a more specialized market.

The crucial points to remember when utilizing pay per click advertising are:

* Be very specific about your keywords - avoid broad terms

* Stay away from sites that pay visitors to click on their advertisers

* Keep an eye on your cost per click vs. sales or traffic and change your keyword ads as needed

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