Paid Search
Drive Traffic with ebay Classified Ads
When you think of eBay, you think of online auctions. Most people do. But what if there was a way for you to drive traffic directly from eBay.com to your online store.You can still sell via auction or set up an online store within eBay, but there is also a way for you to tap into eBay users and bring them to your site and have the transaction happen on your online store. You can drive traffic directly to your online store and forget the whole auction marketplace.
(NOTE: I am not discounting the value of sell products via auction on eBay. They are extremely important for some online retailers. I am just making a distinction between the two opportunities now available to you on eBay.)
To get started advertising your online store on eBay, use this link. You will get up-to-date information regarding their program and fees, which start at $9.95 insertion fee for 30 days. Real estate listings are more.
This means you can have a full, HTML ad on eBay with all your product info, contact information and direct link to your online store for under $10 per month. How cool is that!
Did I mention that you can have multiple items within one classified ad?
You will need an eBay account to begin. Simply, sign into your eBay account and click “SELL AN ITEM”. There is no real difference in creating a classified ad vs. a normal auction except when it is time to select the listing type, which you would choose “CLASSIFED AD”.
Get ready to drive customers to your online store from eBay!
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
Advertising with Amazon Product Ads
Ready to reach tens of millions of qualified online shoppers?Unlike other popular sites (like Facebook, YouTube or popular blogs like the entertainment site TMZ or the political site, The Huffington Post), visitors to Amazon.com are likely to be in shopping mode. Don’t miss this point - they are ready to buy!
Rarely, would you just hang out on Amazon.com (like you might in a brick-and-mortar store, like Barnes & Noble). These shoppers may be at worst early in their buying decision (just browsing) or even better…ready to buy (the credit card is out of the wallet).
Wherever they are in the buying process, they are qualified to some extent as potential customers for your store. According to research from Nielsen Online, Amazon.com marketplace customers are 49% more likely to buy online than search engine users.
Amazon Product Ads is a CPC ad spend only. The CPC charges are based on categories of products - see the current rates, which are likely to increase over time, at their website.
Click here to learn more about the Amazon Product Ads opportunity. Sign up today to tap into the massive traffic on Amazon.com and funnel off their best customers to your online store.
QUICK TIP:
Also, if you have services to offer (and not just products), then you might want to try promoting your services on Amazon.com. Your ad for your services shows up on related product pages - pretty cool! You can check out this opportunity on Clickriver.com.
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
Advertise using MySpace MyAds
Although Facebook and Twitter are the current darlings of the social networking arena, let us not forget about MySpace with over 70 Million users in the United States alone.MySpace is another extremely popular social networking site which has been overshadowed by the popularity of Facebook since about 2008.
And, there are still plenty of active users here for you to attract to your site through MySpace myAds. Still in BETA as of this writing (meaning they are still working out all the kinks), it is MySpace’s answer to monetizing their users. This is good news for you and potentially a great opportunity to drive traffic to your online store.
Consider it a gift to you that MySpace myAds isn’t too popular right now. In my opinion, there are not enough advertisers taking advantage of this opportunity. Their loss, your gain if you take action and try this ad platform!
Like Facebook, there are plenty of contextual advertising filters so your ad is shown to the most appropriate audience either on a CPC or CPM ad spend.
- Age
- Education level
- Gender
- Hobbies
- Interests
- Location - city, state, nationwide or zip code radius
- Parental status
- Relationship status
Currently, the big difference between advertising on MySpace versus Facebook is the cost-per-click costs. On MySpace, the bids start ~$0.05 and bids on Facebook start around $.20.
It is easy to get started and you can end your ads at any time. Don’t overlook this opportunity for your online store. Remember, fish where the fish are!
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
How to Legitimately Buy a Text Link Ad
Paid text links can be used for different purposes - traffic and SEO.
For this tip, I am talking about direct traffic. Meaning you, the advertiser, wants to advertise via text links to drive traffic to your online store.
This is a totally white-hat technique that can work for you. So, we are focusing on driving TRAFFIC to your online store (vs. creating more inbound links designed to help your SEO efforts).
I am making this distinction because buying text links on sites to help boost your SEO program is frowned upon by the search engines. It is a no-no. Search engines don’t want you manipulating their results for your gain.
Now, back to advertising via text links (for traffic). You might be thinking that text links are boring and nobody clicks on them because they are hard to find on certain sites. Well, I guess that could be true, but text links can play an important role in getting traffic to your site. You will need to see if this traffic actually converts while managing the ROI of this effort like any other campaign.
Here are several text link networks to get you started:
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
How to Leverage Your Best Performing Keywords
Hopefully, you have your Google AdWords campaigns running at a profitable ROI. If so, you can leverage your best performing keyword efforts.
You can now take your best ad groups or campaigns or keywords and try them in the next two biggest search engines - Yahoo and MSN (Bing).
Once you are done optimizing your AdWords account, I recommend doing the same in MSN and Yahoo - in that order. The reason for this is that MSN tends to deliver less, but more qualified traffic to your online store. From my experience, the competition is less on MSN and it is easier to get to a profitable ROI sooner.
Take the time to work on creating the best possible PPC ad campaign you can. If you don’t want to do it yourself, outsource it and manage the agency’s work at a comfortable frequency like weekly or at a maximum, monthly. Your accountant will thank you.
NOTE:
As announced in 2009, Yahoo and MSN will be partnering up several assets. While all the details are not available at the time of this writing, it is likely that in 2010, Yahoo will be replacing their Sponsored Search program with the MSN AdCenter platform. In theory, you would be able to manage one PPC program for both search engines, but time will tell if you will need to manage MSN traffic differently than Yahoo traffic.
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
Drive Traffic to Your Site with Facebook Ads
Facebook is currently the darling of the social networking space. It is easy to get started, everyone (and their not-so-computer-savvy mother) is on it and makes it easy to reconnect and stay connected with friends.
I am always interested in being where my customers are and Facebook is one of those places.
So, Facebook now offers an ad service called Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads really came into its own in 2009. Facebook needed to figure out how monetize the 400 Million active users on Facebook.com. Stop for a second - 400 Million active users throughout the world. Wow…that is huge.
To begin advertising on Facebook, click here for their getting started page. Your ads can be up and running within minutes.
There are many options for your ads - text based, text with images as well as contextual options, the genius of this ad opportunity, like geo-targeting (ability to advertise based on a person’s location) and target filters such as:
- Age
- Education
- Keywords
- Languages
- Location
- Relationship Interests
- Relationship Status
- Sex
- Workplace
Also, your advertising spend can be either CPC (cost-per-click) or CPM (cost-per-thousand impressions) giving you several options. Personally, I like CPC because I find it easier to manage my campaign to my target return-on-investment.
And start using Facebook Ads soon before this ad marketplace gets too crowded, which will inevitably raise the cost-per-click rates.
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
Advertising Your Keywords on Google Adwords
One of the keys to success for online retailers is the ability to establish a consistent, profitable traffic stream of new and repeat customers from diverse sources.
Here is an article on online marketing regarding cost per click keyword advertising within Google Adwords and other search engines.
Hopefully, I don’t have to sell you on the idea that you should be using Google AdWords, those paid text links found on Google, Google properties and other sites where Google syndicates their ads. For this discussion, I am assuming you have an active Google AdWords account.
I believe every online retailer should have a strong and reliable pay-per-click (PPC) program on many ad networks but if you could only spend your time optimizing one, Google AdWords is it!
Google is the 800-lb gorilla in search engines with approximately 70% of all searches performed with them. Through Google AdWords, you can get your messages in front of this incredible traffic source!
Now, if you do have a PPC program and it is not performing as well as you would like, there are several issues that are likely at hand including:
- You’re bidding on the wrong keywords
- You’re bidding on the right keywords, but you are attracting unqualified traffic because your ad is too generic
- You’re bidding on the right keywords, but your ad is weak preventing traffic from getting to you
- You’re bidding on the right keywords, but you are getting unqualified traffic. Perhaps you don’t have the right negative keywords in place.
- You’re bidding on the right keywords, but you are sending traffic to the wrong landing page
- You’re bidding on the right keywords, but your landing page or site is not structured to convert the traffic
- You’re not bidding on the enough keywords
- And on and on and on…
There are many ways to optimize a Google AdWords campaign. I could spend several days on this subject, I will keep it simple and give you four proven traffic tactics to optimize your Google AdWords campaign.
1. Get more out of your best performing keywords.
If you are not already number one in terms on bidding, bid higher to try to attract more traffic and watch the results. Usually, long-tail keywords, which are likely multi-word keyword phrases (e.g. “send gift basket NYC”) are good candidates for this higher bidding strategy.
2. Work to improve the quality score of your keywords.
A quality score is a proprietary feature from Google that provides insight into what they think about your ad. Basically, it helps show you how appropriate they think the ad copy and landing page are to the keyword(s) you are bidding on.
See, Google wants to ensure their visitors have a good experience on your site. So, if you get a low quality score (the scale is up to 10 being highest quality), say a score of 5, you will pay a penalty - meaning, you will need to bid more that some other advertisers to have your ad show in higher ad positions.
Said another way, you will be overpaying for PPC traffic. No online retailer wants that…but Google won’t stop you if you want to overpay. Aren’t they nice? You will want to improve the quality score to reduce your cost-per-click costs and improve your ad position.
For keywords with low quality scores, you can adjust the destination URL or adjust the ad copy or move the keyword to a new, extremely targeted ad group. You may be able to get a better quality score, so you get traffic at a discount.
3. Bid on your trademark terms
I hate to even include this one on this list because it should be obvious enough, but too many online retailers miss this tactic. These trademark terms are often the best performing keywords in your arsenal. So, you should be bidding on your trademark terms including your company name, misspellings of all and your URL (including misspellings). If I may use a sports analogy, if we were playing basketball, these keywords would be a slam dunk.
I have seen some companies argue that they shouldn’t have to bid on their own name or trademarks especially if they are indexed well on the terms. I say, hogwash!
You will want as much search engine real estate as possible, so customers have every chance to find your site or products. If you don’t get this real estate, your competitors will or other “partner” sites such as resellers, Amazon.com, eBay, affiliates, shopping comparison sites and others. Protect this valuable real estate!
4. Implement appropriate negative keywords
One of the easiest ways to save money in your PPC efforts is not bidding on bad traffic.
It is an easy enough concept. By using negative keywords in your PPC efforts, you can effectively filter out search terms to avoid unqualified eyeballs from viewing your ads. Save money and get negative keywords working within your PPC program today.
Also, there are some advance techniques to consider:
- Dayparting - bidding different amounts at different parts of the day
- Geo-targeting - bidding on traffic from different parts of the country/world
- Demographic targeting - bidding on traffic based on age, gender, etc.
Each of these techniques can increase traffic to your online store while minimizing your PPC costs.
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
Advertising with the Google Adwords Content Network
Today’s internet marketing tip is short and sweet.
Use Google AdWords Content Network to expand your ad reach. Don’t limit yourself to just the traffic found on Google.com and other Google-owned sites.It is SUPER easy to place your ads on thousands of industry-related sites. Plus, you can find sites by demographic data (interested in marketing to women 35-54 years old? - no problem) or you can advertise on specific sites.
Quick note:
You might find that traffic from some of these sites doesn’t convert as well as traffic from Google’s search, but still, there are plenty of qualified traffic opportunities here.
If this is new to you, here is a recipe for success:
- Start with your most profitable ad campaign (e.g. your brand name and variations of it)
- Create a new ad group just for the content network.
- Start with a lower bid and watch the performance.
- Adjust as necessary.
- Repeat with several other key ad groups.
Also, don’t stop with text ads, you can do the same with banners and video.
Good luck,
David Wauters
OnlineStoreCoach.com
Paid Search - PPC Quick Tip
Paid Search Tip
One of the fastest ways to get targeted traffic to your online store is from paid search. These PPC (pay-per-click) programs can be extremely effective when done correctly. Read more
Time Management of Paid Search
Let’s define Paid Search as paying for traffic from search engines (and their partner sites. The secret to good paid search marketing is to avoid the bad traffic and convert the paid traffic, profitably. I’m over simplifying, but this is the goal. Read more
