Quick Pay Per Click Tips that can Save you Money

Posted by David on Jan 26, 2009 in Pay Per Click | 0 comments

A lot of the internet works off of a simple principle…common sense.  The Pay Per Click world is no different.  Some companies don’t ship out products, they only work on a local level, so you have to think locally, if that’s the business you’re in or targeting.

Let’s say I’m a doctor that performs lasik surgery in Toms River, NJ, and I’m getting ready to launch a pay per click campaign.  To get more bang for my buck I want to advertise locally.  It doesn’t really make sense for me to target the whole country or world for my keywords.  If someone in San Francisco, California finds my ad, what are the odds of them coming to Toms River, NJ?  Very slim unless I have a very unique selling proposition (USP) or they’ll be in town for a while.  So that scratches out buying lasik worldwide, unless I can sell my spare leads to companies around the world.

The term lasik is estimated to be at $7.62 – $10.69 per click at the time of this writing.  I don’t know about you, but with an estimated cost of  $3,500 – $6,140 per day those clicks can get very expensive.  The thing is they’re untargeted.  You can end up in a deep hole if you don’t use pay per click correctly is my main point of course.

Now let’s say we just targeted New Jersey.  The actual keyword doesn’t really get any cheaper, but we are targeting a reasonably sized area that are likely to be interested in what we have to offer and will actually show up for an appointment.  Now our daily budget is only $40-90 (estimated by google because of the amount of New Jersey clicks received), but we’re a local lasik center so it doesn’t make sense to spend thousands if we don’t have to.   You might want to reach into certain parts of Delaware, Pennsylvania, etc… for more traffic if your daily ad budget allows only because their aren’t that many clicks for New Jersey for that term.

You can also expand your keywords.  For example laser eye surgery is another keyword you might want to test out.  You have to keep testing to see what keywords give you the best return on investment.  You can also target within a certain radius of your company.  If you target within a 20 mile radius of your address and see your pay per click campaign is going great, you can start expanding and keep expanding until you see it’s dropping your ROI or you’re not making the profit you need to make to justify the cost.  It’s all about testing to see what works.

Another way to save money is to make sure your ad says exactly what your company is about and the benefits of clicking to see your site.

Lasik Surgery $750 Per Eye!

Get Better than 20/20 Vision Today.

No Money Down.

Note: My ad might not be accurate, it was just a sample ad I whipped up in 3 seconds.  So don’t kill me doctors.

I’m putting my offer out there, they are told their is a fee associated with my services.  They find what’s in it for them in a quick ad.  That’s all it takes, it doesn’t have to be complex.  If you make your ads to generic you’ll get tons of people clicking just to see what’s on the other side, let them know upfront the best stuff.

That’s a quick example of local uses for pay per click and how to save a couple of dollars.

If you’re shipping stuff out nationwide or offer a service that attracts clients nationwide or worldwide, then you don’t have to target down to the state or local level.

Also one or two keywords might be enough for your business, but I routinely have lists of a few hundred to thousand keyword phrases that match my niche and even if they don’t get clicks every day, when they do get clicks they have higher conversion ratios and of course they cost a lot less than just using the main keyword.