I rely heavily on paid advertising. Sure I get results from organic impressions. But the Big Bang comes from paid ads. My top paid ad resource is PPC using Bing. Of course Google ads may have greater penetration. But, Bing ads cost less and are very effective.
I construct my Bing ad method using what I learned from a great program: Traffic Masters Academy. Traffic Masters Academy is a paid course providing detailed instruction on how to get traffic. A top online money-maker teaches each training module.
A new Bing campaign ad schedule is set starting at $5 a day. I let it run for five days or so and then make adjustments. I usually run 5 – 10 different headline ads, rotating them in sequence.
After five days I check which ads deliver clicks and sharpen them, dropping the poor performers. I let the ads run another five days and look at which is delivering clicks over the others. Then I sharpen the subheads and test them for another couple of days, increasing my budget to $10 a day.
When my ads are performing as I want I jump the budget to $20 a day and let them run for a week or so. Now here’s what you need to know. I use a couple of keyword search tools. One is Keyword Snatcher. The other is Long Tail Pro. Click on those links and learn what each program offers. They’re cheap and invaluable.
I start each ad with several hundred keywords and shorten the list with each analysis of ad performance. Now, pay attention to this. When I get the headline performing as I want and have the keywords that work for me I add one more long-tail keyword. This is my ace-in-the-hole.
Suppose we’re selling a house cleaning product. Let’s use ‘widget’ as what we’re selling. And you drill down so your ideal long-tail keyword is:
Best widget to clean your house in 1 hour.
Using the plus sign (+) wildcard here’s how to add a final keyword:
+best, +widget, +clean, +house, + 1 hour.
When checking your analytics the goal is a CTR (click through rate) of 3 or better. You absolutely do not settle for a CTR >1. When setting up your Bing ad campaign designate Bing & Yahoo only. DO NOT send your ads to all networks.
This method works for me. I don’t use shortcuts. Sure, it takes me a couple of weeks to get where I think my campaign should be. Going faster just doesn’t work for me.
I scale up my ad spend, starting with $5/day. I’m usually able to get good clicks for pennies. Some aggressive product niches are more costly. I cannot remember ever spending more than $1.50 a click. My most expensive campaign is now at $1.09 a click. But that is money well spent.
When you have a PPC campaign that delivers you can spend whatever you like; as long as you are making money. We are not in this for clicks. We run paid ads to get buyers. Buyers pay the bills while clicks drain our bank account.
Remember our rule: Buy for a nickel and sell for a dime. Go with what delivers a profit. Make sure the profit is what you need to make progress in your business.
Many people sell their know-how by showing deposits to bank accounts. That’s gross revenue. It does not reflect what they spend to make that kind of money. It’s not what you make – it is what you keep that matters. That’s why you want to sell high ticket items like this. My high-ticket item earns me $1,250, $3,300, and $5,500 commissions.
Now, if your ads begin performing more poorly without an obvious reason you must do something quick. This article (click here for article) by Nathan Pablich gives good advice for what you can do when clicks drop off.
Another bit of advice is to take advantage of Bing ad help. Chat or telephone and communicate with a Bing support person. They are there to help you be successful. The more success you have the more money you will spend on Bing.
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