By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Online business are often plagued with this internet marketing question: Should I hire a PPC agency or do the work in-house?

Most of the time, the question is not only based on cost alone.  Many people feel that managing their own Pay-Per-Click campaigns is more cost effective, but the truth is, it is not as simple as that!

In-House vs. PPC Agency: For your consideration…

A lesson in specialization:

Because PPC Agencies specialize in the current trends, techniques and methodologies of search engine marketing, their agents are more able to deliver work that reflects their expertise.  A do-it-yourself technique may be adequate for a small amount of time, but professional PPC agents will do better work in less time.

It’s a question of perspective…

Now this one can be tricky.  While in-house employees will have a deeper understanding of company philosophy, products and services, a PPC agency can provide a fresh look, as they are uninhibited and uninfluenced by company procedures and past work.

What’s this gonna cost me?

Now to consider cost: With in-house work, you will need to pay salary or wage, benefits, 401K, etc. With a PPC agency, you may pay more for the actual work, but will receive quick, successful results.  This can be looked at in a short-term / long-term basis. For the short-term, a PPC agency can handle the work without creating steep costs. If you can handle the increased costs, in-house PPC reps would be better in the long-run.

Hopefully, this post has provided you with some things to consider before hiring (or not hiring) a PPC agency.  As with most internet marketing techniques, a DIY strategy may work for small businesses, but professional services are the way to go for growing businesses with much at stake.

By Britnee Nguyen

If you’re planning on doing a PPC campaign or any type of internet marketing through the winter months, you’ll want to take the holiday season in consideration. Undoubtedly, there’s going to be a rise of on-line traffic during the holidays as many people turn to the web to find gifts. You’ll want to make sure you have your PPC campaigns properly set up to make the most of your on-line advertising investment. Use these guidelines to be successful during the holiday season through your PPC campaign.

Use keyword reports from the previous holiday season to see what keywords did well during that time. You can use the search-based keyword tool to see these reports. Most likely, these terms will do well again this year. You’ll want to use Google’s sbKT (search-based keyword tool). When you’re on the website you’ll see how well keywords are ranking and how much they are per click. This is really helpful any time of the year, but can be of great assistance if you’re trying to sell your product or service during the holidays.

The one day out of the year you should have your PPC campaign geared for is Cyber Monday. This is like Black Friday which is the day after Thanksgiving where every store has discounted prices on items. Cyber Monday occurs the Monday after Thanksgiving and is for sales available on-line. You could bid higher this day compared to other days to take advantage of the increased traffic on Cyber Monday. To get the most clicks, you’ll need to get your ads in the top 3. If you don’t, then it might be useless to do it since your competition will dominate you. You’ll want to be part of the holiday revenue that day so make sure you maximize your ROI the best you can on Cyber Monday.

Also, even after the holidays come and go, many sales happen after the holidays. Consumers are looking for the best deals after the holidays, so don’t miss out on this opportunity either. Don’t end your PPC campaign on Christmas Day, instead you should keep it and monitor it to make money off of the post-holiday shopping. You’ll might want to alter your keywords a bit after this to make sure you’re still targeting the on-line shoppers.

This holiday season, don’t miss out on increased revenue from your PPC advertising. Be sure to plan and prepare it in advance to get the most ROI. If you’re busy taking care of your own holiday shopping, it’s best to hire a professional company who can handle your account during the busy season. Submit Solution is an example of a company who are experts in pay per click advertising and will maximize your ROI this holiday season.

By Britnee Nguyen

When you have a PPC ad in Google AdWords, you’re only given 25 characters for the headline and 70 characters for the body of the text. You probably thought writing in 140 characters on Twitter was hard! But after seeing the very limited amount of space you’re given for a PPC ad, you realize you have to be extremely clear and concise to get your message across.

While being concise, you need to make sure that you include relevant keywords, explain the benefits, stand out and have a “call-to-action” message. In addition, you need to remember that you are speaking to real humans so don’t sound too wordy or stuffy.

When writing PPC ads, you need to focus on the goal. The immediate goal you’re looking for is to convey why the person should click on your ad. The next long-term goal is how to convert those clicks into sales. But for this post, we’re just talking about the goal of getting them to click. Getting someone to click with just 95 characters total to entice them can be difficult. The last sentence I just wrote was 87 characters which shows just how concise you need to be.

Headline (25 characters)

Your headline is the attention grabber.

If your headline isn’t interesting, the viewer won’t continue reading the rest of your text; therefore, won’t click your ad. It needs to simply say what you have to offer. If you are selling free birthday cards on-line and want to do a PPC ad to promote your website. If you wanted your keyword to be “birthday e-cards” then you should keep the headline simple such as: Free Birthday E-cards. It’s basically just blatantly stating what you have to offer because you don’t have room to do much else.

Body (75 characters)

When you write the body text, this is where you’ll want to explain more about what you offer. This is typically one sentence long and you’ll want it to be “call-of-action”. This means that you are telling them to do something with action words. You can do this by starting off your sentence with words such as “Send”, “Choose” and “Make”. In the example of using “birthday e-cards” as the target keyword, here are some good examples you could do using the call-to-action and keywords:

Send a personalized birthday e-card to your loved one today.
Choose from 550+ unique birthday e-cards delivered right to the inbox.
Make your friend’s day special with an interactive birthday e-card.

So just make sure you get to the point of what the person will get if they click on your ad. Remember to keep it clear and concise and don’t use too much flowery words because they’ll just skip over it. Make sure to use an action word so they will actually take action and click on your link instead of just reading it. PPC ads can be very effective when written properly. Take the time to write your PPC to make sure it targets the right keywords and creates a call to action.

By Robert Lockard

An excellent blog post on Practical Ecommerce got me thinking about how paid-search campaigns are handled. The blog post is entitled, “Pay-per-click Advertising: Seven Pointers for Smaller Campaigns.”

I was amazed when I read all of the pointers on how people can improve their PPC efforts because basically all of them are easily handled by Submit Solution. I think it’s a great idea to be educated on the best practices of online promotion, so you should definitely read that blog post and take its advice to heart.

After you come up with a plan and thoroughly research your keywords, you can present your ideas to a Submit Solution PPC expert, and he or she will be able to improve upon your ideas and fully implement them for you. Submit Solution offers a number of pay-per-click solutions, including one-on-one support, easily updatable keywords, up-to-date reports and more.

The seven things you should keep in mind when using PPC in your marketing strategies include learning about negative keywords, long-tail keywords and match types. Negative keywords are phrases that include your selected keywords, but attach unfavorable or irrelevant words to them. I’m sure Nintendo wouldn’t want to pay for people who click on its ads when they type in words like “Nintendo Wii defective,” or something to that effect. Those people are more likely to be looking for information or venting rather than hoping to make a purchase.

Long-tail keywords are great because a relatively small number of people search for them and so they used to be less expensive to advertise on. But now that the secret is out that Internet marketers want those targeted keywords more than the general ones, they’re becoming more expensive. A long-tail keyword is a search term with more than one or two descriptive words in it. Terms like “Internet marketing” have a high amount of competition to be number one on search engine results pages. Terms like “Internet marketing solution Orem Utah” will have fewer searchers, but they will be much more targeted.

Match types help you get even more targeted traffic to your website by adjusting how precisely you want people’s search terms to match your selected keywords and phrases.

I hope you’ve enjoyed my discussion of PPC campaigns. This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Submit Solution offers PPC solutions.” The photo of the bad advertisement is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Unlisted Sightings.

By Britnee Nguyen

Recently, YouTube announced they are allowing advertisers in Australia to buy search keywords for their videos. I never realized YouTube had the option of Pay-Per-Click ads for videos posted there. Apparently, they’ve been offering this service in the U.S. for a year now. It’s quite a brilliant idea for internet marketing since more people are apt to click on the ad because it’s a video over clicking on an ad that is just has text.

The two major advertisers who use this service are Mitsubishi and Holden who have been doing it in the U.S. Other popular advertisers are automotives, entertainment industry and packaged goods. It’s a clever way to get more hits on videos. How it works is that the advertisers buys popular search keywords that relate to themselves and then their ad for their video pops up when someone types in those keywords. When someone actually clicks on the video ad, then advertisers pay for the click.

With these YouTube pay-per-click ads for videos, it is starting to blur the lines between what is advertisement and what is entertainment. Because of this, I think it’s easier to get more clicks through YouTube, then through a regular search engine. To make it even more effective, if your company actually produces a pretty fun video that can turn viral, plus with pay-per-click ads of it, it would eventually get so many hits that it would probably organically show up in the results and you no longer have to pay for views. It’s quite the clever way to be creative and use YouTube’s paid search to promote it.

So it’s a pretty effective tool to use. The only downside that could happen with it is that a negative video about the company could show up in the organic search results right next to the paid advertising video from the same company. It might deter the message from the paid video. A YouTube spokesperson did say that advertisers can add keywords to their campaign that they don’t want to show up for. So that would probably solve that problem. Overall, it sounds like a great way to get a company out there in the web community.

By Britnee Nguyen

A new and free research tool, Google Insights, provides e-commerce owners with the ability to improve their pay-per-click (PPC) advertising with its search data. Many on-line retailers depend on PPC services to get more customers to their shops. If less people are clicking, then that means less business coming in.

Some may not see the relevancy in PPC or even understand how many people actually use it. Google reported that most of its $5.5 billion revenue in the last quarter was from PPC advertising. This is why Google has a keen interest in paid search ads and want to help on-line retailers receive the best support in it.

So the newest tool is Google Insights which helps hone a marketing message. You can choose three different ways to describe your product such as “environmentally-friendly”, “portable”, and “high-tech” for example and plug them into Google Insights which will tell you which term is searched for most in the U.S. or whatever area you’re in. This gives you a starting point on knowing which phrase will benefit you the most.

You can also see how a certain keyword tends to trend each year. For example, “softball cleats” trends to be the highest on March when softball season is about to start. You can also see which states search for the most and other related keywords and how they trend. You can see below how each divot and peak occur around the same time each year.

Note that Google Insights doesn’t tell you exactly how many people search for that keyword, but instead scales it accordingly. It is a helpful tool to help those with pay-per-click and to use it more efficiently. It’s not the only tool needed to succeed in PPC, but it is definitely one you’ll want in your toolbox.

By Britnee Nguyen

In speaking with a photojournalist from a newspaper the other day, she was telling me how a company had called the newspaper trying to sell them on the idea of using SEO/PPC to improve their traffic to their stories. I was surprised at first since I’ve never thought those services could benefit a newspaper. Actually, some say pay-per-click has been the reason of newspapers downfall since more choose to advertise that way instead of through the traditional newspaper ad route.

The thing with SEO and keyword internet marketing is that it does take some time to build up. So if newspapers are trying to use SEO to build up traffic to timely or breaking news, it will be too late and useless before they see the results. People will have picked up the timely story beforehand somewhere else.

With PPC on the other hand, I can see how that would benefit newspapers. If there is a breaking story that they want to be the ones where readers go to find more information on-line, then PPC would definitely work. Basically, the way it would work is if this kind of scenario happened: Someone twitters breaking news that there is a shooting downtown and that they are there at the scene. A viewer sees it and texts about it to their friend who lives near the shooting area. Since not many details are given, the friend who receives the text is most likely to immediately jump on-line to search for more details.

By this time, newspapers would have caught this story too. They write up a quick article and constantly update it. In addition, they bid on a pay-per-click ad that will pop up on search engines for whoever searches: “shooting in ‘city’ or ‘state’”. And then whoever searches for that term (such as the friend who received the text) will find the newspaper article pop up very first on the list, and will most likely click on it.

This is just an example of one scenario. From what I’ve found, it looks like several newspaper organizations such as Cox Newspapers Inc., The Chicago Tribune, and New York Daily News have used pay-per-click advertising in the past to generate more revenue and traffic. If more newspapers got into PPC then they would have more chances of viewers going to their site for more information instead of other websites.

So instead of newspapers competing with PPC, they should actually take advantage of it and use it for their own benefit. Traffic and revenue are things newspapers desperately need right now, and PPC can help them achieve these things.

For more information on PPC services, visit Submit Solution who are experts in the field of PPC and keyword internet marketing.

Flickr Photo Credit: antonkawaski

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Google, Bing and Yahoo search engines are usually what comes to mind when one thinks of Pay-Per-Click ads.  However, there is another huge market for PPC ads that is often overlooked by online businesses: Facebook.  That’s right, Facebook ads are offered in the PPC format, allowing online businesses to take their targeted marketing to the next level.

Facebook paid-ads work much the same way that PPC ads in Google and Bing work.  However, the subtle differences between the two methods of paid search may make all the difference to some industries.

Here are some of the specs on Facebook PPC ads:

->  BIG Market Share: Facebook is big.  Okay, Facebook is huge.  It’s probably the biggest time-waster known to mankind.  And it’s still growing!  The point here is, Facebook hosts a monstrous aggregate of young and old, educated and uneducated people alike.   Most target markets would be greatly available on Facebook.  However, there are some that would more profitable than others.  For example, an ad for handmade jewelry like you see above would be fairly successful on Facebook, because it is targeted towards mostly educated, middle to upper-class women.  If the ad were to be targeted to mostly uneducated or lower class women, research shows that Myspace would be the more appropriate place to advertise.

->  Not as Powerful: Let’s face it — no matter how big Facebook gets, it can never trump that search engine giant, Google.  While you’re reading this, you may be thinking, “Wait a sec! Didn’t she just tell us that Facebook ads can give us access to a big market share?”  It is important to realize that while Facebook is indeed growing, it is still a social networking site that not accessible to anyone (because it requires login credentials), while Google is the most popular search engine in the land.  Another thing to consider is that your Facebook ads will not be visible in search engine results!

After reading this article, you should have a pretty good idea about whether or not Facebook ads will work for your business.  If you’re not ready to make the leap into Facebook paid ads, you can always just focus on your free Facebook pages or even add Facebook Connect to your website or blog.  Once you see how those campaigns work out, you can have a better idea about where to take your next step.

by Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

Pay-Per-Click ads can be a great marketing tool, there’s little doubt about that.  However, this form of advertising is more difficult than it looks.  Sure, anyone can come up with a slogan, title or headline that they think properly describes their product or service.  But is that really a good and effective ad?  In this post, we will outline the six major reasons why people click on ads and how you can apply this to your own online marketing strategy.

Let’s start out with a small introduction:

So, What is a Pay-Per-Click ad, really?

Well, it’s an ad sponsored by an independent person, such as yourself, that appears on the sidebar or at the top of the results page within relevant search engine results.  The ad will appear when keywords or phrases, that you’ve previously specified, are searched for.  This is a very keyword-targeted form of marketing and is much more aggressive that classic SEO practices.

Okay, that’s the boring, technical version of what a PPC ad is.  But what is it really?

A PPC ad is your chance to catch targeted visitors based on the content you choose to publish.  Unlike SEO, which automatically pulls up relevant links and content according to the search engine “crawlers”, a PPC ad is written and planned by you alone.  This means that the content and keywords chosen for a PPC ad will be the lifeblood of your traffic.

If you want to create a successful PPC ad, it is important to understand why people click on them!  This will help you get in the correct mindset for writing a great ad that will matter to people.  Online marketing specialists have long since studied consumers and how advertising affects them, in order to better market to their needs and wants.

Here are the 6 reasons why people click on online advertisements:

Benefits: Readers feel like they will benefit in some way by clicking on the ad.  Examples include, learning something, gaining something materially, etc.

Brand: Readers recognize the brand.

Differentiation: The ad is different from the others around it and somehow attracts readers’ attention.

Curiosity: Readers want to know more about what the ad implies, claims or asks.

Legibility: The ad makes logical sense to readers.

Call to Action: Readers feel inclined to click on an ad that calls them to action.

Now that you understand the basic motivations behind the clicks you’re paying for, you can begin to discover which motives above would work the best for your ads.  For example, would your particular marketing need benefit from an ad that focuses on curiosity or legibility?  Playing around with these different concepts can not only increase the traffic generated from your PPC ads, but from your other content as well.  These genres of motivation can also apply to your blog posts and titles, greatly increasing your organic ranking through SEO and your Social Media presence as well.

By Britnee Nguyen

When it comes to search engines, some companies pay for pay-per-click advertising because they believe they’d have a better chance of getting users to click on those links, while others rely on organic search results. So what is the best strategy to use when advertising on-line through search engines?

A recent study done by Engine Ready, claims that visitors going to an on-line retailer’s website from a paid search ad are 50 percent more likely to make a purchase compared to visitor coming from a n organic search result. To come to this conclusion, they tracked 20.8 million visits to 26 different online retail sites for a year. They found that paid search visitors typically made a purchase more than those who visited through organic searches. The overall conversation rate from paid search was 2.03% while the organic search was 1.26%.

While these findings lean toward paid search ads as being more effective, there is another factor that must be recognized. This study was solely based on the last click of the visitor, and doesn’t take in account the clicks that occurred before that to get the person to make that purchase.

A lot could happen between the first and last click of a user. When looking only at the last click, it doesn’t take into the full account of how users interact with different websites before making a purchase.

Basically, paid search and search engine optimization have their benefits and are both useful when doing on-line marketing. Some companies may get more clicks from their pay-per-click ads, while others get more from their organic search results. Both tactics are definitely effective in getting a company’s website higher up on the search engines, but there is a fine line in determining which tactic is better. They are both beneficial, so you might as well give both a trial time to see which works better for your own situation.