Question: Who Can Afford PPC?

[Jpasch101]

Really, unless you're a huge auto insurance national conglomerate, paying $30 to be on the first page for the best key phrases is a money pit! Why even bother? I know that some of the less popular key phrases are cheaper, but still, our payout per qualified lead is no where near profitable. Does anyone successfully use PPC as a surehits publisher?

 

[pahealthquotes]

Really, unless you're a huge auto insurance national conglomerate, paying $30 to be on the first page for the best key phrases is a money pit! Why even bother? I know that some of the less popular key phrases are cheaper, but still, our payout per qualified lead is no where near profitable. Does anyone successfully use PPC as a surehits publisher?

dont bid on the highest phrases.. find the diamonds in the rough. PPC works.. I'm living proof. What products do you sell?

Joe

 

[designersjpr]

how do you find the diamonds in the rough. A little more info please

 

[robb01]

how do you find the diamonds in the rough. A little more info please

do some keyword research on products in your niche

 

[BlockO]

the more specific your keywords are, the less expensive they become.

for example:
car insurance (very broad and very expensive)

car insurance quote in "city","state" (more specific and less expensive)

the key is to find that middle ground where the cost per click is not so expensive (competitive), but yet have enough search volume to bring in a decent amount of traffic.

and that's where the keyword research comes in as robb01 suggested. finding those long tail keywords that many people search for, but yet few bidders are aware of. those are your diamonds in the rough.

 

[1manshow]

Why not just "rank" for those obscure keyword phrases and save the ppc $$ ?

 

[ksigmtsu]

Why not just "rank" for those obscure keyword phrases and save the ppc $$ ?

The fact is, you're actually to some degree better off testing with ppc before trying to rank for the keywords, if you spend a significant amount of your time doing seo/page building.

I have several ppc campaigns that are in the 2$ or less range, that get 50 clicks or so per month. If I sent the hours necessary to build pages, content, seo them, and put them on page 1 I'd spend a lot more in time than it costs to buy the ads, and some of them have basically no possibility of ever hitting position 1 or maybe even page 1 for the term.

However, noone buys the ppc for the term, so thats a very simple solution to get a high placement for it, and it generates leads.

PPC is also an awesome/cheap way to A B test the effectiveness of description text copy.

I wouldn't suggest bidding on $30 a click terms, unless you have a damn good reason, but if you can stay below $2 and have some sense, you'll make money with it cheaper than you'd seo certain terms.

 

[YouGotMyMoney]

Google PPC is also a good way to check the actual search volume for a keyword.