Beating down the cost of PPC advertising

The cost of PPC advertising is growing rapidly and people aren't making the same return on investment as they used to. In order to get the most out of your currently costly campaign, here are a few tips:

Day parting - Run your campaign during your normal business hours. If you lock the doors and go home at 5:00pm, then turn off your campaign at 5:00pm. If nobody is there to answer the phone, then that lead is money down the drain.

Keywords - Be picky when it comes to your keywords and try to pick a few niche ones. You won't get the same traffic with a niche keyword but your likelihood of converting that customer is a lot higher if you've chosen carefully.

Content Match - If you have a limited budget, try and steer away from content match. If you aren't familiar, content match shows your ad on tons of websites who are part of AdSense. In some cases it works out but chances are your conversion rate will be a lot lower compared to other things.

GEO Target - Target your ads geographically. There are a lot of reasons to pick certain areas, you just have to figure out the right questions to ask. If you're selling surfboards online, you might not want to advertise in Missouri for example. One obvious tip is to limit the geography to the area you can actually cover.

Tracking - Be sure to watch your campaigns carefully and track the results. There are a lot of analytics you can use for this and it will help prevent your campaigns from leaking money.

Landing Page - I can't stress how important it is to have your landing pages correspond with the content of the ad that led visitors there. I get extremely frustrated when I search "Desktop Computer" and the ad that I click on takes me to a general homepage where anything from stuffed bunnies to rockets is sold. Matching these carefully will help increase conversions, period.

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