Paid for search engine advertising is one of the most flexible forms of online marketing available today.  Not only can you filter your advertising by geography, keyword, time of day, day of week and budget, you can also choose a payment model which is most closely aligned to your business, products and services.

Companies wishing to advertise on search engines can now choose pay per view (pay every time your advert is shown), pay per click (pay every time someone visits your website), pay per query (pay every time someone contacts you following an advert) or pay per purchase (pay every time someone buys something from your site having found it through a search engine).  In the midst of this myriad of choice, one key driver should dictate which model you embrace – return on investment.

Web marketing is about driving actions from online users through the use of good design, imagery and copywriting.  Different industries selling different products will use these techniques in different ways.  In the same way as a telecoms provider will choose a different offline media mix to an FMCG advertiser, so it will be the case online.  The most effective of the search engine options as listed above is dependent on your sector and your products / services.

Happily there is a range of online tools which will help you decide how to invest your marketing money.

One of the first decisions which you will need to make is regarding your keywords, i.e. with which search phrases would you like your advert to be displayed?  The way that most search engines work is that there is a bidding system, whereby search phrases have a cost associated with their popularity.  A quick look at some comparison tools tells me that the phrase “personal loans” costs $8.63 for Google Ad Words, and “cctv cameras” costs $1.30.  The key point is that cost depends on popularity of the search phrase and ultimately how much advertisers are prepared to pay for it.

There are some excellent online tools (e.g. goodkeywords.com, wordtracker.com) which help you pick good value search phrases.  For instance goodkeywords.com was able to tell me that “personal loans” costs $8.63 per click, but that “car loans” costs $2.89 and that “home improvement loan” costs $1.80.  It was also able to tell me that the conversion rate (i.e. people who went on to buy) is higher for “car loans” and “home improvement loan” than it is for “personal loans”.  Make sure that you bid smart.  Don’t bid with rounded values, you only need to beat the previous bid by a couple of cents.

It is also important to ensure that your keyword choices are well qualified, so that you don’t get irrelevant traffic.  This requires a combination of making sure your search phrases are of clear relevance (e.g. if you have a website selling Volkswagen Beetles, ensure that VW or Volkswagen is one of the keywords, or your advert will be shown to insect enthusiasts), and also using negative keywords (i.e. telling the site not to show your advert if certain keywords are used within the search phrase).  The better filtering you can achieve, the better results you will enjoy.

The principle is clear – it is important that you choose keywords carefully, experiment with them frequently, and settle on keywords which provide you with the best result.  Whilst the online tools are very helpful, a combination of these, along with trial and error, will harvest the best results.

You will need to set up and test landing pages.  A landing page is a page on your website which can only be reached by clicking on your advert in a search engine.  It cannot be accessed directly from any other part of your site, and its content should reflect whatever copy was used to get people to click and visit your site.  Landing pages are crucial in making users feel that they have reached the correct destination, and in driving the appropriate next action.

If paid for search engine advertising is successful for you, replicate your success.  Google and Overture dominate the market for paid for search engine advertising, but there are over 650 search engines which allow paid for campaigns.  Some of these search engines are geographically specific, others are industry or subject specific.  If Google and / or Overture are performing well for you, check payperclicksearchengines.com to see if there are other platforms which might also perform well for you.