PPC Bid Management

PPC Advertising Basics

PPC Internet Advertising

Keyword Research Tool

Affiliate PPC Programs

PPC Bidding Basics

PPC Advertising Future

Guide to PPC

Selecting PPC Companies

Returns From PPC

Prevent PPC Fraud

About PPC Software

Tips on PPC

PPC and Search Engines

Comparing Search Engines

Yahoo PPC Tips

Google & PPC

PPC Search Engines

PPC and SEO

Expert PPC Tips

PPC Marketing Information

Effective PPC Ads

Assessing PPC Campaigns

PPC vs. CPM

CPC Advertising Strategies

Free News Letters

Stay updated, sign up for our free newsletter to receive useful tips.

Full Name
Email Id

White Papers

Pay Per Click

PPC Advertisers

Advertising Cost

Suggest An Article

Haven´t found the article you are looking for, please suggest your article. We value all your suggestions and comments.

Pay Per Click Bidding Strategies

Pay per click bid management, or PPC bid management, works like this: The Ad network will first ask you to open an account with them and make an initial deposit. Once your account is created you can view the keywords or key phrases in the pay per click bids and bid on them.

Now when a visitor on the ad network's website clicks on your ad (which appears in a separate column or a row clearly marked as sponsor's ads or some such terminology), you are charged the bid amount and this charge continues until the funds in your account dry up or you decide to discontinue.

Basic pay per click bid management

The basic element in any PPC bid management service is the cost factor. When you advertise in a conventional way, you do so with the expectancy that the advertisement will boost your sales and your profits. The same principle goes for a PPC ad too. So, if you are selling a product for $ 5 and you go for a PPC ad assuming that your ad will get 1000 clicks and 5% of the visitors will buy your product, tha t will translate to $ 250 in sales. Further assuming you are a greedy businessman and your gross margins are 80%, then you could have made $ 200 as profits. Now, working backwards you can figure out that you should be paying not more than 20 cents a click.

Managin g costs is a huge challenge in any PPC bid management systems and there are no shortcuts - you have to go by the book.

Pay per click bids: Strategies

A pay per click ad campaign may throw you in a quandary. Sometimes you will feel that you aren't getting enough visitors, sometimes you will feel that you need to up the pay per click bidding amount, and sometimes you may feel that you should be withdrawing the campaign altogether because the whole world has clicked on your ad and have bought nothing from you. But these thoughts will come to an amateur advertiser who does not follow a sound PPC bid management strategy. The essentials of such a strategy are:

Set your cost per click

First make an educated guess on how much net profit you will be really, really making out of sales generated from your PPC ad. Now, divide this figure by the number of click-throughs you are expecting. This gives you the cost per click that you can bear (X). Now, check the ad network's site for the top bid amounts on the keywords you have chosen (Y). If X exceeds Y, then you will make a profit; if X = Y, you will at least break even, but if Y exceeds X, then you will go into a loss. So, make educated and intelligent guesses and figure out the maximum cost per click that will make your PPC campaign feasible.

Forget the top slot

Unless you own a casino in Las Vegas, do not bother getting into the top slot. It is too expensive and not required. If your ad is catchy and your product good, visitors will click anyway.

Bid gaps

Keywords have different bid rates for different slots. For example, for keyword A, Overture may charge $ 1 for the top slot, 80 cents for s lot 2, and 50, 30 and 20 cents for the 3rd, 4th and 5th slots, respectively. So, in effect, there is a big bid gap between slots 2 and 3. If your budget fits into the gap, then you should grab that spot, bid 52 cents for slot 3 and be seen there.

Bidding on Google and Yahoo

Google and Yahoo (Overture) are the top two PPC networks and both feature different PPC systems. The sponsored results displayed on Overture depend purely on the bid amount, while Google combines the bid amount and the click-through rate to determine the positions. So, if you decide to advertise on Google, you must first head to Overture and figure out the bid range and the cost per click. Then go to Google, place your ad, and monitor the click-throughs. If your click-throughs are less, then you should consider reducing the bid amount on Google.

Track your traffic

It is most likely that you will be advertising on Google or Overture. Keep the following in mind: majority of Google's traffic will come from google.com and from aolsearch.aol.com, while majority of Overture's traffic will come from yahoo.com and from search.msn.com. So, if you have advertised on Overture, go to yahoo.com and msn.com, and run search queries for the keywords you have bid on. Now figure out where your ad lands up and strategize further, if required.

Does PPC bid management software help?

Sure it does. Look, for all the high-tech tools and safeguards that ad networks claim to have built into their PPC systems,

the question that remains is: Who is spending the money? You are. And, you as the spender of your hard-earned money should take safeguards to ensure that it is not wasted. This is where bid management software comes in and this is what it can do:

Using a single software program and viewing a single interface, you can manage your PPC ads across all engines/websites. You do not have to go individually to each engine to make any changes, for the software is like a virtual PPC remote control.
Ad positions keep changing because the bid amounts are constantly in a state of flux. Bid management software monitors your ad rank and the bid gap between you and the next ad. This can be effective in controlling costs.
This software gives you information as to the times of the day the when bid is low or when the number of visitors are high. It will also show you which keyword is working and which one is not.
Bid management software allows you to change your keywords and tracks the conversion rate too.

If you are running a large campaign then go for bid management software that can be automated. And you will go hands-free.

How to start up and earn with PPC Advertising?
PPC Keyword Research! Key to Successful Internet Marketing?
What are the returns on Pay Per Click Affiliate Programs?
PPC Advertising! A boon or a bane for internet business

Bookmark this page Email this to your friend Add this page to del.icio.us