Pay-Per-Click Advertising

In developing your marketing plan, you will want to take advantage of pay-per-click advertising (PPC). PPC ads are the text ads found on the top and sides of some of the major search engine pages such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. You do not pay for the ads to appear on the page, but instead pay when the user clicks on the ad and is taken to your page. Fees for PPC ads are either set by the search engine or bid upon. Some search engines allow you to set a cap on how much you are willing to spend on each PPC ad per month, after which point the ads will stop running.

There are some free online services to help you decide what the best keywords/phrases are for you and your budget. In thinking about which keywords will appear in your ad, a good place to start is to think about how you would begin a search about the topic of your book in two different roles: the layperson and the industry insider. Both perspectives have the potential to yield fruitful results in a search engine depending on the user. Keep in mind also that you want to ensure that if a user clicks on your ad, he/she will be directed to a page that contains relevant information. Furthermore, the keywords you choose and find successful in your PPC monitoring are helpful in creating a highly optimized website.

There are many factors to weigh when thinking about running PPC ads. When considering your budget, you will have to weigh the costs for various key words (note that an ad will sometimes have higher prices depending on its position on the page), and prices do vary among different search engines. Do some research into what kinds of customer support and monitoring systems the search engines offer. You will also need to think about how much time you are willing to devote to monitoring the success of the keywords/phrases you have chosen in order to see which ones are worth spending more money on or getting rid of.

The risk can sound overwhelming; in fact, because the process can appear full of industry intricacies and requires some amount of devotion, it is most advised that you do seek some third-party assistance in the process of developing and monitoring your ads. However, with careful keyword and search engine selection, PPC ads be a really useful tool in creating a strong online presence and ultimately in selling your book.