A Glossary of Helpful Terms in Marketing Online

7Search -- Advertising program that generates quality website traffic on behalf of thousands of advertisers through its pay-per-click (PPC) search engine.

Average Cost-Per-click (CPC) -- Average amount paid by advertiser each time a user clicks on his/her ad. Average CPC is determined by totaling the cost of all clicks and dividing it by the number of clicks.

Conversion -- Occurs when a click on an ad leads directly to valuable user behavior such as a purchase, sign-up, page view, or lead.

Conversion Rate -- Percentage of total people who buy your book divided by the number of people who click on an ad for your website.

Cost -- Total dollars spent on advertising.

Cost per Conversion -- Amount spent on advertising for each book sale.

Daily Budget -- Amount allotted per day for an advertising campaign.

Google Analytics -- Free service offered by Google (the largest online search engine that indexes websites) that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. *Information provided by Google Analytics can be used to optimize an ad campaign (information such as how long visitors stay on the website and their geographic location).

Impressions -- Amount of people who see a webpage with your ad displayed on it.

Keywords -- Words chosen for a given Ad Group for the purpose of targeting your ad to potential customers.

Landing Page -- Active webpage where customers "land" after clicking on your ad. The web address for this page is also referred to as a "destination URL" or a "click through URL."

Lead -- Potential customer interested in buying, reading, or learning more about your book.

Natural Search Results -- List of websites generated from a search engine when a user searches keywords/phrases.

Optimized Website -- A website that ranks high (near the number one search result) in search engines for the chosen keywords.

PPC -- Pricing structure used by some online channels to charge an advertiser each time a user clicks on an advertiser's ad. Also called cost-per-click (CPC).

Social Networking -- Benefit of a virtual community offered by some webhosts (such as Myspace, Friendster, Gather.com). People engaged in this community are drawn by a less or more specific set of interests.

For additional terms, please visit http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=29

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.

Self-publish, Then Self-Promote!

If you've published your book, you are aware of all the costs involved that ultimately cut into the profit you make, and that's only one end of the process. The other is creating exposure-- getting your book out there for people to read. It is recommended that you sell through one of the big online retailers to establish consumer credibility, but often they will take upwards of 50% off the top from each sale. Many online retailers require trade discounts as well; based on a range that you the author set with the retailer, a percentage of these trade discounts are offered online as bargains for the consumer. (But be warned, not all publishers allow you to set your own trade discounts, and some retailers will not push your book less fervently the lower you have set them.)

For legitimacy, sell through an established online bookseller; for profit, sell your books through your own website. Though you will have an added cost of advertising online in order to entice people to your website, you will still fare better since many methods of setting up a personal page on the internet are free. A blog like this one is a great example of a way to sell your books. Blogs have come into their own as more credible sources of news and culture, while being user-friendly for both the one running the blog and the reader. Most blogs are easy to update, archive past posts well, and have enough storage to upload your work in text, audio, even video clips. Perhaps you want to post excerpts or serially post chapters of your book online to captivate the reader; you may want to take advantage of the platform given you to speak to the research you did and the experience of writing your book. The content is up to you, and most blog hosts give you plenty of freedom in determining the look and feel of your site. Blogs offer a great way to connect with your readers in a personal way, faster and farther, around the clock.