Rounding out the ‘holy trinity’ of PPC networks is Facebook Ads. Facebook Ads is similar to Google AdWords or Bing Ads in terms of being PPC. The particular difference is where the ads are visible and how they target your audience.

As you might have guessed, Facebook Ads are displayed on Facebook and will appear in the homefeed and sidebars while you are browsing. The feed shows ads which are directly targeted to the person using Facebook.

The way this differs is that the ads are targeted based on information that the user has given Facebook – information such as their age, their sex, their marital status, their location and even their hobbies and interests.

This information allows you to even more precisely target the right person but not necessarily at the right time when they’re looking for products. When someone is browsing Facebook to catch up with their friends, they’re more likely just to be frustrated to see adverts popping up.

With all this in mind, Facebook Ads is another useful platform to add to your campaign in conjunction with Bing and Google AdWords – just make sure you’re using the right ads for the right location!

Creating a Great PPC Campaign

As you can see then, PPC works a little bit different from ‘traditional’ advertising in magazines and on TV. You are no longer paying for a single advert and nor are you paying for exposure. Instead, you are paying directly for clicks, and that means you need to think about things a little differently.

The first concept to make sure you understand is that your aim is not necessarily to get as many clicks as possible. Traditional advertising campaigns will often focus on doing anything they can to get attention and encourage clicks. But seeing as you’re paying for each click, you can actually reduce the amount you’re paying in total by reducing the amount of clicks you get. In fact, you actively want to reduce the amount of clicks you get to the people who are interested in buying.

You Are Targetting Buyers

Your objective is not to get as many people as possible to your website.
Your objective is to get as many customers as possible to your website.
In other words, you need to get traffic that is going to convert, and you actually want to dissuade all other people from clicking on your ads wherever possible.

If you pay for 100 clicks and 99 of those pay for your product, then you can consider that a highly effective marketing campaign. Conversely, if you pay for 2,000 clicks and 300 of those people buy – it’s actually not been as successful because you can have spent more on ads, than the profit.

Of course, this depends on the price of your product. if your product gives you a commission of £1,000 then you are still in profit. I personally never pay for adverts on low commission products its just too time consuming.

PPC and Your Business Model – Selecting Your Budget

What this essentially tells us is that the bottom line is by far the best way to gauge your success. A good PPC campaign is not one that gets seen a lot, not one that gets clicked a lot…

A good PPC campaign is one that EARNS a lot!

That means it is impossible to separate your PPC strategy from your general business model. And it makes it very important to think about your budget, your costs, and your profit margins whenever you set up a campaign.

So start by thinking about the profits for whatever it is you’re selling from your site. If you’re selling lots of products, this might mean working out an average profit you make from those products. Otherwise, if you’re linking to a ‘sales page’ and predominantly selling just one product, then it will mean thinking about how much you make from that one item.

Do the Math

First, that means calculating your CoGS – this is ‘cost of goods sold, ’ and it tells you how much it costs you to make each of your products. Let’s say that you sell phone cases – this will mean paying for the materials, the manufacturing, the delivery and the storage. Then you have to minus these overheads from the amount you charge for each item. Your profit margin that is gross profit is the difference between these two figures.

The great thing about digital products like ebooks or online courses (which is what a lot of website owners sell), is that you have zero overheads and that means that you’ll make 100% profit on each sale. An ebook that you sell for $30 will give you a $30 profit, less your advertising costs and productions costs.

That said, ebooks appeal to a smaller audience when compared with physical items and thereby you can expect to have a smaller conversion rate. Which is the next point.

Know Your Conversion Rate?

So here, you need to calculate how many visitors on average buy your products from you. This mean analyzing your ‘conversion rate’. If you have 1,000 visitors a day and one sale, then that means you have a .1% conversion rate. If you make 10 sales for every 1,000, then that means that you now have a 1% conversion rate.

This can then tell you how much you’re earning in a day. For example, if you have 1,000 visitors a day, a 1% conversion rate and a product that earns you $20, then you will earn $20. That also means that you can work out how much you are going to be able to earn if you increase your visitors. If you could double your visitors, you should make $20 on average. If you can multiply them by ten, then you should make $200 on average.

More importantly for your Bing Ads, though, this also tells you how much each visitor is worth to you. If 1,000 visitors = $30, then that means that each visitor is worth 3cents.