You may have heard the saying “If you have 3 hours to cut down a tree, spend 2 hours sharpening the axe”, planning and preparation is everything and these 3 steps to PPC success are your solid foundation to every campaign.

Like most things in life, the more time you spend planning and preparing the easier it is to execute and the better the result will be. And PPC ads are no different.

Whichever ad system you decide to use there is a basic 3 step formula for creating successful ads. In my previous post I wrote talked about why you should not reject paid advertising 

Step 1. Plan

There are 3 parts to the planning phase in the 3 steps to PPC success.

Set your goal.

You need to have a goal. Not just for your call to action but also so you can measure your success. The call to action (CTA) in your ad is, what you want visitors to do after seeing your ad. This will vary depending on what your goal is. Decide what is the objective of your ad campaign, what do you want to achieve with your investment in this campaign? do you want:

• More Traffic
• More Subscribers
• More Sales

Decide which asset you have that is going to help you meet that goal.

For Example, if you want more traffic

• A downloadable  3 step plan checklist to  help you succeed at PPC, available from your blog
• A checklist on how to make money selling information products

Or if your target is to get more Subscribers

• An ebook on email marketing
• A multi-lesson online or email course on how to succeed at affiliate marketing

Sales

• A new product you are just launching
• A product you have had for some time that you know is popular

 

Tired of reading? Watch the 3 Steps to PPC Success for the highlights

 Set your Budget to Calculate what you need to succeed.

You need to understand what a successful campaign will cost.

To calculate your CPA customer acquisition cost you need to Estimate your maximum cost per click (CPC). The formula is simple and logical.  The Maximum Cost per Click is the Profit per customer x the sales conversion rate. let’s say you have an ebook that you produced yourself, therefore with no production costs, and you priced it at $17 your profit will be $17. If your conversion rate is on average, 1%, your maximum CPC = 17 cents.

Max CPC = profit per customer x sales conversion rate

 $17.00 x .01=.017

If you are selling a physical product you need to factor in the production cost and the shipping and handling costs

As an example, if your product is a printed Journal based on a template you designed, and you sell it at $17, including printing shipping and handling. The cost of producing the journal is $3 and the shipping and handling $2, for a total fulfilment cost of $5. Your profit, in this case, is $12, so using the same formula ($17 – $5 =) $12.00 x .01=.012.

When you start succeeding at PPC you will be able to get a higher conversion rate. 

$12.00 x .02=24 cents maximum CPC

$12.00 x .03=36 cents

$12.00 x .04=48 cents

…

and so on.

Like everything in an online business, you should always test and refine. Most importantly, set a test advertising budget and stick to it. Test your ad and offer. Start with a small amount and increase it if the ad converts well.

Step 2. Target

Now you know what your target is, what your offer is, and what your budget is it is time to define your target customers and start building the keyword list to use in your ad campaigns.

Know your customers

You hopefully already know a lot about the customers in your niche. You may even have created a buyer persona or avatar. This is a mini-biography of your ideal customer.

Try to imagine this ideal customer as a real person, give them a name and write down details about their interests, family and Job and anything else that you think is relevant

What to include in your Buyer Persona

• Name
• Gender
• Age
• Marital status
• Kids (ages) /no kids
• Pets (how many, type/s)
• Level of income
• Level of education
• What Job they do
• Hobbies and interests
• Personal values (religious, green, interested in animal rights, etc.)

You might have more than one type of customer, so you can create a number of personas.  Don’t create too many, you don’t need to describe all your buyers, just your ideal customer.

If you don’t know much about your customers now is a good time to start understanding who they are. You can do this through surveys, your various analytics metrics, such as Facebook Insights, Instagram follower demographics and so on. You can use the Buyer Personas for a number of other tasks such as creating products, writing sales or email copy.

Tip: Use the persona every time you create any new product, or new marketing campaign, to make sure they will speak to the needs of your target customer.

Research your keywords

Again you should already have keyword list related to your niche, that you will be using to help plan the content you want to publish and your blog posts and page content that you are using for SEO, Search Engine Optimization to rank your site to rank highly on Google search results. This is especially important if you are preparing ads to run on Google or Bing as they use keywords for their ad matching. Social Media sites tend to us demographics, such as age and interests to select the audience to display your ads to. However, they are still useful in describing the needs of your target audience.

Look at your google analytics logs and use google search console to check the top 20 keywords that people are using to find your site. Decide if they make sense for your campaign.

You can use Google’s Keyword Planner or Neil Patel’s Ubersuggest to check on search volume per month for your selected keywords and find any other recommended and related keywords.

You just need a free google account, which you will probably have for using Google Analytics or Gmail. In fact, I recommend you to get a Google account anyway, read this post to find out why. You don’t have to run ads on Google to use the tool and both tools that I have mentioned are free to use

Industry Insider Hack

In Google’s keyword planner enter a competitor’s landing page in “my landing page” instead of your own, to reveal different Keywords.  Try it with the top ranking search results and see what different ‘long tail’ keywords you can find.

Look at the search volume on your selected keywords and look for those that are more than 1,000 but less than 10,000.  Many people make the mistake of going after the highest volume keywords but this won’t work, as large companies will have likely put a lot of money into their ad strategy on these words.

Tip: Choose keywords with a search volume between 1,000 to 10,000. Too high and your ads won’t show as the large companies will be investing more on those words and too low and you won’t notice any change in traffic.

You should also put together a list of negative keywords. Unless you are trying to get subscribers and are giving away a free eBook avoid words like free, will attract freebie seekers clicking on your ads and if you are paying per click you only really want to attract customers with the intent of buying

Another strategy that all great PPC and SEO and PPC marketers use is to Spy on competition’s keywords.  Use https://www.spyfu.com/ to see the keywords that your competitors are using and add any you might have missed.

You can also separate your keywords into two categories. Words that signal; they are just looking, or they have moved to the stage where they are getting ready to make a purchase.  This will allow you to identify how ‘valuable’ they are to you.

Tip: You can use the following to sort your keywords.

1. Research keywords
2. Buying-Intent keywords

Step 3. Give Value

You should choose one offer for each Ad you want to run. The offer should be something that is valuable to the customer.  Valuable doesn’t mean financially, it means something that is useful to your audience Your offer will depend on your goal and the free or paid item you wish to promote.

Searches your top keywords on Google. Which of your competitors are in the top results? Have a look at what they are offering.  You don’t need to copy their offer, but it should be of similar value to the customer, and this will give you some ideas that you have maybe overlooked.

You can employ other popular tactics to get people to click on your ad.

• Tell the story – What is the reason you’re making the offer
• Include a Deadline -it is a limited time offer only so they need to move fast. (FOMO Fear-of-missing-out)
• A special Launch – it is an all-new product never seen before

Sometimes asking a question can help to appeal to your customer’s needs.

• Tired of struggling to grow your list? Grab your free ebook now
• Tired of tiny affiliate commissions? Sign up for your free webinar and watch them soar

Some ideas for an Ad offer are:

• Free ebook (sample)
• Special discount
• Checklist
• Template
• Invite only webinar access

Congratulations! You reached the end of the post and you now know the 3 steps to PPC success.

Wait! I know what you’re thinking we haven’t created any ad’s. I will cover that in my next post, but the first 3 steps to PPC success are the foundation for maximising your ROI.

If you are growing your online business from scratch then the chances are that you are counting the pennies and always looking to squeeze the best ROI from your shoestring budget and like many you may think it is costly and Rejected paid advertising? Think again! it is more effective and less costly as you think

Why do you have a website or blog?  Whether you sell a physical or digital product, a service, or you generate income through affiliate sales?  There is no escaping the fact that whatever your business model is, every online business needs traffic to their website to get subscribers and sales.

The reason that big companies are pouring thousands of $ into paid advertising because it works. There are now more ways than ever to spend your marketing dollars and for a new business with a limited budget and the learning curve may not be as big as you think. Follow this blog series to find out more about Online advertising and how to get a good return on your investment (ROI), even if you are only able to invest a small amount.

Paid Ads are not just about traffic, there are a number of other reasons why you might consider using paid ads. You might run some paid ads to test your marketing copy, to see which performs best, for example. If your objective is brand building and you have rejected the idea of paid advertising? Think again.  Paid Your ads will show on the network thousands of times and with PPC (Pay per Click) you only pay if someone clicks.  but you won’t pay for all those people to see your brand.

Let’s look at some of the top places to Run Paid ads, which we can call PPC Networks or pay per click platforms, to get the best PPC results. The Term ad Networks refers mainly to Pay Per Click (PPC) ads. The cost is referred to as Cost Per Click (CPC).

You may hear the term CPM, This actually stands for cost per thousand not million (M is 1,000 in Roman numerals) but, most advertisers pay on a CPC basis.

There are two main  PPC networks, and you have no doubt heard of these:

Google AdWords dominates understandably as the oldest and most established ad network. It shows ads on the google search results pages (SERPs) and on a network of other blogs and websites. Maybe even yours? through Adsense, anyone can apply to run ads on their own sites. It is possible to make money from your own website or blog by joining the Google AdSense program. The cost of pay per click advertising on Google is related to the search results and is a bit different to paid advertising on facebook. At its simplest for Paid advertising on facebook shows adverts to an audience based on audience demographics that you choose whereas generally,  pay per click advertising on Google displays ads based on keywords

Google paid search comes in two main flavours textual ads and a banner network of display ads. AdWords tends to be the most expensive because they have so much traffic. But, so their ads can get really good results (if set up correctly). The system is quite complex but due to its popularity, there are lots of courses and information online to teach you how to use the system.

Bing, is the result of Microsoft’s merger with Yahoo!’s ad program several years ago. As you can imagine attempting to compete with Google is no easy task. So you can expect to get less traffic from Bing, but should not be ignored completely as it tends to be cheaper and a bit easier to use.

Do you know your PPC acronyms?

CPA: Cost Per Action. Also stands for Cost Per Acquisition.
CPC: Cost-Per-Click. Also commonly known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
CPM: Cost per Thousand
CTR: Click Through Rate
PPC: Pay-Per-Click
SEO: Search Engine Optimisation
SEM: Search Engine Marketing
DA: Domain Authority
PA: Page Authority
SERP: Search Engine Results Page or the text that you enter to appear on the results page

Social Media

You can advertise on social networks as well (Yes individuals and small companies too). Most of us have spent time on social networks, so are already familiar with their interfaces so creating ads on them is not difficult. Social Networking site’s ad programs are highly targeted, not surprising when you consider the huge volume of personal data that they can tap into to match your interests and habits to advertisers. This form of advertising is growing really quickly, but considering how targeted the audience for your ads can be it can provide a relatively low Cost Per Click (CPC). I have used this with varying success.

Facebook

The largest social network in the world and has an easy to use ad system. You can create ads easily even if you are a complete beginner. You can create ads based on your goals, such as getting subscribers, sales, or growing the number of followers.

Facebook ads offer some stiff competition to Google AdWords because the ads are cheap, the system is easy to use, and the traffic selection is more granular which can mean more targeted and all your ads will have an image. You can get the same amount of traffic for less compared with Google the only requirement is that is that you need to have a Facebook business page (which I would recommend anyway) to run ads.

Instagram

Owned by Facebook which allows you to run ads on Instagram or Facebook or both. You need quality images to help market your business. In most situations I would advise against trying to sell digital products through ads on Instagram, although this seems to work for tangible products facebook doesn’t seem to like it, and neither do the users.

YouTube

The video-sharing site is the world’s second largest website. It is also owned by Google, which means its ad program is run through AdWords. It allows certain formats of ads. These can include banner ads and even video ads.  It is now no longer possible to monetize your own videos (with other company’s ads) unless you have a significant following.

Tip: Use these sites for building a following and connecting with your target audience and use ads on these sites to reach more people. “salesy” Posts tend to get less interaction than a good image or a famous niche or motivational quote. You can then drive people to your site or offer, but always give first.

Twitter

Hugely popular with people of all ages. Twitter ads are similar to Facebook and Instagram ads. You can promote your twitter account for followers, boost tweets that have done well to get more traffic or create ads from scratch. It is also very user-friendly.

Pinterest

More than just a collection of images on a certain subject and therefore requires a strong visual. Upload an image and pin it to one of your pinboards. Then boost the post, share the board and so on. It is really easy to use. You must have a Pinterest business page to run ads. You can read more about driving traffic with Pinterest in this free eBook.

LinkedIn

Is a Social network for grown-ups is focused around work and business. It is used mainly for networking and job searches. Since it was acquired by facebook the tone and style of content and posts has changed. Running ads here could drive a lot of traffic, new customers and clients, and all sorts of new business-related opportunities. It may not suit every niche but it is a really targeted platform.

Tip: When advertising on Social networks make your adverts look and read more like posts than adverts. Pay for post boosts, it is cheap and can reach a large number of new prospects

Rejected paid advertising? Think again!

In this post, I will break down what is PLR content, why you should use PLR content, and how you should use PLR content in 2018.

Content is King

You will often hear that Content is king. And despite constant evolution and innovation, this is still true. Not only has marketing evolved from selling to informing, but content marketing has evolved too. From article to eBook, infographic,  audio, video and various combinations of.  However, the challenge persists – it takes time to make content (and of course longer to make great content – we’ll come to that in a bit)

You have probably heard of Private Label Rights but I will start with some basic information on what private label rights content actually is, how to find them and the way to use them in your online business.

What is Private Label Rights?

Private label rights, usually written as PLR, is material sold with ‘rights’ to modify and in most cases claim as yours. PLR licenses can be found for articles, ebooks, software, video, audio, and graphics.

Watch this video for a quick and very basic overview explanation of PLR content.

There are, of course, Pros And Cons of using Private Label Rights – PLR content

PLR offers several benefits, and (of course) some issues, as well. The notable benefits are:

Time saver

PLR Content saves time. Rather than developing from an initial thought and creating from scratch, PLR offers you the concept and foundation – the framework if you like,  from which to base your own article or product on. Think of it as ready made content.

Money saver

It is economical. Compared to hiring a freelance writer, videographer, etc, PLR content can be incredibly cheap and allows you more control over the style and end result.

You will want to modify the content. PLR content has a bit of a bad reputation and in some cases, it is deserved. Some content is just poor, but some people just post PRL content as is. Owning PLR rights permits you to do this. But, you can and should edit, arrange and revise the content.

Make something you’re not ashamed to put your name on, Claim possession. As a result of using the content as your base you’re making a completely new piece of content, place your name on it and claim the copyright.

Disadvantages

Of course, PLR encompasses a few disadvantages as well:

While several suppliers of quality PLR limit the number of licenses the Non-exclusive nature of PLR (in its initial state) means that invariably, you’re shopping for content that lots of, even thousands of others own. That’s why rewriting it and creating your own products in your own style is crucial.

Free PLR content is usually dry and generic and for the most part unusable for anything more than a starting point. And this is somewhat of a problem for ready-made content or PLR  product creators. Content marketing, even content marketing for providers of content to sell to content marketers, requires you to gain the trust of customers before they buy.

Content marketers usually do this via giveaway products such as free ebooks, free PLR that is not poor quality given away for free is not the same as a lead magnet. But inevitability is used as one and free PLR licences will usually have different conditions in the licence. Is shorter, or lower quality this further damages the reputation of PLR in general.

Some purchased PLR also has license restrictions on how it can be used. There are also MRR (Master Reselling rights) or MRR (Master Marketing Rights (MRR) content. Some PLR materials have these rights or a combination of other rights such as You can’t claim as you own unless more than 50% is changed, so it is worth looking through the license before you buy any PLR Product.

Ways to Use PLR Content

One of the nice benefits to PLR is that you’re restricted solely by your imagination. Here area unit some nice ways in which to use PLR content in your home business:

Blog posts

You don’t need to be a blogger for long to grasp the sobering truth that inventing new ideas is tough. PLR content provides you with these ideas and therefore the basics of a piece of content, blog post or video. All you have got to try and do is repurpose not only the content but the idea of how to use it.

Is the money still in the list?

Yes, and PLR content is a great way to provide an Email list sign-up incentive. If you don’t have an email list, you really need to start building one. Now. However, to encourage sign-ups for your list, a good way is to give a good incentive. PLR ebooks, videos, and alternative content provided as a gift to subscribers are more effective, in most cases than a purchase discount.

Self-publish and sell

Since the wide acceptance of eBooks making and selling information products fits with nearly all business models.

If you have a website selling a niche product it is fairly simple. Say your niche is coffee you could give away or sell ebooks about types of coffee. Or if you are in the health space eBooks on the importance of vitamins if you sell vitamins.

As an online educator, you maybe sell self-paced home education courses. You could use PLR as an affordable entry or upsell to your product or services. And it doesn’t just have to be eBooks, Audio Books, podcasts, videos are extremely popular these days. There is a huge Market in online courses. Which has fostered the development of some great tools that help you create, market and run online courses.

Thinkific is an amazing platform that allows you to set up a text, audio or video course and even on a free plan, gives you a landing page, an infinite number of courses, and handles registration and payment for the subscribers to your online courses.

How to Use PLR Materials

As I already mentioned the key to success in PLR content is to use it as a framework to create your own. Text content (articles, ebooks etc) may need to be fully rewritten especially if you plan on selling. But also in order to connect with your audience, you should infuse your ideas, thoughts and style into the content. Adding your own ideas and style makes it attention-grabbing for others to easily engage with you and your business and build relationships, which is the key to online (and offline) business success. And why stop at the written word? Create Videos from your PLR content.

Conclusion

I don’t like the term PLR and due to its negative image I much prefer it to be called ready made content or brandable content.  Any great writer will tell you that the basis for a great piece of writing is someone else’s writing. Have you ever wondered why good versus evil is a popular theme? All through history stories follow this theme – it is a format that works.

PLR content can provide the framework for your own great content and the key to PLR Content and how to use it in 2018 is just that; use it as a framework for your own great content, and be creative with the types of content that you produce with it. And the good news is PLR content creators are evolving too. You can now get some great PLR content packs that include voice, video, SNS images and so on.  PLR content is so much more in 2018. It is a ready made, brandable, framework for saving time and money in a competitive market where achieving success goes beyond the content itself.

Can ‘Later’ help boost my following and efficiency, for free

We all know how much time and persistence it takes to grow your Instagram following and therefore there are many tools to help. In this post, I look at one tool designed not just to help grow your Instagram following, but also your other social accounts too. I have a bit of an addiction, I keep trying out lots of new apps, there are so many great apps available to help you manage your social media and create content for posts. Actually, this is something I really enjoy doing, but I am conscious that spending too much time playing with a new tool, is a risk to productivity!

Instagram is by far my favourite Social Media platform, and I changed my personal account to a business one – long before I had a reason to market anything on Instagram – just because I wanted to play with the stats and analytics capabilities. I am currently running 4 Instagram accounts but there are not enough hours in the day available. I have been using SEMrush social poster and Buffer for my social media automation and my approach is that I post regular content on a relevant theme through the automated Tools and then post manually intermittently- well currently only buffer offer automated posts, and only since this year has that been more than just a reminder. The free buffer account is limited to only 10 posts scheduled so stretching that means a weekly or more session of planning and preparing posts. So I knew I needed another option, but I kind of didn’t want yet another tool (nothing fresh and exciting consistent way of posting).

I then stumbled across later! I was actually looking for an Instagram analytics tool, I love that data! While the free Later plan is probably not going to satisfy this need one thing did jump out at me!

Yes, in their Free Forever plan not only helps grow your instagram following but Later covers the other essential Platforms; Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, too. Allowing one profile per platform, for one user but sadly, no Video posts. The step-up ‘Plus’ account adds Video posting and pro-Instagram analytics on a $9 subscription model and more monthly posts. but still no video posts or Hashtag suggestions.

However 30 Instagram scheduled posts, 50 Tweets, 30 Facebook posts and 30 Pinterest ‘Pins’ per month (Free) seems appealing, so after a bit of growth in your online business, it is probably worth paying the extra $9 to get unlimited tweets and a 100 of each platform posts. 30 scheduled posts a month helps you to plan efficiently for 1 a day posts to build up a regular cadence as you grow your Instagram, or other social accounts.

 

Watch this blog post (yes, really)

Benefits of Later

If you want to give it a try and benefit from 10 extra posts sign up through this link.

Additionally, although they require you to install the app you can post to Instagram from your computer.

So if you still prefer DSLR or editing on a desktop rather than your phone this helps cut out a bit of labour in moving the files from device to cloud and back again.

Later seamlessly integrates with Dropbox and Google drive and of course, you can upload from your PC,  or even drag and drop your files into what looks like exciting bonus feature number 2 – unlimited online storage –

Remember this is a free account!  I am really looking forward to getting into using this as the media storage has several really useful features.  You can add Labels (tags), Notes and track and sort not only used and unused media, but also the time period since you used it.

The only annoying thing with the import from Google Drive was that shows the image files as one list, you can sort it by name or last modified, but if you are like me and store everything in clearly named folders this removes the ability to see those folders and it becomes difficult to see where stuff is – not sure if this is Later’s fault or google’s

When trying to connect the facebook business profile to allow auto-posting – I got a message that there was an issue – it is still being solved…

But the third surprise bonus feature is the ability to save captions and hashtags for re-use in other posts – which is kind of useful and missing from many of the alternative products in this space.  And as this can be done on the desktop no more fiddly typing on the phone and awkward back and forth out of apps to copy and paste.

I will post an update when I can actually auto-post with the tool – but it looks very promising to help me streamline and automate more efficiently. Have you used it to grow your Instagram following?

 

Yes, I want 'Later' free with 10 Extra posts every month!

Exciting News: You’ll Enjoy Savings Of 96% When You Buy This Bundle Of Full Product PLR Worth $1378!