MarketingSecrets.com Blog

Too many entrepreneurs (especially online marketers) want to focus on FREE TRAFFIC. They want to get thousands of visitors from the search engines and suck down all the free visitors they can. There's nothing wrong with that approach. I use it myself. But that's not all I use.

I am a strong believer in BUYING TRAFFIC also. In fact, I will GLADLY pay for all the traffic I can find that will return a profit. I will gladly exchange $1 for $2 in return until the cows come home. YOU should have the same attitude and same "Advertising Plan" for your business. You should have no problem spending $5,000+/month advertising your business just online. Would you spend $5,000/month to net $5,000/month?

Have you tested ALL of the PPC search engines?

By now you should know what the targeted keywords are for your business. You need to BUY THEM on all the PPC search engines and track each one individually to see which ones return a profit and which ones don't. Then you happily continue to pay for the profitable ones.

Here's a site that lists 583 Pay Per Click Search Engines. I recommend you only use the top 10 or so. Most of the others won't bring you much traffic at all and will be a waste of your time in setting up an account.

Have you tested running banner ads and other creatives on targeted sites in your market?

Many people think "banner ads don't work!" This is SILLY. Millions of dollars in sales are being produced by banner ads every month. Ad sizes (and techniques) of all kinds CAN BE a profitable source of leads. You just need to test them for your market and your business. The good news is, once you find some that are profitable you just continue running those ads and making money. Many of the online sites where you can buy traffic get CONSISTENT and predictable types of visitors and can often lead to long-term profitable advertising. So do a search and find web sites that are targeted for your market and see if they accept paid advertising. Then test it out, but be sure to track that ad SEPARATELY from all your other traffic or you're an idiot. I say that in a caring way. :-) My point is, if you don't track it separately you'll never be able to tell if it was profitable, and I don't want you wasting your money.

A great source of banner advertising is actually on Microsoft's Small Business Network - bCentral. You should be able to buy traffic on their network by paying per click. I believe, right now for most markets the cost is 50 cents per click. Now that might seem high to you, but depending on your market, and how targeted you can make your ad placement (you get to choose exactly what types of sites for it to appear on) it's very possible that you can get it to become profitable. I've had several campaigns using their banners that have been profitable. You can also rotate banner ads to see which one pulls in the best results. But always remember to...

TRACK ALL ADVERTISING SOURCES SEPARATELY!