When starting a network marketing or small business using internet marketing, many people have limited experience or knowledge in the industry. This can lead to a few mistakes when applying the first internet marketing strategies. Those mistakes can not only cost money, but can also affect one’s confidence and motivation.

One of those mistakes is using pay per click marketing without adequate knowledge.

You are likely to use pay per click marketing when you start marketing your business online, because it is a very efficient medium to get traffic to your website immediately. The drawback in using pay per click marketing early on is that the less you know and apply the right tactics, the more you will have to pay! I am not saying here that you should become a theoretical expert before you start marketing your business using pay per click, but you must learn as much as you can as early as you can. Being an amateur at pay per click can be very damaging to your finances in 3 ways:

1. You may need to pay more per click to have a good position on the search engines
2. You may receive a great amount of traffic, but poor quality leads (quantity vs. quality)
3. You may have poor performing ads which bring no traffic, and therefore no leads and no income.

I was really pleased when at first I saw how many people were driven to my ads and my website: I was getting great click through rates, my ads were performing well, and many people were even taking the next step on my website and entering their details. BUT, I realised after an expensive month generating more than 1000 clicks and more than 100 leads that I was speaking to the wrong people. Sure, people were interested in learning more about my business, products and opportunity, but where were all the seriously determined entrepreneur-minded people I was truly looking for? I did get a few great leads out of these numbers, but the truth is, it cost me a lot more time, money and energy than it should have, and in the process the people I was really looking for probably didn’t even see my ads.

Many resources are available to help you learn how to use pay per click effectively, how to secure your website rankings and how to generate quality leads by reaching the right market. The bottom line is, the less you learn about those principles and techniques, the more it will cost you and the less it will pay off.

Here are my recommendations for tackling pay per click marketing when you are starting out in internet or network marketing:

1. This is a must: Learn the basics on pay per click marketing. The ‘Definitive Guide to Google Adwords’ by Perry Marshall is a great tool, straight-forward yet comprehensive, and will help you create your campaigns and assess your results.

2. Get some basic knowledge on how websites are picked up and ranked by search engines. You need this so that you can choose an effective title, description, keywords, content and links for your website.

3. Continually learn a little more and apply your new knowledge. Make sure you get the basics before you do anything (it may be worth sacrificing a couple of weeks for learning prior to marketing your business), and then get into the more advanced stuff. Never stop and just sit on your established campaigns. Analyse your results, make them better. The internet is ever-changing and what works now may not work later!

4. Define your target audience. Design your ads to talk to them. Ask yourself if your ads could be misinterpreted, unclear or misleading – this is how you get the wrong people to click on your ads (and pay for it). Also make sure that the content on your website targets the right people; even though you have already paid for a click, you still don’t want to waste your time calling the wrong prospects. Basically, use the content on your website to help people pre-qualify themselves before signing up.

5. Keep some statistics on your leads. How many were actually not looking for what you are offering? How many were not serious candidates? How many leads were high quality leads? How much did each lead cost you? Find out the pattern in your results and change your marketing campaigns accordingly.

6. Consider that getting less traffic (in particular the paid one) can be a positive thing. Put simply, you don’t want to spend money on bad leads. Quality is more cost-effective and will bring better results than quantity. Hit and miss is not cost-effective.

7. Consider using the services of an expert marketer until you can generate quality leads yourself. You may be able to join a trusted marketing cooperative for example. Be cautious however about purchasing leads from a third party, as you may not know the nature, origin or quality of those leads.

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