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 common mistake is using pay per click marketing without adequate knowledge.

When you start marketing your business online, you are likely to use pay per click marketing as it is a very efficient strategy to generate traffic immediately. The problem is that the less you know and apply the right tactics with pay per click marketing, the more it will cost you! I’m not saying that you should become a theoretical pro before you start marketing your business, but you must learn as much as you can as early as you can. Using pay per click as an amateur can be damaging to your budget in 3 ways:

1. It will cost you more to be placed in a good position on the search engines
2. You may receive a lot of traffic, but only poor quality leads (quantity vs. quality)
3. Your ads may be performing poorly, and therefore you may have no traffic, no leads, and no income as a result.

When I first started using pay per click, I was pleased to see the amount of traffic I could generate for my website. My ads were ranked well on Google, my click through rates were always increasing, and a good percentage of visitors were opting-in and officially becoming a ‘lead’. HOWEVER, after an expensive month during which I generated more than 1000 clicks and more than 100 leads, I realised that I was talking to the wrong people. Many were indeed interested in learning about my business, products and opportunity, but most weren’t the serious determined entrepreneur-minded leads I was looking for! I did get some great leads through this process, but at the end of the day, it cost me more time, money and energy than it should have. Even worse, 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 is what I recommend when tackling pay per click marketing when you start advertising your business online:

1. Learn the basics on pay per click advertising. This is a must. Perry Marshall’s ‘Definitive Guide To Google Adwords’ is great for this as he provides a lot of knowledge on how to create your ads and evaluate your results.

2. Learn some basics on how to optimise your website - this will affect how your website is picked up and ranked by search engines. You will need to create your website’s content, title, description, keywords and links accordingly.

3. Continue learning step by step and applying new tactics. Again, get the basics before you do anything (it may be worth studying another week or two before you start to advertise), and then get into the more sophisticated stuff. Never leave your active campaigns fixed or worse, unattended. Test your ads and always analyse your results so that you can improve them. The internet is constantly changing and what works today may not work next month.

4. Identify your target audience. Write your ads to speak directly to them. Consider if your ads could be misleading or unclear - this is how you get the wrong people clicking on your ads (and pay for it). Ensure also that you continue to target your audience on your website; even though you have already paid for the click, you don’t want to waste your time calling the wrong prospects. By delivering the right message and information through the content on your website, people can pre-qualify themselves before signing in to your website and becoming an official lead.

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 this: less traffic (especially the paid one) can be a good thing. You don’t want to waste money on bad leads. In terms of cost-effectiveness and getting results, traffic quality is better than traffic quantity. No more hit and miss.

7. Until you have sufficient knowledge to create campaigns that generate quality leads for yourself, consider using the services of an expert marketer. For example, you may be able to join a marketing cooperative within your company. However, be cautious about purchasing leads from a third party, as you may not know the origin, nature or quality of those leads.

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