5 Things You Must Do Before Internet Advertising Paid

Paid advertising is a great way to guide more traffic to your site and increase business, but it can become expensive quickly if you aren’t careful. How do you make sure you are getting the most out of your paid ads?

Just the other day, I was speaking with a business owner in my local community. They recently had begun an aggressive Google AdWords campaign that was working, sort of. They were receiving new leads, but the leads were for things they didn’t even do. Their AdWords buy was too broad, and they were paying for leads that weren’t any good.

How do we make sure that our paid advertising is performing as it should be? There are several simple things we can do to make sure we are getting the most bang for our buck.

Understand How Long Tail Keywords Work

The main thing we need to understand before jumping into paid advertising (especially search advertising) is how it all works – more specifically, how keywords work. Google’s AdWords tool is a great resource for discovering keywords in your industry.

The problem with this tool is that it tends to push people toward very broad keywords that are far more expensive and much less effective. These are called “head” keywords. It is important to remember that you aren’t necessarily looking for the highest-traffic keywords. You are looking for the words that your customers use to look for you.

So, you will need to be on the lookout for something called “long tail keywords.” These keywords are the longer, more specific keywords that, when added together, make up the majority of search-driven traffic.