Tips on Selecting Buyer Keywords For Pay Per Click Campaigns

As a PPC marketer, you always want to make sure that you are bidding on the right keywords. There is little sense in bidding on keywords that will not lead to sales! That's why careful selection of the terms buyers are searching for is so important.

As was mentioned when talking about article marketing, you need to make sure that the keywords you focus on are as highly targeted as possible. The more general the keyword, the less of a chance there is that you will get a buyer. If possible, you should select product specific keywords. If people are searching for a product, the chances are that they have already done their research and are ready to make a purchase.

Your goal should be to catch people in "buying mode" rather than "research mode." If you are able to do this, then your conversions should increase dramatically.

For example:

Research mode keyword -- netbook comparison

Buying mode keyword -- Asus eee netbook blue

As you can see, one of these searches is much more likely to lead to a sale than the other!

You might be wondering how you find these great keywords. The exact method depends on the type of product you are trying to promote. In many cases, you can use the Google keyword tool to generate keywords you think will be a good bet. This tool will show the advertiser competition for each keyword.

If absolutely no one is bidding on the keyword, then the chances of you making a sale from said keyword are very slim. You also don't want to choose something that is so saturated that you will need to bid a fortune. Try for very specific product names and buying keywords and you should be able to get relatively low bids prices and great sales.

For physical products, terms like the product name, model numbers, etc. are buying keywords -- the more specific (as long as people are searching for the term) the better. Start out small, and work your way up if you start to see what converts and what does not.

It's very important not to let the clicks run away from you either. This often happens when you select very general keywords on broad match (http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6324). If you want to start out spending as small amount of money as possible, you'll want to set your keywords to exact match and focus on specific, buying keywords only.