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.

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. Being placed in a good position on the search engines will cost you higher bids
2. You may get a lot of traffic, but leads of poor quality (quantity vs. quality)
3. If your ads are not performing well, you may get limited traffic and in turns no buyers and no income.

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

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 the basics on how websites are picked up and ranked by search engines, so that you understand how to create an effective title, description, keywords, content and links for your own 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 track of your leads and analyse the statistics. How many leads were not serious candidates? How many were not even looking for what you are offering? How many leads were high quality leads? What was your cost to generate each lead? Find out if there is a pattern in your results and continue optimising your marketing campaigns.

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. 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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