Advertising Is The First Step Marketing Is The Finish Line.

After you've started your pay-per-click (or other) advertising campaign, the next strategic decision is "What's next?" The answer is also strategic - get a marketing plan in place.

Doing that is, in a lot of ways, like writing a reverse personals ad. Most pay per click marketers immediately think "Someone comes to my web site, sees my product, whips out the credit card and buys it!" Well, they'll think that for the first five seconds, until they look at their traffic reports, and see where their visitors have gone. This expectation is sort of like expecting your customer to respond to an ad that looks like this: "Wanted, random visitor with poor impulse control and a ready wallet." As yourself if you'd respond to that kind of ad, and what kind of relationship you'd expect from doing so.

Your visitors are coming to your web site because they're looking for something. You even have some idea of what they're looking for; it's related to the search term and Pay Per Click ad you bought. However, just because they're searching for something doesn't mean that they're going to instantly decide that your offering is the best one available. They're going to hit that back button, check the search results against other companies, and try to find the offer that's best for them.

A lot of people new to Pay Per Click ads have this expectation that someone will click on the link, see the picture of the product, whip out the credit card and buy on the spot. A little bit of soul searching and/or common sense will show why that expectation is a recipe for disaster: How many times have you done exactly that behavior?

Most likely, what happened is that you skimmed the offer, hit the back button, checked competing offers, and thought it over. Visitors to your web site are (more or less) like you. They're going to do the same thing. Now, that should put some context into the mix for you, and tells you something you should be doing. Comparison shop.

Will your prospects have questions that need answering before they can complete a purchase. What are they? Do you know? How will you find out? Shouldn't you answer these questions before you ask for the money?

Notice what it isn't asking for? Someone to put a high pressure sell tactic on them, and try to finagle their credit card out of their wallet. And yet, so many pay per click ads lead to web sites that are nothing but "buy, buy, buy" that it's kind of scary how bad the marketing acumen is for the people who set them up.

Ask yourself, or better yet, ask customers what information could you give a visitor that searched out your website that they'd be willing to sign up to get? Offer these visitors this information in exchange for their name and email address.

The way to do this is to offer some part of the content they'd be buying for free - a teaser offer. Even better is to offer them a series of teaser information, in return for their contact information a valid email address. This is opt-in marketing, and will help you get targeted messages to potential buyers fast; the software you use to make this work is an auto-responder, which puts out a pre-written email message out in response to a form or link.