Pay per click (PPC) marketing is one of the best ways to get instant targeted traffic. PPC is amazing because it allows you to do so many things with ease. You generate affiliates, test landing pages, test sales pages, test keyword variations to target SEO, and more. It’s an amazing way to promote products online and it’s unique in that it has the ability to get quick results.

The 2 largest PPC search engines are Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Google Ads is bigger (since it is owned by Google) and Microsoft Ads is owned by Bing. You’ll get most of your traffic from Google Ads, but Microsoft Ads can also get you high-quality traffic. You just want to be more specific with your keyword targeting, your budget, and the cost per click (CPC) of your keyword.

I know that these abbreviations and terms may be a lot to remember, but I assure you that they are very simple. Pay per click is great because of its ability to allow you to predict the results you may get. If you know the math for your business ahead of time and are getting certain results on pay-per-click networks, you can adjust certain aspects of your campaigns to make the numbers work in your favor.

But there are plenty of other pay per click search engines out there. Now you should know that I don’t normally recommend these other PPC networks. This is mainly because they are synonymous with click fraud and poor traffic. You’ll find that the cost per click for keywords is surprisingly cheaper than Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. While you can pay $1-$3 per click for a particular keyword on Google and Microsoft Ads, on lower tier PPC networks, you can pay 5-10 cents per click for those same keywords. Don’t expect to get good results with those networks.

The only time those networks get decent traffic is when you’re promoting something illicit. That’s about all I’m going to do about downplaying the other PPC networks, but here’s something to know before you start investing hundreds (or thousands) of dollars in these other programs. You may be saying to yourself, “Wow, I have no competition on these other networks!” but you should know that you have no competition because no one else who knows what they’re doing knows to stay away from those sites.

You will be bidding against yourself. And you will be losing all the time. You’ll spend your money on these low-grade PPC networks convinced that if you simply “tweak” some aspect of your campaign, you’ll get leads and sales. Unfortunately, it will not happen that way. You can tweak things as much as you want, but you won’t be able to get the leads and sales you’re looking for. So it’s best if you stick to Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, and make sure the math in your business works with the keyword bids you’re targeting.

So once you’re in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, what kind of strategies should you implement to get the best possible results? Well, I am going to give you some tips that you can use to gain the superior advantage over your competitors. Let’s start with this first tip. This is something I ran into when doing a different form of marketing that involved email marketing:

1) Tier 1 target countries

If you’re selling globally, there’s no point in selling to an audience that doesn’t have the financial ability to buy your products. Also, if your primary language is English, you’ll want your prospects to be able to speak English. So you’ll want to target the top 5 countries that have the most financial ability to buy and also speak English. These countries are: the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying these are the only countries that have people who speak English and have the financial ability to buy. Many people in countries around the world meet this criteria, but these 5 countries are the top ones you’ll want to target for overall campaign effectiveness. I’m not trying to disrespect other countries, but if you want practically bonus results, you’ll want to stick to these 5 countries. Here’s another pay-per-click marketing strategy:

2) Don’t put all your keywords in one ad group

It’s best to have multiple campaigns, and more importantly, more than one ad group. Me personally, I have 2 sets of PPC keywords that I bid on. I have those keywords that I bid $1-$1.50 for, and then another set of keywords that I bid $0.50-$0.75 for. I do this because I found that the high cost keyword set converts better for me, and the lower cost keyword set converts well, but not as well as the higher cost keywords.

So for the lowest cost set, I get more clicks, but lower conversion rates. So to compensate, I lower the cost of those keywords so that they can match the same conversion rates that higher cost keywords give me. Other people have their own reasons for creating multiple ad groups for the same campaign. When you start, you will also have your own reasons. This is what I do, and I have found this works the best for me. This is the last PPC tip I want to give you:

3) Never bid on broad match keywords

Never bid on broad match keyword terms. Wide means bidding on a raw keyword. For example, if you wanted to bid on the keyword “bike tires”, this is what the broad match, phrase match, and exact match keyword types would look like:

WIDE MATCH: bicycle tires

MATCH PHRASE: “bicycle tires”

EXACT MATCH: [bicycle tires]

When you bid on broad match keywords, you’ll get clicks on your ad for any search query that contains the word “bike” and “tires.” This is a virtually guaranteed way to blow your budget and destroy your campaign. In my experience, phrase match keyword types have worked best for me.

Exact match keywords are great, but they’re very expensive and very competitive, and they don’t necessarily guarantee sales or lead conversions when you bid on them.

These 3 pay-per-click marketing strategies are tips to keep in mind before spending a single penny on ads. Follow my advice and you will be on the right path to success.