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I haven’t written much about pay per click (PPC) in my four months of blogging here at Net Business Blog. In fact, this is the only post I’ve written on the subject. Also, I don’t have a lot of experience with pay per click. But over the last couple days, I’ve been thinking of adding it to my arsenal of traffic methods.

One of the things I’ve realized is that PPC is not just for affiliate marketing. If you’ve read many internet marketing ebooks or blogs, you probably connect PPC closely to affiliate marketing. You’ve read stuff telling you to set up an AdWords campaign, create landing pages, and wait for cash to hit your bank account. While both PPC and affiliate marketing do work well together, PPC can also work well for other purposes.

Here are three ways to use PPC more creatively but still effectively.

1. Use PPC as a link building tool.

I got this idea from this excellent link building article, 101 Link Building Tips to Market Your Website. The 9th tip suggested using PPC as a link building tool. Basically, create a PPC campaign with relevant keywords (don’t forget keyword research!) so you can get relevant traffic. As traffic from PPC comes to your site, your brand exposure will increase. If you have great content, you’ll often get links from the PPC visitors.

2. Use PPC to test and increase your non-sales conversion rates.

If you have a call to action on a page, it may be worth it to send PPC traffic to that page. This will allow you to quickly test the conversion rate for that page. Let’s look at some examples.

• If you have a mailing list, set up a landing page to collect email addresses and use PPC to drive traffic.
• If you have a blog and want more RSS subscriptions, write a really good article. At the end of the article, ask the readers to subscribe. Again, use PPC to drive traffic.
• Another call to action might be the passing on of viral content. You can send PPC traffic to viral content like a funny video.  At the end of the page, include a form where visitors can easily email the video to their friends.

3. Use PPC to get valuable consumer feedback.

PPC is a great way to obtain feedback for your business. Tim Ferriss, the author of the popular book 4-Hour Workweek, said before he published his book, he had to choose from multiple book titles. Instead, of going with his gut, he ran a PPC campaign. He sent the traffic to a landing page with the multiple titles and asked the visitors to vote for their favorite title.  “4-Hour Workweek” was the most popular title.

You can test pretty much anything with PPC. Choosing between multiple site designs? Send PPC traffic to a landing page where people can vote for their favorite design. Not sure what your prospective customers want? Use PPC to drive traffic to a landing page where visitors can answer questions about their wants and needs.

Sometimes people won’t vote or answer questions. That’s where you need to have an incentive. In exchange for their time and feedback, give them something free - a short report, a link (if you’re targeting webmasters), video, or audio file. Also, you can get their email address and promise to send them your upcoming product for free once you finish producing it.

One last thing about pay per click and the testing process. If you do it right, you can get a lot of visitors in a short amount of time. This makes the testing process much faster because you get a good amount of information quickly.

Feedback

Have you used pay per click? If you have, how did you use it?

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