The Mind of Vatke
Thoughts, Musings and Advice by Andre Vatke

With ever increasing click costs and more and more advertisers is the Google-PPC honeymoon over or has the real opportunity just begun?

Not too many years ago I was running PPC (Pay Per Click) ads to drive traffic to my home page. It was a cheap and inexpensive method for reaching my target market – network marketers looking for increased sponsoring results.

Landing your PPC traffic on your home page today would be a huge financial waste.

What’s changed?

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Advertising is one of those ever present by-products of living in a capitalist society. In order to survive a business needs to get the word out on its offer and then deliver on its promises. Business are always trying to connect with potential customers and are willing to pay to do so. This creates a natural competition for effective advertising driving increasing costs and more competitors.

Here’s an example…

Back in the late 80’s a few marketers figured out that they could buy “dead air” on newly created cable networks for next to nothing. They produced 30 minute programs to feature and sell various products very inexpensively. In some cases they hired college students and shot their “infomercial” at the local PBS station, often in the middle of the night.

The established marketers, TV execs and studios all thought they were crazy.

But they made a ton of money. They found that they could sell almost anything and make money because the margins were so good.

It didn’t take the cable networks and station owners long to figure out they could charge more money for air time – even in the middle of the night. The market naturally adapted. More marketers wanted a piece of the action and air time costs rose.

If you want to shoot and air an infomercial today your odds of significant success are about 1 in 12. That’s very different from the “almost” sure thing just 20 years ago.

The search marketing and PPC market is on that same curve, only faster! The market is expected to quadruple in just the next 5 years. Companies the world over are expected to spend up to 18% of their entire ad budgets online. That really legitimized this advertising medium…

But where does that leave the little guy – the network marketer?

Already click costs for top 3 rankings are averaging around $1 for decent traffic keywords. Some popular keywords (for network marketers) go for $3 to $5 top ranking. And some have as many as 100 advertisers competing for the top 11 spots.

This can easily push the advertising cost of a PPC generated prospect to $5. In some cases costs can be ten times higher, depending on the offer. A former colleague of mine was spending over $40 to generate a sale. She made a lot of sales but not a lot of profit. So you better have a plan…

Success favors the skilled.

If you had 50 people who wanted to know more about your opportunity or product today what would you do?

Most networkers think they have a plan to effectively contact prospects but when it comes time to perform it all falls apart. One of the biggest issues I hear about are the folks who have spent $1000 or more on PPC ads, had leads come in and yet did not have anyone join.

Skill matters.

Skillful marketers know how to connect with their prospects in a way that does not alienate them, burn bridges or destroy trust. They never let prospects fall through the cracks and they maximize every dollar they spend on advertising and marketing their business.

If you want to build your network marketing skill, there is no better place to do this then Leaders Club. We can create a training program designed just for you – enabling you to easily, reliably and inexpensively grow your own network marketing business into the income stream you desire. To see how we do this visit http://www.leadersclub.com/html/mlm_success_plan.asp

Opportunity still abounds on PPC and the search networks. As Bob Pasons the founder of GoDaddy said, “Almost nothing works the first time it's attempted. Just because what you're doing does not seem to be working, doesn't mean it won't work. It just means that it might not work the way you're doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn't have an opportunity.”

So keep improving :-)

Andre Vatke, Founder
Leaders Club