How to drive ppc search engine traffic with predictable results

Being an engineer and MBA, I have always been attracted to the scientific method of pay per click advertising. Whether it is pay per click search engine management or pay per click marketing as an affiliate, I find Dr Glenn Livingston's ppc program the most logical.

He recommends to determine which individual segments we should group the test market into, so that we get a comprehensive list of all such segments. The best way to do this is to determine the segments on the basis of keywords used by searchers on the net.

This is also a safe way of segmenting the market, as keywords define the mindset of potential buyers like nothing else can.

Let us start with segments whose searches correspond to Google traffic. Why Google? Because this is the most widely prevalent traffic and will help us to gather the most relevant and characteristic information about our customers. That too, at the exact instant they are searching for something.

Even if you are first planning to do a physical survey in the brick-and-mortar world, if these customers also search online, you would do well to first tackle them online.

This is because you will be able to catch them at the moment they are searching for a particular thing, and gather all keyword-relevant information. After that, you may use this information, offline, if you wish.

Since we know that online surveying is more straightforward, we may start with this. People with different needs search the market using different keywords. And we can hence break the market up by these words.

In this pay per click environment, you should prepare a comprehensive list of representative keywords, and group similar ones together.

Take care when you group keywords together. If you decide that certain keywords belong together, and later it transpires that they represent different consumer segments, you won't be able to separate them at that stage. For instance, the keyword groups, 'cockatiel breeding' and 'cockatiel care' don't belong together, although at first glance they might appear to.

Keeping keyword groups separate, until you are absolutely certain they belong together, is safer. So you must cater to all the customers, and give them all that they exactly want, in whichever way they want.

You may thus address all the needs of all the customers you are servicing, by splitting up the market into the right segments. You may then determine which of these are the most responsive, so that you may maximize your sales and profits by entering them.

You must also make sure that each prospective keyword group has at least 2000 searches per month. If the number is less than this, you will take too long to get enough survey responses. On the other hand, groups with more than this number will be great!

Finally you must avoid guessing or speculating, in this information gathering exercise. You need to get to know all about your customers, by surveying - not by following a hunch. For example, I have found you as you were searching for the segmented keywords of this article which were optimized to your search.

For more of Dr Glenn Livinston on ppc programs visit my blog at http://www.doonlinebusiness.info/2009/05/17/scientific-pay-per-click-pro...