One of the biggest mistakes that many businesses make is assuming that they have to bid into the number one position to make their PPC strategy work. Being number one is associated with being the best; thus it is very easy to let your ego get in the way of your marketing objectives. Bidding into the top positions for more competitive keywords generates optimal exposure, but it also blows through your budget more quickly than if your ads were appearing in the lower ranks. When creating the strategy for your PPC campaigns, you should develop a strategy to maximize both your daily budget and exposure for your business. Constantly bidding into top positions can result in having to start and stop your campaigns if the budget is not available to constantly maintain them.
To maximize the effectiveness of your budget, try bidding into the lower ranks to minimize your average CPC. This helps you to stay under your daily budget and lets you implement longer campaigns with your advertising dollars. Also, bidding on the most competitive keywords is not always the best strategy. Use the tools that are available with your PPC program to identify keywords that are proven to be effective but are not being capitalized on by your competitors. These are the words that can help you to drive targeted traffic to your Web site, but will have a minimal CPC as nobody else is sponsoring these words. Advertisers typically focus their efforts on the keywords that are most utilized by their target market and avoid keywords that are less popular.
There have been many books written on pay-per-click advertising, or payto- play as some like to call it, and many, if not all, are outdated as soon as they get to market due to the overwhelming rate of enhancements and changes that are occurring with the companies that offer PPC advertising. For the absolute latest information on these programs, I strongly suggest you visit the advertising sections of all the major search engine Web sites to get the more intricate details.