Pay Per Click advertising is an amazing tool you can use to attract visitors to your website and increase your sales. Whether you have a small or limitless ad budget, you still want to attract qualified leads and get a high return on investment (ROI) for each ad dollar spent. There are three things you need to do to increase your business and convert leads into customers.

Create Your Ad Text and Keywords
The ad text is the phrase or key words that convince web surfers to actually visit your site. If you cast your net too broadly, you may find that the money is going faster than the income is generated. When using Pay Per Click advertising as part of a long-term advertising strategy it is important to have the correct keywords targeted and proper ad text written.

Your ad text should be crafted to only attract pre-qualified and interested buyers. For example, when selling holiday packages you may get more visitors using the ad text: Travel the World: Great vacations for all corners of the globe but this could result in a low conversion rate (turning visitors to customers). Depending on your strategy, you may be better off using this text: An Italian Vacation this Fall: Tours of Tuscany are on sale now so book quickly. The first phrase attracts anyone interested in travel while the second is targeted at a specific segment.

The two previous examples also show the importance of targeted keywords. A more specific phrase will likely result in cheaper advertising and will have a higher conversion rate. The best way to determine the keywords people are searching for is to visit sites like Nichbot.com or Inventory.Overture.com and use their keyword tools.

Know Your Profit Margin and Ad Budget

It is very easy to lose focus when running an advertising campaign. This is especially true with a Pay Per Click program. Keywords that originally cost you $0.10 or $0.20 per click can slowly creep up to $0.30 and $0.40. All of a sudden you are spending twice as much for the same number of visitors. When competitive pressure increase prices you need a firm understanding of the ongoing revenue and costs to continue.

A big part of knowing your ad budget and setting target will be based on the return you get from the ad campaign. Do some research and try to figure out a guideline for your products conversion rate. If 100 visitors cost you $10 and your profit margin from one sale is $100 then this may be an attractive advertising medium. If, on the other hand, you are paying $1 per visitor and each product sells for $10, you may want to figure out a different medium or find cheaper keywords.

Track Your Results
Tracking your results is probably the most important part of any advertising campaign but can also the most difficult. If a business is already selling on and offline, attributing sales directly to a Pay Per Click advertising campaign may be a challenge. Depending on the volume of sales and the amount of money being spent on advertising you need a focused approach to attributing sales to your campaign.

The best way to determine the success of a program is to give the campaign a set timeline maybe 90 days and commit to tracking the results during that time. It may be as easy as comparing normal online purchases with those generated during the campaign (taking seasonality into account) or it may involve additional tracking software. Remember, not all visitors will buy your product on the first visit. Some may bookmark the site and return months later so watch your sales closely and allow some flexibility in your results.

Final Thoughts
After gaining a little experience setting up your own Pay Per Click campaign you will begin to integrate these three pieces into your overall strategy. It may take some time to determine successful metrics for tracking your direct sales and attributing income and expenses to this method; however, as e-commerce spending grows there will continue to be huge profits for successful online advertising campaign managers.