While tough times has seen bid prices on PPC ads drop, popular terms continue be out of reach for the little guy. But there are still bargains if you’re prepared to do a little work and get the focus of your ads right.

According to a Google representative, the company is finding that consumers are very cost sensitive at the moment, so ads focusing on discounts are seeing the best success.

While the economic crisis has seen pricing of keywords trending downwards, it’s not like a few years ago where cheap ads were a-plenty as there’s a lot more advertisers embracing PPC now. In order to get the best bang for your buck from pay per click, instead of focusing on a few high traffic terms, go broad - often referred to as the “long tail”. You’ll need to find more keywords, but the end result is the same at a lower cost.

However, be cautious and over time weed out the “tire kicker” terms; the ones that don’t convert to sales. Try to find cheap keyword sets that are action terms; for example:

flombles - high cost, high traffic
pink flomble picture - lowest cost, lower traffic, lower conversion
buy pink flombles - low cost, lower traffic, but higher conversion < --- winner

Google Insights is a great free tool you can use to help identify commonly searched on terms and ones gaining popularity that are related to a particular topic.

If you haven’t tried PPC before, you don’t have to assume the full financial risk from the getgo. Check out my listings of companies that will provide you with free PPC credits so you can experiment a little.

Beginners guide to PPC
Minimizing PPC costs