If you are like most people, you may have limited experience and knowledge when starting your own network marketing business or home business using internet marketing. As you set up your business and apply your first internet marketing strategies you can make a few mistakes that could not only cost you money but also cost you motivation and confidence.

One of those mistakes is using pay per click marketing without adequate knowledge.

I’m not saying that you should become a theoretical pro before you start marketing your business, but you must learn as much as you can as early as you can. When you start marketing your business online, you are likely to use pay per click marketing as it is a very efficient strategy to bring traffic immediately. The problem is that the less you know and apply the right tactics with pay per click marketing, the more it will cost you! Amateur pay per click marketing can be very damaging to your finances in 3 different ways:

1. You may need to pay more per click to have a good position on the search engines

2. You may receive a great amount of traffic, but poor quality leads (quantity vs. quality)

3. You may have poor performing ads which bring no traffic, and therefore no leads and no income.

I was really pleased when at first I saw how many people were driven to my ads and my website: I was getting great click through rates, my ads were performing well, and many people were even taking the next step on my website and entering their details. BUT, I realised after an expensive month generating more than 1000 clicks and more than 100 leads that I was speaking to the wrong people. Sure, people were interested in learning more about my business, products and opportunity, but where were all the seriously determined entrepreneur-minded people I was truly looking for? I did get a few great leads out of these numbers, but the truth is, it cost me a lot more time, money and energy than it should have, and in the process the people I was really looking for probably didn’t even see my ads.

There are plenty of resources to help you learn how to use pay per click marketing effectively, how to improve your website ranking, and how to reach the right audience and get quality leads. The bottom line is, the less you learn about those principles and techniques, the more it will cost you and the less it will pay off.

Here is what I recommend when tackling pay per click marketing when you start advertising your business online:

1. Learn the basics on pay per click advertising. This is a must. Perry Marshall’s ‘Definitive Guide To Google Adwords’ is great for this as he provides a lot of knowledge on how to create your ads and evaluate your results.

2. Learn the basics on how websites are picked up and ranked by search engines, so that you understand how to create an effective title, description, keywords, content and links for your own website.  

3. Continually learn a little more and apply your new knowledge. Make sure you get the basics before you do anything (it may be worth sacrificing a couple of weeks for learning prior to marketing your business), and then get into the more advanced stuff. Never stop and just sit on your established campaigns. Analyse your results, make them better. The internet is ever-changing and what works now may not work later!

4. Define your target audience. Design your ads to talk to them. Ask yourself if your ads could be misinterpreted, unclear or misleading – this is how you get the wrong people to click on your ads (and pay for it). Also make sure that the content on your website targets the right people; even though you have already paid for a click, you still don’t want to waste your time calling the wrong prospects. Basically, use the content on your website to help people pre-qualify themselves before signing up.

5. Keep some statistics on your leads. How many were actually not looking for what you are offering? How many were not serious candidates? How many leads were high quality leads? How much did each lead cost you? Find out the pattern in your results and change your marketing campaigns accordingly.

6. Accept that less traffic (especially the paid one) can be a good thing. You don’t want to spend money on bad leads. Quality brings better results and is more cost-effective than quantity. Hit and miss can be an expensive approach. 

7. Consider using the services of an expert marketer until you can generate quality leads yourself. You may be able to join a trusted marketing cooperative for example. Be cautious however about purchasing leads from a third party, as you may not know the nature, origin or quality of those leads.