I don’t actually offer PPC advertising services (Pay per click). I’m very specialised at what I do already, but clients do regularly ask me for advice garnered from 18 years experience across a variety of technologies.

So I do have some thoughts to share with you.

One very effective technique with PPC is to target what is known as a “spread” of search queries and phrases. That’s based on making the most of the three different “tracks” people take when planning PPC campaigns.

1. Many people make the mistake of just targeting the most popular searches, which of course is a valid technique but places them firmly, exclusively, in a very competitive market. It also costs a lot more to run campaigns of this nature.
2. Conversely some people will try to do the opposite, target only the less common searches to save themselves money spent on the campaign, but of course they see a lot less traffic.
3. There is a third-road, which is trying to find searches with a statistically slightly higher popularity, but lower competition. However, the vast nature of Google Adwords and other PPC markets tends to even these “gaps” out pretty quickly, so even when they can be found the gap is very narrow.

I prefer to approach these campaigns as a spread, to include some targets from all three of these categories. That way you achieve a good mix of results, financial outlay, and it gives you greater scope to track the success of your campaigns and decide which of these might be worth higher future investment.

Basically, you get more options, more data and therefore in the long run a much more strategic and lucrative approach.