Pay Per Click Marketing and the 80/20 Rule

Stephen Covey, a best selling author who wrote "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People", used principles and techniques used by philosophers 100 years ago. The same habit is being passed on to Internet marketers, who are using half century old direct mail principles for the Internet of today.

The 80/20 rule is an old law that can be applied to new age Internet marketing. It is the formula that says causes and results are highly unbalanced. According to its mantra, 80/20 means 80 of outputs result from 20% input and 80% results come from 20% of effort. When you apply this law to pay per click marketing, it says that 80% of what you want (increased traffic to your website) derives from 20% of the inputs (keywords, for instance). The purpose of a pay-per-click marketing campaign is to choose keywords that accurate target demographic areas and those which will generate the most clicks. When coming up with keywords, deciding on keyword variations are important as well. Ultimately, you will be removing poor performing keywords and replacing them with top performing ones that generate traffic like clockwork.

The 80/20 principle also has to do with keyword performance. By studying market trends and your marketing campaign, you should be able to filter out 80% of the bad keywords and devote your budget to high performing keywords. This will allow you to save money by avoiding slapping money down for poor performing keywords to do their job. Place a value-oriented action (your incentive for traffic - i.e. a registration, a sign-in to an opt-in newsletter) that you want visitors to do on your site. This marketing objective is the basis in determining the effectiveness of your keywords. In essence, you should also decide which 20% of your keywords produce 80% of your main objective. Pay=per-click marketing is more than just pasting a banner ad on your site. It requires thorough research and a dedication to tracking the marketplace.