One of the things that the internet changed forever was the way we do business. The first evolutionary step was when people began buying and selling items in cyberspace. The second step was Pay Per Click, a way to generate income by simply having people click on an advertisement. This was revolutionary, since a person no longer needed a product! With the right kind of marketing skills, affiliates could get paid handsomely for promoting other people’s products.
The next step in this online evolution will be something called PPC 2.0. Specifically, it will deal with the next level of Pay Per Click. Right now, advertisers only pay a fixed rate for a certain amount of click-throughs. The drawback for the affiliates is two-fold. One, it is difficult to gauge which keywords and ads are the most lucrative. (unless you use www.hexatrack.com) On one end, you have markets that are over saturated while on the other side of the spectrum, there are markets that have little or no exposure at all. Secondly, many online marketers using Pay Per Click find it hard to generate the right kind of traffic. Driving hordes of traffic to a site is not enough- the target audience needs to click on the ads for the affiliate to earn something. Landing pages are the wave of the future now. No more direct affiliate linking!
PPC 2.0 will eliminate both of these problems via social media marketing. Social media marketing will take the user’s web experience to a new level- instead of simply viewing material online, they will be able to use different tools to interact online and only view content that they want. Pay Per Click currently targets traffic in a blind manner- an affiliate can only hope that someone in the slew of traffic will click on the ads. PPC 2.0 will revolutionize Pay Per Click by targeting specific traffic that is more likely to translate into sales. The affiliate’s website will be like a funnel, attracting users from specific sites.
I’ve been testing various forms of traffic and a specific funnel all starting from PPC and it’s been proven to almost DOUBLE conversions. It’s really pretty crazy!
As the world of online communities grows stronger, the consumer will become more discerning and powerful as well. While they will be less likely to click on general ads, they will be far more likely to click and follow ads that pique their interest. This will also build a sense of loyalty- if a user has a good buying experience, they will not only return to the site, they will also recommend it to others. PPC 2.0 will operate on the basis of attracting people to a site, rather than forcing them to visit. By using social media networking, it will reap the many benefits of a community set-up such as customer loyalty and advertising via word-of-mouth.
