I can hear you now saying…”What do you mean? Of course, I am competing against my competitors.” My answer again is NO, you are not. Let me explain.

I just typed in the keyword “cars” into Google. On the first page alone, here is what I found advertisements for:
-car auctions
-car buying guide
-used cars
-new Chrysler cars
-DVD of the Disney movie called “Cars”
-information about the CARS Car Allowance Rebate system
-car insurance program for high-risk drivers

Now, let’s get real. Do all of these company really compete directly with one another? The answer: Yes AND no.

No – they don’t directly compete for the same customers. Yes – they DO compete for the same ad space with other companies that happen to be bidding on the same keywords that they are bidding on.

Now, I will tell you, the company advertising the car buying guides (as well as the company selling DVDs) probably make a lot less revenue than the company selling high-risk car insurance or the one selling new Chrysler cars.

The lesson…don’t be one of these low-volume companies advertising on broad, wide-appealling keywords. The problem is with the keyword itself. “Cars” is WAY to broad of a keyword to bid on. If you don’t know what you are doing, you will lose money. Chances are that the larger volume sales companies already know this fact and are willing to take a calculated risk and waste multiple clicks by folks who are not necessarily prospects in their quest for a certain volume of clicks that may end up resulting in a high-volume-revenue sale.

Smaller-volume sellers have to be smarter. They must choose keywords that are extremely targeted. And if these targeted keywords that they choose are super-competitive keywords, then they have to have a strategy for getting these keywords at an affordable price and /or have a better conversion percentage than their competitors.

And if this fails, they must target long-tail keywords that don’t necessarily have the competition of the shorter keywords. If these long-tail keywords don’t have much traffic, then they must make it up in volume – by bidding on a large number of these super-targeted, non-competitive long-tail keywords.

Sound complicated? It is. Think you need help? You probably do. That’s why you may need to consider hiring a full-time employee, dedicated to managing your search marketing campaigns. If you cannot afford a full-timer, then perhaps it is time to consider outsourcing your pay per click campaign to a professional PPC campaign management service so that you can stop competing with companies that aren’t even your real competitors…and start making sales to prospects who want and need your wares.