Chris Cardell Media

Until now, I’ve actually been quite guarded in my comments about Pay per Click Advertising (Google Adwords)

(If you’re new to Pay per Click or PPC, it’s paying to appear at or near the top of Google’s listings when people search for words and phrases related to your business.)

The reason I’ve been guarded is that Pay per Click has been so successful in the accounts that I’ve worked on, I’ve hesitated in just assuming that everyone else will experience the same success. But I’ve seen a clear trend emerging over the last year that can no longer be ignored.

Virtually every business owner I meet who is defying the Recession and doing extremely well (and there are many of them) is doing PPC and has become an expert at it.

At a recent meeting of my Platinum Group in Florida (Platinum is a small group of elite business owners who I work with personally throughout the year) only one person in the room was not using PPC – and the only reason for that was, he’s doing so well he could not cope at the moment with the flood of extra customers that Adwords will bring.

So this month’s Internet Profit Strategies has a simple message but a profoundly important one.

If you’re not currently doing PPC, or you’ve tried before with no success, please make this year the year you get serious about it. It seems to be the most important development in Marketing for many decades – and for those willing to master it, it also seems to be offering the potential for stunning profits.

And the Recession offers another golden PPC opportunity. Because most business owners have no idea what they’re doing when it comes to internet marketing, many are pulling back from their online Advertising. Which means you can get better positions for less money.

There is an art and a science to PPC and this year it’s going to become an increasingly important focus in the VIP Inner Circle. I hope that by the end of the year, you will become one of the success stories and one of the increasing number of smart Entrepreneurs I meet who are using PPC to just shrug off the recession

Most business owners I know are afraid of their competitors. If a client or customer mentions them, the most common reaction is to ignore it; the second most commonreaction is to criticise or make some negative comment about them. But you can actually make money from your competitors… by sending them business.

In fact, you can do it in two ways.

First, and this is very cool, you can send them the people you don’t want to do business with. If you’re serious about being astonishingly successful in your business, you’ll have embraced the fact you need to be discerning about the people you do business with. And one thing you can do is send the people you don’t want to do business with to your competitors.

When you do this, everyone is happy: your prospect or client is happy because you’ve helped them find a solution to their problem; your competitors love you, because you’ve sent them business; and you make more money because you’re not having to deal with the people you didn’t want to do business with.

And the second thing you can do takes a little more work, but can be very lucrative.

Imagine you sell, say, Ford motor cars. And you get a prospect who wants a Vauxhall.There’s no way you’ll sell them a Ford because they simply don’t want one; and if you let them go, they’ll go and buy a Vauxhall anyway. But now imagine you had an agreement with your local Vauxhall dealer wherein you could sell his cars (and at a good discount because the sale hasn’t cost the Vauxhall dealer anything to make – it’s all incremental profits to him).

Your prospect is going to love you (and tell all his friends how great you are); your competitor is going to love you (and perhaps sell some of your Fords, if he understand show it all works); and YOU make some money you otherwise would not have had.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking this applies only to motor cars – it works in any industry.

All you have to do is get creative and put a little work into it – get on the phone TODAY and call some of your competitors and work out a way of getting revenue from business you refer to them (and make it reciprocal, so they send you business, too). Not all of them are going to agree (they might think you’re acting suspiciously, or are just plain mad)… but some will.

Small businesses become big businesses by a process of growth – lots of small, incremental revenue streams soon add up to a huge amount of income. And, let’s face it…in the current economy, we need to be doing everything that works to make us money.