PPC Strategy – How to Use it Right
June 4, 2018
PPC or Pay Per Click is a type of marketing campaign through which a business pays a fee each time an advertisement is clicked on by an internet user. This method of marketing strategically allows a business to pay for website traffic, increasing the number of visitors they receive each day, at a cost. In some cases, PPC can save a lot of money, specifically if ads are more of a visible incentive, through which users are encouraged to enter a different URL to arrive at the contest, product, service, or other content promised. However, it can be expensive and get out of control if not managed properly.
PPC is a great tool to have in your search engine optimization tool-belt, but only if you’re using it properly. Here, we’ll take a closer look at the PPC campaign strategy and how it could potentially benefit your business.
Know the Value of Soft and Hard Conversions
There’s nothing more meaningful than the realization that you’ve gained a new customer. This is a hard conversion, the commitment to the website, product, or service. Before achieving hard conversions, many businesses strive for soft conversions, and this is where your PPC ad comes into play. You need to get potential clients interested in your website before you get them interested in trying your product/service.
The bulk of the important information you’re sharing will be on your site, which means to really get a hard conversion, you need to point future customers in the right direction. Tailor your PPC ad to encourage a soft conversion by attracting new users to visit your site. You can do this by offering contests, free consultations, anything that attracts the eye and some much needed attention.
Make Your Headline Specific
One of the ways you can increase chances of a PPC campaign’s success is by being specific in your copy and target audience. It may be easier to try and target the type of audience which has already visited your website this month, because that seems to be the type of consumer looking for your product, service, or content, but this opens you up to a broad interpretation of what will drive traffic to the site.
A good way to avoid the monotone ad is by considering your audience as two or more groups of people. Divide these groups by qualities which are easily marketed to. For example, perhaps one group is women in their mid-30’s with college degrees and another is teenaged girls, 19-years and under, who are considering college. These are fairly different audiences when it comes to structuring content, so by splitting your target into two separate columns and developing two sets of ads, or at the very least, two sets of information on each ad, you open yourself up to a greater return in traffic.
Be Prepared for Long Term Results
Pay per click isn’t the type of marketing campaign for you if you’re expecting immediate results. While PPC has been proven effective for certain types of business models, it takes time to accumulate those results. In many cases, PPC accounts form much of the late conversion you’ll see to your site. One of the biggest mistakes business owners make is trying out PPC for a short period of time, panicking when they don’t see the conversion they need, and closing the account to attempt some other marketing tactic.
PPC will cost at first and take some time to get moving. Test your data as you progress and watch for first-click to last-click measurements, which will give you different statistics than a weekly or monthly display.
Don’t Re-Target the Same Individuals of Company Over and Over
One problem PPC poses is that it runs the risk of oversaturating the market and becoming more of an annoyance to users than an eye-catching advertisement. You want potential consumers to say, “oh look, something novel, what’s this all about?”, rather than, “ugh, not this again!” One of the ways you can manage this type of flow is through your exclusion list.
As the name insinuates, an exclusion list lets you block your ad from being seen by businesses which have already committed to your product or service, saving them from the repetition of offers and proving the validity and professionalism of your brand. This type of feature lets you better customize and manage your delivery, providing new special offers only to those who have yet to commit to your business. You can do this through the user-data and cookies collected, or by manually managing a client list. If your site is offering a one-time use product or service which will still be suitable for a return client, you may want to market a new ad their way instead of replaying the same information.
However you choose to optimize your marketing strategies via PPC, be sure to do your homework. Never commit to a new form of advertising without knowing the facts, target audience, and method of delivery. You want to know what you’re paying for and get a service worth spending on. Pay per click isn’t designed for every business model and may not suit yours. Unfortunately, there’s no real way to know for sure how successful it may be until you try it. If you’re a small business, be sure to limit your ad publication to local avenues, avoiding spending on clicks from outside your potential new client area.