Pay Per Click Strategies
Digital marketing is all about exposing your brand to the masses. It’s simple. The more people that see your business name or your business logo, the more people that will show interest in and follow through in purchasing a product. But how do you go about marketing your brand? What is the most effective way to do it? A major part to these answers—pay per click strategies.
What is PPC?
PPC, or pay-per-click, is essentially paying publishers for ad space. Each time one of your ads is clicked, you pay the publisher a specific amount. Who publishes your ads? Search Engines.
Your business bids for ad space based on keywords. That way, when someone types a certain keyword into a search engine, your ad populates at the top of the page. Given the millions/billions of people who visit google, your ad would meet the eyes of plenty.
Keywords that are highly sought after within your industry will warrant the highest bids. For instance, if you run a digital marketing company, you would likely have to bid quite high for “digital marketing” as a keyword. Bidding all depends on industry popularity, keyword volume and amount of competition. You know, kind of like an auction.
The goal is to advertise your business, but to the point where converted sales outweigh what your spending on your pay per click strategies. Paying $5 to a publisher is nothing if that click resulted in a $400 sale. You just have to ensure your strategy is working.
Here are some tips…
Make Sure You Bid on The Right Keywords
PPC isn’t like SEO, where your business can benefit from organic traffic; free of cost. PPC requires payment; therefore, you have to be wise with your budget and only bid on keywords that will help gain web traffic.
Your PPC portfolio should consist of high-volume keywords, but also some low volume. And it’s not just one word you need to bid on, you should spend time researching specific long-tail keywords that play into web searches as well.
“Digital marketing” is an example of a keyword. “Digital marketing in Dallas, TX”, on the other hand, is an example of a long-tail keyword. The former will get your more looks, while the ladder will reach a more refined audience, meaning less competition. Less competition means lower cost for keyword bidding.
Ultimately, you want your pay per click strategies to be well-rounded. Try a few things out and see what works best. There is nothing wrong with starting out low risk and becoming more aggressive as you learn more about the game. Experience plays a role in everything. As you become more experienced in developing PPC campaigns, you will naturally grow more confident. It’s like investing in the stock market, but you have more control.
Make Sure Your Pay Per Click Strategies Are Backed By Analytics
When we say “what works best” and “learn more about the game”, we’re not suggesting you take a shot in the dark and make assumptions as to what is working and what isn’t. Rather, we’re suggesting you rely on numbers to tell you!
Google AdWords Performance Grader displays all sorts of statistics and measurements for SEO and PPC efforts. You’ll know precisely how many types each ad has been clicked and you’ll know for how long each user stayed on the page that your ad directed him/her to. This tool will also track important metrics like click-through rate, cost per conversion and quality score.
Use all of your resources to strongly consider which keywords are performing under your pay per click strategies. From there, you mimic what is working and nix what is not. There is not a more surefire way to crosscheck your business than by doing so analytically. Google does an excellent job with the metric layout, helping to simplify your decision making.
How to Structure Your PPC Campaign
You can attack PPC ads one at a time, but you can also use a shared set of keywords to trigger one or more ads for your business. This is known as an ad group. Ad groups act as more of a bulletproof strategy because they provide a safety net. If you win the biddings and include three keywords within a single ad, your ad will cover a wider range of searches.
Someone may search “is hardwood flooring or tile flooring better for a kitchen?”. If you have both “hardwood flooring” and “tile flooring” as keywords, your ad is much more likely to populate than businesses that only have one of those keywords at the helm.
The more ad groups the better, but of course each will come at a price. Nevertheless, you cover more bases and your PPC success rate should therefore be higher.
Landing pages should be another area of focus with your PPC campaigns. A landing page is, believe it or not, is the page where a web user lands when clicking on an ad. For this reason, you need to present a high-quality landing page to back your advertisements.
First things first, be sure the page associates with the keyword used for PPC purposes. Anyone who clicks on the advertisement will hope to find what they were looking for from their search. Also, search engines factor in landing pages when selecting ads to use per search.
So, to make users and search engines happy, take the time to create a worthy landing page. Use informing text, creative design, and sprinkle in a call to action to help guide any visitors.
How Do You Rank in Google Ads?
Every PPC ad earns a rank between 1 and 10. The ranking is determined by multiplying CPC (cost-per-click) by Quality Score. CPC is the bid amount that won you the ad space, and quality score takes into account click-through rate, relevance and landing page quality. The higher the ranking, the better. If your ad ranks as a 10 then it will have an outstanding chance of populating once the intended keyword or keyword phrase is searched.
Click-through rate is defined as the percentage of people visiting a web page who access a hypertext link to a particular advertisement. So, basically anyone who reaches your website through an ad click, in this instance. Click-through traffic is very meaningful to a website because it brings in visitors indirectly.
Relevance is straightforward. It’s simply how relevant your ad is to a keyword or keyword phrase that was searched. Of course, a keyword included in your ad text as part of your pay per click strategies will give you the best chance of being relevant to searches. Hence, the extreme importance of keyword research. If you bid on high volume keywords and niche keywords, you should have a leg up on your competition in regard to relevance.
We already touched on landing page quality. Just remember, search engines see all. Their algorithms are incredibly advanced and every ranking, whether it be for an ad or a page, is determined systematically. It’s wise to keep up to date with any tweaks to the algorithms so your business does not fall behind in the race.
The Underrated Aspect of PPC Campaigns: Negative Keywords
You may be rolling your eyes and thinking, “First positive keywords and now I have to go negative?!”. That’s part of the PPC refinement process. You don’t have to pinpoint negative keywords, but it can certainly help.
First and foremost, what is a negative keyword?
Negative keywords essentially counteract unwanted search associations. For example, if you sell only luxury countertop materials, you don’t want your website to pop up when someone searches “cheap countertop materials”. This would negatively influence your paid advertisement because the searcher would click on an ad that does not fulfill his/her desire. From your business standpoint, it’s a wasted click.
Therefore, the word “cheap”, or the phrase “cheap countertop materials”, can be added to your negative keywords. This will ensure your ads are not triggered by search engines when that word or phrase is used.
Exercising and including negative keywords in your ad set up process will be well worth it. You’ll have to commit in-depth research to select the appropriate ones, but the end result will only enhance the effectiveness of your overall pay per click strategies.
Make The Most of Remarketing
Advertising often has a subliminal effect on the mind. Advertisements can record somewhere in your head even if they don’t gain your full attention. Glancing at a billboard while driving may seem like nothing; however, the ad on the billboard may come to mind weeks, maybe even months later.
The chances of someone remembering your business increase the more a person is exposed to your business. One ad may not do it, but two ads might. That’s why remarketing is so important.
Don’t give up if your ad is not clicked the first go around or if you are not seeing the immediate results that you had hoped for. Try a remarket attempt and see if your results improve. The more your pay per click ad is seen, the more an individual will feel it is relevant to what he/she is looking for.
Click4Corp
The digital marketing experts at Click4Corp know how to manage pay per click strategies. We have all the tricks up our sleeves and tools at our disposal to nail down a dynamite digital advertising strategy. We’ll help your business budget for PPC and we’ll track the successes and pinpoint the areas in need of improvement.
You can trust Click4Corp with your business’ digital marketing. Not only do we operate PPC campaigns, but we also execute SEO, social media posting, web design, content writing, branding and email campaigns. Everything needed for your business to be noticed on a large scale, we do!
