5 Ways to Instantly Improve Your Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Sponsored listings – also known as pay-per-click (PPC) advertising – is a maturing medium for lead generation. Although there are bumps in the road (think: click fraud), this medium remains one of the most reliable and measurable ways to grow your business. Here are five common land mines to avoid as you chart your future through the ever-shifting terrain of PPC advertising:
- "They’ll figure out what to do when they get there." Do not assume your prospects will know what to do after they click on a PPC ad. The most effective ads point to specialized landing pages – not generic pages on a web site. These keyword-specific landing pages have a single, strong call to action. They are fine-tuned by direct response marketers to convert a visitor into a lead.
- "We’ll let 'Sales' figure out how to follow up on these leads." Another assumption to be avoided is that the sales department should take full ownership of the lead volume. Yes, they will be cultivating the leads. But by the time ROI is calculated on the campaign, it is often too late to learn that many of the leads you sent over languished and went cold. Collaboration between sales and marketing is key in managing PPC leads.
- "Our customers don’t search using obscure keywords." If your PPC agency is doing its job, you’ll be presented with keywords that surprise you. That’s because you don’t know the full extent of searches they do until you do extensive testing. PPC can unearth exciting new ways that your market finds your site and your products. The secret: Never stop testing keywords and permutations of your offer.
- "We don’t need to pay for PPC ads for brand-related key words." Many marketers mistakenly feel that if their brand’s site shows up as #1 in non-paid (i.e., "organic") searches of their brand name, including those keywords in their PPC portfolio is a waste of money. Not so. Research has shown that when brand-specific PPC advertising is pulled, net traffic from these types of searches falls substantially. That means consumers are searching on your brand but many are clicking through to competing sites! Avoiding this erosion of traffic is worth the small extra PPC investment.
- "Since it’s going well, we can let the campaign manage itself. PPC campaigns hinge on a bidding system for keywords. Like any other market, things change fast. Even small PPC campaigns should be managed on at least a weekly basis by an experienced professional.
Read this case study on how a Nelson Schmidt client saw its leads quadruple by switching to a niche PPC model. Then contact us to receive a free search engine mini-audit of your own site’s paid and organic search performance.
