PPC, or pay-per-click, can be a very powerful way to drive sales through your website. However, as many have discovered, it can also be a sink-hole for money. Part of the problem is that the big search engines like Google and Yahoo! make it very easy to set up a campaign on your own. Of course with most things, ease of access and use doesn't always translate into "easy" or "successful". They can take a moment to learn, but a lifetime to master.
PPC Primer:
First of all, PPC is not about more traffic to your website or ranking in the #1 position for a given keyword phrase. It isn’t about numbers of impressions or even clicks. It is about generating targeted traffic, quality leads and conversion. If you don’t keep that in mind the only thing your PPC campaign will do for you is drain your bank account.
Secondly, (for Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing) effective PPC starts with good SEO. You can improve all factors associated with PPC (cost, Click-through rates and conversion rates) by having well optimized web pages.
Most Important of all: you can decrease your cost and increase your sales by writing good ads and having good landing pages.
The Five Key Factors in PPC:
KEYWORDS:
Selecting the right keywords is crucial. Well-targeted keywords that are relevant to your business bring higher CTRs and higher quality leads.
Keyword selection tools: Wordtracker Subscription or Free tools and online thesaurus. Start with the root word(s) and build from there. Think of whether or not the phrases accurately describe your product/service.
Matching Options: Broad, Expanded, Phrase, Exact.
Negative Keywords AD TEXT:
Writing good text ads and copy is essential. Good ad creation leads to lower click costs, higher click-through rates (CTRs) and conversion rates. Good ad creation can help lead to a higher Quality Score and lower costs.
PRICE STRATEGY:
Setting the appropriate maximum cost-per-click and daily budget will have a major impact on the success of your campaign.
Four Pricing Strategies:
1. #1 Position Always.
2. Follow the Competition.
3. Always bid the minimum.
4. Always offer your personal maximum CPC A specific budget/pricing strategy is obviously very situational. It’s based on budget, goals, competitive market, etc.
Landing Pages:
Too often overlooked by novice PPC participants. Sending clickers to a well targeted landing page instead of just a Home Page will lead to higher click-throughs, better conversion and lower CPC. Research has proven that the fewer clicks a prospect needs to make to a purchase, the more likely they are to follow through with that purchase. Listen to your prospect and send them directly to what they are looking for.
***As an added note, well optimized website pages work hand-in-hand with PPC because they lead to higher Quality Scores as determined by Google.
Competitive Product:
If you don’t have a good product, competitively priced, all the ads in the world won’t help you in the long run.
ESSENTIAL CHECKLISTS:
KEYWORDS Checklist:
- Are you using targeted keywords? Remember, you are paying for every click, so you need to make them count!
- Bid on keyword phrases a minimum of 2 words long, and sometimes as many as 5 or more words (when including geographic locators like “Nova Scotia”).
- Bid for many, many keyword phrases to make the most of your campaign… hundreds, if possible.
- Selecting “Phrase Match” and “Exact Match” will improve your click-through rate and conversion rate, and therefore, your bottom line.
- Use Negative keywords to eliminate unwanted searches, like “free”, “information”, etc. To make Adwords and other PPC work, you need to make sales!
Ad Writing Checklist:
- Target your ads to appropriate countries, regions, cities and languages.
- Watch the competition. See who is doing what in your area by doing a wide variety of searches and see who keeps showing up. Look at how they write their ads (Headlines and copy).
- Use keywords in the headline.
- Use keywords in the body copy.
- Do you pose a question? Questions immediately engage the searcher and lead to higher click-throughs.
- Use powerful copy. Write in terms of “Benefits” and “Features”. Benefits tell someone what’s special about your product or service, and features describe what they are seeking.
- Each Keyword/phrase group should have its own ad. While more time consuming, it leads to better CTRs and conversions.
- Try different ads for each keyword/phrase and do split testing. Run two ads at the same time for each phrase. One will outperform the other over time. Drop the less profitable ad and then repeat the process. CTRs and conversions will go up over time. Make incremental changes, otherwise you won’t know which parts of your ad copy are having the most impact.
Landing Page Checklist:
- Make sure each page of your website is search optimized for the keyword phrases you are targeting for that specific landing page. This is where SEO and PPC work hand in hand.
- Listen to your potential customers… if they want to buy “heavy duty widgets” then send them to a page where they can buy them. Don’t route them through your Home Page, you’ll only loose customers in the process of trying to hook them on something else.
- Make sure your landing pages make it as easy as possible for a potential customer to make a purchase. Minimize the steps they must go through (shopping carts, payment methods, etc.
PRODUCT AND SERVICE CHECKLIST:
- Understand your product or service. Know its costs, profit margins and how many visitors it takes to make a sale. This is crucial to success. Are keywords expensive, but your product inexpensive? Are you paying $2 per click, requiring 100 clicks to make a sale, but only selling a product worth $50? Better re-think the plan. Find cheaper keywords, write better ads and make sure you get higher conversion rates.
- Are you taking the opportunity to up-sell? If you are selling SEO services with your ad, make sure your landing page also takes the opportunity to let the visitor know about PPC services, email marketing, web strategy, newsletter campaigns, etc.
PPC: Strategies for success - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Sickles's Website.
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