You know that online advertising is an important part of your marketing plan. You know that SEO is also important and that banner ads can make a difference. You know that appearing at the top of the page in a search can keep your front of mind to an audience who is already looking for your services. But what if you could pay only for what “works” in online advertising? Would you know how to take advantage of those opportunities for your company?
We are talking about pay-per-click advertising. PPC advertising is when you insert sponsored text ads in prominent areas of search engine pages such as Google. To get listed here, you bid against other advertisers for keywords and search phrases that are relevant to your services, but you only part with your cash when somebody actually clicks on your ad.
PPC is obviously a great way to reach an audience that is seeking your product or service. But there’s more to it than just writing an ad and throwing some money at it. We have three quick tips to help you improve your PPC campaign.
1– Use the right landing page
Instinct may tell you to link all SEM ads to your homepage and allow the user to navigate to where they want to go. However, we have found more success when our clients customize landing pages that make sense for specific searches, which allows you to make the connection for potential customers by taking them exactly where they need to be. This will ensure that your new web traffic can quickly see and access the specific info they need. This often requires creating custom dynamic landing pages for each ad group within your campaign. The landing pages should have tailored content based on search terms and a clear call to action. As always, make sure that all your pages are mobile-friendly. Almost half of searches happen on mobile, and Google will not show your ad if the landing page is not mobile optimized.
2– Utilize Extensions
Ad extensions are a type of ad format that shows extra information about your business, including contact information, additional website links, and services, and can be added manually or automated. Utilizing ad extensions essentially allows your ad to take up more space on the search page and gives your users more information about your product or your company. They don’t add additional costs for Google AdWords users and can dramatically increase your click-through rates. In fact, Google now recommends having a minimum of three ad extensions active in your campaign to improve your quality score. It’s time to start giving your users more reasons to click on your site by maximizing this feature.
3– Test it
One of the best things about online advertising is the ability to quickly adjust based on data. You should always be testing and adjusting your campaigns on a weekly basis. We know that this takes a lot of time, and you may not even know what all the numbers mean. That’s why our experts at Riley & You are such a valuable addition to your marketing team.
Our team will…
- Test early and test often.
- Test your ad variations simultaneously to minimize time-based factors that might skew your results.
- Test dynamic landing page effectiveness via heat mapping and conversion tracking.
- Evaluate search terms and add negative keywords to further refine the campaign.
- Manipulate bids to decrease cost per conversion while maintaining rank.
- Pay attention to the hard data, rather than “gut instinct” alone, even looking to internal conversions and return on investment.
- Make sure we let the tests run for long enough to collect enough results to get accurate results.
At Riley & You, we know that you are concerned with running your business well. We know you may not have the time or the know-how to run an online ad campaign. We want to work with you to set up and monitor a PPC campaign. Let our experts focus on finding new customers while you focus on serving them well.
