PPC Advertising
PPC or pay-per-click advertising is a great way to be at the top of the search engines for those that are in a hurry. The caveat is that just because you can buy your way to the top doesn’t mean that you’ll be able to convert potential customers. You’ve got to make sure you are focused on the right keyword phrases and that you ensure ‘negative’ keywords are excluded from your campaigns.
Optimizing your Campaigns
Narrow your focus on keyword phrases. Make a list of ‘money’ phrases based on your research, will first of all ensure a robust click-through rate but most of all will convert clickers into customers.
For example, one of our clients is an online hotel booking company. Their marketing goal is to increase the number of bookings through their online channels. In order to do this, we created a list of keywords by using data from their Google analytics and booking data.
We were able to determine the most lucrative cities in terms of hotel revenue (gross revenue per booking) and then we indexed that list against their list of keywords related to those city searches.
One thing we determined is they were using terms that were too ‘generic’ for their needs. One of their ‘money’ terms is, ‘hotels near the grand canyon’. They were also buying the term ‘grand canyon’. Results from their booking stats showed the ‘hotels near’ outperformed the generic terms exponentially. We recommended they exclude the generic term and ‘stem’ the longer term to include other variations of the phrase.
It’s important to make sure that the terms you are using and the landing page you are sending clickers to are in synch with each other. The tighter the relationship of the keyword, ad and landing page is, the better your Quality Score or QS from Google. The higher your quality score the less it will cost you and the better your placement.
If your initial PPC efforts are less than extraordinary, don’t give up hope. If you’re getting clicks on your ads, that’s great. Now it’s a matter of delivering to the searcher what they thought they’d be getting when they clicked on your ad. If your ad specifically reads ‘deals’, then make sure your landing page has deals that are easy to find and a way to easily navigate through the deals. Also, make sure your ad is to the point and you include a call-to-action.
Landing Page
The landing page is extremely important to your ads performance. Clean, uncluttered landing pages that are relevant to the keyword and the ad content are the best. Big buttons and navigation that is easily understood will help with your conversions.
And the best thing about all this is that it is easily measured and can be updated and tweaked to ensure the very best conversion. If you are not constantly evaluating your ad campaigns and tweaking the ad content, the keywords and the landing pages, then you’re leaving money on the table.
Online advertising is not a static operation. It’s a dynamic advertising channel that can bring you a great return on your investment.
