Pay per click
(PPC), particularly Google’s Ad Words, is a marketing channel that can produce
profitable results for your business, whether your goal is lead generation or
sales.
I have been
managing PPC for businesses, as an in-house marketing leader as well marketing
consultant, for over a decade now.
Though the
years I have noticed many secrets to success that I wanted to share --
especially with business owners and marketers that haven’t tried PPC yet.
First, I’d
like to clear the air about a big shocker… or actually a fallacy… that you need
a big budget to run an effective PPC campaign.
You don’t. If
you happen to have a large budget, your ads will be shown more and you can spread
out your ad groups and test different types. With a smaller budget, you do need
to be more judicious with your efforts. But if you market smarter, not broader,
your campaigns can still produce positive results.
I have run
PPC campaigns with total monthly budgets of $1,000. I have run campaigns with
total daily maximum budgets ranging from $25-$50. These campaigns brought in
both sales and leads despite their limited spending. But they do require active
management, strategic thinking, deep PPC knowledge, and refinement/optimization.
The PPC Tri-Pod
What is going
to determine the cost and return of your campaign are 3 simple things I call
the “PPC Tri-pod”, as it supports your entire PPC efforts:
1) Keywords
2) Creative
(or banner ad, if it’s running on the display network)
3) Redirect
URL
So in order
for you to get the most bang for your buck with PPC you should be aware of a
few things regarding the PPC Tri-pod:
Keywords. The more popular the keyword, the
more cost per click (CPC) it’s going to have. So it’s very important to do your
keyword research before you start selecting your keywords as you’re setting up
your campaign.
I like to use
Keywordspy.com. The ‘lite’ version is free, but you
can also upgrade to the full version and see more results and have more
capabilities for a monthly fee. Google used to have their Keyword External
Tool, which has since morphed into Google
Adwords Keyword Planner.
You need a gmail account to access this free tool.
Either of
these tools will allow you to enter keywords or keyword phrases and then view
popularity (actual search results) as well as what the average CPCs are. This
is important for your keyword selection and bidding. You can also type in your
‘core’ or focus keywords and get additional ad group/keyword ideas. To help
refine your search terms you can also choice broad match, broad match modifier,
phrase match, exact match and negative match.
If you pick a
word that is too vague or too under-searched, your ad will not see much (or
any) action. Impressions will either not be served, or if they are served (in
the case of a vague word), it may cost you a high CPC. In addition, a vague
keyword may not be relevant enough to get you a good conversion rate. Since you
pay by the click, your goal is to monetize that click by getting an instant
conversion. And conversions, my friends, will be the role of the landing page.
I’ll talk about that more in a moment.
Creative. This is your text ad (or banner ad,
if you’re running in Ad Word’s display network). For Google to rank your ad favorably, and
more important, for you to get the best conversion results possible – there
needs to be a relevancy and synergy between your keyword, text ad and landing
page. Google will let you know if you’re not passing muster by your ad’s page
position and quality score. Once you carefully researched and selected your ad
group keywords, you want to make sure those keywords are consistent across the
board with your ad and landing page. Your text ad has 4 visible lines with
limited character count:
Headline (25 Characters)
Description Line 1 (35 Characters)
Description Line 2 (35 Characters)
Display URL (35 Characters)
Your keyword must appear in your text ad as well as follow through and
appear in the content of your landing page.
This will give you a good quality rank with Google, but also help
qualify the prospect and carry the relevancy of the ad through to the landing
page. Why is this important? It helps maintain consistency of the message and
also set expectations with the end user. You don’t want to present one add and
then have a completely different landing page come up.
Not only is that a ‘bait and switch’, but it’s costly. Since you’re
paying for clicks, a great ad that is compelling and keyword rich, but not cohesive
to your landing page will not convert as best as one that is. And your campaign
will actually lose conversions.
Redirect
URL. This is your landing page. Different goals and different industries
will have different formats. A lead generation campaign, which is just looking
to collect email addresses to build an opt-in email list, will be a ‘squeeze
page’. This is simply a landing page with a form asking for first name and
email address in return for giving something away for free albeit a bonus
report, free newsletter subscription or similar. It’s got its name since it’s
‘squeezing’ an email address from the prospect. Some retail campaigns will
direct prospects directly to their ecommerce site or catalog page (as opposed to a sales page). Direct response
online marketers will drive their traffic to a targeted promotional landing
page. Where it’s not typically a webpage
where there’s other navigation or distractions that will take the prospect away
from the main goal. It’s more streamlined and focused. The copy is not
technical, it’s compelling and emotional, like promotional copy you would see
in a sales letter. The anatomy of your redirect URL will vary on your goal and
offer. It will take optimization and testing to see what’s working and what’s
not. And that’s par for the course. If you’re testing, I suggest elements that
scream and not whisper, such as long copy vs. short copy, or headlines and
leads that are different themes. However, no matter what your goal, whether
it’s going for the sale or the email address, you still need keyword
consistency between all creative elements.
Tips And Tricks For
Maximum ROI
Whether you
have a big or small budget, there’s a few things I’ve learned over the years
that help the overall performance of a PPC campaign. Some of these are
anecdotal, so if you’ve seen otherwise, I suggest testing to see if it makes a
difference to your particular industry.
Ad and Landing Page. In general, I have noticed that
shorter, to the point, landing pages produce better results. And the rationale
is quite obvious. People searching the Web are looking for quick solutions to a
problem. This means your creatives have
to not only be keyword rich, but compelling and eye-caching. You have seconds
to grave a Web surfers attention and get them to click. In the same essence,
the landing page has to be equally relevant and persuasive, and typically
shorter in copy. Keep in mind Google has many rules surrounding ad copy development. So
write your text ads in accordance to their advertising policy.
Price Point. Again, in my personal experience,
most Web surfers have a price threshold. And that’s items under about $79. When
running a PPC campaign, think about price points that are more tolerable to
‘cold’ prospects, that is, people that haven’t built a relationship with you or
know anything about you. They have no brand loyalty. They don’t know you from
Adam. So getting a sale at a lower price point is an easier sell than a product
you have that hundreds of dollars. Luxury items or items with strong
recognition and brand loyalty are the exception to that rule. As a direct
response marketer, I urge you to price test and see for yourself.
Campaign set up. There’s a few tactics I noticed helps
with ad exposure, clicks and saving money. When you’re setting up your campaign
you can day part, frequency cap and run ad extensions. Day parting allows you
to select the hours of the day you’d like your campaign to run; Ad extensions
allows you to add components to your text ad to help visibility and call to
action such as location, site links, reviews and more; And frequency capping
lets you set a
threshold on how many times you’d like a given person to see
your ad (based on impressions).
PPC Networks. It’s smart not to put all your eggs
in one basket. In addition to Google Ad
Words, try running campaigns on other PPC networks such as Bing/Yahoo, Adroll
(retargeting through Facebook), Advertising.com/AdSonar.com, SiteScout.com
(formerly Adbrite.com), and Kanoodle.com. Then see where you get the best cost
per click, cost per conversion, and overall results.
I’ve only
touched the surface here. There are more tactics and features that can help a
PPC campaigns performance. So get yourself familiar with it, read up on the
best practices, and don’t be afraid to put your toe in the water. As with any marketing tactic, some channels
will work for your business, and some won’t. But you won’t know unless you
test. Just remember the foundation of success hinges on the PPC Tri-Pod. The
possibilities are endless.
UPDATE: If you'd like to get more for your budget... or you are new to PPC and want to put your toe in the water for a minium budget, try testing Bing before you try Google Ad Words. Bing is effective and typically has a lower cost per click, therefore you get more for money with your overall budget. I ran two campaigns at the same time, identical keywords, one on Bing and one on Google. For one month, the Bing campaign had almost 4x higher click rate, and cost me about $500. The Google campaign, with the same ads and keywords, cost me about $1500 and had a click rate of between 1-2%. Part of the reason is market share. Google has more and hence more people are bidding for the same keywords driving up the cost per click rate.
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