The Top 10 Essentials for Your Pay Per
Click (PPC) Success
Whether you're looking to do Paid Search Advertising yourself or to
hire someone to do that for you - you should know what makes a Pay
Per Click campaign successful - or you will end up suffering.
Paid search advertising may look deceptively easy to do. Countless
times small business owners decide (and correctly so) that PPC is
going to do wonders for their business and 'dive' right into it...
Unfortunately most of them don't really educate themselves enough on
what to do and how to do it, and then they end up spending a helluva
lot of money, with little to no results. Next they declare that Paid
Search Marketing doesn't work and then they're out!
Alternatively, the small business owner hires an overpaid,
over-promising PPC management firm, and lets them do whatever they
like - not knowing what to be aware of in order to make sure he's
getting the best possible results for the best price...
Well - despite the doom and gloom scenarios above, I'm here to tell
you that PPC works for most businesses!
It works very well, and can be one of the best, quickest, most cost
effective and best tracked medium of advertising/promotion there
ever was... Sure, there are other ways you can market your business,
but if you know how to, and if you want almost immediate results
that are fully tracked - then PPC can't be beaten.
OK, let's get to the top 10 essentials of Pay Per Click marketing:
1. Know your market place
It's as obvious as daylight, but people still go into PPC without
doing their research. Bear in mind that you may know your market
place offline, but when you consider the internet - it may be a
whole different environment. So make sure you look into it - even if
you have to pay for professional research - it will be worth your
while.
If you're letting an agency manage your paid search, then make sure
you ask them about your market - make sure they have done their
homework thoroughly.
2. Know your target audience
Again an obvious one - and yet again people don't do this step
properly. Don't just list out a bunch of demographics about your
prospective customers. Get into character - engineer 'real-life'
people profiles (avatars), describing everything about them.
Creating about 3 customer avatars for your business, will help you
understand your customers, and thus you'll be able to anticipate how
they behave. Knowing how they are likely to behave, will allow you
to setup a VERY effective PPC campaign process, that will guarantee
you success.
Remember - your customer just wants to feel understood, then if your
product/service is good - they will buy.
3. Know what you want your visitor to do
In other words decide - do you want a prospect visiting your site
to:
- call you to make an appointment?
- email you with more info about themselves, before setting up
a consultation?
- click on the "Buy Now" button on your landing page?
- sign up to your membership site?
- sign up to your free newsletter?
- download a free report?
The clearer you are about what you want visitors to do, the
easier it will be to entice them to do just that. If you don't tell
your prospects what it is they need to do to progress this visit to
something that is of benefit to them, they will click away, most
likely to never be seen again...
4. Know how they look for you & your
product - i.e. understand searcher intent
This one's not so obvious. Only very good paid search marketers know
that keywords have different intent behind them. In other words, if
a searcher on Google types in "running shoes" they are highly likely
to be doing some preliminary research on what types of running shoes
there are.
If the same searcher typed in "running shoes reviews" - then they
are likely to be still researching - but they now know that they
will buy - when they find the shoe that appeals to them.
A prospect with 'buying' intent, however, will likely type in "buy
asics gel kayano running shoes" or "asics gel kayano stockists". You
get the idea...
5. Start small - grow big later
This simply means that it is better to find the most suitable
keyword phrases for your business, and run with that small group
first. This will allow you to test the 'waters' and it will help you
keep control of your budget.
Later on, when you know what works and what doesn't you can add
other phrases to your heart's content.
6. Split test your ads
It is amazing how many people don't take advantage of this feature
on Google AdWords. Split - testing will give you a constant way of
improving on your ads. Your ad is the 'window' to your sales... so
you cannot afford not to be constantly trying to make it better
converting than before.
7. Use landing pages (LP)
Landing pages are powerful when using them correctly. They allow you
complete control of what your visitor experiences. I always
recommend that if you are only wanting one result from your prospect
you should use LPs. But if your resources and knowledge are limited,
then at least make sure you are leading the searcher to the most
search-relevant page you have on your site.
8. Track everything
This says it all - even if you don't know how to, or with what -
find someone that can help you. Outsource this job, or simply head
over to Google and read all there is on their Analytics service. In
some cases this is perfectly sufficient.
9. Listen to your stats
Once you have your tracking working, make sure you look at your
stats to see the results. I recommend you look at them once a day in
the beginning - depending on the size of your campaign, the amount
of traffic your keywords are getting, and the amount of money you've
budgeted to spend.
Once your campaign is working and making you profit, you can start
looking at it less often, but at least once a week. Also make sure
to optimize it regularly on the basis of your stats.
10. Learn consistently and constantly
Learn from your successes, your failures, your competitors'
successes and their failures too... I have a document template that
I use for all my campaigns called - Lessons Learned. It's only
through experience that you will be able to progress and optimize
any paid search campaign.
Well - hopefully you'll find the above list of PPC essentials very
useful. Of course there are a lot of other important points to
consider, like daily budget, competitive research, and return on
investment requirements, but the above 10 will be able to start you
off in a very strong way.
Bear in mind that whether you're managing your own PPC campaigns, or
you're hiring a professional to do it - you can use the list above
to make sure you're getting the best out of your campaigns. |
