Our focus this month at Grow Smart Business has been on getting found. We’ve been writing a lot about SEO, and I’ve actually learned quite a bit about it. I am not an SEO expert, so I had no idea how involved it was or how expensive it can be to implement. If, like me, you are on a limited budget, marketing or otherwise, consider incorporating pay-per-click (PPC) into your marketing plan. According to my good friend Harry Brooks of Search First Marketing, PPC is one of the most important elements of a marketing strategy. From huge multi-national corporations to local service-based businesses, Harry said PPC is a must for driving traffic to your website.
Monika: How does PPC work?
Harry: It’s pretty simple, really. There are six steps to it:
- Write an ad or ads about your business, product, or service.
- Create a list of key phrases, which, when entered into the Google search field, will trigger your ad to appear.
- Tell Google how much you are willing to pay if someone clicks on your ad.
- Activate your campaign and watch traffic start to come to your site.
- As people type your key phrases into the Google search field, your ad will appear.
- As you get some history on your campaign, you will gather enough data to optimize and refine your campaign for conversions and cost.
Monika: That sounds really easy, especially when compared to on-page optimization. But I bet there’s a catch.
Harry: Well, all of that is MUCH easier said than done! But there are three things to keep in mind that make PPC so important.
Speed to market. A PPC campaign can be set up and launched in an afternoon. Results will start accumulating immediately. Within hours, targeted visitors can be arriving at your website.
Targeting. Because the PPC campaign is defined entirely by the business, it can be laser focused on specific products or on a specific target market. For example, an accounting firm might launch a PPC campaign for Quickbooks Pro Advisory Services (rather than accounting in general). In doing so, the accounting firm is spending marketing dollars on a very specific part of their overall target market—those looking for help with Quickbooks. Beyond product specific targeting, PPC campaigns can be geo-targeted to specific cities, regions, or to a defined geographic radius. By focusing a PPC campaign so specifically, an advertiser can expect a higher level of qualified visitor, and thus, more conversions from site visitors to new customers.
Budgeting. PPC can be budgeted down to the penny, which is in stark contrast to traditional marketing vehicles, which can have variable expenses (i.e. graphic design, printing, postage, list purchases, etc.). PPC budgets are defined by the advertiser.
Monika: So, how does a business owner figure out what to spend on PPC?
Harry: The first question I ask a potential client is, “What is the average value of a new customer?” Knowing this information, we can craft a PPC campaign that will best meet the needs of the client. For example, let’s say a painting contractor has an average customer value of $2500. If we have a PPC budget of $800 per month and find that the campaign is generating 4 new customers per month, PPC is working. The acquisition cost is only $200/customer with an average value of $2500.
Monika: I’ve heard a few things about Google’s Quality Score in PPC campaigns. What is it, and how does it work?
Harry: I’m glad you asked, because there is more to a PPC campaign than writing an ad, choosing a few key phrases, and setting a budget. Google uses a sophisticated “Quality Score” algorithm to determine how your PPC campaign will perform. Quality Score dictates how much your clicks will cost and what position your ad will be in relative to other advertisers. To further complicate things, Quality Scores are calculated for each individual key phrase contained in your campaign.
Monika: How do you get a high Quality Score?
Harry: Here are a few things to do:
Split test your ads. Google uses the click-through-rate (CTR) as part of the Quality Score calculation. By split testing your ads, you are constantly improving your ads’ performance. As your average CTR improves, so too will your Quality Scores. You will see a commensurate improvement in average cost per click and ad position.
Design your website with quality in mind. Here are some of the things Google looks for on a website:
- A physical address
- A privacy policy
- Contact information
- Resources or outbound links to other authority sites
- Well-crafted pages with unique titles, meta descriptions, headers and sufficient body copy (aim for 250 words)
FAQ page - About Us page
Be sure to include all of these elements in your site before you launch a PPC campaign!
Don’t be afraid to hire a specialist. I talk to many businesses who have tried Adwords on their own only to lose money on it. In many of those cases, there were some problems that a professional could have identified and fixed to make the campaign a success.
Monika: Great, thanks for that tutorial Harry!
Harry: My pleasure! There is a Beginner’s Guide to Adwords on Google, which is worth checking out.
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