15 May How to PPC
Profit with Google Adwords, otherwise known as PPC or Pay-per-click advertising, is not automatic. Campaigns with incorrect settings and haphazard management don’t maximize profit at best, and lose money at worst. For every well run account, there’s a business using Adwords the wrong way, losing money, and spreading the word that PPC doesn’t work.
The more precise truth is, while PPC didn’t work for those users, given the right (energetically detailed) approach, along with a good product or service, PPC can produce a significant, consistent part of a business’s profit. But profitable PPC campaigns take time and expertise, along with a thorough grasp of the Adwords system. Those who want to try PPC on their own should, at a minimum, learn a few basic PPC tactics before actually starting their campaigns. This helps them avoid screwing up, losing money, and having to tell others that PPC stinks.
In basic terms, Adwords campaigns allows one to:
Track conversions
Conversions don’t have to be sales (unless it’s a strict commodity E-commerce site). Conversion can be completing a form, signing up for an email newsletter, downloading a white paper, connecting via social media, asking for a free audit, and so on. The best websites treat the sales process as a series of escalating conversions, sort of like friends to dating to marriage. Each conversion can be tracked in an Adwords account, to analyze which keywords convert, along with which ads, which locations, which devices, which landing pages and which times of day produce the best conversion rates. Increasing conversions over time, based on adjustments driven by the data, is the goal of any good PPC manager.
Run short-term promotions
During holiday periods or other special occasions within your target market, PPC ads can be switched on and off. There’s little need to advertise for Valentine’s Day flowers on February 15 (unless you have a product, with associated landing page, specifically aimed at guys who FORGOT).
Target Local searches
For marketing to specific areas, use location extensions to show your address below the ad as well as placing a location pin in the map. Such a tactic is indispensable for businesses that make money from customers arriving at a physical address.
Use product extensions to drive E-commerce sales
This is somewhat similar to Local search techniques. And with Google Shopping results soon open to Adwords accounts only, E-commerce websites should start advertising with Google ASAP.
Target mobile users
Businesses can specify ads for mobile devices only, and only in defined areas. This tactics works well for restaurants, drug stores, wine stores, coffee shops and any other business that caters to walk-in, drive-by customers. And if you engage the ‘click to call’ function, the lead can contact you directly from the search results. Talk about an elegant sales process.
Keyword experimentation
SEO can take more time than PPC, and Adwords lets you test keywords first, instead of wasting time and resources to rank for the wrong ones.
Run a re-marketing campaign
Remarketing shows ads to previous visitors of your website, using cookies to track them on your website then follow as they browse other sites, showing your ads along the way. This is Adwords version of following up with hot leads.
Video (and image) ads
Images and video allow for much greater creativity than text only. Google leverages its content network, representing millions of websites, including all the biggies (YouTube, Amazon, Yahoo, and so on). Video/image based ads can be produced and uploaded to run based on defined location, age, gender and so on. Such ad opportunities are relatively inexpensive (since the medium is less than saturated). Hence, smart marketers can get exposure and conversions with less competition than with other tactics.