When organic listings on Google and Bing aren’t bringing in enough website traffic, it’s time to turn to paid search marketing. You’re probably familiar with the basic principles of search engine marketing and pay per click (PPC) advertising, but do you know what goes into a truly successful campaign?
Paid Search Marketing
An Actual Objective
Just about every marketing blog clamors on and on about “setting goals” without actually telling you which goals are worthwhile or realistic.
Realistic goals you can achieve from paid search marketing campaigns include the following:
- Increase brand awareness
- Get more website visits
- Generate more conversions (in other words, leads or sales)
Make sure your goals are specific to your company’s size and ad budget. For example, “we will achieve 500,000 impressions from paid Google results by 2019” is a better goal than “we will get more impressions.”
A Great Landing Page
One major factor that affects the position of your ads on Google, as well as how much you’re charged per click, is Quality Score. And, one way Quality Score is determined is based on how helpful your landing page is to the people who click your ad.
The more people who actually stay to read its content and fill out its form, the higher your Quality Score.
Mobile-Friendly Ads
Your ad campaign must account for the fact that more than half of searches take place on smartphones and tablets. Ad extensions, such as click-to-call and click-for-directions buttons, are crucial to generating customers who browse the internet on their mobile devices.
Use Analytics Tools
Google Analytics is a free service that collects data about the behavior of your website visitors. It provides insight into key metrics, such as page views, traffic sources and bounce rate. Then, diagnose issues with your landing page or paid search marketing campaign in general.
Conversion tracking also gives relevant data about people who have taken a meaningful action on your website, such as filling out a form, after clicking an ad. In particular, conversion tracking helps you understand how to better allocate your ad spend to maximize return on investment.
Constant Maintenance
The reason many business owners elect to allocate their paid search marketing efforts to a professional, third-party agency, is because it’s time consuming. Google AdWords and Bing Ads have a lot of moving parts. Not only do they take months to learn and years to master, but campaigns also require routine maintenance.
After campaigns have been running for a few weeks, certain ads are bound to perform better than others. People in one location may respond more readily than people in another. Consistent optimization is the most important, but often most neglected, aspect of paid search marketing.
Clearly, it’s not easy to execute a successful paid search marketing campaign. But with the right guidance, it’s certainly possible.
