Tried & Tested Pay-Per-Click Strategies That Get Results on a Budget

May 22, 2017

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising has revolutionized the way we are able to bring customers into our businesses. Previously, regardless of whether we had the latest or showiest website, or the best product on Earth, we were at the mercy of search engines sending us traffic – and in many cases, hoping someone comes through our business doors.

Thanks to PPC marketing, that has all changed. The only limit to the number of people we can showcase our business to is the depth of our pockets. The appearance of PPC advertising means we all get an even playing field- if we can “pay to play.”

When the Internet first emerged, followed by search engines, business owners would complain that they had “a traffic problem,” meaning they weren’t getting enough traffic to their site. These days, billions of searches are carried out across search engines every day. There is no longer a traffic problem. We know there is traffic and we know where the traffic is. PPC advertising means hypothetically we get to pick up our shop window and put it in front of the passing traffic – for a cost.

This strategy changed the game, and means you can compete in the marketplace without spending three years trying to get ranked organically.

In order to not waste your advertising dollars in an instant, consider these top strategies when you are ready to use PPC advertising.

Top Pay Per Click Strategies

1) Target Market

When you are paying for ads, you are able to choose who your ad is shown to. Most search engines and PPC providers, such as Facebook, allow you to apply a high level of detail to your target market, including demographic data such as:

• Age
• Location
• Household income
• Interests
• Number of credit cards, and much more.

Use your typical customer to create an profile and target your ads to those people.

2) Compelling Ad Copy

When you are writing your ad, speak directly to one type of customer. More than ever before, this is not a time to please everyone. With so many ads being shown to people, getting their attention requires speaking their language. To do this, you must understand their needs. If you have more than one type of customer, create separate ads and speak directly to each profile, splitting your budget between them.

3) Landing Page

When potential customers click on your ad, where do they go? What page do they land on? Does that page have a compelling call to action? Is it attractive? Does it tell them what you want them to do? The average person decides in under 8 seconds whether they want to explore a web page further. First impressions are everything. Be honest, what impression does your page give?

4) Pixels and Retargeting

Building a list of people used to involve having to collect their email address, and if they didn’t leave their email address you had nothing. This has changed dramatically. Thanks to the development of a tool called ‘pixels’ you are able to ‘tag’ everyone that visits your site, whether they sign up or leave any details. As the business owner, you are then able to show specific ads to anyone that has your tag or pixel. Because 80 percent of all sales are made after the initial touch point, this is a great way to stay in touch with your potential clients. Displaying ads to an already pixeled audience is also much cheaper than ads to a new audience.

5) Don’t Assume, Test

A great flaw of human nature is that we tend to assume. We assume which ads will work best, we assume what offers people will like and we assume which copy will convert best. More often than not, and to the detriment of our egos, we are wrong. When creating your ads, always create at least two versions with one variance. For example, you might create two ads with the same picture but different text. Split your budget between the two and see which ad converts better. The best converting advertisement becomes your new baseline. From there you tweak another part of the ad and again see which converts better and whether it converts better than the baseline. This is called A/B split testing and will indicate to you which ads convert better.

Implementing these strategies will ensure you get maximum bang for your advertising buck and aren’t simply throwing money down the drain.

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