When you run a small business, you need to make sure every penny spent on marketing is accounted for and ensures a healthy return on investment.
Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising can be great ways to promote your business to new customers, with Google claiming every dollar spent on their Pay Per Click (PPC) platform results in $8 returned!
Interested in seeing what PPC can do for your business? Our PPC experts have come up with five great tips to help you get up and running up on the PPC platform of your choosing.
1. Make the most of negative keywords
When you are starting out on PPC, phrase match and broad match keywords can be a fantastic way of showcasing your ad campaigns to new audiences and finding new keywords to use, but the risk is your ad could be served to the wrong people, wasting clicks and money.
However, you can set up negative keywords. This means if someone searches for a keyword or phrase, your ad will not be displayed.
For example, if you sell vegan food, you can exclude keywords from people searching for meat or dairy as the chances are they will not be interested in your products.
2. Target your ads
The great thing about PPC is you can target your ads so they are only served to a select number of people. For example, if you only sell your product or service to specific countries or regions, you can set it so your ads are only shown to these particular places, meaning you are not wasting money serving your ads to people who can't buy from you.
You can target your ads to other demographics including age and gender, the type of computer or mobile your prospective customer uses… even their hobbies and interests!
3. Take time with your ad copy
Think of your ad content as the taxi that takes your customer from the search engine to your website. You want to ensure your ads are as enticing as possible so your prospective customer clicks on them!
Take time to create appealing copy and show your customers exactly why they should buy from you.
You should have at least two ads for each ad group you use… if you have more, all the better! Review your ads regularly and see which ones are performing best. Pause the least effective ones and add fresh new ads into the mix.
4. Make your website as easy to convert as possible
When you have got people to your website, you need to make sure it is as simple for them to convert as possible. A conversion could be anything from buying your product or requesting a quote.
You need to make sure your page loads as quickly as possible, and the content is easy to understand. People only have short attention spans, so make sure any prospective customers can find what they need before they get bored.
5. Check your campaigns regularly
As tempting as it may be to set up your campaigns and leave them, you need to check into your account regularly so you can see how your keywords are faring and make changes if required.
Think of your PPC account as a plant. If you don't tend to it regularly, it will keel over and die, and you don't want that!
Check your account at least once a week and take a look at your stats. Does the budget on any of your keywords need changing? Can your ad copy be tweaked? Are there any new negative keywords you can add?