Why Pay Per Click Requires More Time and Investment in 2015 and Three Tips To Help
The advent of the internet advertising model, Pay Per Click, back in the late 1990s hailed an era of easy success and high ROI in the early days of its conception. There are so many reasons why it is attractive. For instance, you only pay when someone is interested enough to click on the link, you control your costs with budget limits, you can access a targeted customer at the right time and you get results about effectiveness quickly.
Reports of 25p bids attracting multiple thousand pound deals/sales were rife and many businesses were made to look good because they were early adopters of paid search rather than because they had a great website, product or service. It was a simple way to rise to page one, get noticed and win customers.
Roll forward 15 years and, even though some companies still presume that online marketing is as simple as just having a website and turning on their paid search, the internet is now a very well established trading environment and that means that everyone is going hard at making their keywords optimised, pushing budget into their campaigns and most businesses are savvy enough to know the essentials needed to be competitive.
The beauty of paid search was, as it still is, that you can measure the effectiveness of any campaign accurately. But today – what once was a marketer’s playground has turned into a battlefield – and as such requires a strategy akin to a military one.
So how can you prevail in PPC when you are amongst other seasoned experts in your field?
Here are 3 Tips to help optimise your Google AdWords Campaign
Tip 1: Increase Your Spend And Monitor
In the old days, small pin money could reap exceptional results when combined with a bit of keyword research. Today big players often dominate PPC with equally big budgets. It’s more realistic these days that you get what you pay for in the scheme and scale of things so increase your budget if it allows, to attain the best ad positions. However, remember at all times to consider ROI and monitor constantly. There is a phenomenon known as ‘ego-bidding’ where you outbid your rivals at any cost to get to the number one ranking spot. Ego-bidding between parties can cause high inflation that does not reflect the potential return. At all times it has to be worth the return or it’s ultimately a fruitless exercise. This is where market intelligence and research is at its most critical for you to make the right decisions.
Tip 2: Blended Marketing
This is staple, good, solid online marketing advice – align your PR, your marketing campaigns, blog content and link strategy to your PPC/Google AdWords strategy. Use your marketing arsenal to get your product or service noticed and align your strategy across all platforms, especially when promoting a new product or an event launch for example. Customers use the internet differently today when compared to a decade or so ago, which means they are more likely to convert through a cross-channel marketing strategy.
Therefore, organic search should complement paid search to push an overall brand into focus for your customers. Last year, the orange ad symbol appeared on the Google Ads that flank the organic search results. This makes them stand out – yes – but stand out as adverts where previously they may not have been perceived as ads. It helps in terms of brand perception if your brand has a generally strong presence all around.
It’s also worth knowing that paid search can often have an influence on organic Click through Rate (CTR), which is a reason it’s worth investing in.
Tip 3: Research And Experiment
Whilst niche is harder these days, it’s important to find the best niche keywords for people to discover your website. AdWords is always changing and it is vital that you try out a few things; change text when it does not work well and find out what people are exactly looking for in relation to your offering. If you get your words right you’ll notice it straight away as people start clicking on the search term. One advantage of PPC is its flexibility allowing you to adjust and adapt to market conditions, so use this capability where it can be exploited.
For more information on how to manage PPC into your marketing mix and SEO strategy contact Varn.
