With so many different pay-per-click (PPC) advertising opportunities—such as Google, Bing, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Yahoo—it’s easy to feel a little overwhelmed. A strong PPC campaign, on the other hand, can rake in new leads, bolster brand awareness, and make it “open season” for business growth all year round. Keep customers from leaf-ing your website without converting by avoiding these PPC advertising mistakes small business owners sometimes make. As a result, you’ll leave no stone unturned for new business!
Instead of tossing 100 broad match keywords into a single ad group, why not organize them throughout different ad groups and campaigns? Grouping keywords together, whether by relevance or single keyword ad groups (SKAGs), allows you to get a better understanding of what works and what doesn’t.
You can also compare enabled keywords to their corresponding search terms to see what customers are searching. Finally, keyword match types and updated negative keyword lists provide more control over which searches you show for. As a result, you can reap what you sow without wasting away your budget.
PPC advertising has grown from search engines such as Google and Bing to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. Instead of sticking with just one PPC platform, crawl that worldwide web of opportunities. Recognize who your target customers are, where they spend their time online, and which platforms they’re most likely to use. That way, you maintain a wide reach, so customers stick around.
When a customer clicks on your digital ad, where do they go? It’s likely they searched for a specific product or service, so it’s important they’re directed towards a landing page that reflects their specific search. Unlike your company website’s homepage, a keyword optimized landing page reassures customers they’re in the right place and encourages them to convert. That way, they don’t leave you high and dry by wasting ad spend that doesn’t convert.
Speaking of conversions, how are you keeping track of yours? Conversions are an action potential customers complete after clicking on your ad. That can include clicking on a phone number link displayed on the website, completing a form, booking an appointment, or even visiting a specific page. These actions allow you to leave no stone unturned, so you know exactly how customers are interacting with your business—and which search terms inspired that action.
Most small businesses start with a monthly budget for their PPC advertising. To ensure you don’t exceed your advertising budget each month, establish a goal-based bid strategy and max cost-per-click limit. There are a number of bid strategies to choose from depending on your priorities, such as bidding for the first position or the top of the search engine results page (SERP). Researching your keywords and their average bids are also important to ensure you’re not over-bidding and blowing your budget. As a result, you’ll be spinning that hay into gold in no time.
Whether you offer your services to a single city, a wide radius, or hope to reach potential customers worldwide, your PPC campaign needs to know how far to go. In addition to determining your desired reach, you also need to determine how competitive your keywords are in each city, state, and/or country. Depending on how different the bids are for each location, it may be more beneficial to create separate campaigns. Navigating through the location maze can help you maintain an effective strategy, regardless of where your customers reside.
Don’t leave customers wondering! Effective ad copy contains your keyword for relevance and a call-to-action (CTA) that encourages them to complete that action. With focused ad copy, you’re able to compel customers to click on your ad and take action on the landing page. The landing page should maintain that same focus within the page content. As a result, customers are more likely to fall in love with your company, and less likely to kick up and leave.
A call-only PPC campaign targets potential customers who are using their mobile phone. As a result, you get an automatic call conversion each time they click on your ad to call your business. While there are many benefits to a call-only campaign, it’s also essential to keep mobile users in mind for your additional campaigns. A landing page that’s optimized for mobile devices ensures you don’t lose customers due to small buttons or difficult-to-use forms. By strategizing for mobile customers, you won’t miss out on those busy, on-the-go customers.
No, we’re not talking about pumpkins! Instead of keeping ads active 24/7, it can be more cost-effective to create an ad schedule. Campaigns can be set to run at specific times on specific days. This is especially beneficial for call-only campaigns for businesses that are only open at set hours. That way, there’s someone available to answer the phone, ensuring those customers aren’t lost in the great pumpkin patch!
Ad extensions allow customers to choose different ways of interacting with your ad. Extensions can display a clickable phone number to call, your business’ location, products or services, reviews, special sales, site links, and more. As a result, it’s open season for customers to reach out and learn more about your company!
After implementing these strategies throughout your campaigns, you may notice there’s still room for improvement. Competitor bids can fall and rise, landing pages may need an upgrade, or you may notice customers are more active on a certain device or at a certain time. There are numerous benefits to PPC campaigns, but they can’t be left unattended. By making necessary changes as needed, you can ensure your campaigns are always optimized to perform at their best!
By steering clear of these PPC advertising mistakes small business owners make, you can blow customers away and rake in new business with an effective campaign! Need a little help? Leave it to us. That’s what we Doo!