Pay Per Click (PPC) is one of the least understood online marketing methods. People will often think they can just put up an ad and start rolling in the traffic. It isn’t that easy. It is important to continually be monitoring your PPC results and testing everything. When you are done testing? Test some more. Let’s look at four mistakes that you can’t afford to be making.
1. Competition
Are you looking to see what your competition is doing? Are you aware there are tools like SpyFu and SEMRush that will tell you what keywords your competition is targeting along with an estimate of what they are paying? Not only can you get a good idea of keywords to target when looking at you competitions numbers, but you can also get some ad ideas. Ideas. Not ways to copy.
2. Content
With all PPC ads you have a limited amount of space to work with. What you don’t want to do is repeat information in the space that you have. Unless of course you are just testing it for effectiveness, but typically the headline should be different from the content of the ad. Look to place ads with a strong call to action that differentiate you from the competition.
3. Landing Pages
Where are you sending the traffic that clicks on your ads? Say you are a dentist and you are wanting to get more cosmetic cases coming in, specifically teeth whitening. In this case, send them directly to a page on your site dedicated to teeth whitening and what you can do for them. Don’t send them to your homepage and make them try to find where they need to go.
Another idea is that you can send them to a landing page like this. This page has one purpose and one purpose only. To get your information so that you can be added to a sales funnel. If done properly, this is a highly effective way to get leads.
4. No SEO
PPC is aspect of a well-designed online marketing strategy. But what happens if your PPC provider changes the rules, or if bids become too much? If something happens, you can be gone overnight. That’s why it is important that you are investing in SEO services as well. Small business SEO can help you increase your online presence and stay up there in search engine rankings. SEO, if done right has much more staying power than PPC does.
Be sure that as you set up your PPC campaign that you are considering these four mistakes that many small business owners make. The last thing you want to do is poor your money down the drain. Learning PPC is challenging, but can reap fantastic benefits once you figure it out.