Do you have a small business and are looking to undertake a pay per click (PPC) campaign? This can often feel like a daunting task and in some instances, unaffordable. However, this doesn’t have to be the case. PPC can be a quick, cost-effective way to increase your profits.
So what are some small business PPC marketing tips?
1. Keyword research
PPC advertising campaigns involve your ad being displayed on search engines or social media. Every time someone clicks on your ad, you will be charged a certain amount.
Keywords are a crucial part of any PPC campaign. If you are using irrelevant keywords, you’ll find your budget will be used much faster than it should be, and you won’t be making any sales. People who aren’t actually interested in your product will click on your ad and then soon leave your website without making a purchase.
To avoid this happening, make sure you undertake keyword research. Know exactly what keywords you want your ad to appear for. You can do this by using the Keyword Planner in Google Ads. Using tools such as Analytics can also help to know what people are searching to arrive at your website. You can use this to add keywords or to add words to your negative keyword list. This means if someone searches one of your negative keywords, your ad will not appear, which will save money in your budget.
2. Start with one campaign
If you’re new to PPC, managing your own campaign can get confusing fast. To avoid feeling overwhelmed, it is best to start small. It can be tempting to set up lots of campaigns in order to increase your profits faster. Avoid temptation – start with one campaign. When you’re using Google Ads, this will generally involve managing at least three ads – one responsive ad and two expanded text ads. Once you feel comfortable managing this number, you can add more ads to the same campaign, or start a second campaign. Scaling your campaign slowly ensures you will be able to manage your PPC campaign easier.
3. Be location specific
This may not necessarily apply if you’ve got an online business that doesn’t target people in a specific location. However, if you have a physical store, or you are a local business selling to a few cities, you can use location targeting to your advantage.
PPC campaigns will allow you to target certain locations. This means you won’t have to worry about people in cities or countries you don’t sell your product or service to seeing your ads.
You can even use the location in your copy. If you’re based in a certain city or only delivering to a certain city, make sure to include this in your ad’s copy. You can even get really specific and mention the suburbs of a city. People will then know this ad is more relevant to them rather than just everyone living in the city.
4. Call to action
Any good PPC campaign needs to include a call to action. This is essentially you telling the potential customer what they should do once they have seen the ad. Do they need to call you? Do they need to email? Shop online now? Download a form? Whatever it is that you’re wanting your audience to do, make sure you include it in the ad! This avoids any confusion about what the audience needs to do next.
5. Monitor your results
You may be able to tell that your campaign has increased your sales – but how will you know how successful it has really been without monitoring your campaign?
Make sure you look at Google Ads or Facebook Business Manager during your campaign in order to track how the campaign is going. This will allow you to tweak the campaign if it’s not performing as well as you thought it would, or change the budget if it has started to spend too much. You can even use tools such as Google Analytics to monitor your overall traffic and see how much your PPC campaign has contributed to an increase in traffic and conversions. If you don’t monitor your results, you won’t know how your campaign really performed, and if you need to do anything different in future campaigns.
Want to run a PPC campaign but don’t want to manage it yourself? Contact Patch Agency’s PPC experts today to get your campaign started.
