Using Pay-Per-Click to Grow Your Small Business

Pay-per-click advertising is a way to generate clicks by advertising on the search engines. PPC ads are sponsored ads usually placed at the top of the search results pages. They are marked with “ad” and always placed above the organic listings. 

PPC has a reputation for being expensive, but this is only the case if your campaigns are poorly planned. As long as you run strategic campaigns, PPC can be both affordable and lucrative. For example, if you pay $10 for a click and a customer spends $200, the $10 spent was well worth it. If a user sees your ad but doesn’t click, you don’t have to pay anything and your brand still gets visibility. 

Let’s learn more about how you can use pay-per-click marketing to build your small business. 

Pros & Cons to Using PPC 

Usually, we see smaller businesses fret over pay-per-click because it can get expensive. It’s important to understand the pros and cons to using PPC so that you know when to make the investment. PPC is not a standalone marketing strategy but one that works well with organic SEO. 

As your website gains more visibility in the search results, it will show up in more searches and drive qualified traffic to your site. But, until this happens, pay-per-click is a great way to get your small business noticed. 

Here is a closer look at the benefits and shortcomings of PPC. 

• Pro: PPC is immediate. As soon as you set up a PPC campaign, it will start working in your favor. The ad will be featured at the top of the search results pages, and those who are interested may click on the ad, visit your page and take the next steps to convert. 
• Pro: PPC gives you control. Organic SEO is a more wait-and-see approach based on the algorithms, but PPC puts the power into your hands. You can control all of the fields and even make changes in real-time. 
• Pro: PPC give you very broad keyword coverage. Assuming you have enough budget, you can run a very long list of keywords.
• Con: PPC requires analytics. If you’re not comfortable running analytics and viewing the metrics, you’ll benefit from working with a New Orleans internet marketing company. You need to understand this data and be prepared for constant monitoring, analyzing and adjusting based on the insights. 
• Con: PPC can run through your budget. Pay-per-click marketing needs to be set up properly, otherwise it can run through your ad budget without any promising leads. Be sure that you have a specific goal in mind, targeted landing pages to drive traffic to, enough budget to invest in a campaign and a trusted PPC consultant. 
• Con: Not everyone will click on the ad. Many people do not click on the ads when they are using a search engine.

Adding Pay-Per-Click to Your Marketing Mix 

You can add PPC to your marketing mix whenever you want by doing it yourself or outsourcing it to a digital marketing agency in New Orleans. Before you get started, there are a couple of considerations to review. 

• Your website or landing page. Where will you be sending people who click on your ad? Your ad will only be successful if it brings the user to a dedicated landing page or targeted web page. If you send the person to a generic page that doesn’t correspond with the ad, it’s a wasted click and an unhappy customer. 
• Your budget. What is your budget for your PPC campaign? To determine your budget, you’ll need to decide how much you’re willing to pay for a lead. A lot of this depends on your industry, as some industries pay more for their leads than others. You’ll also need to consider what your competitors are paying for leads, how many leads make it through the sales funnel and what your profit margins are. 

PPC is Always a Work in Progress 

People sometimes forget that PPC is never set in stone. It’s something that you should always be improving. This is why it’s helpful to work with a digital marketing firm that understands how to run successful, targeted campaigns. Your budget won’t be wasted, and you can focus on other things while your campaigns are bringing in new business. 

Here are a few tips to optimize your pay-per-click ads for better results. 

• Optimize ad copy. You only have a few characters, so use them wisely and tell people exactly what they can get by clicking on your ad. Focus on your unique selling proposition (USP), use numbers, symbols or punctuation to make your ad engaging and include a call-to-action (CTA) and keep in mind how the text will affect the quality score.
• Study SEM trends. Keeping up with the latest SEM trends ensures that your ads are relevant to today’s online users. Some of the latest trends in SEM include content marketing, remarketing and mobile preferences. 
• Monitor metrics. Google Analytics provides a lot of information about your campaigns. Work with your PPC consultant to determine what metrics you should pay attention to. Metrics have their own values that can be used to improve and optimize campaigns. 

Avoid Making Common PPC Mistakes 

If PPC is new for you, you can learn from the mistakes of others. Even though pay-per-click campaigns are flexible and allow for real-time adjustments, there are some mistakes that you’ll want to avoid from the start. 

• Ignoring negative keywords. You don’t want to pay for wasted clicks, do you? Negative keywords can save your campaigns. By adding negative keywords, you prevent driving irrelevant traffic to your website. Here is a great article on how to build a negative keywords list. 
• Excessively using broad match. There are different PPC match types, and broad match is the default match. However, if you use it excessively, you can waste valuable ad spend because your ads will show on searches with misspellings, synonyms, singular/plural forms, related searches, etc. 
• Not split testing ads. Run multiple ad types to see what your audience responds best to. Continue refining your ads based on the information you learn. Certain words, phrases, colors, CTA buttons, offers, etc. will be more enticing for your audience than others, and you’ll want to use them to improve your campaigns. 
• Not searching for pseudonyms. A lot of words have different meanings, so do your research and make sure that the words you are bidding on don’t have alternate meanings. It’s important that your keywords are relevant to your target audience. 

Running successful PPC campaigns is possible when you work with the right internet marketing firm. Contact WSI Star Web Solutions for a consultation and let’s learn about how we can reach your goals using pay-per-click marketing.