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The saying goes that critics are people who failed in art and literature. This is true to some extent for some critics of the pay per click campaigns. Most blogs about how PPC does not work for business are mostly written by people who failed in their PPC campaigns. Pay per click campaigns are not easy. They need good preparation, the right products, the right planning and the right follow back.
You do not just post the ad and hope for the best; you’ll need to invest your time and resources to find out and create the best ads with the most appropriate and thought out keywords and their corresponding links.
There is good news and bad news to anybody who wants to mount a successful pay per click campaign in Hong Kong and elsewhere. The good news is that PPC works; it works like magic when mounted properly.
The bad news is that it’s hard and involving. It needs endless improvement of ads and links and using the right keywords with the right audiences.
There are useful tips that as a business person you can observe to have an effective PPC campaign. Failure to observe them and use the right methods for your campaign will only add you to those that claim that PPC does not work. So, let's dive in!
1. Choice of keywords is critical
The fight for the best spots will be intense and relentless. This is because you and your competitors will be in a constant battle to take possession of the best spots. For those with a big budget outlay, things might be easier because they can pay premium rates for visibility. If you are not similarly financially muscled, you’ll have to be extremely creative with your choice and use of keywords.
While it may seem a daunting task to keep up with the big boys in your industry, you’ll be surprised to know that small players have taken on the major players with the right choice of keywords as well as the use of long-tail keywords.
Thinking about your potential clientele and what they’ll need to be searching to land on your pages is what makes the difference between success and failure in pay per click campaigns.
To make good use of keywords is not enough though. A good PPC campaign will need you to keep away people who click on your links but cannot convert because you are not what they really want. This is where you neglect the use of negative keywords. If you do not prevent this practice, you’ll end up paying for clicks that were useless.
If you are promoting books that do not come in paperback, use negative keywords that will not attract people who need paperback books of the type you want to promote. As you pay per click, it will be profitable to target only those clicks that will most likely end in conversion.
2. The quality score and the need to optimize it
While it’s said that few people outside Google fully understand the algorithm behind the quality score, it’s not a reason why you should not work hard at optimizing it. Any pay per click campaign should be preceded by a deep understanding of the quality score. It will have a profound effect on your visibility as well as your costs in paid campaigns.
The quality score can be compared to your credit worthiness when applying for a loan. If your credit is bad, the higher the interest you’ll be charged. Likewise, in pay per click campaigns, the lower your quality score, the higher your costs in PPC.
Since the quality score is a rating used by Google to determine the relevance of your choice of keywords and links to what people may be searching for, the only way to have a high ROI in pay per click campaigns is to have a high quality score by using relevant and credible keywords and links in your AdWords.
3. The magic of mastering the landing page links
Why are you paying for your pay per click campaign? It’s because you know that potential buyers want a direct link to what they want. If they wanted to make a wide search of a product, they might have as well searched the broad keywords only.
When you drive leads to your landing page, you should make sure that the landing page contains exactly what the buyers are looking for and not a page that contains other links to other products. This effectively means that your homepage should not act as your landing page at all.
When you have your potential customers bombarded with banners and invitation to check out other products while they were thinking that they have found the specific product that they needed, you’ll only be turning them away.
While it’s logical to promote your entire brand, you need not irritate the people who need only specific items by directing them to your homepage other than the page they hoped would land them on the specific product they really needed.
4. Track the effectiveness of your PPC campaign frequently
While pay per click campaigns work positively for businesses, it will not be effective if it’s not monitored for effectiveness. What is needed in effect is a regular check on the proceedings over at the AdWords section. You’ll need to look into it to see if your keywords are having the desired effect in terms of the traffic they will generate.
Testing your pay per click campaign and measuring its effectiveness is part of what makes it successful. Knowing what is dragging it behind lets you know what needs to be done to rectify the situation.
It’s by visiting your AdWords account that you’ll find out whether it’s effective or not and what remedial action will be needed if it’s not working as targeted or as desired. A point to note is that it’s by this evaluation that you may realize that you have been targeting the wrong audience. You might need to change your keywords to correct this situation. Posting your ads and leaving them to organically generate traffic perpetually is self-defeating.
Customers change in their preferences and your competitors’ activities in their accounts could be drawing traffic to their sites from yours. If you do not evaluate your account often you’ll find out one day that you are almost irrelevant in the industry and only another costly pay per click campaign can help regain your position.
Your PPC campaign is part and parcel of your overall marketing strategy and it should not be taken lightly or neglected in favor of traditional marketing methods.
In Hong Kong today, business worth millions of dollars is transacted daily. This means that your pay per click campaign needs some sprucing up if it does not meet desired results. The good news is that with the observance and use of the tips above, it need not end disastrously as so many more have.
It would be good to engage experts in pay per click campaigns in your marketing strategy much as you would use an advertising agency for your promotions. This will guarantee that results will be positive and your ROI will be impressive.