The Google Hummingbird update changed Google forever, as did the Hummingbird iterations that followed it. Instead of using SEO (Search Engine Optimization) factors, Google started to use big data to rank up websites. It used data that it gathered from people using its search engine, the Google Analytics programs that webmasters used, social media markers (previously Google Plus, and currently YouTube), and information gathered from Google Chrome users.
The resultant shift in Google behavior means that people may now use PPC services to increase the popularity of their website within targeted groups of people, which subsequently ranks the website up the search engine results.
How Can PPC Services Possibly Help A Website Rank Up the Search Engine Results?
Google uses big data for two reasons. It is used to interpret the meaning of websites, images, audio tracks and videos and also to judge the popularity of a website within certain demographics. Below, I explain what these mean. It is important that you understand what Google is doing so that you may better understand “How” and “Why” the use of PPC will help improve your search rankings.
Interpreting Images, Websites, Audio Tracks and Videos
This sort of interpretation is quite simple if you have access to the sheer amount of data that Google has access to.
For example, if you have five thousand people searching for a car that floats, and around 16% try a certain website and 7% click a certain image, then you can assume that the website and the image have something to do with floating cars.
Keep tracking such data, and over time you get a clear view of what a website, picture, audio track, or video is all about simply by monitoring how people interact with said element.
Judging the Popularity of Websites
In its simplest terms, Google judges how popular a website is by how many people use it and how many people quickly bounce from it. If a website is popular, then Google ranks it up the search engine results. Google is geared in this direction, but the process itself is actually far more complex.
Not only does Google judge popularity, but it also judges the user. This means your website may rank highly for some people and not for others, even if your search terms are the same.
For example, if you are Catholic and you often visit Catholic related websites, then your search engine results will reflect your Catholic theme. Websites about certain subjects with a Catholic edge will appear on your search engine results sooner than people who have shown no interest in Catholicism.
This is also true of inflammatory content. Continuing the example, a person who is Catholic is more likely to see anti-Catholic search engine results rather than anti-Jewish or anti-Islamic websites and ads.
How Does Pay Per Click (PPC) Help Rank Up a Website
Firstly, it helps to make your website more popular in general and helps make your website more popular with targeted demographics, which means Google will rank you up the search engine results.
Secondly, PPC draws your demographic to you, which means people from your target audience are more likely to see your website on the Google search engine results. People who have seen your website are more likely to see your website on the Google search engine results.
Making Your Website More Popular
PPC leads people to your website who wouldn’t have usually found it. Exposure to your website means several things. The user may – keep your website address in their favorites and visit again multiple times – may link to you from their websites – may share your content on social media.
If you are using something such as Google paid ads and you are only spending a small amount, then the effect will be negligible. But, over several months, your Google search engine advertising will make your website more popular so that it ranks up the search engine results.
Drawing Your Demographic to You
PPC can be geared towards a certain demographic. This fact, plus the fact that PPC marketing involves certain keywords (and negative keywords), means that certain targeted people will visit your website.
These targeted people are more likely to buy from you or enjoy your content (since the content was made for them). They are therefore more likely to recommend your website/service, share your content, link to your content and so forth.
They are also likely to link to your content from other related websites and social media groups, which makes your website more popular for other-similar people (remember that Google judges the user too and pigeonholes them).
In other words, by attracting people who are interested in a certain niche area, you are making your website rank more highly for said niche whenever they use the Google search engine.
Recapturing People Who Have Already Visited
If somebody visits your website, even if they are visiting because they clicked an ad, then they are far more likely to visit again. They are more likely to see your website on the search engine results, and there is also a chance that your visitors really enjoyed your content and saved it or remembered it so that they may visit again at a later date.
Again, if people are visiting and revisiting, then your website appears popular and starts attracting more people as it ranks up the Google search engine results.
Here Is What You Do
Now that you understand the odd-but-interesting way that Google works, you need to exploit it with pay per click services. You need to:
Step 1 – Use PPC services (to not use it means you miss out on the SEO benefit) Step 2 – Carefully target people using the demographic features offered by PPC services Step 3 – Target people using cleverly chosen keywords Step 4 – Use PPC in a sustained fashion over months and years
That is all you need to do. As you now know from what you have learned in this article, taking these four steps will create a situation where your website becomes more popular in general and also becomes more popular with your target demographic and target audience.
The Takeaway
Using PPC services is a fruitful way to improve your search engine ranking. You just have to remember that the whole process takes time. It is not a case of running a PPC ad and then six people have linked to your website within an hour.
It takes time and a consistent effort, but over time, people who use PPC services as per the four steps mentioned above will see their websites rank up the Google search engine results.
A PPC ad can boost brand awareness by 80%. Since brand awareness makes conversions easier, it’s important to understand how to use these PPC bids for your business.
To get the most out of pay-per-click ads, you need to understand the PPC bid management process. Knowing how to budget and analyze your bids will help you get the most out of the money you spend on ads.
The process involves planning, bidding, analyzing, and further planning.
What Are PPC Bids?
A PPC bid is a bid on specific keywords or groups of keywords to get optimal ad placement when people search these words. You bid on how much you’re willing to pay each time someone clicks on your ad.
The placement of your ad depends on the ranks of highest bids for these keywords. For instance, if you’re willing to pay $.20 per ad, but someone else places a bid for $.30, their ad will get placement more often than yours.
PPC Bid Management Process
Why would you spend money to show up higher in searches anyway? The quick answer is because it works.
46% of search clicks go to the top three results. By paying for placement in these top spots, you ensure more clicks to your landing pages.
You also increase your chances of grabbing people with intent to buy. 65% of buyers go to the paid advertisements. To get the most out of these opportunities, it’s important to make sure you plan well.
Which is the Best Bidding Option?: The Planning Stage
You need to understand your ad goals before you start a campaign. Do you want clicks or sales conversions? Determine what you want your ad to accomplish.
Once you know what constitutes success, pick some keywords that will rank in searches. You want to make sure the keywords are specific enough to reach people interested in your business. You also want to make sure they’re broad enough to show up in searches.
You can use tools such as Keyword Finder from Google to determine the best keywords to use based on traffic and high-bid amounts. This will help you determine which keywords to use.
You also want to determine what parameters to set up for your bids. You can modify bids to specify placement on specific devices or based on location.
Creating Ads that Convert: Planning Part Two
Once you have the keywords you need, you want to make sure your ad will keep people interested once they click. This means creating ads that will meet the keywords and ad parameters.
Make sure the keywords you’re bidding on show up in the ad copy. Any keyword groups you bid on need to show up in the ad copy to make sure you keep it relevant.
You also want to make sure you have a clear call-to-action in the ad copy. The idea is to convert leads. You can only do this by telling them what you want them to do with the information.
Set Up Bidding Parameters
With PPC bids, you can set up the parameters you want for your ad to show up. In some instances, you can even set up times you’d like the ad to show up based on best conversion times.
The most important parameters are based on the keywords you want to rank for. Set up your keyword groups and the amount you’re willing to pay.
Make sure you base this on bids that will allow you to rank without breaking your budget. If necessary, set up daily budgets for your words.
You can also set up location parameters for your ads. This will make sure your ads show up for people in a set area. This works well if you have a location-specific business or you’re running ads for a conference.
Analyzing Your Bids
How you analyze your bids will depend on the software you use to manage your bids. You can manage them manually, use the automated bidding software provided, or purchase bid management software. You can also outsource bid management to an agency that specializes in PPC ads.
Even if you use an automated system, you still need to check your conversions and adjust your bidding parameters on occasion. You want to make sure you have enough data before making changes.
It’s best to schedule bid checks so you’re not tempted to check too often. You need time for bids to have an effect.
Analytics allow you to see how your keyword ads perform so you can modify if necessary. This includes:
Increasing bids with higher conversions
Stopping or modifying keyword bids with low conversion
Changing keywords you want to rank for
It’s important to watch conversion rates for your keywords. If a keyword has a high conversion rate, you might consider raising the bids. Low-conversion bids need adjustment.
Which Bidding Option is Best Suited to You? Planning Part Three
After you’ve run PPC ads for some time, you’ll have a better idea of what works for your needs and what doesn’t. This allows you to determine which bidding options work best for your business needs.
Take time to analyze your results and continue to make adjustments until you hit a sweet spot. This doesn’t mean you’re done analyzing results though.
Bid management requires regular analytics and adjustments. Once you start seeing conversions you’ll have a better idea of what customers are looking for. This helps you determine further keywords to bid on and better call-to-action statements.
Even if you use an automated system, you can’t just rely on this. You need to stay involved in the adjustments so you make sure you’re getting the most out of your money.
The Help You Need for PPC Management
The PPC bid management process requires regular work. This can eat away at the time needed for other business processes.
If you want to take advantage of PPC bidding, but don’t have the time to keep up with it, you can outsource the work to PPC experts. If you’d like to learn more, check out the PPC management services we provide.
According to the Digital Marketing Institute, only 12% of your keywords are responsible for all of your ad conversions. Failing to understand that is what leads most PPC campaigns to fail.
Sure, you might think that creating a solid keyword list, writing great ad copy, and publishing your campaigns are going to do the trick.
However, you’ll need to put in a little more effort than that to succeed. That means managing your campaigns on a daily basis.
If you’re just starting out with paid ads and want to learn how to best manage your PPC plan in order to see a profit, then follow these nine steps.
1. Pay Attention to Google’s Suggestions
When you log into your Google Ad Words account after publishing a campaign, it’s likely that you’ll see suggestions on how to optimize everything.
This could range from adjusting the text in one ad to adding extensions or even changing the keywords.
Usually, Google will show a percentage meter at the top of the page. This indicates whether or not your campaign is 100% optimized according to current trends and online behavior.
Pay attention to these suggestions! Make the changes! Google is smart and it knows what it’s talking about.
2. Add Negative Keywords
It’s hard to be 100% accurate with your keywords every time. You might think that “dog sitting in Boulder” is a great keyword to attract people to your dog sitting business.
But, then you find that people are clicking on your ad because they’ve searched “dog sitting in Boulder jobs.” They’re dog sitters too, and they’re looking for jobs, not your service.
In this case, it’s a good idea to take a look at what people searched for in order to find your ad (whether it results in an impression or a click).
Then, add negative keywords to your negative keyword list so that your ad won’t show when people search for that specific term.
This will save you a lot of wasted ad money on clicks that don’t turn into conversions, so make sure this is at the top of your pay per task checklist.
3. Transfer Budgets to Another Ad Group
Optimizing your campaigns, in general, should be part of any Google checklist for paid ads. However, optimizing takes time as you have to wait a while in order to see results and analytics.
One of the most effective things that you can do to increase your campaign effectiveness is to take a look at which ad groups are performing best.
The idea is to create more than one ad group per campaign in order to test the effectiveness of copy and keywords. This also helps you see if one ad group is performing much better than another.
If that’s the case, then transfer more money to that ad group. Increase the daily ad spend and watch that group grow.
4. Optimize Campaign Settings
While this is usually part of a monthly task checklist, you can also optimize your campaign on a daily basis, too.
Check your campaign settings to make sure that you’re targeting the right location, language, and audience.
Sometimes, especially if you’re working in different languages or trying to sell in different countries, this can get changed in the process of setting up a campaign.
So, make it a point to add this to your weekly task list just to make sure you’re not missing out on target audiences or paying for clicks that you don’t need.
Every morning, look at your ads and compare them to other ads that are ranking for the keywords you’re using.
What is the difference? Can you do anything to make yours better? If so, do it!
Changing and optimizing your ad copy should actually be at the top of your task checklist, as it also affects things such as your ad relevancy and overall quality score.
6. Check Your Landing Page Daily
Checking your landing page doesn’t require a lot of time. In fact, if it’s a part of your PPC plan checklist then it’ll soon become second nature and you’ll just do it without even thinking.
Why is it so important? Your landing page accounts for a huge part of your overall paid ad campaign success.
It needs to be relevant, high-quality, and it needs to provide the user with a great experience.
This means that if the landing page goes down or if there’s some other type of big error, then you’re going to want to know.
If the link is broken and you’re sending people to that page, your campaign and budget are going to suffer.
7. Check Your Budgets
When you start running a campaign, make a budget worksheet.
Then, create another worksheet that acts as a “catch-up budget” worksheet.
Divide your total budget by the days of the month and check each morning to ensure that you’re not going way over or coming in way under your target budget.
This will help you not only avoid going over budget, but it’ll help you see where you can spend more or increase your bids.
8. Expand Your Keyword List
When you’re taking a look at the words that people used to find your ad, you’re looking for negative keywords.
However, it helps to look for other keywords that you hadn’t already thought of.
If you see that people are searching for a relevant phrase that you didn’t already have on your list, then add it to your list!
Expanding your keyword list depends on how people are interacting with your ads and what your overall campaign goals are, but it’s a good way to optimize your efforts either way.
9. Create Your Own PPC Plan Daily Task List
No two ad campaigns are alike. Okay, they might be alike but they’re definitely not exactly the same.
This means that your campaigns are going to require different actions than those of other companies.
In order to maximize revenue with the least amount of ad spend, you’ll need to figure out what works for you.
So, play around with your campaigns and develop your own daily task list and tweak it depending on what you need to do each day. This is going to be the most efficient way to see better results.
Start Increasing Revenue with PPC
PPC ads are a relatively low-cost way to increase brand awareness or revenue.
Depending on the goals you set and the budget you allocate to your paid ad campaigns, you can see a lot of success.
However, that all depends on the kind of PPC plan you have and how often you’re optimizing your campaigns.
Ready to start increasing your revenue with PPC? Contact us to discuss your needs and we’ll help set you up on the road to success.
40% of brands say that their PPC (pay-per-click) advertising budget is lower than it probably should be.
When you’re creating a PPC campaign, one of the most important aspects is how much you’re going to budget per day or month for your ads. And, if you’re just getting started, it’s often hard to know just how high or low to set your bids.
Creating the right kind of budgeting strategies is a crucial part of ensuring that your campaigns are successful.
So, what’s the best way to go about creating a budget for ad bidding? Here’s how.
What Is a PPC Campaign Bidding Budget?
Before we get started, it’s important to understand what a solid campaign strategy definition contains.
Defining your overall PPC strategy means that you have to also define a campaign budget.
Setting up a paid search campaign requires you to allocate a certain amount of money to each campaign while also defining how much you want to spend per day.
This essentially means that if you know that you can only spend $250 per month on paid ads, then you need to spread that budget out over the entire month.
You can simply divide that $250 by 30 days and then you’ll have your daily budget. However, there are smarter ways to go about optimizing your ad spend that will increase your revenue.
How to Create a PPC Budgeting Strategy
A qualified PPC expert will tell you that creating a budgeting strategy is different for every business.
Even if two businesses have the same amount of money to spend, it doesn’t mean that they are going to need to set the same daily campaign budget.
To create a solid PPC budgeting strategy, it’s important to think about the value of what you’re selling.
Imagine two companies.
Company A is trying to create paid ads in order to sell their brand new $25 coffee maker. Company B is building a paid ad campaign to sell $500 mountain bikes.
If an ad results in a click that later results in a conversion, that conversion is going to be worth a whole lot more to Company B, right?
Think about this when developing your budgeting strategy. How much is a click or conversion worth to you? Don’t set your maximum cost per click to any higher than that number or else you’re going to be losing money in the long run.
You’ll also want to pay attention to your keywords.
If you’re selling in an industry that is highly competitive then you might have to allocate a little more money to a paid ad campaign as you’re going to need to
Budgeting Strategies for a New Campaign
Unless you’re working with a really experienced team of PPC specialists who know exactly what they’re doing, experts tend to recommend starting with a high maximum cost-per-click.
This will allow you to see how your keywords and ads are performing in the first few days or weeks. It will also ensure that people are more likely to click on your ads, which leads to a higher level of ad relevancy. This helps a lot in the long run!
Don’t worry. It’s unlikely that you’re going to have to pay more than a few dollars per click anyway.
However, following this budgeting strategy, you’ll be able to let your keywords and ads work their magic alone.
After seeing how they perform, you can then start to optimize your ad texts and remove and add keywords.
Take a look at the search words for each ad and figure out which keywords you’re paying for that aren’t going to drive conversions.
If you’re selling mountain bikes, for example, and you see that people are clicking on your ad after searching for “children’s bikes for sale,” then add that keyword to your negative keywords list.
This will help you save money on clicks that won’t lead to actual conversions.
After engaging in this kind of optimization for about a week or so, you’ll then be able to start to adjust your campaign strategies and budgets.
After your ads are relevant and receive more traffic, you can begin to lower your daily budget and maximum cost-per-click.
Budget Strategies to Increase Revenue
If you’re not new to ads or have been running a campaign for a while, then you’re likely wondering which bidding strategy should use you if you want to increase revenue from your ad spend?
Great question! This is actually part of the exam that Google suggests all expert PPC specialists complete.
By following this budgeting strategy, you’ll be able to set your bids based on, well, ad spend.
This is a Smart Bidding strategy that you can select within Google Ads. It essentially helps you get more conversion value or revenue for the ROAS that you set.
This also means that, when it’s time for the search engine to hold the auction to see who’s going to appear first on the page, it’ll optimize your bids automatically.
Why is this important? It allows you to tailor your bids for each auction, which ensures that you’re going to consistently rank higher and reap the benefits of that.
Any budgeting strategy that focuses on action and conversions are going to increase your revenue.
Here, you’re not looking to build brand awareness, you’re looking to increase clicks to a high-quality landing page that will drive people to take action (i.e. purchase whatever you’re selling!).
Getting Help with Your PPC Budgeting Strategy
This might seem a little confusing, and that’s okay. That’s why there are courses and certifications for those who work to fully understand how PPC campaigns work.
If you’re left feeling a little confused as to how to develop quality budgeting strategies for your campaign, then it helps to get help!
Contacting a PPC marketing specialist who has experience in developing budgets for campaigns and companies of all sizes and types will ensure that you’re not wasting precious ad money on things that don’t increase your revenue.
Ready to increase your revenue and start winning with PPC?
The last five years were huge in the world of PPC marketing. Marketers used paid ads tools, enhancements, targeting options and new campaign features.
Most of these changes are in response to changing consumer behavior. The current business environment is ever-changing. Marketers have to be aware of these changes to remain relevant.
Experts argue that the growth of the internet offers more opportunities to advertisers. Exploiting these opportunities will help advertisers to stay ahead of the crowd.
Here are the five upcoming PPC Trends to watch for in 2019.
1. A shift of Focus from Keywords to Audiences
Search experts believe that keywords will die in 2019. Therefore, advertisers will shift their focus to context and people in paid searches. Keywords will still be important, but audience targeting will be crucial for securing high performance.
Targeting involves dividing a large market into smaller portions. This allows marketers to focus on the particular group of consumers in the audience.
It outlines a fragment of clients based on their unique traits.
The markets segment the audience based on characteristics such as demographics, geographical areas, business industry, and psychographics.
Audience targeting strategy will differentiate the best search marketers from the ordinary ones. The key to success will be creating a comprehensive approach to different audience types.
Audience targeting enables companies to reach consumers interested in their products or services with relevant messaging. It also improves conversation rates and saves the organization’s resources.
It is essential for targeting prospective customers and preventing wasting ads on people who won’t convert.
2. Automation and Human Intelligence
Automation and human intelligence are the latest technologies used by marketers to develop ‘smart ads.’ These are advertisements that pinpoint the preference of the designated customer segments.
Artificial intelligence provides computers the ability to learn and improve from experience. They learn without human help and adjust. Machines learn by accessing the data and analyzing human behavior when using computers.
For example, people type different topics when searching for things on search engines or YouTube. Machines use this data to guess and predict the segment and preference of that specific internet user.
Based on this data, the computer will display advertisements. This is the concept of smart advertising. Machines will do the heavy lifting by analyzing big data of internet users and recommend advertisements.
3. Amazon
Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world, and its growth is expected to continue with an upward trajectory. Amazon has evolved from an eCommerce site to a huge advertising platform.
Shoppers find it easier to find their desired products on Amazon since sponsored products display ads on Amazon. These ads can be displayed on app placements, in a desktop, mobile browser or tablet.
Amazon continues to test new ad designs and ad placements to improve the shopping experience.
The use of artificial intelligence improves Amazon ad placements. The ads are relevant to what the customers search for. The ads are personalized, leading to increased impressions, clicks, and sales.
There are also other advertising alternatives that advertisers should look out for in 2019:
Bing Ads that display product stock availability in nearby stores. Facebook advertisements personalized for different users.
Pinterest allows users to buy from a product pin.
Local catalog Google ads feature that displays pricing in a simple mobile layout and in-store availability.
4. Use of Videos is one of the latest PPC Trends
Video marketing dominated in 2018 and will continue to be more prominent in 2019. Video is a powerful marketing tool to publicize products and services on the internet.
Display ads tend to get more clicks than text ads. People will only buy when they see what they are getting.
Video ads offer aesthetic appeal and business reach. The following stats prove how videos are compelling:
More than 8 million videos are watched daily on Facebook.
96% of clients find it easy to use videos when making their decisions on with products to purchase.
60% of consumers find companies that provide video content trustworthily.
Sponsored videos on Instagram get three times more comments than sponsored photos.
Video advertising has the potential to reach a wider audience. Short videos with relevant and valuable information grab the attention of the audience. Social media platforms increase the reach of videos because users share them with their friends.
Videos are powerful marketing tools, but the challenge is identifying the right audience. Displaying videos to the right audience will increase their reach and performance of the paid ads.
5. Science of Marketing Funnel
Marketers interact with their audiences using various channels in the different stages of the buying cycle. Each channel is significant and produces different results. It is essential for marketers to prioritize the channels based on their impact.
For example, a customer can view and engage with a video published on YouTube. The same customer can also see the ad on Google, clicked, visited the site, and made a purchase. It can be difficult for a marketer to measure the effectiveness of each channel in such a scenario.
A good attribution model is crucial in measuring the effectiveness of the campaigns. The results are useful in prioritizing the different marketing channels. More resources should be spent on the high performing channels to improve the results of the marketing campaign.
Bottom Line
The business environment is rapidly changing, and marketers have to keep up with these PPC trends.
The growth of the internet offers more opportunities for marketers. They can exploit machine learning to develop smart advertisements.
It is also evident that eCommerce sites are slowly replacing search engines. Customers are increasingly searching for their desired products in eCommerce sites than Google.
It is significant for marketers to have and utilize this information. It separates the best search marketers from the average. The best search marketers will develop more customized ads that will provide great impressions, clicks, and site visits driving up the sales.
Please explore our blog to find out more insightful information about upcoming PPC trends for 2019.
Pay-Per-Click advertising is probably the most efficient way to draw attention to your website, your products, and your social media posts. There is a lot of fuss about how PPC is not a long-term marketing solution, but the biggest reason for this misconception is because of the sheer weight of PPC mistakes that people are making.
Try to remember that the world’s most common oxymoron is “common sense,” since common sense is both rare and typically wrong. Just because something seems to make sense vis-a-vis PPC, it doesn’t make it true. For example, the biggest budget doesn’t always win, the best advertisement doesn’t gather the most attention, and there is no way to predict which ads and keywords will generate the most success.
1. One of The Most Common PPC Mistakes
Trying to attract large numbers very quickly is probably one of the biggest and common PPC mistakes.
It may be frustrating if you have time-sensitive content that is not being read, but even those with massive budgets have trouble generating “many” meaningful clicks quickly.
You can attract clicks within ten minutes of posting your advertisement but getting “many” clicks quickly requires a big budget, lots of affiliate advertising platforms, and a lot of luck.
2. Believing Those Gosh-Darn Affiliate Advertising Tools
Jump onto something simple like Google Ads, and enter a bunch of keywords into your advertisement. Notice how many of them say, “low search volume.” If that is the case, how come some of them get clicks, and how come those clicks are most likely to convert?
The tools that come with your affiliate marketing platform are there to make you spend more. They want you to use the most contested keywords so that you pay more.
In addition, do not forget that affiliate advertising tools run on the algorithm that is set by the platform, which includes any priorities the platform has that do not coincide with your priorities. Plus, they are using historical data that doesn’t account for sudden shifts or even gradual linear shifts in keyword and spending trends.
3. Thinking That PPC Helps SEO
You may have read the many studies that say SEO is not enough, but the associated notion that PPC helps SEO is slightly askew.
If your PPC campaign makes your content more popular, then it may help your search engine ranking, but the two matters are only loosely related. A little like if you take a bus to work or a car to work, then your legs may not ache as much when you get home.
4. Misunderstanding Negative Keywords
If you want to avoid PPC mistakes, then start slow, learn from what occurs, and then change very slowly without fear of going back on yourself if something doesn’t seem to work the way it should.
Negative keywords are like the noisy toy you give to your kid at Christmas and regret it by Boxing Day. Negative keywords are the sort of toy you wish some PPC campaigners didn’t have access to.
There are plenty of unsuitable keyword variations that seem correct, and people are entering them into their negative keyword section and thinking they are honing their campaign when what they are really doing is limiting it.
5. Not Using A Landing Page
Forget the other PPC tips you have read, here is how PPC works. The advertisement is a question. At its very core, it generates a question. It puts a question in the mind of the user, no matter how subtle. That question is what motivates a click. The landing page needs to offer an answer.
Let’s say you are selling a car. People may be sold by the ad without clicking. The only reason people click is that they have a question. They may wonder if the listed price is for real, or if the car really has a roll cage, or they may wonder if the car will fit three kids in the back seat.
The landing page is there to answer the many different questions that may have attracted the click. Simply linking to a product page or a home page may result in said question being unanswered, which results in a bounce.
6. Using Phone Numbers
This mistake doesn’t apply to all forms of affiliate marketing, but there are many cases where phone numbers are simply wasted ad space.
Some marketers think they can avoid paying for clicks if people see the ad and then call the number, but study after study seems to prove that nobody calls the numbers they see on affiliate adverts. People will instead click the ad or a link on Google to get the number.
There are only a minority of cases where people will call the numbers they see listed on affiliate ads, and it is usually because they recognize the freephone number from a TV jingle.
7. Misunderstanding Ad Extensions
One of the benefits of PPC advertising is that you also get to spread a bit of your brand message too, and ad extensions may help you do just that. However, the assumption that ad extensions are vital (or even needed) is one of the many PPC mistakes to avoid.
There are times when they damage the value of your advertisement. Such as if your ad says, “Find Out Where Festival Number 5 Is Going to Be Held” and then the extension gives the location as Worcester.
The Biggest PPC Mistakes
There are plenty of PPC mistakes you can make, but the most common, obvious and dumb is not learning from your mistakes. There are still people out there who are generating hundreds of clicks per month with a conversion rate of a fraction of a percent. Committing the most common PPC mistakes is forgivable but sticking with it and failing to adapt is unforgivable.
If you are really having a hard time getting your PPC campaign to turn a reasonable return, then give August Infotech a chance to turn things around. What makes them different is the massive team they have and the sheer weight of staff hours they can invest in a project. If you want results, then there are very few who can offer them so consistently.
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