Three PPC Tips to Improve Ad Campaigns

 

 The world of pay per click marketing is a lot different than other offline and online advertising methods. By using pay per click marketing you are actually “paying per click”. Now think about it… how easy is it for you to click on a search engine listing or even a banner ad? Your simple click may be nothing to you, but it is costing someone else money. That is the mentality you need to have when creating your ad campaigns, so you can understand how important it is to create a winning campaign that targets the right audience. Let’s cover a few of the basics that you must understand and implement to create a winning pay per click campaign. Targeting the Right Audience Just like having a store on a busy street, only interested customers will come inside. The difference between having an offline business and an online business, is that you can actually target your audience directly. How many wasted eye balls are looking at billboards and television commercials that are being shown to a general audience? Make sure you online ad campaign isn’t built the same way. As search engines and social networks continue to improve their technology and ad serving, more options are becoming available for targeting your ads. Search engine advertising through Google, Yahoo and Bing will allow you to create ad campaigns that target to specific countries, web sites and even allow you to do day parting, which allows you to start and stop your ad campaign during different times of the day. Social networking sites like Facebook, have an even more advanced ad tracking system that allows you to target your audience based on full demographics, location and even interests. When creating a new pay per click campaign, make sure you take the time to build your campaigns around difference audiences and not just have your advertising showing to a broad audience. Landing Page that Converts You landing page is the life line of your ad campaign. You can target the best traffic in the world, but if you are sending them to a landing page that is a disaster, your results will be the same. It’s extremely important for you to split test your landing page and continually make changes to see what improves your over all conversions. It’s also important to make sure that your landing page generates a high Quality Score, or you will end up paying more per click than other higher quality advertisers with better landing pages. The best way to build your landing pages is to build around your audience. As I mentioned earlier in the targeting section, you want to build ad campaigns that target to small groups, such as women versus men. Make sure you do the same thing with your landing pages. Will a male click on the same advertisement a woman clicks on? This is the type of testing you will need to track. Study Your Competition As the search engines and ad tracking systems continue to evolve, so will the tools we use for building and tracking ad campaigns. With that said, you can now “spy” on your competition and see how their campaigns are being built and what ad copy they are using. You won’t be able to see the specifics of their ad campaigns, but you will be able to get enough information to get an idea of what is working. It is not recommended that you copy these campaigns, as there is a lot of back end data you will not see. Instead of using services that provide this information, use them as a resource and as inspiration for new ad campaigns. Going Live With Your New PPC Campaign Now that you have a few tips for improving your next pay per click campaign, make sure you take the time to implement them. It’s way too easy to throw up an ad campaign and just hope for the best. The difference between finding success in online marketing and not, is the ability to stay driven and continually focus on improving your existing ad campaigns.