Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns can be extremely effective in driving traffic to your website or landing pages. When setup and managed correctly, they should result in conversions—new leads and more sales. Unfortunately, this profitable scenario doesn’t always hold true. If your PPC campaigns are not making a significant difference in lead generation and closing sales, start looking for the reason behind the poor performance.
It is important to understand the keys to gaining the best ROI on your PPC campaigns. There are several keys that relate to the ads themselves and then additional factors related to the final destination after someone has clicked on the ad.
Keyword Selection
The first and crucial step in creating your PPC campaigns is the selection of your target keywords. Selecting the most popular keywords for your industry and location may sound like a sound strategy, but it seldom is. The more popular the keyword, the tougher the competition and the more you’ll pay for each click. If you want your ad to be seen without spending an unreasonable amount per click, shoot for keywords that have lower pricing but still generate traffic each month.
Negative Keywords
Businesses too often neglect this critical piece in their PPC strategy. By listing keywords that might be used in connection with your target keywords, but draw the wrong type of traffic as keywords to be excluded, you can decrease the number of costly clicks that quickly bounce off your page.
Clickable Ads
Just like any other type of advertising, your PPC search ads need to grab the attention of the individual. You are extremely limited in the text space available. It is important to make every word count in attracting the clicks of searchers.
The Crucial Web Page Sales Funnel
Once someone clicks your ad, that click takes them to your website or a landing page. To turn that click into a conversion, two factors can be either a negative or a positive influence—an attractive and user-friendly design and well-written content.
Design
Within milliseconds, the colors, layout and general feel to a website communicate a message to the person who views it. What does your website design communicate? Does it communicate energy or calm? Do the layout and fonts used say professional or amateur?
Content
What about the words themselves? Can a reader quickly and easily scan the page to find the information they want, or will they be overwhelmed with long paragraphs of detailed information?
A review of all these factors can help you better manage your PPC campaign and improve the ROI for your advertising dollars.