Knowhow: Click Thinking | Avoiding the dangers of pay-per-click advertising
Imagine the power of putting your business in the path of consumers at the exact point they intend to purchase the type of product or service that your business provides.
The illustrious appeal of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is that it can do just that, and yet, “pay” you will if your business has overlooked the potential dangers and pitfalls of running to set up an account without fully understanding how PPC advertising works.
First, the lure of PPC is that it seems easy enough and you can spend as little money as you’d like.
Next, it appears that once you set up your account, it’s plug and play! You can just sit back with your coffee and watch the clicks to your web site come rolling in as you max out your budget each day and wait for the rise in sales that will blow your boss away.
In reality, for most novice users, you are about to spend — and likely waste — thousands of dollars maniacally bidding on keywords that you discovered from an infinite abyss of terms, without any strategy wrapped around how you will organize your keywords, continuously update your campaign, and measure results.
Here is how to avoid wasting your money.
Keyword Control
First, keyword research is key. Major business empires have already been built on it and for small businesses it can be expensive to compete with million dollar ad budgets. Think more targeted and focus specifically on the keywords that bring actual visitors to your web site. The easiest way to do this is to sign up for a free Google Analytics account and start monitoring the keywords that consumers are already using to find your business.
Building Blocks
Next, take those keywords and build on them. Google has a free keyword tool available, however, the caveat is that the same tool is available to everyone else and you can easily fall into the expensive trap of bidding on highly competitive keywords. Alternatively, WordStream (www.wordstream.com), a Boston-based company, also offers free keyword tools including the “keyword niche finder” and “keyword grouper.”
The grouping of keywords is also important in that tightly aligned keyword groups are rewarded with better placement on search engine results pages.
Ideally, you would have a small group of keywords aligned with text ads and a landing page containing many of the same keywords. Not only will a search engine such as Google reward you for this practice with better placement and less expensive bids, the tightly knit groups lead to more qualified clicks to your web site which ultimately leads to increased conversions.
Monitor and Manage
Finally, it’s crucial to continuously monitor and measure your campaign results. PPC is far from a plug and play operation. You must always be monitoring your traffic, uncovering new keyword phrases, filtering out keywords that have led to irrelevant clicks and testing out new ad groups and text ads.
Reaching your consumers at the point of purchase can happen with PPC if you just spend some time strategizing before you log in to that Google AdWords account. n
Kerri Martinek is the founder and marketing consultant at Small Pond Marketing in Marlborough. She can be reached at kmartinek@smallpondmarketing.com.
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