The old way of advertising was an interruptive style like ads on the TV and radio. Other forms of interruptive advertising including billboards and flyers. These are a hit and miss. Rarely does a person spit out their dinner and grab the phone because they saw an advertisement on TV for a product that they just had to have right away.
There is still a place for that style of advertising but they can be much more effective when tied in with more strategic and targeted forms of marketing. It is hard to find anything that converts as well as targeted advertising.
Most forms of advertising including a newspaper ad in the local paper that supports a specific business sections, as well as the Yellow Pages can be modified to be super-targeted. They may go out to the masses but speak only to your market.
Are the Yellow Pages Dead?
With the rapid onset of mobile devices like the iphone and ipad, the majority of people are not looking in their Yellow Pages for information on a service provider. The Yellow Pages have made a concerted effort to be online with offering websites and such but targeted ads for Yellow Pages still work better in paper form.
The majority today are searching for local business services by going to their favourite search engine like Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Yahoo. People are typing in their search keywords to find a solution to their problem. However, having a website on the internet has its own set of drawbacks.
Here are a couple of facts.
1. Most people who search for what they want will stop looking by the time they get to the third page.
2. They will stop searching even sooner if they are doing their search on a mobile device.
This alone highlights the beauty of PPC AKA Pay Per Click advertising.
The top four listings search results page of your favorite search engine can all companies be that have PAID to be there. The bottom three as well. You can tell it’s an ad by the little word “Ad” that is at the front of the title.
What is a PPC Campaign?
The basic strategy behind a PPC campaign is to ensure the keywords you are targeting directly matches:
1. what you provide
2. what your potential client is looking for
3. the message in your ad
4. the message on the page the person lands on when they click your ad.
Many, many, people think they are selling to “anyone”. They think it is a good idea to advertise to a broad group of people. Then once the person gets to the website they just hope that something on the website or landing page will entice them enough to buy, or come to the store, or call, or whatever action you are hoping they will take. No, it does not work that way. Sure you can pay to have thousands of people click to your website and absolutely if enough people go, someone will take action. However, if you do this you will find out very quickly that broad campaigns are super EXPENSIVE and will eat through your budget faster than you could possibly anticipate.
The first part of the struggle for an effective pay per click management is to do in-depth research into the appropriate keywords for your targeted audience. Once this is done you can then design a bidding strategy. A bidding strategy can be quite complicated. Not only does Google and the others keep changing the rules and information they will give you, but the competitors will change as well. Learning how to be competent at PPC is no small feat.
Everything needs to be recorded and monitored to make ad campaigns more and more effective. You WILL spend a significant amount of money to gather information.
Write an Effective PPC Ad
The PPC ads themselves not only have to match on all four counts as indicated above, they also have to be worded in a way that makes a person WANT to click your ad enough to visit your site.
Copywriting may not be an exact science but it is a talent that you can NOT afford not to have. If you don’t have the ability to write effective ads, it is a good idea to learn how or to hire someone who can.
Take the time to prepare your PPC campaign to squeeze every bit of value out of your nickels. By following those four important guidelines your campaign has a greater chance of success.
Where to Send Your Clicks to?
Now that your ads are up and running you want to entice the click to a targeted and focused webpage. You need to make a specific page for your PPC promotion. Make certain it is keyworded to attract and keep the interest of the customer who found your advertisement by using those exact keywords.
For example:
Let’s imagine you have a lawn-care company and want to promote your business. Lawn care can mean different things to different people. Some might want mowing, or weeding. Others need trimming and edging etc.
Most people will keyword search for a particular service like “lawn mowing”. Rather than broadly advertise “Lawn care”, instead target your campaign for “Lawn Mowing”. Next ensure the website page they land on is titled and talks about your lawn mowing service. NOT the tree pruning, or the weed killing, or the hedge trimming, or the topsoil, or the… Yes, those are also important services and you can introduce them later on. You can also have several PPC campaigns super targeted for different services.
Next you can combine your PPC efforts with your social media efforts by asking for a ‘like’ on your page or other methods of building your client list.
Aside from the search engines like Bing and Google, there are other forms of PPC that aren’t quite as effective but do have their place. Things like contextual advertising for instance. This is the underlined words on people’s websites that click to other websites. These people aren’t really targeted traffic and will bring some looky-loos and raise your bounce-rates. Some forms of contextual advertising can be ok for generating traffic or for increasing awareness. Maybe you are trying to build some social proof. But as far as bringing a ‘buyer’ to your website, the chances aren’t very good.
Banner ads can be better for target markets than contextual ads. Depending on how and where you have them placed, it may be a closer target – or way off the mark. If you have done your research and placed the banner on a page similar to what you are offering in your ad, it is good. Otherwise it’s just a branding ad. Regardless, if the person didn’t click on a paid ad and found your banner using other searches, they are likely not in a buying mode.
How The Process Works.
The Ad headline draws in your prospect, the body of the ad sells the click. Simple as that. A PPC ad isn’t about selling your product or service.
Likewise, the landing page isn’t necessarily to sell them your product either. The purpose of the landing page is to sell them on taking the next desired action. They might be there buy but you certainly want them to contact you. Different companies have different needs. High ticket items often need a first contact before the sale.
If you focus on collecting the lead, you now have the contact information of an interested customer. Next, you sell them your product. There is far too much money and time wasted trying to sell a product or service in the wrong place.
If they make the move to call you, they have identified themselves as your target market. If you make them like you – chances are they will buy from you. People buy from people they like.
When you get a prospect to become a lead, don’t let them just go away and never follow up. Make sure you do follow up with email, or phone, or similar, so you can keep contact until you turn the sale.
Remember, often times when sourcing new clients, they may not know anything about you. They do want to know you and trust you so it becomes your job to make it ok for them to spend their money with you.
If you are a solid DIY business person there are some excellent resources you can use to learn how to be a very effective marketer for your chosen market.
