Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising is a valuable tool that can quickly help get your small business in front of potential customers. The good news is that, whilst it may seem a little daunting at first, PPC is not as difficult as it looks.
Your small business may have more budget constraints than bigger companies, once you get the strategy right, it can deliver significant results.
Here we take a closer look at the steps you need to take to make PPC work for your small business:
1. Set Your Budget
A key decision is how much you are going to spend. PPC services generally allow you to control your budget fairly tightly. You can, for instance, decide to spend a certain amount every day and you can set the maximum cost per click that you want to pay so it’s relatively easy to stay on budget.
Our advice is to start small and optimise your campaign before you start increasing your spend. Spending more doesn’t always translate into more conversions.
2. Keyword Choice
The most important part of pay per click advertising is keyword choice. These will determine whether your ad shows up on someone’s search as well as how much you are likely to pay for each click. Basically, you bid for keywords along with other businesses. Popular keywords cost more than those which are a bit more obscure so making savvy choices is imperative if you want value for money.
You need to do keyword research and look for keywords that have a good volume of monthly searches and which are competitively priced. There are, fortunately, a number of keyword creation tools online which you can use to help with this, including Google’s Keyword Planner.
When you are bidding on keywords, it’s important to bear in mind the return on investment (ROI) you are trying to achieve. Just because someone clicks on your advert, it doesn’t mean they will be converted into a customer. In fact, it may take 10 or even a hundred clicks on your advert before your product or service is bought. You need to factor this in when considering which keywords to purchase.
One tip that can help bring the cost per click down is if you attach your location to the keyword selection, especially if you are looking to keep your client base local.
As an example, if you run a digital marketing agency in Salisbury, it is highly likely that bidding on the search term ‘digital marketing’ will cost more per click than a search for ‘digital marketing Salisbury’.
3. Creating Your Ads
Small businesses often spend a lot of time choosing the right low-cost keywords but then don’t devote enough time to their ad development. There are certain things you need ensure you do:
- Include your keyword in the ad title so that it is fairly prominent. If you run a plumbing company and offer emergency plumbing, it is fairly clear that if someone is using the search term ‘emergency plumber’ they need someone quickly. If your advert however was more generic and just mentioned ‘plumbing services’ and two other competitors adverts said ‘24/7 Emergency Plumber’ then their ads are more likely to be clicked on, and not yours.
- The more you can personalise your ad for your audience, the better. If you have different segments for your audience, changing the wording can make a big difference.
You have a small amount of text to build your ad so you have to be clear about what you want to say and include a strong call to action.
Google’s Ad Builder is one of many tools you can find online to help create your marketing content.
4. Testing Your Ads
Compared to other marketing choices such as social media and search engine optimisation (SEO), pay per click advertising allows you to see results quickly. This means you can see which keywords and adverts are working and which are not.
Measuring performance gives you the opportunity to then change your ad copy or the demographics you are targeting. Small tweaks here and there can make a significant difference. It’s all about optimisation and getting the best return for the money that you are putting in. Whilst you should give a campaign time to work, don’t be afraid to experiment and change things up.
If you need some help setting up your PPC account, Blue Bee can assist. Our digital marketing team have over 15 years’ experience and can create a perfect set up for you.