PPC (Pay Per Click)

PPC (Pay Per Click)

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Online paid advertising, often referred to as Pay-Per-Click (PPC), is a highly effective way to drive leads into your business. If you aren’t using online paid advertising for your lead generation efforts, you are missing opportunities that your competitors are gaining.

Online paid ads work very well when they are properly managed. With that said, we often speak with business leaders who have had negative experiences and believe that paid ads do not work.

Here are the most common reasons paid ads to fail to produce results:

Your campaigns are neglected.

Most agencies setup your campaigns in the beginning, and they do not continue to manage them on a regular basis if at all.

No split testing.

The key to success in online paid advertising is to constantly be testing. You must split test your ads to see what works and what does not.

We run ads all over the country in various industries, and we have learned through years of testing that what works in one market does not automatically work in another.

Therefore, we test our ads constantly.

Not only that, we spy on your competitors to learn what they are doing so we can outperform them.

Poor Click-Through-Rate (CTR)

Your CTR is a metric that tells us how many times people click on your ads versus the number of times it was shown. For example, if your ad appeared 100 times, and users clicked on it 3 times, your CTR will be 3%.

Your ultimate metric in online paid advertising is to watch your conversions (as long as your properly measuring conversions). And the ultimate overall metric is your bottom line revenue. But a highly valuable, but often neglected Key Performance Indicator (KPI) is your CTR.

Why?

If no one is clicking on your ads, how do you expect to gain conversions?

Improving and maintaining your CTR is a never-ending project. You should be testing your ad copy and creative work on a regular basis to see which elements yield the best results.

And once you’ve achieved a high CTR, keep testing. What works today isn’t always going to work tomorrow, so you must continue to monitor your CTR.

What is a good CTR?

This depends on your industry. But Google claims that a 2% CTR is a good number for Google Ads, and others argue anything over 1% constitutes a strong CTR for Facebook ads.

Our methodology focuses on how we can exceed industry benchmarks. For example, many Google Ads accounts in the healthcare space perform under 3% CTR, yet our account average is closer to 3.75%.

Again, the ultimate focus of paid advertising is to gain more conversions. But we show a strong correlation between a high CTR and increased conversions.

Poor Conversion Tracking

You can’t properly gauge success in your online paid advertising if you don’t properly track your results.

From our experience, most businesses are not properly tracking their digital marketing nor their traditional marketing efforts in a meaningful way. When it comes to PPC, most businesses have no idea how they are actually performing. And those who believe they are tracking their PPC performance are often incorrectly tracking results.

For example, we often find accounts are double counting their conversions because their tracking isn’t properly set up. Couple this with a lack of tracking within the business (call tracking, KPI tracking, financial tracking, etc.), and most business haven’t a clue what their marketing is doing for them.

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Under Spending

Marketing is an arms race. If you’re lucky enough to have competitors who aren’t spending money to gain visibility online, you will be able to keep your marketing spend very low while achieving results. However, this is not the case for most industries within most markets.

We often find that businesses simply fail to spend enough money to be competitive, and they effectively waste their money.

With that in mind, we caution you to avoid cheap marketing solutions. Many businesses often find that cheap marketing yields no results. Yet, spending just a little more can make all of the difference in the world.

In regard to PPC ads, consider this:

Remember that we discussed the importance of your CTR? Now, factor in where your ad places in online searches (this admittedly pertains more to Google Ads, but Facebook and other social media platforms will focus similarly on the frequency of their ad placement).

With Google Ads, you’ll want to focus on your Search Impression Share. This metric focuses on how often you show up for online searches for which you qualify.

What does that mean?

PPC platforms offer up ad placement in an auction format, and you are competing with other businesses who also want that visibility for their ads. If there are multiple bidders, you can be outmatched if your competitors are willing to pay more for ad placement.

If you have all expressed a willingness to pay a premium, however, then there will be some form of distribution amongst all bidders for ad placement. This is why it is unlikely you’ll ever see that you get a 100% Search Impression Share.

Some key points to keep in mind regarding Search Impression Share:

  • You won't qualify for every auction, and that's okay.
  • Your Search Impression Share only matters as a KPI if you haven't maxed out your budget.
  • If you are showing a high Search Impression Share, but a low CTR, then you have some work to do.
  • Google will stop showing your ads if they don't perform well. Never forget that the number one rule in digital marketing is to provide an exceptional user experience.

Your Website Isn't Performing

For the most part, a digital marketing agency’s job is to drive high-quality traffic to your website. The very best agencies understand how to optimize your website to covert above industry standards.

More often than not, we find that a business’ website simply is not optimized to convert their online paid ads.

Click Funnels and Landing Pages

Traffic begets traffic. If you are sending your traffic anywhere other than your own domain (your website), you are throwing away domain authority and costing yourself money.

Click funnels and landing pages are, at best, and outdated concept that typically only serve the agency or marketer who wants to make their job easier.

There is no value to your business to send your traffic to another domain (website). You’re either wasting the value of that traffic (whether or not it converts), or you’re building someone else’s domain by driving traffic to their website.

First and foremost: send all of your traffic to your website.

Secondly, create evergreen content aimed at a longterm SEO Strategy.

Remember that branding is a far more profitable marketing focus than lead generation over the long haul. SEO is a branding focused activity that will eventually generate high-quality leads, so to waste any traffic that can benefit your digital marketing is simply short-sighted.

User Experience

Google is the undisputed champion when it comes to search engines and paid advertising platforms. You can follow their guidelines and achieve overall success in your digital marketing.

To appease Google, you need to focus on this one thing in all aspects of your digital marketing:

Create an exceptional user experience.

Your website is the foundation of your marketing. When customers come to your website, they must get an exceptional experience. If you meet this obligation, you will not only convert more customers, but you will also be rewarded with greater online visibility.

Remember, traffic begets traffic.

Too often, we find websites are not secure, they are not optimized, they lack content, and/or they simply fail to provide a good user experience.

If your online ads are failing to produce results, take a look at your website and compare it against similar sites in various markets.

  • What are others doing that you should be doing?
  • What have your customers said to you about your website that they felt should be improved?
  • What has your team suggested you do to improve your website?

It’s important to understand the different functions within marketing and what role they play in your short term and long-term planning.

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