Looking to up your PPC game? Here’s how you can get more leverage.
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1. Use PPC networks other than Google and Facebook
Google and Facebook are the top PPC ad platforms, but there are seven other PPC networks that will send traffic to your site. Those seven networks are:
- Yahoo!
- Bing
- YouTube
- Taboola
These seven networks are often overlooked, but are powerful tools to add to your digital marketing toolbox.
Being overlooked by many marketers makes these PPC ad networks less competitive. They’re also less expensive. If you’re serious about your business, consider advertising on at least three of these alternative networks.
Your customers don’t just hang out on Facebook and Google. You can find customers just about anywhere, so why not take advantage of PPC spaces with less competition?
2. Revisit your target audience
Not reaching the target audience is one of the biggest reasons PPC ads fail. If your ads aren’t performing as well as you’d like, revisit your target audience. First, make sure your ads are reaching your intended audience on your chosen platforms. If they are, it’s time to reassess your audience.
If you chose your target market randomly, without doing market research, you might be advertising to the wrong demographics. It’s not easy to identify your market by brainstorming. Do some market research and then revamp your demographics and see how your results improve.
3. Optimize your landing pages
Your landing pages are the most important part of your PPC ad campaign. The most irresistible ads will fail if your landing pages don’t convert.
If you’re getting clicks, but no sales and sign-ups, your landing pages might be the culprit. Your landing page should be an exact match to your ad so users don’t feel a disconnect after clicking.
To improve your landing pages, check out this guide from Wordstream for some valuable advice, including how to use a honeypot to filter out spam.
4. Hire a copywriter to write your ads
If you’ve never hired a copywriter to write your PPC ads, you’d be surprised at the difference it will make. On the surface, it might seem pointless to hire someone to write ads when there isn’t much to write in the first place. However, that’s exactly why you need a professional copywriter.
Your ad copy is more important when you have less space. It’s not easy to pack a large punch into a small number of words. Sure, you can write ad copy that fits into the right amount of characters, but it won’t necessarily be effective.
Professional copywriters know how to write effective copy, even when that copy needs to be short. Here’s an example of the difference:
Headline #1:
“Stream unlimited music to all of your devices for $5.99/month.”
Headline #2:
“Sign up for unlimited streaming music for just $5.99/month.”
Both headlines are direct and show a good deal. However, the first headline example will get the most clicks.
Copywriters focus on features more than benefits
It’s easy to see the difference between the two headlines, but it’s not as easy to identify why they’re different. The difference is that headline #1 focuses on benefits, while headline #2 focuses on features.
Features describe what a product does, while benefits tell people how the product will solve their problem. When you’re not a professional copywriter, it’s easy to tell people about features and skip the benefits. However, people respond better to benefits.
Copywriters are trained to identify the benefits that appeal to a target market and then condense the copy into the appropriate length for a given PPC ad platform.
5. Hire a professional PPC advertising company
Running PPC ad campaigns is a full-time job. Most DIY marketers can get by on their own until they start running PPC ads. Most marketing strategies can be learned fairly well online, but PPC ads are different.
On your own, you can achieve a decent level of success. However, a professional marketing agency will skyrocket your results. Professional marketers have the experience of playing the game on a high level.
If you’re running your own campaign, you’re not getting results, and you’re not sure what you’re doing wrong, a marketing agency can help.
Hiring a full-service marketing agency will also align your PPC ad campaign with the rest of your marketing efforts to create one seamless overall strategy.
PPC ads are essential to your marketing strategy
PPC ads are an essential component of your marketing strategy. Everyone dreams of generating massive amounts of traffic, but few know that PPC ads play a significant role. You can do SEO all day long, but at the end of the day, you need a PPC marketing campaign to drive that kind of traffic to your site.
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