Marketing in the digital world has become so complex, every penny spent needs to be boxed and accountable for. Mind me saying, with the creaking buzz around organic traffic dangling everywhere, the pitfalls of doing it wrong lurks in the shadows.
Mostly encountered when you outsource it, or trade quality for short-term benefits. Every entrepreneur looks out for a sage who can take their business to the elite group, but never asks the question, How well he knows the niche market and the business I run. Most so-called digital sages are still dopey when hammered with a single concept, “Persona”. The only mantra they utter is “keyword & traffic”.
My fellow comrade, let me demystify. “Traffic is insignificant if it doesn’t add value to your business”. Often numbers are just figures, used to contemplate a failed strategy, The right one will always have a constructive impact on your business.
During the Inception stage, you always have a labyrinth of options, optimism for gigantic sales. You fantasize about the rich gory you are heading towards, mesmerizing a steady cruise before you leave the ground. Down the line, it all falls apart, exactly when the revenue slips. One such marketing channel is Google’s PPC (Pay Per Click), PPC can be a frustrating road if not mastered reasonably.
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Is Google the Most Effective Marketing Channel
The sole objective of Google to provide its end users the best possible user experience has transformed it into a leading search interface. Whether it’s an opinion or a query, the millennials expect Google to provide a genuine answer. As the saying goes, Never engage too much with your enemy, then he adapts to your strategies. Google too follows the same principle, the more people interact with a search interface, the more it learns about the user, making it more user-friendly.
Google provides multiple touch points for users, the search interface, display networks, social network, etc. Each channel allowing marketers to methodically attract and retain customers. In the digital world, it becomes a basic necessity to maintain a competent digital presence. Where people can acknowledge your digital presence and interact with your business.
Every entity needs to understand their business requirements, marketing objective, and who their target customers are. Once this part is clearly penned, easier it gets to take action. Google provides everything you need to target your target audience. When targeted and positioned properly the marketing strategy on Google can give you the result you anticipate. Map your marketing objective, and always be brave enough to revise and iterate your marketing strategy.
What is PPC Campaign?
PPC campaigns are one of the most effective campaigns ever developed. When SEO aids in getting organic traffic, PPC provides an opportunity to buy instant and relevant traffic. This advertising model enables a business entity to target specific users who interact with Google’s search interface. Yes, as you all know it all starts with a keyword.
Before you leap into the AdWords interface, spend some time to understand how the tool works. Invest the right time, plan, and then execute. Keep in mind that every click is going to cost you, believe me, I have come across businesses that have spent more than 15L, and failed to recover to the least 10% of what they have invested. Don’t fall for it, compete for results. Find what are the recommended strategies, know how to execute them, optimize, and analyze to get the best results, etc.
Understand the Business Model and Learn your Target Audience
If you don’t have the expertise to do online marketing, most likely you will outsource the marketing activity. Finding the right advertising partner plays a crucial role in determining the success of digital marketing. Educate and empower your marketing partner, so that they are well adept with your business model and knows who to target. If the effort is not made to learn and identify, then there are a feeble chance that your digital marketing plan/strategy will meet your required objective.
Again, knowing your customers is crucial. Trust me on this. I have worked with clients who told me any sentient could be their customer. With a slight propensity to their comment, Example: If your client is selling an anti-pollution mask, then their goal is to sell the value proposition, and everyone gets the need to wear one, with rising air quality index, air pollution masks become a must to have product.
If your PPC strategy is focused to cater the whole, rather curated to a niche segment comprising the decision-makers, then you will most likely end up spending a large sum. The ideal target customers for this category would be, two-wheeler commuters, people with lung disease COPD, asthma patients, etc. Pondering how I know, I always start with a persona.
Analyze your Pre Historic Data
We live in an era where data is the prized possession, yet we fail to analyze it. When you encounter clients who say they had a bad experience tagging with a certain digital agency, since the opportunity, you have a myriad of data at your disposal. Investing the right time will help identify what has gone wrong, what can be improved, and what might have been the right approach.
Example: One of my clients is an eCommerce platform provider. The first thing I did when I started framing my PPC campaign is to analyze both landing pages and the prehistoric data. When the data was properly structured and analyzed it helped me to map certain patterns. Keywords that falls into the ad group category “Online Stores”, are giving me better conversion compared to keywords that fall in the ad group category “eCommerce Stores”. Also found that the marketing strategy is not hyper-optimized in terms of conversion, contrary they are more palpable for branding.
The interaction rate on weekends seems a bit higher, which clearly shows it’s important, that I need to focus a little more on weekends. The demography clearly shows that a majority of my visitors falls in the age group of 18-24. So, I pulled over and thought of creating a student plan. This is not the final verdict, need to keep monitoring and optimizing.
Note: Structure your data, compare it with information collated from multiple sources. You could get immense information when analyzed properly. Never ever forget to interact with your sales/ support team they could provide valuable information. They are the ones who directly contact the end-user.
Create a Coherent strategy
When you are done analyzing the data, you will be able to create a mental map of how to proceed with the project.
Understand, Brainstorm, Revitalize:- Your marketing team should have a clear understanding of where the project is, what they want to achieve and how often they need to revise the PPC Strategy (other than monitoring it on a regular basis). Your marketing strategy differs based on the kind of project you handle and the expected end objective.
Structure Your PPC Campaign
Mediocre digital marketers fail to structure their online campaigns effectively. It’s a universal fact that a streamlined, well-oiled machine gives you a better result. Keywords are the backbone of PPC, but there are a plethora of factors that determine your campaign effectiveness.
1. Selecting the right keyword:
1. Since the keyword is the foundation it’s important that we create a keyword matrix and, then select keywords from the decision stage of buyers funnel (Ideal, can also try a combination). Also, consider keywords that have lesser bid value, and can promise you a better ROI. Run campaigns for a specific span and filter those keywords that could give you better results.
2. Structure your PPC campaign:-
i) Campaign
ii) AdGroup
iii) Ads, Ads Extension
iv) Landing Page
v) Keywords
Let me take you through this activity. For now, consider that your client is an eCommerce platform provider and a keyword matrix is created after identifying the target customers’ pain points.
Let’s take one primary keyword and create a PPC campaign around it.
Structuring and systematically segregating keywords with campaigns will help increase the relevancy of the ad and makes it more succinct in terms of tracking and analysis.
Add Negative Keywords to your PPC Campaigns
Negative keywords are keywords that could have a negative impact on your pay per click strategy. By adding more negative keywords you can trim down the probability of your ads, to be shown for subjects that don’t resonate the context of your campaign.
Example: Consider you are using broad match modifier as your keyword match type. The keyword being, “ +buy +eCommerce +website”. There is a high probability that the ad created for, the keyword (+buy +eCommerce +website), can be shown for search queries similar to “buy products from eCommerce websites”. Which does not have any relevance to what an eCommerce platform provider is? Adding a negative keyword like “buy products” could restrict Google from showing your ad for search queries that contain “buy products” in it.
Customize your Dashboard
Most analytical interfaces provide an option to hyper-personalize the dashboard based on your requirements. Once the fields are set up, it becomes easier to monitor the campaign performance.
1. Explore the options you have in AdWords interface
2. Create goals that genuinely add value to the marketing activity
3. Customize it based on your requirement.
Parting Notes:-
Hope now you get a glimpse of how to optimize a PPC campaign. If you are starting afresh online, then invest the right time to learn what are the best practices. Never ever compromise just to one marketing channel, explore the opportunities and slowly expand. The best strategy is to go for a holistic approach and give your business entity a chance to get discovered on all marketing channels.
