A large pool of prospects is essential in effective marketing. All businesses are consistently looking to generate more leads quickly and looking to maximize the quality of those they find.
The larger the number of leads, the greater the likelihood of turning leads into paying clients or consumers. But, how do you build a large lead pool? Pay per click (PPC) advertising is one of the powerful methods to help you generate more leads and do so fast.
What is PPC?
PPC, pay per click advertising, is an internet marketing model where advertisers are charged a fee every time one of their ads are clicked. The most common avenues for PPC advertising are search engines. Google, being the most popular search engine on the web, provides enormous marketing potential. Advertisers are able to tap into this market by using PPC. The top links shown on a Google search are typically reserved for PPC ads.
These site owners pay Google a small fee when a user clicks on their link, hence “pay per click”. If you are a rock star with PPC, the small dollar amount you pay Google for the click is well worth the lead you have generated by having a user click through to your page. PPC is an art and must be done carefully in order to be successful. PPC is one of, if not, the most powerful form of online marketing because you are only showing your ads to search users who are looking for exactly what you are selling! Therefore, there is no need to find customers… they find you. All you need to concern yourself with is standing out from the rest of the advertisers going after the same customers you are.
The concept of PPC advertising can be confusing. Keep reading to ensure you understand how to get Pay-Per-Click Leads that matter!
How to Use PPC with Google
Google AdWords represents the most popular PPC advertising model and is the most common place to start for anyone looking to initiate a PPC advertising campaign. AdWords allows businesses to create ads that will appear above and in the right-hand sidebar of the regular Google search listing. While the process of determining which ads show up in the results is a bit complex here is a basic overview of how it works. An AdWords user puts in a bid for the amount they are willing to spend if someone clicked on their ad.
Typically the bid is referring to a specific keyword. So for example if you are selling running shoes, you might bid different for the keyword phrase “running shoes” than you would for “mens athletic shoe.” You do not pay for impressions (every time your ad is displayed). You only pay when the search user clicks on your ad. This part is pretty easy to understand and its fairly obvious that you should select the most relevant keywords based on the services or product you are trying to drive web traffic towards. Keep in mind, you need to think about keywords your customer might use as those can sometimes differ from keywords you might use to describe the product or service. For example, we commonly refer to ourselves as “website developers” but its 2-3x more common for the average customer to use the term “web designer.”
AdWords begins to get a bit confusing if we look deeper at the selection process (i.e. which ads are shown in the search results). Whenever a search using your keyword phrase is conducted, Google makes a selection from the pool of AdWords advertisers, choosing just a couple “winners” to appear in the advertising space. Those who are selectively chosen by Google are chosen as a result of a variety of factors. Some of these factors include:
- Keyword Relevance and Similarity: how close your keyword phrase matches the keyword phrase entered by the search user
- The Quality of the Landing Page: Google analyzes the page you are linking to and ranks it based on its relevancy to the keywords you are bidding on. So for example if you are bidding on “green socks” and your page is about “slow-cookers” you can probably imagine that AdWords would give you a very poor quality score for the “green socks” keyword phrase.
- The Daily Campaign Budget: You can set a daily budget for any of your campaigns. If your budget is lower than cost for placement in the search results, your ads will not show. Google bases how many times your ad is shown by your daily budget so the higher the budget, the more impressions your ads will receive as a result.
- Keyword Bid: this is the amount you are willing to pay, per click. This can be adjusted per keyword if there are particular keywords you wish to bid more or less for. You can also set one universal bid price across a group of keywords known as an AdGroup.
The selection process is the most challenging piece of the PPC advertising campaign. Make sure you are going after the most relevant keywords, that your budget and bid amount are sufficient and that the landing page you are sending visitors to is targeted, and well put together.
Note: for more information or an easy to follow video tutorial, check out Isaac Rudansky’s AdWords Tutorial created in July of 2014. Its about an hour and fifteen minutes but well put together, and its free!
Using AdWords Successfully & How to Get Pay-Per-Click Leads
No matter which Paid Search platform you explore, there are three areas to focus on when trying to start a successful PCC advertising campaign; keywords, landing page quality and your quality score.
The keywords are extremely important. This is probably the most important piece in a successful PPC advertising campaign. You should spend significant time identifying keywords, and thinking about the end-user and how they are trying to find your product or service. You should also continue to refine and add keywords after you launch your PPC ad campaign. There are many keyword tools to help you.
Your PPC key word list must be relevant.
If the words are not relevant you will be paying for clicks and traffic that will not generate you any leads. Irrelevant keywords will lead to users who click on your page and have no interest in your product/service. This is NOT what you want. Identify a list of keywords that are relevant to your site, for example “mens running shoes” instead of just “shoes,” and represent realistic words that your clients/consumers would be searching in Google to find you.
Your landing page needs to be top notch. Google evaluates the quality of your landing page when choosing you from the pool of AdWords advertisers. That being said, you need to ensure that your landing page is relevant and helpful to users. Google is end-user-focused. If your page is not going to help their users, you’re not going to be selected as an AdWords advertiser.
Your quality score represents the combination of your keyword relevance, landing page quality and your overall PPC campaign success. If you have a great quality score, you will pay less for clicks, even if your ad shows up higher on the page.
Why Choose PPC for Lead Generation
PPC advertising offers numerous benefits for lead generation. First and foremost, you are attracting users who are already interested in and looking for the product or service you offer. Additionally, you have the opportunity to see what users are searching for have the ability to change your marketing plans and goals according to their needs. This data is also highly measurable. Unlike SEO and other traditional forms of advertising you can see exactly what keywords and ads are being clicked, how much it’s costing you, and which clicks were converted into actual business. And, the most attractive element of PPC advertising; you can grow your lead pool quickly. In a matter of hours you can create an adwords campaign and start getting click traffic to your site.
So, what you waiting for? Need More Marketing Advice?
