Effective Pay-Per-Click Advertising Practices

The most effective marketing strategies tend to be the ones that take multiple angles and platforms into consideration. Just as a good general doesn’t just attack from one front, a good digital marketer doesn’t rely on one platform to get traffic to a website. There are loads of options for digital advertising space and knowing the best practices to employ with pay-per-click platforms can ensure that your marketing budget is used effectively. At FirstPage Marketing, we have a long history using various pay-per-click advertising systems and we’ve picked up some strategies along the way that help us get the most out of these platforms for our clients.

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Tips for Effective Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Whether you are looking at getting into display ads, search ads, or social media ads, pay-per-click advertising is a great way to bring in plenty of website traffic in a short amount of time; however, without the right practices, it is possible to burn money on inflated click costs or wasted clicks. Some tips to make sure you make the most of your PPC campaigns include:

Research Click Bids

Most PPC advertising platforms allow you to set your maximum bid amount so that you never pay more than you want to for a click. If you set this too high, you will wind up paying more than you might need to. If you set the bid too low, your ads won’t show up and you’ll get less qualified leads. When possible, research what a good click bid might be for your industry. Because search engines don’t publish this information, in many cases this will mean talking to a digital marketer to lean on their expertise.

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Improve Quality Scores

There are a few factors that PPC platforms consider when determining which ads to show to any given user. The click bid amount is important, but it is possible to get more with a lower budget by improving the ad campaign’s quality score. The quality score of an ad is an indicator of how much value it has to a viewer. PPC systems will often prioritize ads with higher quality scores over higher click bids, meaning you can get often get more by maintaining an ad well than you can out of pouring more money into clicks.

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Augment with SEO

Search ads are a major sector of pay-per-click, and these ads take a website’s SEO value into account when determining quality scores. Engaging in SEO work at the same time as working on search ads can make a big difference in the quality of the clicks a website gets. On top of that, if a website shows up multiple times on a search results page in Google or Bing, it becomes much more likely that a viewer will click on either the ad or organic listing.

Look at User Intent

It is vital to target the right users with PPC ads. If you are using search ads, this means picking the right keywords. With graphic ads (such as display or social media ads) this means being meticulous about ad copy. Inspect your potential viewers intention with their clicks. Are they looking for somebody to meet their need right then and there, or are they just looking for information? Somebody who searches for “soccer uniforms” could be looking for design ideas for their team, information about what equipment is needed for their kid’s upcoming season, or they could be looking to find a retailer, whereas somebody searching for “soccer uniform store” or “soccer uniform for sale” is much more likely to have a user intent that matches with a retailer.

What is user intent and why does it matter?

Use Landing Pages When Necessary

In most cases, PPC campaigns should direct to a website’s homepage. If the homepage is well constructed and leads visitors through a company’s offering effectively, then it will usually be more effective than a dedicated landing page. In addition, people usually expect to go to a website’s homepage when they first click on a search result, so leading them somewhere else can be jarring. However, there are many cases where a landing page can be more effective at converting leads. Seasonal offerings, specific offerings or service listings, temporary deals, and more can all be great foundations for dedicated landing pages.

How do you develop a high-performance landing page?

Always Be Improving

A stagnant ad is a money pit. If you are not monitoring monthly traffic and clicks, optimizing ad copy and landing page details, and analyzing results, you might as well just shut your ad down, because it is likely to cost you more money than it brings in.

If you would like to learn more about how to make the most of your pay-per-click advertising campaigns, give the team at FirstPage Marketing a call. We’d love to help you get started with the best system for your unique needs.

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