You might have been told that one of the most important things that you should do for your website is search engine optimization or SEO. This practice allows you to rank higher in organic SERPs, which can then drive more traffic to your website.
When done properly, SEO can help you enjoy the following benefits:
- Increased visibility
- Attract quality traffic
- Authority
- Brand awareness
There is no doubt that SEO can help your website in attracting your target audience and provide your company with more revenue. However, no matter how beneficial SEO is, you still need to put in more effort to introduce your brand to other users. One thing you can try is pay-per-click (PPC) marketing.
What Is PPC?
A great PPC advertising definition is as follows: a type of online advertising model utilized by several brands and advertisers. In this method of advertisement, companies and marketers pay every time their online ad is clicked.
To have their paid ads show on top of or before their competitors, marketers bid on keywords that they want to target. So, when a user searches for the keyword a company bid on, their paid ad has a chance of appearing on the very top of the SERP.
How to Improve Your PPC Campaigns
You might have done the ABCs of PPC, including testing your CTAs, ad copies, images, headlines, placements, and keywords. You might have even worked with your marketing team to determine a way to boost your PPC campaign, but you still cannot seem to attract enough leads and increase your conversion rate.
There is some chance that you may have missed or done something wrong while setting up your campaign. However, it is more likely that you are overlooking some strategies that are costing you your conversions. If you would like to address this problem, read on and try the following tips.
Run a Branded Campaign
Branded PPC campaigns involve including your company name and other brand elements in the keywords and terms on your ads. You might think that this is not important since you probably already rank for those words. However, running a branded campaign can prevent your competitors from bidding on your brand name and getting the clicks, impressions, and conversions meant for your company.
Remember that paid ads always appear before organic search results. This means that even if you are organically ranking for your branded terms and keywords, it does not necessarily imply that users see your website at the top of SERPs.
Individuals who search for your company name and other branded terms will still see paid ads that bid for those words. So, if you neglect to bid on your branded keywords, you might find yourself being beaten by your competitors who do.
To start a branded campaign, you can analyze your company’s search terms report and look for popular queries that include your company name or other brand terms. Then, input each query in a search engine and see if any of your paid ads appear on the SERPs.
If you do not see any of your paid ads for those branded search terms, it is time to try a new strategy. You should start by targeting your branded keywords on your paid ads and include the services or products people usually look up.
You can then work on other parts of your PPC campaign and launch it. Make sure to monitor it regularly and see how it affects your conversion rate after a few months.
Work on Your Landing Pages
Your landing page is, as its name suggests, the web page a user lands on when they click on your paid ads. It is separate from the pages a user sees when they enter your domain on the address bar, such as your Home, About, Services, and Contact Us pages.
A landing page is a standalone page made especially for marketing campaigns. Each one is usually designed to help a company achieve a certain marketing goal, including gathering leads and conversions.
To ensure that your landing pages are contributing to your marketing goals, you have to make certain that each one aligns with your paid ads. This means that if you are offering free delivery on your PPC ad, your landing page should reflect this message. Failing to do so will cause you to incur a large bounce rate and lose conversions.
You can also optimize your landing page to meet the needs of your target audience. To help you determine their needs, you must conduct an efficient digital segmentation. This process will help you learn more about the users you are trying to target and their demands.
One thing you can do to help solve your audience’s needs is to utilize the kind of language that your target audience would use in your landing pages and talk about their unique struggles that you are trying to help resolve. Creating targeted landing pages will make users feel more heard and welcome and provide them with a more personalized experience.
Invest in Mobile-Only Ads
Nowadays, almost everyone in the world owns a mobile device. According to statistics, more than six billion people worldwide own a smartphone as of 2021.
With the rise in popularity of mobile devices, more people have also started using their phones in browsing the internet and using search engines. Mobile phones have become such a convenience that people are even preferring to using them when looking for information compared to desktops and laptops.
As a marketer and/or business owner you should leverage this opportunity to promote your brand. You can do this by launching mobile-only ads.
You might be thinking that publishing mobile-specific PPC ads is counterproductive since you are targeting a limited amount of users. However, the opposite seems to be true.
When you use mobile-only ads to promote your products and services, you can target a more specific group of people, including high-intent users. These individuals are users who are already looking to buy a product or pay for a service but are still considering their choices.
According to Google, most mobile users utilize their phones and tablets when searching for information on the product that they want to buy. Additionally, the majority of these individuals made a related purchase after doing some research.
This means that if you target mobile users specifically, you can create PPC ads that appeal to people who are on the lower end of the sales funnel. If you are successful, this strategy can allow you to sell more products and services and earn more revenue.
To cater to mobile users, make sure that you use local and mobile-friendly extensions on your PPC ads. The following can help drive traffic to your site and increase your conversion rate:
- Call extensions
- Message extensions
- Location extensions
- Pricing extensions
You should also take advantage of your search impression share if you want to improve your average conversion rate. This metric is computed by taking the total impressions your ads have received and dividing it by the number of impressions they were eligible to accumulate.
You can use search impression share to assess your PPC campaigns. If you have a high-converting campaign that has a low impression share percentage, you should consider adding budget to it. Doing so will increase its impression share, making it easier for you to reach more users.
Offer Exclusive Content
Not everyone who uses search engines is looking to purchase a product or pay for a service. Some may be searching for additional information on a certain subject. If you put all your focus on the typical purchase journey (ad–landing page–purchase), you might be missing out on different types of conversion that may provide you with loyal customers.
To make sure that you are catering to all the needs of your target audience and not just their purchasing requirements, you can target keywords with lower buyer intent. You can then entice users by offering exclusive content in exchange for their email addresses. Some of the types of content you can provide are:
- Podcasts
- Ebooks
- Webinars
- Tools
Doing this will allow you to have a pool of people whom you know are interested in what you offer. When you are ready, you can go back to this list of individuals and target them for sales.
Boosting your PPC campaign’s conversion rate cannot be done simply overnight. It can take weeks and even months to see some improvements. There is also no specific technique that will magically solve all your needs and improve your conversion rate right away.
Similar to traditional PPC techniques, you will need to test various tips to find one that works for your company. So, make sure to try every strategy listed above and assess if they do anything to boost your conversion rate. You may also visit our blog for additional articles on how you can boost your PPC campaign’s conversion rate.
About the Author
Jerry Little: I’m still hoping to have a nephew named Stuart, because how fun would that be? I’m a freelance writer, and my interests range from the hottest chili in the world to the ergonomics of a good office chair.
