Top 5 PPC Pitfalls
I just read a great article on Pay Per Click in the Multichannel Merchant about the top 5 things marketers get wrong in PPC campaigns… thought you would find this interesting – especially if you attended our Google AdWords Webinar. If you missed this Webinar, just view our on-demand library to get the basics on starting your own PPC campaign.
Check-out these 5 pitfalls to help you to…
- drive qualified prospects to your site
- improve click-through rates
- be more strategic about your bidding
- lower your costs-per-click
Questions to Get Your Paid Search Campaign Started Right
I’ve run into a number of clients who really don’t understand where to start when it comes to generating targeted leads through paid search. The more I thought about it, I decided it would be helpful to provide some guidelines for clients to gain a basic understanding of things you need to think about to run a successful online lead generation campaign.
I asked Joe Ford, our strategic partner from NetVantage Marketing, to pull together a few of the basic things you need to think about. He actually came up with several items for you to evaluate. Here are Joe’s thoughts:
Like any marketing initiative, it is always important that your online marketing campaign get off to a good start. The pre-launch work that goes into a campaign can pay large dividends, and it can also save a lot money and headaches in the long run.
The following is a set of questions that can serve as a checklist when you’re looking to get a paid search campaign off the ground. These are broad questions, in many cases you will want to dig deeper to properly investigate the value points of each area depending on the campaign objectives. You should be getting asked similar questions by your online marketing firm, or asking yourself these questions if managing your campaigns in-house.
1. What is the overall background and mission of the company?
2. What are the goals of your online campaign in relation to:
a. Brand positioning
b. Building awareness
c. Increasing leads
d. Increasing revenue via direct sales/ecommerce
e. Are there any offline/traditional campaign efforts that should be coordinated with the paid search campaign?
3. Has there been past work done in the online marketing arena? If so, what were the metrics for success, and is there data that we can use to investigate?
4. Has there been web analytics in place to detail the performance of the current website?
5. How long has the website been in its current state? If there has been current changes, was the results tracked through web analytics?
6. Is there a greater emphasis on certain products or services than others? Should we be marketing and driving traffic to certain products and services that are better sellers or represent higher margin?
7. What is the target audience profile, and what are the different personas throughout the buying cycle (this can have a profound effect on keyword selection)? Are there any new audiences that we are trying to target with this campaign?
8. Either from current web traffic reports, or from a qualitative business standpoint, what are the keywords that your target audiences are utilizing to find your site?
9. What are the initial keywords that you feel you want to be ranked highly on for your business?
10. Are there any online channels that you deem necessary to be placed on?
11. What is the testing strategy? What variables will be evaluated, and what is the cause/effect frequency that you or your firm has in place. (This will be especially important early on in your campaign)
These examples represent a basic foundation of questions to gain the right information to form a strong campaign that hits target audiences and meets your online marketing goals. As you can see, there is a combination of qualitative and quantitative information that needs to be gathered. Keep in mind that these initiatives should be treated with the same processes and standards as any marketing campaign you conduct.
As you can imagine, starting a pay per click campaign without answering these above questions can lead to major trouble and a lot of reactive work post campaign launch. It is important that this foundation is created as comprehensively as possible. This will allow your testing platform and refinement strategy to have the best chance for success!
