Pay-Per-Click ads or paid search is part of a well rounded digital marketing strategy. To explain the top 5 things to keep in mind when putting together a Pay-Per-Click campaign, here is a guest blog post by Dan Slagen, Senior Marketing Manager at Sokolove Law. Dan has over 7 years experience in digital marketing, with an emphasis on paid search strategies. He has graciously accepted the invitation to share with us what all marketers and small businesses need to know about using paid search.
Be Meticulous When Building New Accounts – Whether you are building a campaign with one million keywords or one hundred, be methodical during the build. Accounts can become overwhelming for a PPC manager to control very easily. For instance, if you decide that geo-targeting by state is the best approach, consider that you’ve just increased the size of the account by 50 times (just imagine if you target by city/zip code). Make sure to build concise ad groups, properly labeled and using appropriate messaging. Most importantly though, talk (this does not mean email) on a consistent basis with the PPC manager, to understand how the account is being monitored, tested and optimized to ensure that everyone is in agreement with best practices.
Pull Strategy – The beautiful thing about search marketing is that your target market comes to you all day, every day. It’s your job, through effective keyword selection and ad copy messaging to gain the attention of the user and engender clicks. Keep in mind that search is a pull strategy, and users most likely performed a search due to reading a news article, talking to their friends or seeing an advertisement across traditional or other types of online media which is important to consider when writing creative.
Test, Test, Test – An essential aspect of any search campaign is testing. Given how user-friendly Google/Bing ad platforms are for SEM managers, new keywords, ad copy, day parting, time of day bidding tests or any other test you can conjure up can be tested and evaluated almost instantaneously. The problem that managers run into is testing too much, without retaining the post-mortem knowledge that should be beneficial to future endeavors. Before deciding to test, ask yourself what you want to test and more importantly, why? On a weekly basis, look to conceptualize various tests that you want to run, include time for post-test analysis and do not stray from the testing schedule!
Blue Collar Work – Search is, and always will be, about dedicated optimization. Whether using a bid management tool or not, campaigns that are optimized on a planned and structured basis will succeed. Nine times out of ten, when a campaign is under-performing, a simple analysis of performance over the past four weeks will show inconsistencies and areas of improvement. Evaluations will show that specific keywords are accounting for too high of a percentage of total campaign spend, ad copy needs to be updated, day parting/day of the week bidding needs to be implemented or that landing page experiences need to be enhanced.
Fluidity – Search adheres to the basic principles of marketing, and should be treated with the same precision and tactics that traditional marketing utilizes. When putting together search campaigns, ensure that messaging from keyword, to ad copy, to landing page experience is consistent with the users experience. For instance, if a user searches for the term “tax lawyer” don’t show ads and have landing page experiences promoting “tax attorneys”. Follow this strategy all the way through to your call center, sales and customer service teams.
