3 PPC Strategies to Try Now

PPC, or pay per click, can be scary to some people. Like, SEO, it’s one of those marketing disciplines that gets a bad rap for being too hard or, in a lot of cases I’ve come across, they’ve worked with a PPC “expert” who ended up blowing a budget with nothing to show for it at the end of the campaign. PPC strategy is not as hard as you may think, but it does require planning, research, and a little know-how.

PPC campaigns can pack a big value– from increasing short-term sales to testing out the effectiveness of specific SEO (search engine optimization) keywords–if done correctly, it’s a great investment and a wonderful lead generation tool. Like any marketing discipline, there are some evergreen PPC strategies that will remain effective throughout 2019, but it’s worth looking into some new strategies, too! The more you can get out of your PPC campaigns, the better.

 3 PPC Strategies to Try Now

1. Track Your Conversion Actions

PPC is a proven method for attracting leads and generating new sales but it’s worth noting that not all leads that you attract with your PPC ads are at the same stage of the buyer’s journey. The effectiveness of your CTAs (calls-to-action) you use for your PPC ads will depend on the stage of the buyer’s journey leads are in. When creating your PPC campaigns, you’ll want to know what conversion actions make the most sense for every stage of the sales funnel.

Take note of the CTAs you are using and where they map to. Begin thinking about what potential customers might want and what they may find valuable and not just about what you have available right away. This can help you find weaknesses in your PPC campaigns that you can address with better CTAs, better content, or better offers.

Examples of conversion actions:

• Calls
• App downloads
• In-app actions
• Website visits

Basically, any action a user can take is technically a conversion. Some of your campaigns may be more for branding and a visit to a landing page or website to learn more about something may mean that a click on the ad is your conversions, in other cases a form fill or a download may be a conversion. Think about what you want your user to do and make it as easy as possible for them to do it!

Helpful link: We could go on a long-rambling how-to so we can increase the number of words we have on this page but we won’t do that to you. THIS link Google’s own step-by-step instructions on how to set this up–there’s even a video! Work smarter, not harder.

2. Test Out New Channels

When it comes to PPC campaigns, most businesses stick to major search engines, such as Google and Bing (yes, Bing!). While conducting PPC campaigns on major search engines like these is a great way to attract new leads, generate brand awareness, and increase sales, there are lots of other channels that offer paid advertising.

Social media also has paid options and yes, they count as PPC. It’s worth running a few PPC ad campaigns on channels that offer paid advertising options, such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, NextDoor, and Reddit. These social channels have huge audiences that you may not have tapped yet–and you may discover that a large portion of your target audience lives on a channel that you haven’t taken advantage of yet.

One social channel that isn’t getting nearly as much attention as those previously mentioned is Quora. Quora’s paid advertisement platform is only a year old, which means not as many advertisers have taken advantage of it yet. However, you should give it a chance as there are an estimated 300 million monthly active users on Quora. With such a large audience and little competition as of yet, 2019 is a great time to begin testing PPC campaigns on Quora.

3. Use Date Ranges to Retarget Audiences

One of the common mistakes advertisers make is lumping together all users into the same retargeting audience. However, there’s a big difference between leads who clicked on an ad but didn’t convert yesterday and those who did the same a month ago. The chances of successfully retargeting a lead that failed to convert within the last few days are much better than converting a lead that failed to convert months ago (odds are they already found a solution to their problem, after all). To make retargeting more effective, build new audiences based on date ranges for retargeting purposes.

PPC ad campaigns can provide value in so many different ways and because of the way that they are set up (in that you only pay for the clicks you get), they are great value for your money. Keeping that in mind, these are three new PPC strategies that are well worth adopting for your PPC campaigns this year.

Helpful link: Again, we could go on but Google already has it parsed out really well in THIS link.

PPC Strategy Takeaways

PPC strategies are only as strong the energy and work you put into them. Google and other platforms have made it incredibly easy to use their platforms and automate bids and targets when possible for users whose PPC acumen is low to non-existent. While it might be tempting to “set it and forget it,” PPC is one of those disciplines that requires hand holding–and for good reason.

There are a lot of good stats out there that demonstrate how and why PPC is an important part of your marketing and lead generation strategy (here are just a few!).

• According to Google, businesses that use its AdWords (now Google Ads) PPC platform see a high ROI (return on investment) of $2 for every $1 that they spend.
• People that land on your website through a PPC ad are 50% more likely to make a purchase than visitors who arrived organically.
• Consumers who click on PPC ads on Google before visiting a store are 27% more likely to make a purchase once they do visit a store.

Are you convinced? Get started with your PPC strategy today. And check out our free lead generation calculator to help you figure out how many leads you need to generate—an important first step in determining your PPC and Marketing budgets, in general. Happy PPC-ing!