With local SEO, PPC is an ever-changing practice, with new keywords and trends drastically shaping how a campaign must be built. In order to succeed with local PPC, you have to constantly review the successes and failures of your campaign, in order to make necessary improvements, and to stay up to date with changing dynamics.
While trends and consumer desires may change, what stays constant are the practices used to successfully market through PPC. Let’s look at some of the best tools at your disposal, and how to use them.
Bid Management: Ideally, you want your PPC advertisement to show up at the top of search listings, but this isn’t always possible. Occasionally, your ad will fall below the top few, and you’ll have to increase your spending in order to correct this. Even when your ad stays at the top of listings, you’ll be forced to adjust your bid every week to ensure that it stays there. You can make these changes by having alternating bid minimums, which can be selected through AdWords bid management.
Testing: PPC, much like SEO, and all online marketing is constantly changing. Every single aspect of it is written and rewritten, adapted to changing trends and new technologies. Much of this is done through continuous testing to see what works best, and what changes could optimize the campaign for better performance. Everything from your landing page, to ad content, to user interaction should be tested and examined, to see how they relate to one another, and to your success. Testing should be done across all devices and regularly, to effectively change those aspects that aren’t working.
Individual Ads: Your campaign will comprise not just one ad, but multiple. Rather than analyzing your campaign you should consider how individual ads within it are performing. Certain ads will always perform better, or even some ad groups. You may often decide whether to pause an ad or whether to remove it altogether, which should be decided on a cost-performance basis.
Market Research: PPC revolves around the consumer, and that means that you have to understand the consumer inside out. Certain demographics will be more predisposed to your products and services, so you need to curate your ad copy to appeal to these demographics. How can you hope to increase your conversions if you don’t understand the very people purchasing from you?
Landing Page: Once a consumer clicks on your ad, they’re taken to your landing page. While it’s extremely important for the ad to be well written and enticing, the only thing that matters just as much is for your landing page to be appealing, otherwise you may end up losing a lead. The landing page should be quick, optimized, and visually appealing, so that the consumer sees the effort you’ve put into it. A slow landing page is an ad wasted, because the consumer will simply find another website instead. The landing page should match the ad that leads to it. If your ad is about one product or service, and your landing page is about a completely different one, consumers will become confused, and will look elsewhere. Don’t forget to include a call to action, so that consumers can reach you immediately.
‘Key’ Keywords: Certain keywords will drive more traffic to your website than others, purely because consumers are searching for them far more often. Through Google you can set what your conversion needs are, and easily identify which keywords will help you achieve this. Do these tests often to ensure that you catch any keyword changes which can help you reach your goals.
Call Extensions: For local businesses, you need consumers to be reaching out to your physical business, whether through personal meetings or through calls. When mobile consumers search keywords that lead them to your ads, they may want to call you immediately, and call extensions help them do this. Obviously, call extensions will work best for mobile, where they can be acted on immediately. For desktop, integrate email contact forms, which will allow consumers to get in touch easily.
Use these practices to run a successful ad campaign, with high conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
