The size of the business doesn’t matter when talking about PPC, as it is one of the most preferred ways for a business to promote their brand and products online. If planned and executed properly, the PPC marketing can bring dozens, often hundreds, of new customers. It can also provide you with rarely matched return on investment.
However, there is widespread misconception that popular PPC platforms (the most notable among these being Google AdWords) are to be considered some type of gambling. You basically put down a certain amount of money as a daily or monthly budget, sit down, and expect the miracle to happen. This is not even nearly close to how effective PPC marketing operates, as it involves detailed research. Detailed research not only for relevant keywords to target, but also of the; target audience, key competitors, the typical customer buying cycle within the industry, and multiple other factors. Combined, this research produces enough insight to enable the manager of the PPC advertising campaign to make informed decisions in order to improve its profitability.
Google AdWords
Without doubt, the most widely used PPC advertising platform is ‘Google AdWords’. It allows advertisers to reach not only to users of the world’s largest search engine, but to also place ads on an incredibly vast network of partner sites, as well as other Google properties such as YouTube.
It can be incredibly easy to setup an account, and run your first advertising campaign (you can get this done within approximately 5 minutes). However, to ensure you are targeting the right people and your marketing efforts do pay off, you need to seriously dig into existing data and think about the following questions;
- Where do your target customers live?
- How old they are?
- What is their education?
- How do they shop online for the products you offer?
- What are the key steps of their typical buying cycle?
- What messages will you use to target people at different stages of the buying cycle?
- How do you ensure profitability in your AdWords campaign?
These are just some of the questions that you need to answer before setting up any PPC advertisements. The more insights you have on your potential customers, the more targeted your campaign will be. By considering these factors, your campaign has the potential to send your profitability off the roof.
The main reason why many business owners fail with Google AdWords, and other PPC marketing platforms, is simply because they are not targeting the right people and they are wasting their money by not doing so. The key benefit with PPC marketing is that your advertising message has the potential of reaching hundreds, thousands, and even millions of potential customers. This is why it is so important to target carefully, as there is a vast benefit if you have done your research. Another benefit is that it is at just a fraction of what you would typically pay per customer when using other marketing methods both online and offline. So, if you are still wondering why you would bother doing a PPC marketing campaign, I have 2 things to share:
- You are already really late! – All your competitors are probably already getting dozens of new customers with the help of well-crafted PPC ads.
- You don’t have to do everything yourself! – Contradictory to the widespread opinion, to hire professionals to help setup and organize PPC marketing campaign is neither expensive, nor time-consuming. It’s better to pay certain fee to professionals to do all the setup for you than waste all your money advertising to the wrong people.