Part 3 of 3 | This is a three-part series on Digital Marketing
Paid Search is a form of advertising that—when done right—puts you in the top positions of search results. It’s beneficial because you can reach people actively seeking to purchase your products or services in-the-moment.
On the other hand, you can blow a lot of money by executing the wrong strategy. It’s also worth noting, Paid Search isn’t for everyone. This is where planning can help determine whether it’s right for you.
Let’s get started with Paid Search.
Determine a goal.
What do you want out of your ads—leads, sales, downloads? Without a goal, your campaign will perform horribly.
Where will your ads run?
Are you local, national, or global? Running a local campaign will cost less than running a national campaign. Google AdWords allows you to target from globally, all the way down to a one-mile radius of an address. But maybe you’re national and you have a smaller budget. In this case, you may want to target a few select markets until your capital allows for more advertising funds. This has worked well for us with various clients. Digging up market research on your industry—or from a database of customers—can help determine markets you should target.
Is there an audience?
Keyword research with Google’s Keyword Planner will help discover search volume for terms related to your product/service. You can estimate the cost of your campaign and see where your budget could take you.
How will you convert traffic from your ads into this goal?
Let’s say our goal is to get leads. We need a page that is going to convince the person who clicked your ad to act. Tons of people will click your ad and then go right back to the search results. That’s money down the drain. Attention spans are short, and people want to find what they’re looking for quickly. You need to answer a question or solve a problem in your headline, and ask for them to take a specific action.
We call this a “landing page”. A landing page is designed for a specific ad, with a specific call-to-action. Most likely if you link your ad to an existing page on your website, people will not convert. When you build a custom landing page that is geared specifically toward an answer or solution and you ask for an action by the user, you will see a spike in conversions versus just linking to a page on your website.
Campaign Setup
Once you have a goal, target market, and a powerful landing page, we can set up a campaign. It is best to leave Paid Search to a professional who has years of experience working with live campaigns and has learned from both failure and success. Our Digital Strategists have spent years mastering AdWords through professional training, certification, and experience. We have failed and we have succeeded, which helps us quickly determine whether Paid Search is right for you, or if there’s another digital strategy that would serve you better. Often, we use a combination of digital strategies to build the most effective campaign for your brand.
Don’t forget retargeting.
As we discussed in Part 2 of this Digital Marketing series, retargeting is an effective way to maximize your Paid Search efforts by recapturing your audience who didn’t convert form your ads initially, enhancing your conversion rates by staying top-of-mind even after they have left your website.
Good luck with your Paid Search campaign. Let us know if you need help!
