How to Get Customers Through Pay Per Click

Every business wants to lure leads to its website. One of the most effective ways is via a powerful pay-per-click (PPC) campaign using Google Search ads. 

By developing a detailed understanding of your target audience and delivering the ideal message, even brands with a small budget can use paid ads to skyrocket their website traffic.

However, don’t rush into a PPC campaign without knowing what it takes to lead a successful strategy. In fact, many businesses waste loads of time and money with ineffective pay-per-click advertising.

Here, we cover several crucial steps to ensure your campaign reaches its ideal customer base and delivers a glorious return on your investment.

Understand Your Target Audience

Figuring out how to target your PPC campaign is almost impossible if you don’t have an in-depth understanding of your target audience. 

For example, Google Search ads use audience targeting to reach potential consumers. Here, you can attempt to convert customers based on their real-life demographics, such as age, gender and location. 

You can also target audiences based on their affinity, which basically translates to their habits and interests when browsing the internet.

With a detailed picture of your target market, it becomes vastly easier to target your PPC campaign. This way, you won’t waste your budget on people who aren’t interested.

Conduct Keyword Research

Productive keyword research is essential to the success of virtually every pay-per-click advertising campaign. By building a compelling list of keywords relating to your products, these terms ensure you benefit from an optimised strategy.

Compile terms ranging from very broad to highly specific for the most razor-sharp approach. For instance, a coffee bean retailer could start with “coffee beans” before exploring keywords like “speciality roasted coffee” and “single-origin coffee”. 

Alongside branded keywords, generic terms and those that relate to your competitors, a stellar keyword list enables you to target the right people with Google Ads.

Research the Competition

Monitoring the competition goes hand-in-hand with high-quality PPC advertising. Whether they’re a direct rival or a business higher up the food chain, checking out their paid ads provides inspiration for your own.

While every business has its own quirks that interest some customers over others, you can review how your competitor’s ads perform with their audience. For example, see whether their Facebook or Instagram ads generate positive interactions.

Then, use these learnings to level up your own PPC campaign’s messaging and imagery to ensure you keep pace with the interests of the constantly evolving marketplace.

Develop Powerful CTAs

Perfect Google Ads require expertly crafted copy and visually appealing components. However, one aspect that simply can’t be underestimated is the call-to-action (CTA). 

Serving as a powerful finishing touch, this snippet of text should evoke emotions and persuade people to pay attention. The nature of your CTA will depend on your target audience and advertising goals, but know that it’s crucial for sending leads to your website.

If you’re offering a great deal, mention the percentage customers will save. Meanwhile, getting people to sign up for a newsletter requires an actionable verb like “join” or “subscribe” to achieve the best results.

Use A/B Testing

A/B testing is imperative for high-performance PPC. This analytical approach sees brands run two similar but slightly different ads to determine how minor differences massively impact your strategy’s performance.

For example, you might decide to use the same messaging and image, but a variation on your call-to-action to see whether this translates to increased website leads and sales.

With results from A/B testing often surprising even the most experienced PPC marketing experts, completing this analysis is a smart decision. Make minor changes to your ads and monitor how each performs to find a powerful formula. 

Review Your Landing Pages

While you might not realise it, landing pages are pivotal to the high performance of your PPC campaign. After all, getting someone to click your ad is only half the battle; you must also convince them to sign up or make a purchase once they land on your website.

The best way to approach this is by aligning your PPC ads with your landing pages. For example, if they click on an ad promoting a specific product, they should arrive at the corresponding landing page. 

This alignment is also critical for your Quality Score, a Google benchmark that determines how your advertisement satisfies consumer needs and competes against the competition.

Implement Negative Keywords

As previously mentioned, keywords are vital for how well your campaign reaches its intended audience. But did you know you can also use negative keywords to boost performance? 

This technique helps focus PPC advertising on those most relevant to your goals. With every brand, no matter the size, having a limited marketing budget, ensure it goes towards those who care most about your products and services.

For instance, using the negative keyword “kids Nike shoes” ensures your advertising budget isn’t wasted on parents looking to purchase footwear in sizes you don’t stock. Keep negative keywords in mind whenever embarking on a new campaign.

Analyse Your Results

Google Ads is an imperfect science, with plenty of experimentation required to discover a method that makes sense for your business and its objectives. However, each campaign’s analytics provide the data needed to make the right decisions.

So, what should you look out for? Cost-per-click highlights how much you’re spending for each conversion. If the price is too high, you may need to rethink your keyword research strategy to find a more cost-effective approach.

Bounce rate is another useful indicator. This showcases what percentage of users viewed your landing page but immediately left. A high bounce rate signals poorly aligned PPC ads and landing pages.

Maximise PPC Performance

Pay-per-click is a powerful digital marketing technique. However, considering the sheer amount of competition online, convincing your ideal target audience to choose you over your rivals requires incredible precision.

The PPC specialists at First Page Digital know what it takes to achieve your objectives for an unmatched ROI. With our experts leading campaigns for companies around the globe, we can plan and execute a successful strategy for your operation.

Start a conversation with our team today to discover how we’ll get to know your business and reach your target audience with a tailored approach.