Online marketing is a must for any business looking for serious growth today.
Your company can’t survive without advertising in a market where your competitors are spending multiple thousands of dollars on ads each month.
Yet…
Topping their advertising costs isn’t necessarily the smartest of solutions.
Your marketing can yield better results if you spend your budget where it serves you best. With that, you’ll make up for all your costs, attract better clients, and emerge profitable.
That’s why you must calibrate your marketing costs to ensure that your investments will succeed.
So that makes you wonder…
What metrics should I focus on to ensure profitable marketing?
1- Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
ROAS is an essential metric that allows you to evaluate your ad spend and manage your budget more effectively.
It measures the expected returns for each dollar you spend on an ad. You’ll then be able to choose the best performing ads and spend more money on them.
You can easily calculate ROAS using the following formula:
For example:
If you spend $1000 and get $3000 in return, your ROAS is 3. The result means that — for each dollar you spend, you make three dollars back.
NOTE: When you are starting a brand new campaign (or existing), it’s necessary to also review your Average Order Value (AOV) and Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). Understanding these numbers will help track the “health” of your business and advertising overall. You’ll know that a CPA less than AOV is highly beneficial!
2- Return On Investement (ROI)
ROI is a financial metric used in many areas of business. It’s a ratio similar to ROAS, which also helps you assess your marketing campaigns’ success.
But…
Unlike ROAS, ROI deals with the overall costs of marketing and business. And it does that by looking at the net profit instead of revenue.
Here’s how to calculate the ROI for your campaigns:
For example:
A starter business has made $25000 in revenue in its’ first month. It spent $8000 on ads but also has additional financial costs of 18000$.
By running the calculations, we find:
(25000 – (8000+18000)) / (8000+18000) x 100 = -1000/26000 x 100 = -3.84%
The company has an ROI of -3.84, which means that it’s still losing money.
This is why you need both ROAS and ROI to better evaluate your success.
3- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
CAC is the average cost a business pays to acquire a new customer. It’s a unique measure that can help you increase your profit margins significantly and dominate more markets.
Customer acquisition cost is calculated using the following formula:
For example:
A business spends $9000 (marketing expenses) each month to acquire new customers. That includes employer salaries, ad spend, paying for third-party tools, etc… The company acquired 150 new customers during that month.
In this case:
CAC = 9000 / 150 = $60
The business is spending $60 to acquire new customers, which can be either good or bad based on many factors.
But, the general rule of thumb is this:
A lower CAC allows more flexibility with your marketing budget as you can convert a lot more customers for lower prices.
4- Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)
CLTV is a forecast of the total amount of money a customer will spend on your business. It tells you how valuable a client is throughout their whole relationship with your brand.
Calculating CLTV depends on your business plan and revenue model.
To calculate this measure, you must estimate the following :
Average sale value
Average number of transactions per customer
Average customer lifespan
Profit margins
Your formula should look something like this:
Calculating CLTV allows you to manage your ad campaigns more efficiently. You’ll have tangible numbers to compare to your customer acquisition costs.
You can then work on increasing CLTV and decrease CAC to boost profits and reduce costs.
Ready to Get Started With Paid Advertising?
Chaosmap has a dedicated team of digital marketing experts and professional advertisers at your service. We’ll help turn your company into a profitable business with paid advertising and PPC.
Take a quick look at our Pay Per Click services to learn more about our process. Contact us today to get a quote for your project.
How many times have you come across this situation?
Your sales team (one or several) complains daily about crappy quality leads or no leads at all. And, they keep nagging about your online advertising strategies…are they working? (with a frown).
“How am I supposed to close sales and grow this business when you cannot deliver leads I can work with?”
SILENCE.
PPC (Pay Per Click) is a powerful online advertising model to drive traffic and get quality marketing data for further optimization (SEO, anyone?)
TRUTH BOMB: Most of the advertising campaigns tend to fail.
Especially in the beginning.
Google’s revenue from ads is BIG (graphic from 2001-2014) *source
Potential consumers for your products and services are searching the net for solutions to their problems every day. It’s very “intent” driven.
AdWords is a perfect method to get in front of these customers at the exact moment in their buying cycle.
In fact, AdWords can be one of the greatest sources of new leads for your business, small or large when used correctly.
When speaking of AdWords, many newbie advertisers assume that the consumer will click on their ad, show up on the site and convert into a lead for their sales team.
But, as mentioned …it doesn’t happen this way in reality.
Even though AdWords is an awesome advertising method, it is also one of the most complicated systems that take a great deal of effort for a newbie marketer to succeed.
In fact, there are so many marketers where obtaining a new lead causes dread instead of excitement because they find the lead isn’t qualified.
This is why it is important that you learn some of the most important current PPC tips to obtain highly qualified leads from AdWords.
This article provides a comprehensive overview of 8 current PPC strategies to get quality leads from AdWords in any niche.
1. Keyword Research
If you are getting unqualified leads from your AdWords campaign, your keywords are the first thing that you should take a look at.
There are so many paid as well as free tools available to do keyword research.
STEP ONE:
Brainstorm a list of keywords that you think is relevant to your market. You should be selecting general keywords as well as keywords that are specific to the market that you cater to.
STEP TWO:
Dump this list into the Planner, and you will get an expanded list of keywords along with important data such as how often consumers search for them and how competitive the keywords are.
STEP THREE:
Review this list carefully and eliminate all keywords that aren’t relevant to your business. This is the basics of keyword research when planning your AdWords campaign.
IMPORTANT:
Most of the time, newbie marketers go with broad-match keywords, which is one of the main reasons that they get unqualified leads.
The broad match keyword “bicycle bell” can cause your ad to show if someone searches for variations like “bicycle bells,” “buy a bell for a bicycle,” and “bell reviews for bikes.” (Google)
This keyword type offers the search engine a great deal of leniency in determining the “relevancy” of the searched queries.
If a marketer bids on “red shoes,” the broad-match could show your ad when a customer searches for “ruby slippers.” This makes perfect sense since ruby is considered a shade of red and slippers would go on your feet just like shoes.
The search engine algorithm can get away with such type of match when the marketer has selected the broad-match option in his or her AdWords campaign.
This is a sure-fire way of landing unqualified leads on your webpage.
This is why it is important that you go with the exact-match option whenever possible.
Adding terms that are not relevant to your business as “negative keywords” is also a good practice to get quality leads from your AdWords campaign.
You need to organize them into campaigns and ad groups properly. You also must test the ads, and against each other (A/B testing).
Segmenting your keywords into campaigns/ad groups will make it easier for you to analyze the data later on. Make sure your ad text is specific to the keywords within an ad group.
This means, you should get ready to write a lot of ad group specific ads.
Each ad group should have an ad text which specifically mentions the topic of that ad group.
This is very important to improve the Quality Score of your campaign, which will help attract more targeted customers to your business. At the outset of a campaign, you’ll do a lot of testing and it should never stop.
3. Proper Geographic Targeting
If your business is operating within a specific geographic area, make sure to set your campaign to show your ads to the searchers within that specific area.
If not, you are going to end up paying for clicks from customers who you cannot provide the service.
Excluding unwanted geographies from your ad campaign is important to improve the lead quality.
4. Showing Your Ads At The Right Time
Think in terms of your potential customer.
When will they most likely search for your product or service? It can be during the morning hours, while they are at work or after work.
For example, if you operate a plumbing service, it can be during any time of the day or whenever a plumbing emergency is discovered.
If you are in the B2B (business) environment, you might test during morning hours and certain business hours and not on weekends. But, you should test this. Always.
This is why you need to set your campaign to show the ads at the right time so that your targeted customer can see the ads. This will definitely help improve the quality of leads you get from the AdWords campaign, and it will help budget management (the fee you pay to Google).
5. Avoid Misleading Ads (Or “Corporate Speak”)
There are many examples of misleading AdWords ads on the net.
The majority of these ads are not targeted to the keywords that the marketer is promoting. Such ad copies are a complete waste of your advertising dollar.
Be careful about creating too much “brand conversation” (keywords or ad copy that your searchers don’t use). Understand your audience, and make sure to speak to that conversation. Often we see experienced leaders in marketing succumb to this, and their ad campaigns fail.
You will definitely attract unqualified leads under such circumstances.
Make sure you have your main keyword in the ad title as well as ad copy. The ad should be enticing and inviting the right customer to click on it and explore your website.
Continue testing, and understand that you will not have success overnight. Patience is a good keyword here, pun intended!
6. High Quality Landing Page
Many marketers lose highly targeted leads due to disappointing landing pages.
If your ad makes a promise, make sure that your landing page delivers on that promise.
If your landing page promises a free consultation, you should make sure that it is given to the potential customer.
These are very important points to generate highly targeted leads to your business.
While you A/B test ads, you should also consider testing pages. How will you know what the best ad click to landing page conversion rate should be for your market? Test it.
7. Qualifiers On Your Ad
You can filter low quality leads to a certain extent by adding qualifiers on your AdWords ad.
A qualifier can be a simple sentence on your ad such as “We only lend to customers with at least a 15% deposit”. This will help filter the low quality leads and pass highly targeted leads to your landing page.
Structure your headline, description and display URL according to text limits. Check the make up of adwords ads.
And, make sure to not engage in bidding (cost per click) wars either. You’ll lose.
8. Optimizing For Mobile Platforms
This is the latest trend in the industry. Mobile has overtaken desktop devices where customer searches are concerned.
Optimize your AdWords campaign for mobile devices since it is easier to convert mobile users who click on your AdWords ads compared to traditional customers.
CONCLUSION:
This article provides a comprehensive overview of eight current PPC tips to get high quality leads from your AdWords campaign.
Review these for your Adwords programs:
1. Keyword Research
2. Organizing Similar Keywords Into Ad Groups
3. Proper Geographic Targeting
4. Showing Your Ads At The Right Time
5. Avoid Misleading Ads (Or “Corporate Speak”)
6. High Quality Landing Page
7. Qualifiers On Your Ad
8. Optimizing For Mobile Platforms
Your sales teams will start to breathe a little easier now.
It will also help increase your ROI and profits in the long run.
BONUS:Get the free lead generation guide that will show you how to quickly get more leads from traffic. Includes 2 bonus strategies not found in this post.
If you found this post, it’s more than likely that you’ve heard, seen and used the most agile method of search engine marketing: PPC. Also called Pay-per-click advertising… it is a way to get instant search engine visibility to those who are searching for keyword phrases directly related to your business. Portions even appears above organic rankings, which makes it more visible for people interested to learn more, and even buy directly. That’s why PPC marketing & advertising is an essential part of an online marketing strategy for businesses, big or small.
How Does PPC Work?
The concept is very simple: you bid on search terms or keyword phrases you think are relevant to your business and only pay if and when the ad is clicked by users. PPC ads are placed strategically to generate a response and drive targeted buyers to your site.
These 9 strategies can be your guide to effectively incorporate PPC to your online advertising pursuits and drive more relevant, buyer traffic to your web pages.
Read and Be Updated
Just like anything on the Internet, PPC advertising moves constantly. Read up on how PPC marketing works, register for Google’s training courses and check for updates every now and then in your favorite blogs and PPC websites. The Google Adwords Help Center and Search Engine Journal are some resources you may want to check before starting your campaign.
Know Your Industry & Market
Beyond reading about PPC, it’s also essential to do some research specific to your industry. Review keywords that come to mind and compare then to what’s out there in terms of competition. Research is a key for you to choose effective keyword phrases, set the right budget, and structure a campaign that has the most chance of giving you great results. The Google Keyword Research Tools are a good place to start.
Test Ad Copy
Test different versions of your advertisements to know which would give you the best results. This will help you maximize the ROI of your campaigns. Set up tests that will rotate different ads for each of your keywords. Most PPC platform allows you to do this and displays what version of your ad will result with most clicks.
Always Include a Call-to-Action
There should always be some kind of call-to-action placed in your ad. If possible, use text, or even images (Display Networks) that can grab the attention of users. Then, use a simple one-liner that tells your visitors what they should do to know more about your brand, product or service. Possibly explain what they should expect once they click on your ad. Make sure to leverage approved symbols, numbers and punctuation, along with testing domain names and display URLs.
Use Location-Specific Keywords And Ads
PPC advertising allows you to target your audience based on their location and the scope of your business. If you are offering products or services that can be used globally, it’s good to design different ads that cater to different groups of people in terms of demographics (e.g., country, age, gender). If you are a small business owner, then use the specific city, state, or place you are located in so they could be more familiar with what you offer.
Use Negative Keywords
Negative or excluded keyword is an easy way to avoid unqualified traffic that drive up your overhead costs. Sometimes, your keyword can have a broad meaning that your ad shows up even though the query is not a match for your product. Using negative keywords will lower the chance of this occurrence and refine the positive keywords for web spiders. A simple example might be “cruise”. If you’re not selling Tom Cruise wares, make sure to exclude showing ads for “Tom Cruise”. A common negative keyword is “free”.
Explore Beyond Search Engines
Don’t limit your paid advertising campaign to search engines alone. Having your ads appear on websites, blogs, and emails can also give you a boost. Some high traffic websites and ad networks can publish your ads, which may increase your online visibility. Another way of reaching a wide number of potential customers is through sponsored ads on social networking sites and web properties related to your business.
Long-term Communications
Since your goal with PPC advertising is to get users to land on your page, why not get the most out of it by adding subscription and follow buttons to your landing pages? Once they click your ad, make sure you ask them for permission to receive future communications from you. You can do this by getting them to fill out a form, subscribe to a newsletter, or follow you on social media sites. This way, customer retention and loyalty can be promoted.
Impress With Your Landing Page
Last but not the least, you must have a killer landing page; both design-wise and content-wise. The purpose of your PPC advertising is to drive targeted traffic to a particular page. Make sure that what users saw in your ad is reflected on the landing page they’re about to see. If they don’t get what they want after clicking your ad, then the traffic will just go to waste. It’s advisable to have a clean look and direct messaging so they can easily see what they came for, and can decide quickly if they want to stay.
Top PPC Platforms
With the help of PPC platforms, you’ll surely have a spike of user traffic to your landing pages. Google revolutionized the Internet when it first created a search engine that ranked pages in a way that made sense. By 2005, the number of searches had grown dramatically as Google introduced Quality Score; a better ranking mechanism to determine which ads should appear before others (not simply based on keyword bidding price).
Because paid searches benefited both search engines and advertisers, the strategy just kept developing. Google’s Adwords program is the most widespread PPC platform in use today. Using it means your ads will appear next to organic Google search results and on the first page.
Facebook has also joined the PPC market with their “sponsored ads.” Other platforms include Bing! which provides advertising through their network including MSN and Hotmail, and Yahoo!
With the right knowledge and adequate practice of Pay-per-click advertising, you will surely reap more and more benefits along the way. In this day and age of technological innovations and online marketing pursuits of businesses worldwide, there’s just no excuse but to use Pay-per-click advertising and master it for the growth of your business. Plus, leveraging all the valuable marketing data in combination with SEO can prove a marketplace breakthrough for your business.
