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PPC

8 Tips To Avoid Sales Teams Bitching About Poor Adwords Leads

sales teams bitching about leads adwords ads

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

advertising revenue google 2001-2014

Google Adwords celebrated 15 years, and it’s interesting to check popular searches from 2001 … failure, you said?

Let’s dig in…

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.

The AdWords Keyword Planner is an easy to use and free tool for this purpose.

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.

2. Organizing Similar Keywords Into Ad Groups

Do not just throw in the researched keywords in AdWords. Make sure to create a good Adwords structure.

good adwords structure chaosmap

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.

max length adwords ads characters

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.

Categories
B2B Marketing

Use This 1 Weird Tip And You Will Earn BIG Business The Old Fashioned Way

owned paid earned media chaosmap

What is the golden egg of marketing strategy to get more quality and targeted leads, happy customers and growth to your business these days?

What is that ONE THING that you could apply to your business today, and see (virtually guaranteed) results as early as this week?

I know this is a HUGE (and common), possibly complex — question asked online.

We’ll need to break this down, so you can see the options that lay before you.

But first…

Everybody is out there trying the latest trick, tool or gimmick it seems (periscope, anyone?), and there are more failures than successes, that’s for sure. It’s noisy online, and getting worse by the minute…

What do you do?

Simple. Get the key and unlock the secret to the NEW GAME.

You must understand the distinctions between Paid, Owned, Or Earned Media To Strengthen Your Business Online.

Don’t take this lightly.

One of the frequent questions I see posted on the Internet and in blogs and business forums is a CEO or business owner asking for a growth strategies, and what to do. They may ask about where paid, owned, and earned media can be used, but don’t fully understand what it is.

Many website owners and marketing teams simply get online and begin to churn out the content without any understanding of these three essential elements for digital marketing success.

Of course, you could go your entire digital career and never find out the answer to this question and probably be no worse for wear.

(Ed.Note: Read this post fully. At the top, I promised 1 THING, not three. But, you’ll see how understanding the trifecta relationship will allow you to zoom in on the “one”…)

As a digital marketer, it is your responsibility to understand the various aspects of marketing and this trio of media needs to be understood and tamed.

Each one of these media types is its own animal and it needs to be treated as such. With that, I will try to stop with the animal analogies.

As with any problem we do not completely understand, let’s start at the beginning by defining these three media types.

What Is Paid Media?

Perhaps one of the easiest to understand.

This includes all of the advertising that comes directly from the $$$ in your pocket.

Actually a better representation would be the thousands that are withdrawn from your corporate card(s) on a monthly basis, in exchange for clicks or impressions (Example: ads or banners displayed).

Regardless if you place an ad on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google search (Adwords), Display networks, or even a newspaper ad, it is considered paid media.

This is basically the process of bringing a stranger to your website or store and introducing them to what you have to offer.

The goal is to generate immediate, targeted incoming traffic, and to begin testing to quickly get a positive return on every dollar or cost metric invested. Example: If you pay 1.00 a click and get 2.00 back, you’ll do that day in and day out. Powerful. Fast.

What Is Owned Media?

This form of media is anything that is officially owned or operated by you. This would include your website, Facebook fan page, blogs, or even a retail shop.

Many believe that owned media is the strongest element of the trio.

They argue that it is the strength of this property that will take an individual from a paid media outlet to becoming a full-fledged customer.

We will dive further into this conundrum later in this post and expose what is actually the most important aspect of this chain.

What Is Earned Media?

Earned media is the reward you receive for publishing incredible content.

Earned media includes retweets, shares of your Facebook post, and comments on your blog. You are “earning” the love.

Basically, anything that you did not go out and physically set out and do yourself.

Ready For A Test?

Here is a trick question for you. You have posted a video on Youtube and have been using paid advertising to drive traffic to it. Your video begins to pick up momentum and starts to get shared and commented on.

Is this video considered paid or earned media? I’ll give you a minute to mull over your answer.

In this case, the video would be considered an earned media.

While you are driving paid traffic to the video, you are not paying for the like or comment. That just becomes a bonus from producing high-quality content.

There you have it, the three primary forms of media.

More than likely you are already engaging in two to three of them. If not, you should be, you know what they say about putting all your eggs in one basket, right? Google will come along and step on them. OK, they may not say that, but they should!

What is the “ONE” TIP?

Out of those three media types, which would you believe to be the most important?

If you answered paid media, you would be absolutely correct. However, out of the three, it is used the least, at least in a startup phase.

Many marketers shy away from paid media as they are afraid they will lose their shirt in ad costs. However, it is becoming a reality that this is the model you need to focus on for 2016. You re-invest into the paid campaigns as you turn profits. Plus, you can offer something for sale on the “thank you” page that immediately covers the cost of ad spend!

What most marketers do not understand is that paid marketing via social media and search is actually quite effective.

Paid media is not only cost effective it is quite simple to get started with. Within the day or week, you could have a steady stream of new visitors coming to your site on your own budget and terms.  Provide a fast loading landing page, a strong offer and test for conversions. Then, leverage this incredibly valuable marketing intelligence to push over to your SEO and related marketing campaigns.

Paid media allows you to direct your traffic where you want them to go, with a little planning and strategy of course! You can turn it on and off quickly.

Start by promoting a high-quality piece of content on Facebook, for example (blog or direct response offer). The user clicks thru and reads your content. Bang! You have them on your site, you have to direct their next move. Without a question, send them to an opt-in page and collect their information.

Make sure to retarget your visitors (Facebook pixel), and build your audience profile over time.

Consider expanding via Facebook Lookalike and Google’s remarketing programs. Research tools and systems for broader online/offline look-a-like modeling frameworks too.

Why Paid?

Capture emails from your paid traffic, and start nurturing the relationship via email marketing. Having that email means when the next big change comes you are already prepared and will not have to go chasing a new audience down.

Unlike earned and owned media you are in absolute control.

While you may own media, you can not drive traffic to it other than by search engine optimization techniques and external profiles (links) management.

Paid media lets you turn on the flow of traffic whenever you need to. There are so many marketers struggling for that little trickle of traffic, and here it is.

Once you master how to promote your posts, content, offers, products and services — and place cost effective ads, there is no better feeling of control over your properties.

With paid media you have absolute control through the use of tracking with your favorite analytics and tracking program. You can even get keyword data in your analytics.

Of course, you will not be able to promote every piece of content you place on social media unless you have a massive budget in hand. You will be able to promote select pieces of content that are going to work better for you. These posts help to increase brand awareness, loyalty, and eventually turn to earned media. This has to be tested and fit into your monthly spend.

The most important part of this equation is to have a strong strategy in place and plan everything. There is no perfect strategy I can give you to master this process. But, run your analytics and watch for KPIs (key performance indicators) as you determine the best results.

It is also important to know that this media trio does not always work in perfect sync.

In a perfect world you would promote a post, the visitors click onto a property you own and reads your content, they share with their friends and leave a comment for you.

That is a moment of zen in this strategy. But, it will not always work like that. Continue testing, testing, testing – and don’t give up. Hire a digital marketing consultant to help you.

This brief overview should have at least helped you understand the basics of paid, owned, and earned media types.

You should now be able to create a strategy based on this media that will help you meet you business goals.

Now: Do you agree?

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Categories
PPC

Pay Per Click Marketing And PPC Advertising – A Best Practices Guide

What is PPC (Pay-Per-Click) Advertising?

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.ppc - pay-per-click search engines

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.

Resources:
https://metricmarketing.ca/pay-per-click-management-services
https://www.looksmart.com/3-successful-pay-per-click-strategies
https://www.futuresimple.com/blog/successful-pay-per-click-marketing-campaign/
https://www.quantumseolabs.com/blog/marketing/list-top-5-ppc-platforms-advertising/

A Brief History Of Paid Search Advertising

photo credit: Stuck in Customs | cc