PPC accounts that are utilizing old keywords and ads are not only less likely to engage searchers and convert, they can also generate significant budget waste. Furthermore, accounts that haven’t been updated in some time can portray your business negatively, doing substantial brand damage. Avoid these perils by cleaning out your account using this actionable checklist:
Spring is here, which means the season of cleaning is underway. While most people are cleaning out their homes, desks, and cars, shrewd marketers know that this post-holiday lull is the perfect time to clean out their PPC accounts as well.
PPC accounts that are utilizing old keywords and ads are not only less likely to engage searchers and convert, they can also generate significant budget waste. Furthermore, accounts that haven’t been updated in some time can portray your business negatively, doing substantial brand damage. Avoid these perils by cleaning out your account using this actionable checklist:
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Most of the business owners and marketers we work with have a general sense of how their PPC efforts are doing, but few truly have an accurate understanding of how they’re performing. Whether you’re new to running PPC or have been investing in PPC for a while, understanding which key performance indicators (KPIs) to monitor can be tricky. While KPIs can certainly vary by industry and even by company, some KPIs will always be important.
Utilizing online advertising for services instead of products poses its own unique set of challenges.
Unlike products, which typically have SKUs and easily distinguishable characteristics, services can be more ambiguous. The nuances between service offerings and providers often requires more explanation that a short text ad will allow. Furthermore, restrictions, in the form of geographic service areas and technical project requirements, complicate matters even further. For these reasons, many local service providers opt to forgo online advertising and rely primarily on word of mouth referrals and offline advertising to increase brand recognition. However, national service providers understand the value in paid search (PPC) advertising and often invest heavily in building and maintaining online advertising campaigns tailored for different markets. The result is that national providers typically dominate markets where local providers should be thriving. For instance, one of our local clients provides specialized equipment rentals across the state of Michigan. Their prices are reasonable, their service is impeccable, and they know the local community far better than their national competitors. However, the big national companies they’re competing with were running sizeable online advertising campaigns and taking business away from them (despite charging a premium for doing nothing more than contracting with the local company for their equipment). We were able to catapult this local provider to the front of the industry using strategic local advertising at a cost far lower than they had anticipated. How do you find the same success for your service-based business? A three-pronged approach to online advertising will give your business an advantage! I talk with a lot of small business owners, and the conversation is typically along the same lines. They want to advertise their offerings locally in their community but realize that their growth potential is limited if they don’t have a national ecommerce focus as well. This is especially true for businesses in more remote areas, where their local market may not sustain enough demand to keep them in business. Designing an ecommerce site to sell their products across the US is the only viable way to generate the revenue that they need to thrive.
The catch is that while local advertising may not be as lucrative, it’s often perceived as easier and less expensive than national advertising. Subsequently, most small business “start small” with local campaigns and then expand to a wider market once they have PPC figured out… or at least that’s the plan. In my experience, one of the following things typically happens instead:
Before you start paid search locally or nationally, plan for how you’ll win at both! The biggest misconception about online advertising is that there’s no way to track ROI on websites that don’t have ecommerce functionality. Business owners that maintain informational sites assume that they’ll have no way of tracking which business was generated from their online ads. This is problematic for local businesses or companies that require customers to speak with someone before placing an order or scheduling an appointment.
However, there is hope! You don’t have to sell anything on your website to effectively assess the return on your ad spend. There are plenty of other conversions for you to track to determine how much of your revenue to attribute to your PPC ads. |
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