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Pull Marketing Tips for Getting Your Money's Worth from Paid Search

  

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Do you sometimes get the feeling that Google Adwords is a vampire sucking you dry? Let's be honest here - you've spent hundreds (or thousands!) each month on paid search and haven't seen it translate to an increase in leads or sales.

Want to start seeing results? Here are three ways you can set your next PPC campaign up for success:

1. Don't use words you already rank high for organically.

Before even thinking about what search terms to add to a paid search campaign, you need to check your organic traffic. Find out what keywords people are already using to find your site using your analytics software of choice. If you notice that you're already getting a lot of traffic for a certain term without PPC, then chances are it's not a good investment in paying for that traffic.

2. Link to a landing page.

One of the biggest "no-no's" we come across with paid search campaigns is that, more often than not, people are just linking to their home page.  Sure, you might get a nice traffic increase, but you can bet your bounce rate is going to skyrocket. Most home pages tend to be designed as an "internet brochure" for a company and don't contain a way to capture lead information directly.

Why is it better to design a landing page for your PPC campaign? The more leads you can generate from a paid search, the better. This gives you a way to build up a lead list so you can actually nurture people who visit your site into customers via e-mail marketing. People are more inclined to give you their contact information (in this case an e-mail address and name at the bare minimum) if you have some sort of compelling offer you're willing to give away for free.  

3. Choose "middle of the road" keywords.

Another mistake we see people make when setting up paid search campaigns is picking many low-traffic terms instead of a few higher cost ones that get traffic. There's a false economy in going with several lower-cost "long-tail" search terms. It's not worth your time setting up a whole campaign around a bunch of terms that aren't going to generate any traffic.

You're better off utilizing those lower traffic keywords within your SEO within website strategy by using them in your content. So what should you pick? Terms that bring in that are priced to bring in traffic, but don’t break your budget.

On a final note, you should avoid falling into the trap of relying too heavily on paid search to generate traffic and leads. PPC should always be an ancillary marketing effort and not your primary focus. Remember, there's no substitute for generating remarkable content that pulls people to your site without paying for their visit!