Regardless of how attractive and well-designed your website is, it may seem like […]
If you are running an online business, you are probably familiar with the struggles of attracting a large number of website visitors. Looking for ways to increase their profits, many business owners nowadays rely on pay per click marketing as an advertising method. They pay Yahoo, Facebook, Google and similar companies to help them drive traffic to their website. The fee they have to pay depends on the keywords they use.
Even though PPC advertising is considered one of the fastest ways to attract more visitors to your website, it can be risky and expensive. You can spend a large amount of money without achieving the results you were hoping for. For example, if the keywords you want to use are more competitive, the clicks will be more expensive. This can result in immense costs for your business.
While pay per click marketing has many benefits for online businesses, it comes with a number of risks, too. If you're considering using PPC marketing to attract potential customers and expand your business, be mindful of the following challenges, as you may experience them along the way.
One of the reasons why some small business owners are not using pay per click marketing at all, is because PPC can be costly. If you are new in the ecommerce business, you just can’t afford high marketing costs. If you want to try PPC marketing and avoid the high costs, you’ll need to hire a high-profile expert to manage your campaign.
Although this is just another expense at first, it will actually save you money in the long run. An expert in PPC marketing will tailor a campaign according to your budget and your needs. They will help you set achievable goals in terms of conversion rates, an average time table for campaign execution and an optimal budget for success.
According to the latest research, over 95% of Google's revenue comes from pay per click marketing campaigns. Google AdWords allows business marketers to compete for top ad placement based on keywords. However, trying to increase your score quickly on Google AdWords will take a lot of money if it’s not done by an expert.
Although the minimum price per click may sound affordable, clicks can cost you up to $50 if you choose highly competitive keywords. Those are the keywords that most businesses (and your competitors) use.
These popular keywords often include phrases such as: buy car insurance, car insurance prices, defense attorney, college degree online, hard drive recovery, and drug treatment center. However, the list of most popular keywords is constantly changing, depending on the latest trends. PPC experts follow the trends of popular keywords and can help you choose solutions that will fit your business needs.
Many people are skeptical about advertising nowadays. They even look down upon PPC ads because they are aware that you want to sell them something. There is nothing wrong with this - except that people don’t like being advertised to, while merely surfing the Internet for information.
Regardless of the money you spend on a PPC marketing campaign, it can cause a negative customer reaction. Some business owners may believe that just because they’ve invested a lot of money, their PPC advertising will automatically result in high conversion rates. However, this is not the case for most businesses.
People who are still in the decision-making process want to do research, so their click doesn’t necessarily mean they will become your customers. This is why you need to do proper campaign tracking, so that you identify what your customers like and dislike about your campaign.
Conversion rates and consumer reactions to your ad are based on numerous factors related to the ad's visual appearance and content. You need to thoroughly monitor every aspect of your PPC ad and see how it relates to the overall return of investment. Test how images, colors, fonts, and buttons affect the conversion rate of the landing page.
One of the largest mistakes some businesses make with PPC is that they link the ad to their home page. Your customers are looking for specific keywords, so you need to give them specific offers. These offers should also be compelling enough to stop people from checking the offers of your competitors. Ensure quality and trustworthy content that will motivate conversions.
Relying on the assertion that PPC brings fast results, businesses often want to test it for a short time or with a small budget. This is where they face a potential failure. You need time and money to test keyword strategies and acquire enough leads to know whether you will get the results you want. In fact, the initial investment in PPC needs to be larger than the monthly planned costs.
Pay per click marketing is a good way to drive visitors to your website. However, you need to optimize your website to keep the attention of those visitors. If you don’t put effort into your website's layout, content and structure, your online marketing strategy won’t bring the results you are hoping for. This is why it’s best to combine PPC with a search engine optimization strategy.
PPC advertising appears online as soon as you activate your campaign, but it shuts down the moment you stop paying for the clicks. Meanwhile, search engine optimization is all about ranking your website higher in the search engine result pages. It's a long term strategy. It takes a while to build up a ranking, but if you take a break from this work, you don't suddenly lose traffic. In fact if you get lazy you can do no work for months, and still get decent traffic from SEO work you did years before. It is slow to acquire, but also slow to lose.
Including SEO in your online marketing strategy stimulates you to constantly improve your online presence. In order to rank higher, you’ll have to pay attention to many details that improve visitor experience. As you upgrade your website, SEO gradually improves, and you get a better ranking. And so, your site becomes more and more visible to your potential customers.
Moreover, if you rank high on the search engines for a specific keyword, it’s a sure sign that you're reliable and trustworthy in your business field. Research shows that people put more trust in the relevance of natural/organic results than paid search results. If you combine these two, PPC will bring you traffic, while SEO will ensure the conversions.
