In spite of the fact that numerous SEO professionals are proclaiming the death of the PPC ads, in reality, the sales drops recorded this year are only an effect of the expanding mobile market. What this means for webmasters and companies is that they need to reconsider their entire AdWords campaign approach and come up with innovative strategies that can determine mobile users to click their ads.
For the time being, such campaigns are perceived negatively by mobile users who claim that clicking those ads is nothing more than a waste of time. Luckily, Google was already well aware of the problem and took action with the introduction of the new Google Shopping service implemented on October 17 this year.
Granted, taking a free service and transforming it into a paid merchant version was frowned upon by most small companies. However, if you consider that this had to be done in order to determine online merchants to keep their info fresh and updated, this move makes a lot of sense. Not to mention the fact that rethinking the ads to address a specific audience will bring companies better traffic.
But how will these effect small companies that don’t really have a large enough budget to afford paying for the new service, especially with the holidays right around the corner? Frankly, what matters most for now is not the quantity of ads, but their quality. Following is a set of simple tricks small businesses could put into practice without spending a lot of cash.
Create individual advertisement campaigns
While Google advises merchants to advertise on all their available sites is in general good idea, a better tactic implies creating individual campaigns for each of the networks. For starters, you will be able to develop ads that address different goals or distinct types of customers who prefer a certain site or network. In addition, since you’ll need to update them constantly, having exclusive campaigns means you will have less work and spend less money on refreshing the ads.
Ads location
Because a small business has to be careful how it spends its advertisement budget, it is highly recommended to pay attention to location targeting. To put it simply, if you decide to pay for ads visible in regions that are beyond your company’s reach, then you are throwing money out the window. For instance, a plumber that advertises at an international level is wasting cash, as he cannot provide services elsewhere than his city and/or nearby cities. Therefore, evaluate the locations in which your business can deliver or implement your company’s geographic target and only pay for the ads to show up there.
Negative keywords will help you select your audience
If your company offers a high end, yet expensive service or product then you need to filter certain keywords that address an audience who is looking for a cheap, free or discount product/service. Otherwise, you will just waste the daily budget on clicks that do not convert. In addition to paying attention to the keywords, it is necessary to mention that you might also have to weed out other keywords, usually based on how the PPC campaign evolves.
You will need to treat your AdWords account more seriously
More often than not, small company owners believe that once they launched their campaign, their work is done. However, in practice the real work on your PPC campaign starts after your ads are up and running. Similar to the other critical elements of your marketing strategy, you need to take the time to analyze the evolution and returns of your ads. If something is wrong and you are not getting any returns, then you need to find the problem and fix it immediately, or else you will be losing money.
Get customer support from Google
Granted, when you come across errors that you don’t know how to fix or code flaws that you don’t really understand, your first instinct is to smash your computer with a hammer into little pieces. However, a far better approach that will actually resolve your problem would be to contact the customer support from Google and get personalized help from a professional who is familiar with the issues and solutions of the platform you are working on.
James Hollands is a freelance PPC consultant that offers affordable PPC Services to the globe. He’s worked with a number of high profile companies and local businesses as well.