One of the best ways to draw people to your business is pay-per-click ads (PPC). They’re displayed prominently on search engines, anabolics attracting a lot of attention, bronchi and since they only cost you money when someone clicks on them, you don’t pay until they’re working. However, as effective as PPC can be, they still require a lot of thought and effort, especially if your business is a small one with only limited resources. When your budget is limited, you need to be very careful about how it’s spent. Here are some tips on how to make the most from your PPC budget:
Define Your Goals. This is important when starting any marketing campaign, but is especially important when you have limited resources. Make sure you really figure what exactly you want from your PPC ads, what you want them to do for you, what sort of clients you want them to find. Talk things over with the rest of your team and with the person creating the PPC.
Don’t Try to Do Everything. Most PPC specialists have a list of best practices that they recommend for all their clients. This can include ad delivery setting, ad rotation, tiered bidding strategies…. However, this list is often for companies with a large budget and not of the options are as viable on a small budget. You don’t want your daily marketing budget to run out before noon so be very careful about what options you take. Stay focused, stay lean.
Limit Keywords & Targeting. Carefully choose your targets. You won’t be able to afford putting in thousands of keywords and even if you did, you couldn’t give all of them enough attention. So use Google Analytics, past PPC campaigns, the advice of your PPC specialist, and other factors to determine which keywords are especially important. Keep the list limited so that you can be confident that the keywords you use can receive your full attention.
You don’t need to be #1. You’re often told that you need to be in the top three positions on search engines in order to be effective. However, maintaining this rank can get really tough. It requires really targeted keywords and often a big budget. Being a little lower on the list (such as #7) will still get you a lot of attention and won’t cost quite so much.
Schedule Your Ads: Posting ads 24/7 is rarely a good idea, even if you do have a large budget. And with a smaller budget, it becomes pivotal to choose the right time to get people’s attention. Use Google Analytics and consult with your team to figure out the best time of day, days of the week, to be posting your PPC ads.
Target Geography: For most products, you don’t need to target a whole country. Choose keywords that focus on locations especially relevant for your business. This might be a state or province or even only be a city.
It can seem incredibly daunting to set up a PPC ad campaign that meets your budget. However, if you keep your campaign focused and don’t spend money where it’s not needed, you can have excellent results.
References
“PPC for Small Business.”
https://www.clixmarketing.com/blog/2014/02/12/ppc-for-small-business-dealing-with-the-budget-cap-crisis/
Jonathon Long, “Small Business Marketing.”
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-long/small-business-marketing-_1_b_5206764.html