Effective PPC Strategies in 2016

Hand drawn Pay per click PPC concept business strategy on blackboard

When it comes to click-based marketing, there are new PPC strategies being created every day. Unfortunately this means there are too many options for your own good. You might fall for the hype and waste money on the latest “ppc tricks”. Or you might do the opposite mistake and resort to old strategies that no longer work. In order to have a successful business running successful online campaigns, you need to keep up with the changes, but in an intelligent way.

Each business is different, so naturally each campaign should be different. You need to analyze your results and see which lead turns into opportunity that later turns into a customer. We have made a list of the most effective PPC strategies this year. Some of these are old-school and have been fundamental since PPC was invented. Some of these are newer. All of them are crucial for you to implement straight away.

Target keywords that matter

Keywords are the single most important thing in each campaign. You can never “waste your time” by doing deeper keyword research. You need to find out which keywords are the best for your business in general and the specific campaign in particular. There are plenty of keyword research tools that can help make the process easier. For most intents and purposes however, Google’s keyword tool is a great choice.

Keywords are key to good PPC strategies

When you’re picking out the keywords you need to be more specific

Let’s take location as an example of specificity. Let’s say you have an “app development company” with a physical office in a certain city in Florida. One of your keywords should be ‘Android App Developers Florida’.

Of course this will depend on factors like keyword competition. Perhaps your research will reveal that “Florida Developer for Android Apps” is the better option. The key is to use terms that make your keywords specific. In this case, you would want to direct your research towards keywords that include your physical location.

Consider going long-tail with your keywords

Another way to be successful in targeting keywords is to use long-tail keywords – those consisting of four or more words. Most people who search for something online type a whole sentence. For example, ‘What’s the best Developer for Small Business software in Florida?’. Yet most marketers are targeting “software developer florida” or even worse “software developer”. Those short keywords have the most competition and are the most expensive to target. Longer keywords have less (direct) competition and often bring you more qualified traffic.

After you’ve gotten enough traffic, look at your Search Terms Report. You need to see which of your long-tail keywords give you the best results. That’s how you will be able to cut off the irrelevant keywords. You might think – What’s the harm in having more keywords even if they don’t give you good results? Well, you shouldn’t be wasting money on clicks that don’t create leads.

It’s 2016, so trends change fast. You need to check the keywords and see their results almost every month. Don’t think that if you’ve done the research once, you’re done with that.

Mobile PPC

Since 2015 mobile advertising has been on a meteoric rise. And now in 2016 it’s larger than ever. Mobile ad clicks have grown to the point that sometimes it is more worthwhile to use mobile PPC than desktop PPC.

mobile ppc strategies

If you add mobile PPC to the repertoire, your brand will grow in recognition more quickly, thus you will build consumer trust. This will help you rank higher on search engines such as Bing and Google. This 2016 trend will also help you build a stronger and more intimate relationship with consumers.

The best way to use mobile PPC is through social media networks

For example, Facebook is the best social network for specific audience targeting. Millions of people who are searching for new content have profiles there.

Also, Twitter and Instagram (as of this year) can also be good for pay-per-click content marketing. However you have to test them if they’re good for your specific industry or niche.  There is a good chance that Instagram will become the lead social network in some markets and niches, so you might want to focus on that.

Remember, your mobile PPC ad needs to send the viewers to a URL that you control. That’s why you need to create a custom landing page that is mobile-ready. Your visitors should quickly and easily access the content they are looking for. Don’t make them have to switch over to their desktop. When it comes to mobile PPC you wouldn’t want to send them straight to anything complex such as a PDF or long-form offers. You collect their email address and send them content, reports and more with an autoresponder. They can then later choose to open that complex content from their desktop PCs.

Build awareness for your brand

Paid search is the most common way to do pay-per-click advertising, but it is not the only way. Paid search is one of the best ways to put yourself in front of people looking for a solution to a problem. And often that solution happens to be your product or service. However this approach is always the best or most convenient for every type of business.

You need to focus on finding people that need your service or product, but don’t know even know it yet! Targeting these people is a bit different and more difficult, but it’s definitely worthwhile.

Build a brand through PPC

You should still use paid promotion, but primarily as a way to build a name for your brand. After they visit your website you can use retargeting to keep them coming back until they realize they need your service or product.

This can also be more worthwhile because with retargeting ads you get more clicks and the cost is 33% lower. Also, when people buy online they want to feel like they know the brand. If your brand is a “known entity” in their mind, there is a bigger chance for a sale. This strategy requires long-term dedication and a lot of effort to get results. But it is definitely something that will increase your sales.

Ad extensions

If you want to have ads that stand out you might want to consider using ad extensions. They could drive traffic to your page by increasing the content and size of the PPC ad. This can increase the click-rate by 30% to 100%. That’s why it is really important to optimize or use ad extensions. Let’s look at some of the Ad extensions offered by Google.

Review extensions – Your ad will include a small snippet from a positive review. Kind of like those lines you see on back-covers of books or in some game and movie trailers.

Location extensions – If you have a local business this would be perfect for you. Your address will be visible and clickable.

Seller ratings – If you have 4 stars or more, this is an amazing extension. It will show your star rating, right under your ad.

Call extensions – This is for local businesses too. Include this if you want the potential customers to be able to call you directly from the ad. This can also be used for implementing Google call forwarding.

When it comes to online marketing and promotion, new strategies are being developed every month. It is getting increasingly difficult to keep up to date on everything yourself. If you want a cutting edge online marketing strategy, we’re here for you. We’ve modified and created many PPC campaigns for many happy clients over the years. Whether you need help with PPC, Search-Engine-Marketing or an overall strategy, feel free to reach out

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