Profiting from Pay-Per-Click: The Small Business Owner s Resource for Online Advertising

Transcription

1 Daniel Kunz Profiting from Pay-Per-Click: The Small Business Owner s Resource for Online Advertising 2015 Brightladder

2 Table of Contents Introduction... 1 Chapter 1: How PPC Can Help Your Small Business...5 Chapter 2: Understanding Keywords...8 Chapter 3: Writing your PPC Ad...11 Chapter 4: Choosing Your PPC Ad Network...16 Chapter 5: PPC Best Practices...21 Chapter 6: Measuring Results Resources Introduction My name is Daniel Kunz, and I am the Founder and CEO of Brightladder. When I was 22, my parents gave me $1,000 to invest in a business idea; that business soon became an Inc multi-million dollar company employing dozens, and providing thousands of ecommerce businesses with products to sell. When I first started I did not have a lot of money to spend on advertising, and built our web traffic through organic search rankings. You can read about my tips in the SEO ebook I wrote. Later in my career, I started working with Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising and developed strategies that helped the company effectively drive traffic Brightladder

3 Intro Introduction In today s competitive world of SEO and search engine marketing, it s getting harder to be placed above the rest. You can pour your energy (and finances) into trying to reach the top of search results, but you can t guarantee success. So how are you supposed to reach potential customers if competition for those organic results is too cutthroat? Try PPC. PPC -- otherwise known as pay-per-click -- is advertising you purchase on search engine pages, social media, and other sites. What just a few years ago was relatively unpolished and unappealing now is a highly targeted and effective means of reaching your audience. What makes PPC different from, say, banner ads, is that instead of paying a flat rate for your ad to appear, you pay for every click that it gets. So if your ad sits there and no one clicks on it, you pay nothing (you also get no new customers, but we ll make sure people click on your ads in this ebook) Just to further throw you, there are also options to pay per thousand impressions. So once your ad has appeared 1,000 times on a site, your credit card would be charged for the agreed-upon fee. The Difference Between PPC and SEO 2015 Brightladder 1

4 If you have not read our Small Business Guide to Search Engine Optimization written by the founder of Brightladder, you might be unclear on the differences between SEO and PPC. Let me illuminate you. SEO -- or search engine optimization -- includes those marketing strategies you use to rank higher in search results organically. Organic search results just means these are the non-paid results based on relevancy and popularity. If someone searches for women s maternity shirt and your site (which sells maternity clothes) uses this keyword phrase frequently and many people visit the site and buy from it, your site will appear in search results. The higher you appear in those results, the better for your business. PPC, on the other hand, takes the shortcut to getting in front of people who want to buy what you re selling. If you ve got the budget, you can appear on the front page with your ad right there, ready for people to click. You don t have to work as hard to appear in organic results (though it s still a wise idea to strive to). But Do PPC Ads Really Work? It is true that most searches on Google skip the ads, there are still those who can t tell the difference between sponsored ads and organic results. In the graphic below, the ads just above the main results and to the right (both marked Ads ) are those that businesses paid to appear for the keyword search PPC. An effectively written and targeted ad is key to deliver exactly what people are looking for, which is why you should add it to your marketing arsenal Brightladder 2

5 Who Are the Big Players? Naturally, most people think of Google when they think of pay-per-click ads, but Google AdWords is just a drop in the bucket. Other search engines that offer PPC ads include Bing and Yahoo!. And then there are publisher networks like AdClickMedia that spread your ad across dozens of relevant websites. And then there s social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn who offer advertising options. Additionally, there are affiliate advertising networks like Commission Junction, which help you connect to publishers that have big audiences that will want to click on your ads. You pay the affiliate either per click or a percentage of a sale that comes from a click from their site. Other less popular but effective pay-per methods are pay-per-lead, and pay-per-call. As you can see, there are plenty of options for your small business to consider when it comes to advertising online. Terms to Know Before we set sail for PPC Island and learn how to take advantage of advertising to boost sales, let s look at some key terms you should know. Click Fraud: Occurs when someone (sometimes a competitor) clicks on your ad to incur costs to you Conversion Rate: The percent of people who click your ad who actually make a purchase or take a particular action. CPA: Cost per action. The cost to you for a potential customer to take a particular action, such as make a purchase. CPM: Cost per thousand impressions of your ad. Impression: The appearance of your ad on a web page. Landing Page: The web page a visitor lands on after clicking the link in your ad. This should be targeted for a particular product or audience. PPA: Pay-per-action. Some ads only charge you when a particular action occurs, such as someone signing up for your newsletter or making a purchase Brightladder 3

6 PPC: Acronym for pay-per-click. Refers to an ad where advertiser pays a set amount each time someone clicks on the ad link. ROI: Your return on investment. How many customers you re getting per your PPC spend Brightladder 4

7 Chapter 1 How PPC Can Help Your Small Business If you re looking for an easy way to get in front of your customers, PPC can do that for you. There are plenty of other benefits that pay-per-click ads offer small businesses. Let s take a look at a few of them. The Difference Between Organic and Paid Search Results Sure, you can spend months churning out relevant content for your blog, optimizing your keywords, and expanding your social network to drive more traffic to your site and boost your ranking in search results, but if you need results now, that s not the way. Online advertising provides immediate results. If you can afford to pay to play (meaning you can afford the rate it costs to get to the top of the PPC ads for a given keyword), you can reach millions of people. With SEO it could take years, but PPC can yield overnight results. Get Market Research Fast If you re still testing out a product or a landing page, your PPC results will quickly tell you if you re on the right track or not. For example, if you run two versions of an ad, you can measure which converts more clicks into customers. That s obviously the one you will use going forward. Then create another version to compare with the better yielding ad, and keep continuing this process. You should always 2015 Brightladder 5

8 have an A/B test going with your advertisements. Or if you re trying to figure out if you should offer your product in yellow or pink, as an example, setting up two ads can tell you which your customers really want. You don t waste a lot of time producing a product no one wants, because you essentially crowd source the next color you offer your product in. Reach More People Like I said a few paragraphs ago: PPC offers you the unique opportunity to reach far more people than you would through other marketing efforts. Once you know the popular keywords that are a good fit for your brand (and that fit your budget), you can reach all of the people who type in that keyword. Or if you opt for ad networks, you can reach even more people on all manner of websites that cater to your particular demographic. And social ads, too, expand your reach by letting you target who sees your ad, and putting it in front of the right people. Target a Specific Audience It s pretty darn impressive how far we ve come in the online advertising world. In the beginning (say, 15 years ago), ads were just blast out without regard to who saw them. So if you wanted to sell your doggie chew toys, your ad would appear to everyone, regardless of whether they had a dog or were in the market for a chew toy. Now you can not only target dog owners looking for chew toys, but even the type of breed they own! (That may sound far-fetched, but it s definitely in the realm of possibility. LinkedIn does a fabulous job of targeting, and is especially useful if you re in the B2B (business to business) area. You can decide what industry you want to target, and ensure that only people with a particular job title see your ad. If you know the job title of the person who typically buys from you, this helps you cut everyone else out and zero in on your ideal customer. Easy to Measure ROI While experts continue to argue about how to measure the return on investment for social media and content marketing, PPC continues to deliver simple ROI analysis. It s easy: if people click on your 2015 Brightladder 6

9 site and then buy, the cost of that click is your investment. Your return is whatever they paid for your product. You can also measure your cost per click, cost per action, and other activities that matter to you. Essentially, you should be getting more value than you re putting in. If you re simply looking to beef up your list, assign a dollar value to each new signup. If each subscriber is worth $15 to you, you can spend up to that amount to get a new subscriber through PPC ads. Great for Testing You can test more than product ideas with PPC ads. You can also see which keywords people are associating with your brand, as well as test out different campaigns to see which do better. You may find that people search for chew toy more than doggie toy based on the number of clicks your two keyword-targeted ads get, which can help you guide the direction of your web copy and landing pages Brightladder 7

10 Chapter 2 Understanding Keywords Properly targeted keywords are imperative for the success of your PPC campaign. But before you let the concept of choosing the right keywords overwhelm you, keep reading. We ll walk through the process of figuring out which are the best keywords and implementing them in your campaign. How to Choose the Right Keywords Start by understanding how customers see your brand. If you were looking for products like yours, what would you search for in a search engine? If, for example, you sell marketing software for small businesses, you might type in: software marketing for small business small business marketing software Start with this list so you can dive deeper and figure out which of these keyword phrases more people are searching for, or whether you need an entire new list of keywords. When you plug this list into the Keyword Planner on AdWords, you get the following information: 2015 Brightladder 8

11 There s great information here. First, you can see how many people are searching for each term. Obviously the more people searching the better. However, you also see how high the competition is for each keyword. blast has a ton of monthly traffic, but it s got high competition, and you d have to pay about $28 per click just to compete with others who use this phrase in their AdWords. marketing is also highly competitive, but its suggested bid is less than half of the first example. You want to find the balance between a keyword that people are actually searching for, and a keyword that you can afford to rank high for. Your budget probably can t afford too many of those $28 clicks, so keep looking until you find a better fit. Even if you don t plan to use AdWords for your PPC campaign, this is a fabulous tool to help you understand your keywords and how competitive each is. Taking a Note from the Competition If you ve noticed that your competitor seems to do exceedingly well with his pay-per-click campaign, there are ways you can discover his keyword secrets. Called spy software, tools like SpyFu will scour AdWords and other PPC campaigns your competitors have and glean the keywords they ve used Brightladder 9

12 From there, you have the choice to use the same keywords and pay more than your competition to rank higher in PPC placement. The Importance of A/B Testing When it comes to spending money on PPC ads, every penny counts. You don t want to pay for clicks that don t result in sales (of course, not every click will result in sales, but you want to increase those that do), so it s important to test different versions of ads against one another. Most ad platforms will allow you to do this from within the program. But additionally, it s a good idea to split test the landing pages that people arrive on once they click your ad. You can pit one landing page against another with tools like Optimizely and Convert. Something as small as changing the color of a button from purple to green on your landing page can actually net huge changes in your conversion rate, so figure out what s most likely to get people to click and buy with split testing. Now that you ve got your keywords ready to roll, let s start writing your first pay-per-click ad Brightladder 10

13 Chapter 3 Writing your PPC Ad While writing a pay-per-click ad isn t difficult, it does require attention to detail, as your wording will determine how many people click on it, and ensure that only the right people click it. There s a certain amount of psychology behind any kind of persuasive writing, such as ad copy or website copy. You want to be clear in what your link will provide visitors, while also spurring people to take action (make a purchase, sign up for your newsletter, click to learn more). That s a tall order to fill in just 35 characters, the limit for a Google AdWords ad. Other platforms don t permit much more text than that either. Look at Your Competition You ve already perhaps used spy software to find out what keywords your competitors are using. Now s the time to pay attention to their copywriting. Using the same software (or simply searching for keywords on search engines) you can see what your competition is writing to attract people to their site. You can see what works (and what doesn t) with your spy software, which will save you a lot of testing of your own copy. While you don t want to copy their text verbatim, looking at other ads can help you understand what your audience is identifying with, which will aid you in crafting your own ad copy. Now let s look at some strategies to increase your success with your PPC ad Brightladder 11

14 Tips for Smarter Copywriting It s got to be short and sweet when it comes to your PPC ad copy. Let s start with your headline. Hitting on a Headline That Has Impact You re limited to 25 characters for your headline on search engines and social media, so it s imperative you boil it down to something that will grab people s attention instantly. Make sure to include your keyword in the headline. That helps people (and all search engines) know that your ad relates to their search. Next, make your headline engaging enough to make people want to click. Below is an example of a series of ads that run on LinkedIn. They each do a fantastic job of piquing interest and making viewers want to click. I particularly like the last example: Are You A President? Questions are great for headlines, as they get people thinking, and they can t help but answer the questions in their heads. This is a great opportunity for you to try out that testing we talked about earlier. Create a few versions of your headline, and then see which nets you the biggest clicks and sales Brightladder 12

15 Crafting Copy That Convinces Once you ve mastered the art of writing a winning headline, move on to the body of the ad. Here, brevity is still key. Below are the limits for characters for each major ad platform: It s definitely challenging to say what you need to say in such limited space, but once you practice writing a few ads, it ll come easier. Again, looking at other ads is a great education that will help you in writing your own. Here are some helpful hints for writing your ad copy. Google AdWords: 70 Bing: 70 LinkedIn: 75 Facebook: 90 Focus on What Makes You Different. Are you the cheapest product in the game? Have you won awards? Are you 60% more energy efficient than the competition? All these are value propositions that will capture people s attention in your ad. Include a Special Offer. Your link should take people to a landing page where they ll save money or get something free. It s a surefire way to get them to choose your ad over even organic results. Use Your Keyword. Use it naturally in your text to reinforce what visitors can expect in clicking on your ad. Leverage Credibility. If you re the #1 choice of dentists, mention it. This makes people trust you and then click. Include a Call to Action. What do you want people to do? Say so! Whether you want them to sign up, buy, register, or try, use the right words to spur people into action. On the right we see some good examples of the bullets above. Xero and Peachtree use the promotion strategy to entice people to click, while Netsuite uses the credibility angle. If their product is trusted by more than 20,000 organizations, it can probably help your company, right? To Use Images or Not Now, your ad is written. Is there anything else you can do to enhance it? 2015 Brightladder 13

16 Try an image! Pretty much every PPC ad platform allows images these days, and as studies show, people are more likely to engage if there s visual appeal. On Facebook, photos get 53% more likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-throughs on links than text-only posts do. It s definitely worth the effort. One thing that s improved with Facebook is many of its ads now appear in a user s news feed, so they seem more natural and don t stick out like a sore thumb: You can use your image to target what you want your ad to focus on. Maybe it s your spring lineup of women s dresses, or an adorable puppy sleeping next to your product. Whatever the image, make sure it is professionally shot, clearly depicts what you want viewers to know about your brand, and relates to what people will see if they click on your ad Brightladder 14

17 If At First You Fail You may not get it right with your first ad attempt, so don t be shy about trying out different verbiage, headlines, offers, and images to see which one gets the response you re looking for. It s often trial and error, so be willing to modify and adapt. If you take the mindset that you will not succeed most of the time then you will not get frustrated. Instead, make PPC a game and seek to have a higher and higher success rate as the weeks and months go by. More than likely failure is going to happen. However, don t let it frustrate you at all. Instead learn from it and motivate yourself to grow from what you did, or didn t do. Just like baseball where you fail the majority of the time you must have the right mindset to continually persevere and be successful in this game of PPC. As long as you learn from your mistakes during the process you will find success Brightladder 15

18 Chapter 4 Choosing Your PPC Ad Network When it comes to which ad network you use to reach your audience, you have the ability these days to choose the one that will help you best connect with your specific demographic. Looking to reach business owners? LinkedIn can help you target them based on their job titles. Want to find social media influencers? Put an ad on Twitter. Would you rather spread your ad across sites in a particular niche so that people recognize your logo frequently? Partner with an ad network that distributes your advertisements to sites in your genre. Determine Who You re Trying to Reach The first step is to figure out exactly who you want to connect with. The more you know about your target audience, the better you can select the network that best caters to them. You should know: How old they are Demographic info (income, location, job) This information will be valuable in helping you decide which platform to invest your advertising dollars in. What sites or social media platforms they use 2015 Brightladder 16

19 Research the Channels They Use If you re not sure which social media sites your audience uses, a little investigation can go a long way. Make a list of all the channels you re considering, then spend some time on each. See if your competitors have a presence on each channel, and how much interaction they re getting. For example, if your biggest competitor has a Facebook page with 10,000 likes and plenty of comments on its posts, chances are, this is a great place to start your advertising efforts. You can also search for your target audience to see how active they are. Say you want to target hotel managers on LinkedIn. See how many Groups there are that cater to this demographic, and see how active members are. Lots of activity means favorable conditions for your ad. The Lowdown on Each Ad Network Let s look at each category of ad network (social, search, and affiliate/publisher) and examine the characteristics of each so that you are informed enough to know where to begin advertising. Social Media Each social network offers slightly different benefits from one another, and one of them is surely a good fit for your needs. Facebook Facebook s sheer number of users (currently at over 1.23 billion) makes it appealing for many advertisers. But make sure you re trying to reach the audience that s there. If you assume it s a younger crowd, you might be surprised that users under 25 have abandoned the site in favor of other social tools. Because you can customize who receives your ad based on demographic data like age, relationship status, interests, and location, it s great for being able to put your ad in front of exactly who you want to see it. Twitter The biggest portion of Twitter users are aged 18 to 29. Twitter offers a few types of advertising options: 2015 Brightladder 17

20 Promoted Accounts: Invite targeted users to follow your brand s account Promoted Trends: Drive interest around a hashtag for a campaign or event Promoted Tweets: Show to targeted users in streams or at the top of search results. LinkedIn Great for connecting with B2B or people in a particular industry or with a particular job title, LinkedIn sees the greatest activity from the and year old age brackets. It s wonderful how you can drill down who sees your ad based on industry, job title, salary, keyword, and more. And with options for ads including text, image, video, and social, you ve got plenty of options. Publisher Networks Another way to spread the word about your company across the Internet is to work with an advertising network that can place your ad on targeted sites. The more places potential customers see your banner ads, the more they begin to trust you. Then comes the purchase! Here are a few networks to explore: AdRoll AdRoll s specialty is retargeting. They help you capture people who have visited your site, but maybe didn t make a purchase. Suddenly, these people see your ads on websites, blogs, and social media. They re more likely to return to your site and take action if they continually see your brand splashed across the Internet. AdBlade AdBlade s focus is content-style ads. It s a break from the usual visual ads, and worth exploring, given the popularity of blogs and content marketing Brightladder 18

21 Affiliate Networks Affiliate ads have come a long way since the early days 20 years ago, and now include mobile ads, as well as social media ads, coupon sites, and more innovative advertising solutions, and this area is expected to double from what it was in 2011 to $4.5 billion in If you aren t familiar with affiliates, here s how they work: you decide what campaigns you want to promote. Maybe you have an offer for 20% off of your services. Once you sign up with an affiliate provider, you can determine what the criteria is for people to sign up to be affiliates for this deal. Maybe you only want bloggers who write about small business to promote your campaign. After you ve specified the details of your offer, it will be published and affiliates can apply. They publish your link or ad on their sites. Whenever someone does one of the following (based on your specifications), they get paid: Click the ad or link Make a purchase from your site Call your company using that link So you pay a small fee to drive leads through your affiliates websites, blogs, and social networks. It s win/ win for everyone. Let s look at a few options. Take other action on your site Commission Junction One of the most popular affiliate sites, Commission Junction is unique in how it s adapted to changing technology. It now suggests mobile optimized offers for affiliates, which helps you reach people on their phones where many people spend a significant amount of time. It also offers content solutions if you want to try something other than traditional banner or text ads. The site offers ad publishing in dozens of industries, including construction, education, legal, web services, and more. Keep in mind there is a fairly hefty upfront fee to work with Commission Junction as well as costs for each conversion. Rakuten LinkShare Another option to consider (and there s no reason you can t use more than one) is LinkShare Brightladder 19

22 In addition to affiliate advertising services, LinkShare also offers assistance with customer acquisition for brands that have a longer sales cycle. They can assist in getting signups, free trials, and leads. Setting Your Budget Whichever option or options you choose for your pay-per-click advertising campaign, you ll have to start with what you can afford. Fortunately, a small business doesn t need big money to be a player in this space, and you need little money to get started. For PPC ads on search engines or social media, you typically have two choices: Pay per click Pay per thousand views Which is cheaper depends on what the competition is already paying for a click for a given keyword (some, like insurance, can cost $50 or more per click!), as well as what the value is for one thousand views. You might try out each option and see which nets you more sales. Remember, the option to pay per thousand views (PPM) doesn t guarantee clicks. It s simply what you pay to get your ad shown on the screen 1,000 times. With affiliate ads, you ll be paying commission fees for your affiliates, as well as administrative fees to the ad network. That commission fee will vary, but typically falls between 4 and 20% of a sale. So start by determining what you can afford, then choose the best option. You might run a campaign on LinkedIn for $100 and see what results you can get before investing in more. The key here is making sure your efforts are resulting in sales. Whatever size your budget, you want it to get you at least some sales. So start small, assess results, then increase your spending accordingly Brightladder 20

23 Chapter 5 PPC Best Practices Now that you re well-versed on all topics related to PPC, let s look at some best practices. Targeting The better you know your audience, the better targeted your ad will be. It s really necessary to know who you re trying to reach, know what their behaviors are online, and know what they search for to find businesses like yours. Even if you re not sure you re spot on with your targeting, results will soon tell you. Once you re a few days into a campaign, log into your website analytics and look at your bounce rate for the past few days. This tells you how many people viewed one page (the one they clicked from your ad) then left without visiting any other pages. The lower the bounce rate, the better the people clicking your ad fit your customer demographic. If you ve got a high bounce rate (over 70%), go back to your ad and make sure you ve chosen the best keywords and wording. If not, revamp and start again. Wording How you phrase your ad will have an impact on clicks and bounce rate. Keep it simple. Stick to what you re trying to promote. Nothing more, nothing less Brightladder 21

24 And I can t stress how important your call to action is! This is what moves people to do something, be it click, buy, or sign up. People need direction, so give it to them. Keywords If you can afford to compete for top keywords, do it; otherwise opt for high search low competition terms. And be as specific as possible. A keyword like small business will cost you a lot, but if you re trying to sell small business accounting software, the former won t even lead the right people to you. Also, if you re a local business, make sure to include your city or neighborhood in your keyword. You ll have less competition, and you ll help people who are looking specifically for a place like San Diego Filipino bakery. Not sure if you ve got the right keywords? Compare clicks to sales to see if you re using the right keywords. If you re getting lots of clicks but few sales, try targeting your keywords even better. Testing PPC ads need constant testing. What works this month might fail miserably next month. Run several versions of the same ad to see which gets the most attention. You might find your spicy title Find Out What You Don t Know About Your Taxes gets more clicks and sales than Everything You Need to Know About Tax Law. (Go figure, right?) Or that your ad with an image got 45% more sales. You never know what works best until you test. Testing is imperative to the success of your business and PPC ad. If you don t know what is and isn t then you will have a difficult time getting to the next level and making sales. You must be proactive and not reactive. But test only one thing at a time! If you change too many factors, you won t know which led to the change. Change just the title, or image, or copy. Then wait a few weeks to measure results. Then change the landing page or keyword. One step at a time. Now that you re an expert on writing and implementing your ads, let s look at measuring results Brightladder 22

25 Chapter 6 Measuring Results It s imperative that you constantly measure results to ensure you re achieving what you set out to do with PPC ads. If not, it s simple enough to tweak them, change your keywords, or increase your budget accordingly. Mastering Analytics Whichever channel you use for your advertising, you ll likely have an insightful dashboard you can look at to get results for your ads, at least from the advertising perspective. You can find out how many clicks an ad got, and in some cases (like in Google AdWords, if you ve also got Google Analytics set up), how many clicks turned into sales. You can see which of your sponsored social updates got shared or retweeted, and with affiliate programs, you can see how successful your affiliates have been in driving traffic to your site. But on the other side, you want to look from your website analytics perspective. You can see how much total traffic you re sending to your landing page, which is important if you re using multiple PPC channels to drive traffic to the same site. You can see which pages people visit after clicking to your landing page. From all this, you can glean data that helps you determine which products people are most interested in. From there, you can invest more in the ads that are netting you clicks and sales, and cut back on the others Brightladder 23

26 Make a point to check in on your analytics every week or so to ensure your ads are continuing to drive the right traffic to your site and get them to buy. Remember, you must make only one change at a time to see what s working. Again, be proactive, not reactive, in your PPC efforts! Ready to Get Started? You ve got all the information you need to start benefiting from pay-per-click advertising. Have fun with it! Try out several types and see which appeal to you most. Then see how much new business you can attract! 2015 Brightladder 24

27 Resources Search Engines AdWords Help Center Bing Ad Content and Style Guidelines Social Media LinkedIn Advertising Tips for Beginners How to Use Twitter Ads for More Exposure, Leads and Sales 45 Fabulous Facebook Advertising Tips & Magic Marketing Tricks Affiliates Online Guide to Affiliate Marketing [for Merchants] Five Tips for Successful Affiliate Program Management Writing Ads 7 Secrets for Writing Killer PPC Headlines How To Write the Best PPC Ad Copy & Beat Your Competitors Writing killer Google PPC ads 2015 Brightladder 25

28 August 2015, Brightladder, All Rights Reserved.