It’s all very well having a cutting-edge website that looks great and offers clear and informative content about your products and services, but is it actually racking up a healthy number of visitors? Even more important than the visitor numbers is the conversion rate. If most of your visitors are clicking on to your site, stopping for a few seconds and then clicking off elsewhere, then your website simply isn’t doing its job properly.
Website Visitors Are Not the Goal – Customers Are!
The problem that every business faces nowadays is getting the message out there, and drawing in the right sort of visitors who are ready, willing and able to make a purchase. That’s where a good PPC marketing campaign comes in – with the emphasis very much on ‘good’.
PPC, or Pay-Per-Click to give it its full name, is a way of ensuring that prospective customers get to see your site prominently displayed in the search engine results. You agree to pay the relevant search engine a set amount for every single time that someone clicks on your advertisement slot, based on the keywords that the person has entered into their search engine’s text box.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? Once you figure out what search terms prospective customers are most likely to use, then you pay to have your website listed at the top of the rankings. But selecting the appropriate keywords is actually something of a science, particularly when you consider the sheer amount of competition involved. That’s why ‘long-tail keywords’, made up of several words, can be so much more effective.
Understand the Science Behind the Concept
You don’t have to rely on the services of an AdWords consultant in London, or a marketing company in Glasgow, but in order to hit the your businesses marketing goals it is important to consider the sheer knowledge and expertise that companies such as Brand Innovation Agency Blond Ideas Group could help your business with.
With years of experience in digital marketing and branding, these organisations can ensure that you are targeting the right people in the right way.
If you’re determined to go it alone, or perhaps you simply want to learn as much as you can about the way PPC works, a great resource is Search Engine Land which offers articles on all aspects of digital marketing. Complete beginners will find Econsultancy’s guide useful, as it assumes no prior knowledge of the subject.
Armed with your new-found knowledge, you certainly could cobble together some sort of PPC campaign, but it’s important to factor in the potential costs. The aim is not just to get people clicking on the link to your site: it is to get high-quality leads clicking on your site, as otherwise you are paying money to little or no purpose.
Bear in mind that even if you dig deeply into the subject, search engines constantly update their rules and regulations, so there is no guarantee that what worked for you last year will still be effective this year. The way internet users connect to online information also changes – as evidenced by the rise and rise of the smartphone – which also has a knock-on effect on any digital marketing campaign.