Legal Internet Marketing Blog
Not so long ago, small business owners had to be very selective about their advertising with their limited marketing budgets. Google AdWords and Internet marketing have leveled the playing field for small businesses substantially. However, unless owners or their Internet marketing expert plan their AdWords campaign carefully, they can quickly find themselves spending thousands of dollars with little return on investment.
First, determine if a Google AdWords campaign is the right choice for your business. For example, if your company produces a new product with very little name recognition, an AdWords campaign centered on a keyphrase like “organic turkey pastrami” might result in very inexpensive clicks, but little traffic to your site.
Next, establish an affordable budget and stick to it. Regardless how competitive your target keywords and keyphrases might be, unless you set a daily and monthly budget and stick to it, you’re setting yourself up to pay an expensive tab for pay-per-click. Instead of focusing on the quantity of clicks on your ad, concern yourself with the quality of those clicks.
Third, consider modifying your selected keywords and phrases with the names of nearby cities or your county. Also, bear in mind that AdWords will let you select a defined geo-specific area where your ads will reach local customers. If your snow plowing business is in Manchester, New Hampshire and you’re trying to attract qualified traffic with a PPC campaign for “snow removal,” it doesn’t do you much good if a user eighty miles away sees your ad. Select Manchester snow removal, Bedford, NH snow plowing services or another nearby community.
Next, create landing pages specifically for each PPC ad that address the topic, service or product mentioned in the ad. Running several different ads and having them send traffic to the same page will not produce positive results for you and may alienate the very people you want to attract. Consider your own Internet habits. If you arrive at a page that has little relevance to what you thought you might find, it creates a negative feeling toward the company and products.
Be prepared to monitor your campaign on an ongoing basis and make adjustments in real time. Remember that people and software make mistakes, and if your click-through rates are off the charts, but most of your clicks are coming from users in Brazil, your Illinois business is spending money on those clicks for no return. If an ad is underperforming or attracting unqualified traffic, constant monitoring and analysis will save you money, let you know what does and does not work and let you make informed decisions about how to maximize your ROI.
Depending on your situation, you may or may not have the time or inclination to monitor your AdWords campaigns. You will probably achieve measurably improved results if you hire an Internet marketer with years of experience managing PPC campaigns to provide some insight and recommendations on what does and does not work.