Paid Search is a fantastic way to drive web traffic to your site from the major search engines. It can also suck your marketing budget dry in just a couple of days if not done properly. The bottom line is someone is going to profit by implementing paid search. The question is, is it going to be you or the search engines? The goal of the search engines (and their strategies) is more clicks. The more people click on your ads the more money the search engines make. Their strategy is to get as many clicks as possible with in your budget and they are willing to do that all day long. This is great for them bad for you.
The real goal should be more conversion with less clicks and lower cost. Let's take a few minutes to look at some strategies that should make a difference in your campaigns. We will get more specific and articles to come.
General strategies
1. Turn off Content Network
In Google when you first set up a campaign there is a default setting that turns the "content match" setting to "on". For now, turn that setting off. What this does is present your ads on websites that are using AdSense. If you go to a website and see "Ads by Google", those ads are coming from Google paid search accounts. Those ads show up on these websites based on the content of the website. At first glance this may look like a good idea and it usually is, for Google. There are two things that you need to consider before turning on the content match. The first is that the website that is hosting your ad gets paid every time someone clicks on your ad. Most of the click fraud that happens is when an owner of a site or so want affiliated with the site clicks on these ads. The second thing is that individuals who click on these ads are not actively seeking what you are offering. These folks are tire kickers. Even though your ad may be presented (number of impressions) to a lot of people, the click through rate and conversion rate is very low. The magic of search engine marketing is that you come in contact with individuals who are actively searching for what you have to offer. Only pay for clicks that come from people in that category.
2. Search Terms.
The more general the term the less qualified to lead (generally speaking). Personally, I am not a big fan of hundreds of key words for paid search. This is a great strategy the search engines and paid search management companies that are paid a percentage of your spend. What I try to figure out is what terms would work in order to get my ideal customer to my site. Remember, you want people to come to your site who are actively searching for what you are offering. For example if you sell "long term care insurance" what type of people do you want clicking on your ads? Of course, you want individuals looking for long term care insurance, not "long term care" or "insurance". You can use these terms if you create a list of "negative" key words. We will talk about that at another time.
3. Keyword "types"
There are three types of keywords "Broad", "Phrase" and "Exact". Do not use "broad match" except for phrases with four or more words. For example, long term care insurance quote. The rule of thumb that I use is: for single word phrases, I use exact match and for search phrases that are two to three words, I used "phrase matching". I am also experimenting with using "exact" matching for these terms as well. Remember the more specific the search term is to what you are offering and who your ideal client is, the more qualified to lead will be. Better a small number of qualified leads than a large number of leads that waste your time and ultimately cost a lot more money.
In Part 2 we will discuss Ad Copy, Landing Pages and Tracking.
Terry Stanfield is a SEM consultant with over 15 years of sales and marketing experience. His company, Clickadvantage, manages PPC and SEO efforts for his lead generation and ecommerce clients. For more information: Paid Search: one-way ticket to the poor farm or great profits
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