Pay Per Click StrategiesBetter Search Engine Marketing / Pay-Per-Click Results Start Here – We Guarantee It!

In the post, Pay Per Click: How to Use Google Trends to Capitalize on the Slow Summer Months, we alluded to how and why things slow down during the summer months. So right now, sales may be a little sluggish.

But, the busy season is right around the corner. As many pay per click marketers set their pay per click campaigns and forget them, now’s the time to give your site a pre-season tune up. Following are three areas to assess to.

1. Does my site load quickly enough? When was the last time you checked this? It would suck to spend money on a fantastic PPC campaign, only to have visitors clicking away because your site loads too slowly.

2. Can browsers easily find what they want on my site? Prospects should have to click no more than two or three times to find the product/service they’re interested in. If it’s more, you need to simplify your site.

Beyond this, a rule of thumb to live by in pay per click marketing is to direct prospects to what you promised them in the ad.

For example, let’s say you owned an online clothing boutique. You carry apparel for every member of the family. If a surfer clicks on a “cheap children’s shoes” ad, then that’s the page they should land on, not a generic home page with your.

3. Keyword Research: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is mercurial; not static. When was the last time you evaluated your keyword choices. Are they still the best keywords for pay per click campaign? Do you need to add more local keywords to the mix to gain more of this traffic?

By paying attention to areas like these, you can significantly increase your pay per click results with little or no further investment. 

Many pay per click marketers see a definite dip in sales during the summer. When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. Kids are out of school so parents have more responsibility; there are family vacations and many spend much more time outdoors.

Recognize it for what it is – a seasonal cycle that is largely out of your control. But, that does not mean that you should not market. Marketing is all about consistency. And, there is a nifty little tool that can help you run your pay per click marketing campaigns more effectively – no matter what the season is.

Google Trends: The Seasonal Equalizer in Pay Per Click Marketing
What is Google Trends? Google Trends is “. . . a public web facility of Google Inc., about Google Search, that shows how often a particular search-term is entered relative to the total search-volume across various regions of the world, and in various languages.” [Source: Wikipedia]

So how do you use it in your pay per click campaigns? By knowing what people are searching for on the web, you can use it to help you choose keywords better; tie your product or service into a popular event; and/or build entire campaigns around a newsworthy/popular time, place, person or event.

As we’ve said many times here on this blog, many internet marketers fail to increase their results because they “set it and forget it” when it comes to pay per click marketing.
Using tools like Google Trends can help you keep your campaigns fresh, popular, clickable and hence, profitable!

When most internet marketers think of pay per click marketing, they think of quick sales. And, while this form of search engine marketing is good for that, there’s another – just as good – reason to use it. What are we referring to? Branding.

Using PPC Marketing to Brand Your Business
In good economic times and bad, businesses need to brand their business. To digress for just a second, one of the biggest mistakes most businesses make is to stop advertising when times are tough or when they have too much business. Pay per click campaigns should be an ongoing marketing strategy.

Following are two reasons it’s a good idea to use PPC to brand your business:
(i) It draws motivated consumers: If you’ve done your homework and conducted the right keyword research, your search marketing campaigns will bring consumers who are highly motivated to buy. These are not tire kickers; they are ready for a solution to their problem (eg, to buy your product/service) if it fulfills the promise in the ad.

 (ii) It builds consumer awareness: Getting and staying in front of consumers is key to building brand awareness. Remember, pay per click marketing – by its nature if done correctly – draws highly focused consumers. They have a particular problem/need and are looking for a particular solution/product.

Staying top of mind with these types of customers is perhaps the number one reason to brand your business using pay per click marketing.