Paid advertising is an amazing way to drive traffic to your website, but could become let’s say out of control if you are not careful. By out of control I refer to the fact that it could become very expensive and at the same time not serve its purpose. You could make such a mistake if your AdWords for example are too broad and not specific. Marketers pay for search engines to do text advertisement in respond to keywords, but these keywords could be generic (computer) and branded (Apple Mac) (Rutz & Bucklin 2011).
There are number of tips that we should use to make sure we get what we pain for. Let me share some of the bang on tips with you guys.
- Understand how AdWords work:
The first thing you have to do is literally understand how the AdWords work and more specifically how Keywords work. Google AdWords tool is the ideal place to discover keywords in your industry. This tool is very good, BUT is leading you to keywords which are very broad and not particularly effective. The keywords you should look for are the ones your customers are looking for and best describes your business. Therefore, you are looking for so called ‘long tail keywords’, which means that the words are long and more specific and added up together they make up most of the search-driven traffic. According to (Internet Advertising Bureau UK (iab), 2016), AdWords takes approximately 60% of all paid advertising, which is leading us to the notion that it does work.
In the example shown above, the term ‘how to get out of debt’ is a ‘head’ keyword which means that it has been searched very often. But here you are aiming for more specific words, which are searched less, but better exemplifies a long tail keywords. Most of the businesses make the mistake to purchase ‘head’ keywords and spend tremendous amounts of money and at the same time reduce your ROI substantially. The best source of keywords could be your own website or maybe a customer survey, which is going to navigate you to what the customers are interested and looking for.
- Knowing what paid Ads are available.
As a beginning you should know some of the most popular paid advertising such as:
Display/Banner Ads- Display or also called Banner ads are the first thing that appears in our mind when it comes to advertising due to the fact that they are so visibly noticeable. The use of such an Ads is very wide spread, but used for targeting customers which are not looking for a particular thing at that particular moment. This means that if you read your online newspaper, but encounter an advert about cars you can use and click on the banner which is going to lead you to a landing page which more information.
Text Ads- Text Ads are the ads, which we see as soon as we go to the primary Google or other Search engine. These ads are not as expensive as others and targets customers which are looking for something specific. Text Ads could be very successful, but it depends on keyword research and A/B testing.
Google AdWords- These type of ads are one of the most used by businesses. They can be looked at as a merge between display and text ads. The Google AdWords will generate a better return on your investment if you use them for a longer period of time and at the same time you are going to be rewarded by Google with better ‘quality scores’.
Here we come to the question, Why not Bing or Yahoo ads? You are right, they offer the same service, but some businesses state that they don’t bring the same amount of traffic, therefore most of the businesses prefer Google AdWords.
Facebook – LinkedIn- Using social media as a way of advertising has increased in recent years. This type of advertising include banners and text and are preferred due to the fact that you can target the customer’s preference, demographics and location.
3. Time to Track Your Progress
If you can’t see the progress of your advertising what is the point of having it ? One of the advantages of the online advertising is that you can track everything. Google Analytics is a necessity and also another good thing about it is that it is free and easy to install.
Once you get to know how Google Analytics work, you should create a customized URL for each of your advertisements and this will help you monitor your ads performance. This type of tracking is vital in order to track which clicks have been converted into genuine leads or long-term subscribers.
There are a number of disadvantages when it comes to paid advertising. Such a disadvantage is when you get high volume of traffic through your website, but do not have any sales or subscriptions due to the fact that this traffic comes from unreliable sources (. These are people paid to surf the internet.
Another disadvantage in paid advertising is due to its efficiency is the competition, which can drive the price per click in excess of £10 for commonly used phrases.
References:
Rutz, O., & Bucklin, R., 2011 From Generic to Branded: A Model of Spillover in Paid Search Advertising. Journal of Marketing Research (JMR). Vol. 48 Issue 1, p87-102.
Gyatham, A., 2015, 5 Disadvantages of Paid Traffic (PPC Traffic), [Online] Available at: http://www.shoutmeloud.com/paid-traffic-disadvantages.html. (Accessed 8th of May 2016).
Internet Advertising Bureau UK, 2016, Digital Adspen, [Online] Available at: http://www.iabuk.net/research/digital-adspend. (Accessed 8th of May 2016).
Kissmetrics, 2016, 5 Things You Must Do Before Jumping Into Paid Internet Advertising, [Online] Available at: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/paid-internet-advertising/. (Accessed 6th May 2016).