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Pay-per-click marketing (PPC) is a proven internet advertising method used to get your company in front of targeted customers when they are actively searching for your products or services on Google.
Here are the proven methods and techniques that SVM follows to deliver bottom-line results for B2B companies’ PPC campaigns.
When doing keyword research, the first step should be to take a look at your website for keyword ideas. This is a great way to get an idea of the core words and phrases that describe your business. While developing your keyword list, go inside the mindset of your target market; think about the search terms one would type into the search bar when looking for the products and/or services available on your site. If you are not sure if it is a good keyword, test it out in Google and see what appears on the search engine’s result page (SERPs). If the results are relevant to your website, than it is likely to be a good keyword to target.
Now that you have a list of keywords that you have identified as relevant to your target audience, you need to group those keywords into logical bundles with related themes. A good way to set up ad groups is using the structure of your website. For example, create ad groups and choose keywords based on your top level products or services categories. It is recommended to keep the amount of keywords in each adgroup to a minimum, ideally no more than five to ten keywords in one ad group.
Negative keywords prevent your ad from showing to people that are searching for products or services that you do not offer. This is especially useful for b2b companies who provide products or services that end consumers are search for also. Creating a proper list of negative keywords can:
However, be sure to choose your negative keywords carefully, as too many negative keywords may lead to your ads reaching fewer targeted customers. One way to make sure you are filtering out the right audience is to look in Google Analytics and Google Ads to see what visitors were searching for before they clicked on your ad.
Although not part of the Google Ads platform, landing page content is probably the most important part of this whole process. Great ads are not going to get visitors to convert—your content is. If you do not have targeted landing pages with high-quality content that is well-structured and user friendly, visitors will bounce right-off and go to another website to find what they are looking for. If your landing page successfully communicates the key benefits of your product and/or service in under ten seconds, chances are that your landing page will be successful.
That being said, don’t lead all your traffic to one optimized landing page or the homepage. In a perfect world, each ad group would have its own dedicated landing page. I know this can be very tedious and time consuming, but do the best you can. This will improve your performance tremendously.
The most efficient way to get the best performance and to increase your click-through rate (CTR) is to constantly test and refine your ads. Great adgroup optimization requires creating multiple ads, within an adgroup, to run at the same time. Then, it is important to monitor impressions and click patterns, to figure out which ones are performing best for your business, and which ones are not. You should always experiment with new variations of your already existing ads to determine what works best; change the wording, capitalization, display URL, and landing page.
Ad extensions enhance your ads by showing extra information (extending from your text ads) about your business. Google Ads shows one or more extensions along with your ad depending on your past performance and ad rank. Some of the extensions available are calls, locations, reviews, sitelinks, call-outs, social media links and more. Ad extensions tend to improve your ad’s visibility since ads that have extensions have a greater expected impact and are generally given higher ad positions. In return, this can help improve the click-through rate of your ads, meaning more targeted visitors; therefore better return on investment.
In addition to ad extensions, Google Ads also hides a few hidden gems within the settings: Locations, Ad Schedule and Devices settings. You are probably aware that you can target you campaigns by location, at specific times of the day, or on specific devices. But what you may not know is that you are also able to adjust bids depending on those different factors. So if you want to run ads on the weekend but don’t want to pay as much for a click, all you have to do is lower the bid. For more information on setting bid adjustments, take a look at the Google Ads Support page.
Use Google Analytics to help you get an overall look at your PPC performance. While there are many other programs available out there, Google Analytics is a really amazing tool that makes it possible to track off and on site performance for free! Although a lot of the information available to you in Analytics is important, pay special attention to your conversion rates and bounce rates because these are two of the most important key performance indicators (KPIs). For example, if you are getting a high bounce rate of over 50% and a high CTR of 3% of more, then that is an indicator that you need to improve your landing pages.
Never stop refining your campaigns—keep looking at the analytics reports and studying what is working and what is not. Never be afraid to pause keywords or ad groups that are not delivering results and creating new ones.
Need more help with your B2B PPC initiatives? SVM will make your PPC marketing understandable and provide you with a results-focused strategy that will help you attract new visitors to your website. Read our B2B search engine marketing guide or take a look at the pay-per-click advertising services offered and contact us for more information.
