Walk In Your Customer’s Shoes Before Starting a Pay Per Click Campaign

During a recent dinner with a friend he expressed frustration that Pay Per Click (PPC) is a big waste of time and money and he can’t see how businesses generate ROI from it.  I could hear my wife thinking “oh no here we go again!” along with the subtle eye rolling.  Knowing how effective PPC can be and the ROI my Sitewire team was generating, I could not stop myself from asking questions to better understand why he was having such poor results with his PPC efforts.

I am sure my wife loved that I turned our delicious dinner into a PPC 101 training class; however, after hearing from my friend about a week later how my advice turned around his PPC results I felt it was worth it and wanted to share 2 of those tips with you.

Whether you are running one PPC campaign or multiple PPC campaigns, here are two tips to help you think like your customer and improve PPC ROI:

Tip 1 – Consider Your Customer Buying Stages When Selecting Keywords and Writing Ad Copy

There are 5 different stages someone goes through when making buying decisions:

1. Need or Problem Identified
2. Research
3. Evaluation of Options
4. Purchase
5. Review of Purchase

If person A was searching online for “how much is my home worth” and person B was searching online for “2 bedroom golf home scottsdale 85260” should they be served up the same PPC Ad?

Because these 2 people are obviously in different buying stages where person A is probably in the early decision making process where person B knows what they want and is ready to buy, serving them up the same ad (which my friend was doing) will result in low click thru rates and lost sales.  When setting up or improving your current PPC campaigns, keyword research and ad copy are two critical steps.

Keyword Research – If your site is targeting the wrong keywords your customers may never find you, resulting in lost opportunity and meaningless impressions.  If you go after the broad phrases and terms, you’ll waste budget. Aim for specific search terms that reflect your products or services.  Consider analyzing the search activity going on inside your site through Analytic programs like Google Analytics, and incorporate those phrases into your PPC keyword lists.  If customers visit your site and use a search box to locate the right product, these are keywords that definitely need to be included in your keyword list.

Another good idea would be to talk to your customers to see if they associate any other words with your business.  Ask them to describe your business and the phrases they would search on.  To improve click thru rates make sure you put your keywords into themes around customer buying stages and separate each stage into separate ad groups so you can generate more targeted ad copy per stage – as discussed next.

Ad Copywriting – Google, Yahoo! and other paid search services have limits on the number of characters you are allowed to fill per line so don’t waste real estate on “we” phrases and keep your ad copy focused on the customer and the benefits they will receive.  Tell your customer what problem you will solve BASED on the keyword they are searching on.  Prospective customers are searching online because they have a problem they are looking to solve.  Create an ad around this and your Web site will generate more conversions.  If your ad copy does not effectively explain benefits and how the customer’s problem will be solved (at the very least) your potential customer will click on the next ad that accomplishes those strategies.

Tip 2 – Identify Customer Objectives When Analyzing Landing Pages

I am amazed at how many companies launch a PPC campaign without setting business goals.  How do you know if the campaign is successful without knowing what results you are measuring against?  What is worse than not setting your own business goals (i.e. cost per conversion, traffic, leads, etc.) is not taking the time to understand your customer’s objectives.  One common customer objective is searching online for a resource that will provide information so they can make an informed buying decision.

Think about where on your Web site you will send the prospective customer after they click on one of your PPC ads.  It is well known that driving all visitors to the most applicable landing page within your Web site is an effective strategy but it is more than just sending them to the most relevant page.  What is the experience your customer will go through when they land on that relevant page?

When analyzing your landing pages I recommend you consider Bryan Eisenberg’s AIDAS test which are based on the following 5 questions:

1. Does the page grab visitors’ attention in about eight seconds? Can they perceive the relevance of your page to solving their problem and meeting their need?
2. Does the page stimulate their interest and reinforce they’re in the right place? Does it suggest your solution is among the most relevant and useful?
3. Does the page inspire the desire to take the action of clicking deeper toward purchase? Does it explicitly engage the imagination of your prospects and make them feel they will get value from your solution?
4. Is how to take action obvious and easy? Do you provide relevant information at the point of action so visitors feel more confident in taking that action?
5. After they’ve clicked, does the next page give them satisfaction by providing exactly what they wanted — exactly how they wanted it?

It can be difficult to identify the best landing pages when you have provided the direction around your Web site’s content so consider asking a few customers to sit down with you and share their experience.  Watch them closely asking yourself the above 5 questions and see what you can do to ensure your customer’s objective is being met based on the keyword and ad copy that is sending them to your Web site’s most relevant page.

If you are about to give up on Pay Per Click advertising, ask yourself if you’re doing everything you can to make sure these 2 tips are being utilized.  Take the time to test, test and test some more and soon you will be able to leverage the power of PPC!  Let us know in the comment area below if you need help on a specific PPC problem.   You can also follow me on Twitter where I love to share tips and articles on digital marketing.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Adwords used for SEO (redflymarketing.com)
• Expert: Fraudsters pull tricks with Google ads (macworld.com)
• SEO Since 1999 (seomoz.org)
• 5 tips for optimizing your web site for sales (socialwebschool.com)
• Google Analytics Adds Annotation Feature (marketingpilgrim.com)

Tagged as: Ad Copy, Ad Copywriting, Google, Google Analytic, Google analytics, Keyword Research, Landing Pages, pay-per-click, PPC, Promotion, Web search engine, Yahoo