Market Smarter, Not Harder: Your Guide to Creating a Small Business PPC Plan
It is estimated that over 1.66 billion people worldwide make digital purchases every year. If you’re not leveraging on the digital space to make your brand visible, let’s just say you’ll spend a lot of your time playing catch up with the competition.
As a small business owner, your priority should be to grow your company as quickly as possible using as little money as possible. So, in case you were wondering, “How much does it cost to advertise on Google?” The answer is – not that much to be honest.
With a great PPC plan, you can give your business the exposure it needs without having to break the bank to do it. Thankfully, the days when businesses had to spend thousands of dollars every month in advertising are long gone.
You’ll be able to cost-effectively draw in new customers with a couple of well-crafted sentences and a moderate budget. In this guide, we’ll look at how to create a small business PPC plan that guarantees a tangible ROI. Read on.
Step 1: Every Great PPC Plan Begins with the Right Keywords
Remember the days when you’d stumble upon a new product on the store shelf or while you were browsing a sales catalog? Well, these days, consumers simply have to go online and type in a phrase in their search engine and voila!
They have myriad of options to choose from. As a small business owner, you need to know what phrases your target audience are using to search for your products.
That way you can customize your PPC ads to pop up when Google displays the results. Google’s Keyword Planner tool can help you find the phrases that are most relevant to your brand.
Step 2: Write Captivating Copy
As you embark on creating a PPC campaign plan, you need to manage your expectations going in. Don’t expect to become an overnight success.
Growing your brand takes time. One of the keys to doing this involves creating captivating content.
In addition to a PPC Plan, every small business needs a strong content marketing plan to go with it. Content is what builds your brand’s reputation.
The words you put together need to be compelling enough to prompt potential customers to click on your ad. It needs to be attention-grabbing enough to make them want to learn more about your business and what you have to offer.
What’s more, you have to do it in 60 characters or less. So, the words you choose are a big deal.
Step 3: Keep a Close Eye on Your Campaign
One of the best things about PPC ads is that you can monitor the performance of your campaign and switch out what doesn’t seem to be yielding results. This is a huge plus for small businesses that don’t have all the money in the world to spend on PPC advertising.
Nevertheless, even with a limited budget, you can target your keywords so that the audience that matters to you the most see it. That way you don’t have to watch your valuable dollars go down the drain.
It also helps to be on the lookout for crucial details on the latest developments in digital advertising. You might get valuable insight into how to optimize your PPC campaign.
Step 4: Analyze the Search-Term Reports
Once your ad goes live, search-term reports show you exactly what phrases your audience is typing in when your ad shows up on their web pages. Using a bit of reverse engineering, you can check to see if those queries are represented in your PPC plan. If not, you need to add them right away!
Step 5: Add Negative Keywords to Your Campaign
Speaking of search terms, negative keywords are just as important as your primary ones. They tell search engines, not to display your ads in results when certain keywords are used in queries.
Most common small businesses often leave this step out when crafting their PPC plans. Failing to do this could cost your company lots of marketing dollars if your ad shows up to people who may not be interested in your products/services. Some of the words that might pull up your ads in unrelated search queries include:
- How to
- Free
- Worst
- Jobs
Here’s a perfect example. If you run a local gym and use the keyword “home fitness”, your ad will appear whenever a search query contains the word “home”. This means that you’ll get charged even when uninterested customers see your ad.
Step 6: Schedule Your PPC Ads
Get into the mindset of your customers. What time of day do they typically use your products/services?
Does it make sense to run your ads during the times when they are necessarily using them? For instance, if your small business is a local coffee shop, what hours of the day do you typically get lots of traffic?
Most likely in the daytime hours, right? So it would then make sense to pause your ads during the night to avoid wasting money. Most people aren’t online in the searching for “best place to have coffee in LA” in the dead of the night.
On the other hand, if you have an online store that sells cute outfits, you could run your ad 24 hours a day to factor in the different time zones your audience might be in. Scheduling your PPC ads is a critical element when it comes to boosting your online business.
Step 7: Use Google Analytics
Google for small businesses is invaluable. It has lots of free tools that are quite effective in helping you analyze data about your PPC campaign.
Using this information, you gather data about your audience and website visitors that can help you make informed business decisions about your ads. That way you customize your ads to interest your audience.
Some Final Thoughts
There are numerous ways to advertise your brand. Paid advertising is arguably one of the most effective digital marketing tools that can grow your business by giving it much-needed exposure.
With a great PPC plan, you’ll not only see results fast, but you’ll actually reach the customers who are most likely to buy your products/services. What are you waiting for? Get in touch with a pay per click advertising company and give your small business the boost it needs to rise to the top.
Have you thought of using YouTube to market your brand? Here are some great tips you can use to get those views!
