With eCommerce quickly becoming the preferred way to shop, many other local businesses are struggling to keep up.
Massive online retailers like Amazon often dominate sales in just about every industry, which makes it hard for brick-and-mortar Local businesses to compete.
And it’s not always about better prices.
Often, it’s simply more convenient for people to buy everything they need in one place.
If you’re a local business owners looking for ways to get more Local leads/local lead generation, potential customers, or clients, you need to start using pay-per-click (PPC) ads management.
PPC ads offer something other marketing channels can’t: immediate traffic to your website.
Fast traffic will give you an advantage in your local market.
You can generate Local leads/local lead generation online from the entire world, and that’s great if you have a product or service that is globally relevant. However, when you’re a local business/local businesses, your local leads/local lead generation also need to be local. This is where local PPC ads come into play.
By running PPC ads that target people in your area, you’ll reach the most relevant segment of your market. And, as you probably know, highly targeted ads are more effective than general ads at generating Leads clicks and conversions.
If you’re concerned that you can’t compete with online retailers, here’s how you can use PPC ads to generate more local lead-generation strategies for your local business/local businesses.
Your Home page are a critical component in your local PPC ad campaign and it’s important to craft them intentionally. For instance, if your goal is to generate leads, make sure you have a powerful, enticing lead magnet that people see first thing when landing on your page.
If you’ve never made a landing page with a lead magnet, here’s how it works. Lead magnets are free offers provided as an incentive in exchange for contact information, and they’re quite effective. However, the success of any lead magnet depends on the market and the type of offer. For instance, some industries report higher conversions with video lead magnets, while others say text-based lead magnets convert better.
Creating a local lead magnet is no different from creating any other lead magnet, except the offer will be oriented toward local customers/potential customers. For example, here are several titles that would make excellent local PDF downloads:
These are just some examples of what you might offer people at the local level. Your local lead magnets can be PDF resources, videos, audio files, exclusive content, coupon codes, or anything else users might find valuable enough to sign up to receive. The only thing you need to remember is to maintain a local relevance.
Facebook offers the most detailed ad targeting capabilities of all PPC platforms, which is why they’re so effective. Facebook also has nearly 2.9 million users, a number that rises by 7.18% every year. Chances are, your market is on Facebook – you just have to know their demographics.
Here’s how it works. Say you run a local mail center and you’ve just hired a Notary Public. You want to get notary clients, but they need to be local, so you’ll run ads that target people in your area who might need notarized documents. For instance, you can target people who are getting married (engaged status), buying or selling a property, looking to travel, or people who work in administrative services.
Whatever your products or services are, you’ll want to target a narrow set of demographics in addition to people in your area to greatly improve your chances of getting conversions. You can do this to some degree on other ad platforms, but Facebook offers the most options and has the largest audience.
Facebook lead ads generate leads through a form without making users navigate away from Facebook. These ads are nearly 20% more effective than ads that send users toHome page to fill out a contact form. This makes sense considering people are more likely to convert when the process is easy, and nothing makes filling out a form easier than bringing that form upright inside of Facebook.
To get started with lead ads, run an ad and set the objective to “conversion.” Set the target Home page to a page that asks visitors for their email address.
Next, run a Facebook lead ad. This type of ad will open a Local lead generation strategies/local lead generation strategy form inside a user’s news feed. They can enter their contact information and submit the form without ever leaving Facebook.
To make this process smooth and easy, skip the manual export option and connect your managed Facebook ad account directly to your CRM.
This way, on the back end, your form will be connected to your CRM and your leads/local lead generation will be automatically tagged and segmented according to your CRM settings.
People love contests and giveaways when they provide real value. For instance, you’ve probably seen those giveaways where you can buy tickets for the drawing and the proceeds go to a charity. The potential to win an amazing prize is already enticing, but it’s even more enticing knowing the proceeds go to a good cause.
Your Home page will be the key to getting your leads to enter to win your giveaway. Here are the most effective elements to include on a giveaway page:
Contests are a bit more involved than a simple drawing, but they’re very effective and you can run a contest for just about anything. For instance, many organizations run PPC ads on Facebook for poetry contests that are judged by a single person, and this type of contest could be easily localized.
Some ideas for running contests include:
If you’re going to run a contest to promote your business, you definitely want to run PPC ads to get more entries and more attention. You never know who your ads will reach; if your contest is interesting enough it could even get picked up by the news like this live pottery competition.
Promotions are easy to promote through PPC ads. For instance, restaurants often run PPC ads for special events like open mic night, live music performances, and even just good deals on food.
To get the most out of these ideas, think about what kind of giveaway or contest you can run for your business. Once you have the logistics down, create a Home page for your promotion, contest, or event, and use it in your PPC ads. Just be sure your ad headline and image match your pages. It’s best to create your ad first, and then adjust your pages to match. This will ensure a smooth, connected experience for everyone who clicks on your ad.
If your product or service appeals to a global market, start creating landing pages for local areas and run your PPC ads to target various local audiences. For example, pick an area with multiple cities, like the Bay Area in California. Then, create one landing page for every major city. For instance, create landing pages for San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland, Fremont, Sunnyvale, and Walnut Creek to start.
Craft your sales copy on each city’s landing page to speak directly to that market. What you write will vary based on your products or services, but find ways to tie your service or product to local culture, attitudes, and familiarities. Speak to your target audience with as much specificity as possible.
Once you have your local landing pages, you can use them for more than just PPC ads. They can actually become an integral part of your overall local SEO strategy when optimized for local search and local SEO (search engine optimization). You can continue running PPC ads to your local landing pages, but they’ll also come up in search results and generate targeted, organic traffic.
Now you know some great strategies to generate local leads/local lead generation with PPC ads, but if you’re not used to running your own ads, getting things off the ground can feel a bit daunting.
If you’d like to start generating local leads/local lead generation through paid ads, we can help. At PPC.co, our team of experts can help you establish a competitive advantage in your local market, whether you need help with an existing campaign or you’re just getting started.
To speak with one of our PPC experts, contact us today and we’ll get you a free proposal based on your individual needs.
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When you want to use paid search marketing platforms, Google Ads often leads the list. Because of its versatility, simplicity, and popularity, it’s obvious why it’s a popular choice. But when you drop all of your PPC advertising money into one marketing strategy, you could lose some leads.
That’s why some businesses explore paid advertising marketing outside of Google, with many turning to Linkedin Ads.
Google Ads and Linkedin Ads are highly efficient ways to market your products and services to businesses and consumers. But each marketing channel has its advantages and disadvantages. Whatever you choose, make sure you discuss the matter with your web development company.
Below is a closer look at each option.
We think it’s reasonable to conclude that Google reaches a vast audience worldwide – its ad reach is a stunning 4 billion people. Google search handles about 70% of desktop searches, and many companies report that they get about 90% of their organic traffic from the search engines. Also, up to 95% of the mobile search market comes from Google.
People use Google’s search a lot, and having the ability to target search terms with specific search ads is a massive benefit of Adwords. People tend to search for very specific things in Google, so if you can customize your Google advertising for your targeted audience, you’ll receive plenty of leads.
So, we can assume that most people’s targeted audience uses Google to some degree. That’s a massive advantage for companies when they want to target an audience.
However, businesses that want to narrow down their search may have issues getting their Google ads settings right with both Google Ads. And if you blunder when segmenting your audiences, your digital ad campaign could suffer.
LinkedIn features a narrower audience – 500 million users – namely businesses and business professionals. But this more limited audience makes it the perfect place for effective B2B marketing. LinkedIn lets marketers serve online ads to decision-makers and vital audience members in several ways.
Summary: For B2B firms that want to reach decision-makers, Linkedin is a terrific advertising platforms. If your B2C company intends to increase its reach, Google Ads could be the best fit.
When you target your audience with Google Ads, you have a few options: location, affinity, technology, buyer behavior, demographics, and interactions with your app or website.
No matter how much you know about your buyer, you may struggle to avoid clicks from worthless leads that cost too much.
In some cases on Google, people may not even know what they’re looking for. You can try to advertise to your desired targeted audience on Google Ads, but it can be challenging to get to the precise people who will most likely buy what you sell.
When people sign up for LinkedIn, they usually provide many details, such as their occupation, title/job title, experience, industry, education, interests, and more. All of this information can be leveraged for great advantage when you start your marketing campaigns.
Also, LinkedIn users can join many groups, start conversations, and obtain followers. The data is priceless when you want to target a specific audience and market to them. LinkedIn also has a Matched Audience that helps advertisers match their email marketing lists and website visitors with users on LinkedIn.
Many marketing experts think that LinkedIn Ads offer more value. LinkedIn has refined targeting, and you can make your product known to them so that you can tell them about something they didn’t know existed.
Summary: For B2B and B2C companies looking for a broad audience, Google Ads has enough targeting features. But for B2B firms that want to target specific groups, LinkedIn Ads has about 100 segmentation methods for micro targeting.
When you want lead generation, Google Ads has a broader reach and is the most effective. First, you can bring in a lot of prospects to your site without breaking the bank. The audience you’re after on Google visits the search giant with the idea to find the best product or service. This makes generating leads easier.
Getting leads from LinkedIn can be more challenging. Users of the platform may sign in to read industry news or talk to group members. No matter how perfect your ad is, viewers may not be in the mood to buy anything.
That said, Linkedin has a way to target ad leads through in-site messaging, which can generate plenty of leads.
When it comes down to dollars and cents, LinkedIn Ads usually are more pricey than Google Ads. As in Google, you can select cost-per-click or cost-per-impression.
LinkedIn also features a cost-per-send for InMail advertising. Typically, you’ll pay about $5 for each click, $6 for 1,000 impressions, and .80 for each send.
With Google Ads, the average CPC is $1. But to leverage that low cost, you need to work on your audience segmentation. If you don’t your ROI may be below what you want.
Summary: Advertising budgets for each platform depends on several factors. On average, Google Ads cost less than LinkedIn Ads. If your B2B company has a tight budget, you may want to focus on a limited variety of LinkedIn ads instead of a broad range of Google Ads.
So should you advertise with Google Ads vs LinkedIn Ads? Yes!
What we mean is, it depends. The correct choice depends on your budget, product or service offered, marketing goals, and target audience. You should not assume that when you need a digital marketing campaign, Google Analytics Adwords is the only choice.
It’s critical to evaluate the market, understand who your buyer is, and make a data-driven decision about the best marketing platform to reach your well-defined goals. One type of company might do better with Google Ads, and another may find LinkedIn Ads preferable.
The great news is you don’t need to choose between the two platforms. Many businesses use both, as well as Facebook, Instagram, and others. If you have the budget, it may pay off to diversify your paid search advertising to get the best ROI.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Digital marketing is a classic marketing strategy that’s commonly used to supplement organic web traffic, but it’s hardly the most straightforward way to increase your site’s audience. In fact, from a technological perspective, it’s a rather fussy practice. That’s why brands that want to include a PPC marketing strategy in their overall strategic decisions need to work with an experienced agency. Agencies facilitate ad distribution, track clicks, and calculate fees – and the best ones can help their clients thrive. Unfortunately, there are a lot of subpar agencies and bad actors out there, and you need to know how to spot them.
So, how do you know if it’s time to fire your PPC agencies? Keep an eye out for these 9 red flags. They could indicate you’re working with the wrong agency and that it’s time to make a move.
Companies leave their PPC agencies behind for all sorts of reasons, but according to a 2015 report by the Society for Digital Agencies (SoDA), the most common reasons include outgrowing the agency’s capabilities, cost overruns, and dissatisfaction with their strategy. These are all valid reasons, and ultimately many of them can be reduced to an agency’s failure to generate any or enough growth. After all, disliking the agency’s strategy isn’t likely to be much of a problem if that strategy is generating major growth. Similarly, a brand is unlikely to view itself as having outgrown the agency is their accounts continue to grow.
Ultimately, what these different reasons for firing PPC agencies demonstrate is that, any way you slice it, no one wants to work with an agency that isn’t making them money. So, while it might take a little while for your PPC ads to gain traction, if you’re not seeing growth based on the launch of or changes to your PPC campaign, it’s time to move on to a different agency.
While most brands work with a PPC advertising agency to run their campaigns, it’s not only possible but advisable for you to set up your own accounts with the major PPC advertising platforms, which include sites like Google AdWords, Yahoo, and Facebook. Still, if you’re not the most technologically savvy, it can be tempting to let your agency do it for you. Don’t give in to the impulse. Instead, ask them to guide you through it so that you can ensure that you’re the one with owner access rights.
Unless you have the owner access rights to your company’s PPC accounts, you can’t be sure you have unmediated access to your campaign metrics or feel good/ confident that you’ll be able to transfer your accounts to another agency or bring them in-house if needed. In other words, your agency could be misrepresenting best results to you or could refuse to relinquish control if you end your contract. You need to retain those rights and then give your PPC agent the appropriate permissions to manage your campaigns. If they balk at this arrangement, show them the door.
Typically, when you look at your company’s profile on a site like Google AdWords, you’ll see that your PPC agency has set up specific goals to help your business grow. These commonly include such metrics as Cost Per Acquisition, Return On Advertising Spend, and Cost Per Lead, though there are plenty of other valuable metrics that are worth tracking. Such measurements assure you that you’re spending your Digital marketing money in the right place, help you budget for ad spending, and offer insights into what’s working and what isn’t.
Unfortunately, you’ll occasionally encounter PPC advertising agencies that fail to set up these metric reports, and they’re not to be trusted. Even if they claim to be using an in-house system, it’s your right to demand they use the standard reporting system for each PPC platform and to fire them if they refuse to. Dashboard-based metrics exist to provide consistent measurements regarding the success of PPC campaigns ad those are the numbers you want to reference.
In a similar vein, some PPC advertising agencies skip the core metrics noted above in favor of less valuable but more appealing “vanity metrics.” Vanity metrics don’t help your business make money and they offer limited insight into your operations. Examples of vanity metrics include any campaign value based on impressions, engagement metrics that don’t drive conversions, and even many of the behavior-based metrics that used to be considered the gold standard in website evaluation, such as bounce rate or time on site.
Ultimately, vanity metrics don’t serve your company because they can be created artificially. An untrustworthy PPC agency might drive up engagement numbers by sharing a great meme on your brand’s landing pages, which will drive likes and other reactions, but won’t actually funnel clients to your site or create sales. Similarly, you can get a huge number of impressions by getting your PPC new ads onto a very popular site, but if no one is clicking on it, all you’ve got is a tally of how many people visited/ web traffic to someone else’s website.
Having the right metrics is important, but if you’re going to meet your goals then your Good PPC agency needs to be adjusting your account settings regularly to refine your campaigns. At a minimum, that means accessing your account to regularly monitoring and fine-tune the settings at least once a week. Such regular check-ins allow your agency to quickly adjust your social media campaigns based on updates to the search engines algorithm, catch any conversion mistakes that could cost your company money, and even react to competitors campaigns.
Be sure that you not only ask your PPC agency how often they access and update your accounts, but that you’re also checking your accounts regularly for updates. The reality is that, although many companies run PPC campaigns, only 10% of AdWords accounts are updated weekly. If your PPC agency can’t meet that standard, ditch them for one that will stay on top of your campaigns.
Just as your PPC agency needs to be fine tuning your accounts regularly, they should also be reporting back on your campaigns at least monthly. While seeing week-to-week progress would be great, as with many kinds of growth, this can be hard to evaluate. Comprehensive, monthly reports, on the other hand, can help you see what your agency has been doing on your behalf, how your accounts are growing, and allow you to be an active participant in your Digital marketing strategy.
Never settle for a company that doesn’t offer substantive reporting. While great reports may offer added insights from your account manager or more labor intensive explanatory work, the majority of PPC reporting is automated – any company that doesn’t provide it is just lazy.
It’s unrealistic to expect that you’ll speak to the same person every time you contact your PPC agency; that doesn’t even happen at your bank or your doctor’s office. That being said, there should be one person who acts as the lead on your account because that allows them to master your brand’s voice, develop a big picture strategy, and generally build up a knowledge base around your brand’s needs and preferences. They might be busy or out of the office occasionally, but anyone whose experienced both approaches – a core account manager and a rotating cast of agents – can tell you that having a point person makes a difference.
If your PPC agency doesn’t have you working with a single, core agent, you may want to ask a few questions to get a better sense of what’s happening. Do they have an unusual in-house strategy, or are they having trouble with employee retention? Do they think it doesn’t make a difference? You can also request that they place you with a single representative, but if that’s not their standard practice already, you’re probably better off going elsewhere. It just doesn’t bode well.
Google AdWords isn’t a new program and there are plenty of other PPC programs out there, but if an agency is committed to this work, then they should have complete Google’s AdWords certification program. You can check on this by asking them to show you their Premier Partner page – it really is that simple. Not having one isn’t necessarily the worst offense a company can commit, but it’s a good indicator that you can do better and should commit your ads spend elsewhere.
Did you pick your PPC agency based on their portfolio of appealing PPC ads/ads or optimized images? That’s a great starting point – it certainly indicates that they can do high-quality work – but it’s not enough if they’re not actually showing you your brand’s own ads before they launch them. Obvious, right? It should be, but many entrepreneurs have been duped by PPC agencies who tell them that their ad is similar to another ad product, which is called ad copy; the client, not wanting to be pushy, walks away with their own notion of their brand’s ad, and meanwhile the agency may not have done any work at all.
Your PPC agency should be giving you the final say on all your paid ads, so if you’ve supposedly got a campaign running and you haven’t seen your ads, ask to see them right away. Odds are good that if your agency isn’t showing you your PPC ads before launching them that they either don’t exist or they’re extremely low quality for online visibility. Great PPC agencies are proud of their work and they want you to see it. Anything less should raise concerns.
Hiring an agency to manage your PPC campaigns will obviously cost more than just the fees for the campaign itself, but the costs involved in running ads with your agency shouldn’t be confusing. That’s because, ultimately, your money should only be going two different places – to the agency and to the ad platform – and everyone at the company should be clear on the split. So, when we say you should be wary about confusing fees, we’re not talking about total cost (that’s a matter for you and your budget), but rather about how the money is split up. For any payment there should be the fee to the agency and the ads spend and it should always be obvious what the division is there.
As popular as PPC marketing is with businesses today, many of the agencies that execute these campaigns don’t do a very good job. They’re wasting your ad spend and your time, and you deserve better. That’s why you should switch to PPC.co’s PPC Management Service.
At PPC.co, we’re committed to ensuring that your ads are reaching the right audience and we know that most agencies just don’t deliver that. Starting from our understanding that website conversions often top out at 2%, we emphasize PPC marketing that pairs first contacts with retargeting efforts to ensure that your brand remains a top-of-mind solution for past visitors. A non-converting visitor is often just someone who hasn’t seen the right content yet, and we want to help you make those connections.
What else makes our PPC Management program stand out? With dual Google Ads and Google Analytics certifications, we have a deep understanding of the systems & AdWords account that get your ads seen and can use tracking data to its fullest potential of web traffic. In fact, that’s why we start every client engagement with a full PPC audit, because even when we’re not leading the campaigns, our skilled professionals can quickly see what’s working and what’s falling short in your current campaigns. From the start, we put our expertise to work for you.
If your PPC agency has exhibited any of the above warning signs, you can’t afford to wait around for progress. It’s time for the protection of business and moves on – to PPC.co. Contact us today to learn more about our PPC Management Services and say goodbye to wasted ad spend and rock bottom conversions. Once you’ve seen the difference a top PPC agency can make in your campaigns, you’ll never believe you let anyone else handle your PPC needs.
