Small business owners often feel a little overwhelmed when it comes to advertising online. Banners are not big converters, social media can be time consuming, and paid search expensive. When a small business owner does run an advertising campaign, the most common complaint we hear is that their campaign was a complete flop. What makes matters worse is that many of these businesses do see a remarkable increase in traffic to their websites, they just don’t see the same sort of increase in sales. The problem is obvious – these sites are attracting the wrong traffic.
When competing for keywords, some business owners, especially those new to paid search marketing, head straight for the cheapest keywords. They are cheap for a reason – they are no good. Keywords relate to relevance. If you want to make a sale, you need to use keywords similar to those used by people wanting to buy. Using keywords that link to ‘how to’, ‘repairs’, ‘maintenance’ for example, will mainly attract visitors who are looking for that information – and that generally means they have already purchased that or a similar product.
PPC for small business can be frustrating, however, there are ways around some of these problems. The first is to consider long tail keywords that shoppers are likely to use when looking for a particular product. The second is to pay a little more for those good targeted keywords. Would rather pay $1 per click and receive 1000 useless clicks, or $2 per click and receive 500 targeted visitors, some of whom will stay and shop, whilst others may well join your mailing list and become customers at a later date?
When preparing any advertising campaign, your focus should be on targeting the right audience. Pay-per-click is no different. If you cannot afford to target the right keywords, then focus your advertising in different areas, for example, Facebook, or through banner advertising on similar websites. You may even be in a position to swap banners (free advertising) with businesses that complement yours. If you’re attracting the wrong traffic, your wasting your hard earned money.