No matter what your level of experience with paid ads is, you can start today and utilise ad platforms to reach a wider audience online and promote your business. But without expertise in paid ads, you may find you are targeting the wrong people, paying more than you budgeted, and perhaps still not get the qualified leads you want. Behind successful paid ads campaigns, there is creative and technical knowledge, and understanding of marketing strategy.
These are the six key reasons why small businesses without paid ads or poor paid ads don’t reach their potential online:
If you can avoid these pitfalls, you’ll be well on your way to success with your paid advertising campaigns! Let’s take a closer look at each one.
One of the most important aspects of any effective pay-per-click campaign is keyword research. You need to target the right keywords in order to attract the right kind of leads – those that are actually interested in what you have to offer and are more likely to convert into customers or clients. Without proper keyword research, you’ll be wasting your time and money on ads that no one will ever see!
In addition to targeting the right keywords, you also need to make sure you’re bidding on them correctly. If you’re not familiar with how pay-per-click bidding works, it’s essentially an auction where you compete against other advertisers for placement on the search engine results page (SERP). The higher your bid, the more likely it is that your ad will be displayed when someone searches for one of your targeted keywords – but that doesn’t mean you should just go with the highest possible bid! You also need to consider your quality score, which is a measure of how relevant and useful your ad is considered to be by Google (or whichever search engine you’re using). A higher quality score means a lower cost-per-click (CPC), so it’s important to focus on creating high-quality ads as well as bidding strategically.
An effective pay-per-click ad is more than just a few sentences cobbled together – it needs to be well-written, persuasive, and relevant to the keyword it’s targeting. Your ad copy is what’s going to convince searchers to click through to your website, so it needs to be compelling! If you’re not sure how to write effective PPC ad copy, there are plenty of resources out there to help you learn (including this blog post).
Once someone clicks on your ad, they’ll be taken to your website – so it needs to be up to scratch! A poorly designed website or bad user experience will quickly turn searchers away, resulting in a high rate of ‘bounce backs’ (people who leave your site almost immediately after arriving). Make sure your website is easy to navigate and contains relevant, targeted content that furthers whatever goal you’re hoping to achieve with your PPC campaign – whether that’s selling products/services or generating leads.
Retargeting (also known as remarketing) is a powerful tool that allows you to keep your brand front and centre for people who have already visited your website but didn’t convert into customers or clients. With retargeting methods, you can show them targeted ads featuring products/services they viewed on your site or lead capture forms they didn’t fill out – essentially giving them another chance at conversion. If you’re not using retargeting as part of your PPC campaigns, you’re missing out on a great opportunity!
Finally, it’s important to remember that paid advertising should never exist in a vacuum – it should always be part of a larger marketing strategy that includes other elements like SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, etc.
Working all of these channels together in a joined-up campaign will help amplify your message and reach more people than any one channel could do on its own – but only if they’re working together cohesively as part of an overarching strategy.
If you’re not sure how all these pieces fit together, we can help! Just contact us today for a free consultation.
Paid advertising can be an extremely effective way to reach more people online and promote your small business – but only if it’s done correctly! Avoid these six common errors and set yourself up for success. If you need our expertise in paid ads, whether you’re a beginner looking at trying ads for the first time, or already running ads but not getting the conversion rates you need, we can help you maximise your paid ads!
As always, if you have any questions, or if I can be of help in any way, drop me an email on eve@fantheflames.co.uk. And if you’d like to get some expert help or talk more about how I can help your business grow, feel free to book in for a quick virtual coffee with me HERE.
