What? A marketing company working with another marketing company on marketing? Yes, it can happen. Take it as a bonus lesson from this article: Recognize your weaknesses and surround yourself with others who can help.
We’re content people, not digital ads people. We also wanted to make our own internal lead generation more robust and capture the low-hanging fruit that was out there for the taking. Admittedly, we’ve tried running our own Google ads in the past and we just haven’t cracked the code.
So we set out to find an expert to help us out. After working with multiple vendors and building our own processes, we’re sharing with you what we’ve learned in case you decide to go the PPC route as well.
1. You don’t have to cast the widest net
Many PPC companies will, by default, just try to help you generate as many leads as possible. To do that, they’re going to cast a pretty broad net with dozens and dozens of keywords and locations in an attempt to cover as much ground as possible.
The downside of this is that you can easily end up generating a bunch of traffic and leads that aren’t qualified for your firm. In general, the PPC vendor wants to keep your average cost-per-click and cost-per-lead as low as possible, but if you have a niche, it’s okay to narrow your search to ensure the right people are making it to your landing page.
2. Get your keywords right
This can be a big trial-and-error exercise. It can be difficult to understand what people are searching for when they’re looking for someone like you. For example, the words/phrases you might use to search for yourself could be completely different from how another person would do it. In our case, our PPC provider was using a lot of “personal injury” phrases in their keywords, which actually resulted in people looking for a personal injury attorney clicking our ad rather than the attorneys themselves.
Over time, you should be able to understand what phrases are working and what aren’t. Even more, your PPC provider should be able to give you a list of the keywords and phrases they’re targeting.
3. Troubleshoot systematically
It’s very rare to get paid ads right on the first try. Even the best, most reputable companies can struggle to get it just right with any given client. What’s important is that you do NOT treat your marketing strategy (PPC included) as a set-it-and-forget-it sort of thing. You need to work closely with your vendor to get it right. (This will also reduce the frustration you might feel about an initial lack of results).
When it comes to troubleshooting why your ads aren’t performing as well as they should, you should start from the top and drill your way down like this:
- Start with impressions: Are your ads even being seen by enough people?
- Move to clicks: If you’re getting the impressions, check to see how many clicks your ads have gotten. If you have a lot of impressions but very few clicks, the ad headlines/subheadlines could be the issue.
- Check conversions: If enough people are seeing the ad and your landing page is getting a good amount of traffic, but the page isn’t converting, then your landing page needs work.
Running a successful PPC strategy takes time. If you’re doing it yourself, you need to monitor its progress often. If you’re entrusting the campaign to a vendor, make sure you’re meeting regularly to stay informed about your ads’ progress.
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