Things to Keep in Mind When Conducting Paid Search

Paid search advertising involves placing a bid on key search terms in order to have your company ad appear as a sponsored link at the top of the SERP. When search engine users search for relevant keywords related to your business, the ad will appear as a top result. Each time a visitor clicks on this ad and is taken to your site, you pay a varying fee. With this in mind, it is important to optimize every paid search advertisement in order to get the most out of your money. Though the fee may often be small, the gain on conversions may be large. Here are some things to keep in mind when conducting paid search campaigns.

Conduct Research

Before you start designing your ad, it is important to research the competitors currently in this ad space. To develop a budget, use a keyword planning tool to identify specific keywords you want to utilize in the ad and to get an idea of the current bidding price. Next, a simple Google search of these terms will show you which competitors are currently advertising and what their calls to action and landing page experiences are like. This will help you identify what your ad needs to feature in order to compete.

Prepare Your Landing Page

What’s the point of putting in all the work of the paid search campaign, keyword search, ad copy development, and optimization to drive traffic if you won’t have a landing page that entices the user to stay on your website? The goal is to ultimately drive a conversion and the best way to do that is with a call to action that emphasizes the reason a consumer clicked on your link in the first page. Think about what your ad was advertising and ensure that the linked page focuses on that subject matter, otherwise a hasty consumer will bounce off your site for misleading content.

Choose Metrics for Success

While getting clicks to your website is one goal of using paid search advertising, it is important to keep in mind what happens after you get that click. The ultimate goal is to drive a conversion, so conversion tracking is a great way of defining success for a campaign. There are different conversion points you can track depending on your industry, business, and website design. This data will also assist you in outlining which ad or keyword is driving the most conversions so you can optimize future campaigns.

Continuous Monitoring

It may seem like once you hit publish on an ad, that you’re done with the project. On the contrary, it is important to continuously monitor its success from time to time. Once you have a few days’ worth of data from the campaign, you can make optimization edits to your content. Alterations made to an ad could be peak performance times, effective keywords, or even landing page CTAs. This will ensure continued success and a proper use of the ad budget.

Paid search has the ability to drive large conversions and profits to a business when conducted with care and precision. If you need assistance optimizing your paid search, Kraus Marketing has professionals ready to help. Contact us today for guidance from a highly qualified digital marketing agency!