The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt our way of lives at each and every level. Economically, the effects of the coronavirus crisis are still stagnating the success and viability of many small businesses, but new re-openings and digital marketing strategies are helping a majority of businesses to keep their doors open. Pay-per-click (PPC) marketing and SEM are crucial for any small business that wants to gain an advantage in the “new normal” of commercial enterprise. However, businesses that may not have relied on digital marketing before may need a crash course in PPC marketing.
Any business can sign up for Google Ads and create their own campaigns and dashboards, as long as you set a budget for a given duration of time (monthly, weekly, etc.) Anyone can invest money into a PPC campaign but the most successful search engine advertisers can maximize their keyword bids, ad placement, and campaign strategy by focusing on intent-based PPC. Using paid search ads to correlate to a user’s most common keywords, search behaviors, and buying patterns can help businesses scale their ROI at a healthy rate. Even though COVID-19 is still in full force, paid search specialists and Google Ads managers can still grow revenues with intent-focused pay-per-click marketing.
Google’s The Keyword blog broke down many of the crucial facets of PPC campaigns that leverage behaviors and expectations consumers have when shopping for goods and services online. Below, we’ll provide an overview on how anyone can formulate a basic skeleton PPC campaign based on these consumer patterns:
Building an intent-focused marketing campaign
Experts at Google suggest that users on Google Ads need to leverage these following tools and strategies to target their ideal users. Using a strategic combination of keywords, smart bidding, and ad placement analysis are necessary fundamentals. Per Google:
- Tap into intent: Pair broad match keywords with Smart Bidding. By evaluating billions of combinations of signals in real time, these tools help you make the most of changing trends while meeting your goals.
- Inspire new audiences across Google: Reach up to 3 billion people with Discovery ads as they explore YouTube, Discover and Gmail. This reach, alongside Google’s machine learning and unique understanding of intent, makes it easier to generate qualified leads at scale.
- Follow Google’s creative best practices: Write ads that clearly articulate your value to people researching new brands. Start with messaging that includes your unique user benefit, a strong call to action, and a variety of ad extensions.
- Uncover new opportunities: Use optimization score and Performance Planner. As the market evolves, you may find that your campaigns, bids and budgets aren’t set up to meet shifting demand.
Source – Google Keyword Blog
Users that build optimized ads can then modify certain ad types to unique call-to-actions that more aggressively build leads. Lead generation tools such as direct calls and form sign-ups are all available to use through new ad types. Call ads allow users to build an ad that specifically highlights a phone number to call while form extension ads allow a user to sign up for a quote all on the first page of Google. These ads allow a user to request more information without even needing to visit an internal website page.
Additionally, Google allows users to integrate their captured leads into Google Ads to build customized campaigns that can retarget similar users for lead capture. This feature allows an Ads Manager to target as many like-minded leads to generate a strong marketing funnel. These features also pair with Google Ad’s Customer Match tool that allows you to even retarget similar users on multiple Search Network placements including Search, Maps, YouTube, and similar Google products.
Identifying your perfect customer with intent-based PPC marketing is one of many ways to build a successful digital strategy that builds high-quality leads. If you’re looking for a PPC manager or strategist to begin scaling your search advertising, then contact Boston Web Marketing for a free analysis, here!