If you struggle with tracking and measuring the performance of your AdWords or Facebook pay-per-click ads, this blog post is for you.
It’s clear that each product, service or campaign — whether on your site’s landing page or Facebook page — should have multiple ads created to test what appeals to your audience (what they click on). Even better, you should be eliminating the underperforming ad versions and spending the budget on the winners.
It’s easy to create an ad that triggers curiosity and gets the viewer to click, but that is something you can practice when paying for impressions, not clicks. While creating your ads, think why somebody who sees it would click and find your offer/service attractive.
You can play with variations of the subject line, copy and images (for Facebook ads) to test the different combinations; however, the success metric should not be clickthrough but rather conversions on your landing page.
After all, you’re paying Google and Facebook for clicks, but customers only pay you when you earn a conversion.
So, whether the goal action of your customer is a lead or purchase, follow these five easy steps to start measuring your ads’ performance today:
Read more…
I recently came across a great free resource for B2B marketers looking for tips on starting or refining their PPC campaigns for lead generation. Todd Miechiels, a B2B search engine marketing expert, has compiled his list of the “7 Cardinal Sins of B2B Search Engine Marketing.” It features such missteps as:
o Not Establishing a Clear and Realistic Goal
o Not Being Diligent About Testing and Refining
The upshot of Miechiels’ report is that PPC campaigns are so easy to start that marketers often jump into a project without the proper planning, research and budget required to generate significant results and actionable lessons to improve their campaigns.
After reading the report, I was inspired to humbly offer an eighth “cardinal sin”:
– Sin #8. Neglecting your PPC landing pages
When developing a PPC campaign, marketers may be so focused on the mechanics of the search channel – such as keyword selection, ad placement, or bidding strategies – that they forget to focus on the action prospects are supposed to take once they’ve clicked on a search ad.
Landing pages are the lynchpin of PPC campaigns. A click isn’t a lead until you’ve convinced that prospect to take an action and provide some information about themselves that will allow you to continue nurturing the lead.
So when planning a PPC campaign, you may even want to work backwards from your landing page, focusing on key elements that will influence your conversion rate, such as:
o Headlines and body copy – Does the searcher know they’re in the right place and understand the value of your offer?
o Design and layout – Do the text and graphic elements offer a clear eye path to get prospects toward the call to action?
o Call to action – Is it obvious what step you’re asking prospects to take next?
o Registration form requirements – How much information do you *really* need from prospects in exchange for the offer?
If you’re confident that your landing page is optimized to generate conversions, you then can build out the PPC campaigns you’ll use to drive traffic to those pages.
