PPC Search Engine Marketing: 9 Questions Before You Go Live
By Anna Johnson on June 27th, 2010Before you ‘go live’ with your pay-per-click (PPC) search engine marketing (SEM) campaign, here are nine (9) questions in order to double-check that your campaign is ready.
This isn’t an exhaustive list of questions – you’ll want to make sure you’ve addressed such other factors as where and when you’re running the campaign, your choice of keywords, your SEM budget, your maximum cost per click, and a host of other factors.
Rather, these questions are designed to prompt you to double-check the state of your ads and landing pages.
So, before you start your PPC search engine marketing campaign, ask yourself:
1. Does your text ad include the keywords you’re targeting? In general, this is a tried and true way of getting the attention of your target market i.e. the people who typed those keywords into the search field.
2. Even if your PPC ad doesn’t include the keywords you’re targeting, is your ad likely to attract the attention of someone searching on those keywords for some other reason?
3. Does your ad clearly convey a powerful benefit – a reason why – for someone to click on the ad? Keep in mind that, especially given the limited length of a text ad, the main objective of the ad is to get someone to click on it, not necessarily to buy the product or service you’re selling.
4. Are you split-testing at least two alternative pay-per-click ads?
5. Does your landing page relate to your ad? Ideally, the headline should be the same as, similar to, or naturally follow on from your ad. Your overall offer should answer the question in the search engine user’s mind when they typed in their search query in the first place.
6. Does your landing page clearly convey your product or service offer – is there a benefit driven headline, video and/or copy, and call to action?
7. Does your landing page confine the actions able to be taken by the visitor to (a) performing the desired action (e.g. buying, filling in a form or clicking on a link) or (b) leaving the page? The fewer alternative actions you let the visitor take, the higher your conversions (visitors taking your desired action) will be.
8. Have you considered using a video in addition to, or in place of, copy on your landing page? A video may increase your conversions.
9. Are you split-testing at least two alternative landing pages (depending on likely visitor volume)?
