In order to drive traffic to your website, build your web presence, and broaden your base of loyal customers, it is imperative that you have an effective PPC strategy. But how do you put your plan into action if you’re strapped for funds? Well, the good news is that there are several ways to generate leads and sales…even for the budget-conscious. Here’s how it’s done:
Tip #1: Narrow your sights on a niche market. To be successful in your PPC efforts, the key is not only to create a campaign that draws traffic, but to create one that is also manageable, small in size and low and competition. To achieve this goal, choose a niche market that represents your overall market. While you focus on this specific subset of your audience, you will be paying less per click and conserving your finances. Once you learn from the results and determine which techniques work best, you can adjust your PPC campaign accordingly.
Tip #2: Keywords…the longer the better. When choosing relevant keywords directly related to your content, be sure to be as detailed as you can with your phrases…avoiding ones that are highly competitive and comprised of one or two words. For example: If you have a custom home building company, instead of using “custom home builders” as your keywords, go for something like “custom home builders in Dallas, Texas.”
Tip #3: Create a small campaign. To generate positive results from your PPC campaign on a budget, you’ve got to think on a small scale with the goal of maximizing your budget on the smallest amount of keywords. Be sure to pick a small string of keywords that you can hone in on. And still set up separate search and display campaigns but remember to keep them both small. The beginnings stages of your PPC plan will be spent learning. But once you’ve learned all that you can, you will be able to grow the profitable areas and create a larger campaign.
Tip #4: Continue with the good, nix the bad. When you find the components that meet your performance goals, carry on. These are the elements that are keeping your campaign in motion and are probably driving the most return on your investment. When you determine the keywords that have proven less than successful, either cut back or get rid of them altogether so that you can allocate your resources elsewhere.
Tip #5: Optimize for performance. When trying to scale back and optimize your campaign on a budget, rather than focusing on volume, focus instead on performance. When reviewing your metrics, steer your attention away from things like number of impressions or number of clicks and gear your energy towards ones such as cost-per-click, cost-per-acquisition, and conversion rate. These performance based metrics will define how successful your keywords and ad groups are for the amount of money you’re dishing out.
Tip #6: Run fewer tests. With PPC plans, it’s crucial to test and optimize so that you succeed. However, if you are trying not to exhaust your funds, you will need to keep the testing to a minimum. You’ll need a lot of traffic to determine what methods work best, but when working with a strict budget, focus a small amount of traffic on just a few tests so that you know what the next step will be for optimizing.
Tip #7: Grow your campaign. Once you set up your budgeted PPC campaign and run enough statistical data to make the necessary adjustments so that you are achieving profits, it is time to increasing your budget. Do this a little bit at a time, closely monitoring the changes you make while ensuring that you are still making a profit. Before you know it, you’ll have a campaign that runs itself and you’ll reach a point where a budget is irrelevant!
Sabrina Jackson is a guest post author who shares with us this piece about PPC on a budget. In addition to her hobby of guest posting, Sabrina also contributes her dating advice and safety tips to free dating sites for women.
