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This month’s marketing theme is Connectedness, which is one of our three “C’s” of marketing – the others being Clarity and Consistency. Connectedness is related to PPC marketing in the way that it doesn’t (or shouldn’t!) operate in a vacuum with your other marketing campaigns.
When it comes to paid digital marketing, you want to build upon the successes of all your marketing efforts. You can use your SEO research to help identify primary keywords for your PPC campaigns, while using the Search Terms report in your PPC campaign to help feed into your content strategy. It’s all interconnected!
In this article, we’ll be discussing 5 PPC mistakes your campaigns might be committing, and how you can circumvent them.
1. Not Using PPC Synergistically
The most common mistake we see in PPC marketing is the lack of Connectedness with other marketing efforts.
As mentioned earlier, insights from PPC and SEO can be intertwined to identify your audience’s core needs and interests. These insights provide a feedback loop with other marketing aspects such as social media, to build a synergistic portfolio among all your campaigns.
Here are some ways to use PPC synergistically with other efforts:
- Are you getting lots of traffic to your blog post via social media or content creation strategies? Launch a remarketing campaign to keep your audience interested and drive them towards your sales funnel
- Are you experiencing a high drop-off rate in your PPC campaign? You may have a longer sales cycle than you might expect. Most audiences need to process multiple marketing messagings. Instead of pushing for an immediate sale, try signing up your visitor to your mailing list for exclusive information and offers. Take it slow to build their trust!
- Are you noting new search terms being generated in your PPC campaigns? Incorporate them into your content strategy! Likewise, if a particular topic is seeing a lot of interest on social media, it might be a good idea to address it in your paid digital campaign plans.
The above tactics are ways to use PPC outside of their traditional “bottom-of-funnel” purpose; therein lies PPC mistake #2, which we’d like to clarify:
2. Only Using PPC To Convert
Paid advertising is amazingly effective in generating sales. It is one of the best ways to quickly ramp up interest, while also maintaining an element of control in optimizing audience groups and marketing messages on the fly.
But what happens when your audience just isn’t willing to convert?
In the aftermath (or, should I say, current progression) of the worldwide COVID-19 phenomenon, many users around the world have completely changed their buying behaviour, opting to focus their attention and resources towards new areas in life and business.
If you’re a business owner, where do you go from here?
The answer may surprise you – PPC marketing can be used as effectively in Top-Of-Funnel generation as it is for Bottom-Of-Funnel conversions.
We’re noticing a huge increase in desktop searches and social media usage, coinciding with a large drop in sales for many businesses. This means that many marketers are exiting the market – resulting in lower costs per click and fewer competition.
If you can afford to do so, now is a golden opportunity to use PPC to generate a healthy top-of-funnel mailing list, fan base or subscriber group to feed into conversion campaigns in the future.
It’s time to really dig down into what’s working and what’s not working, to regroup and strategize. This will also help you avoid PPC mistake #3:
3. Relying On Automation
The digital age brings a huge amount of automation to the table. Marketers in this day and age are able to use machine learning and a huge portfolio of analytical tools at their disposal.
Tech giants like Google and Facebook are also able to offer automation to run PPC campaigns, helping with everything from audience generation to ad delivery.
The only problem with automation is that it’s difficult to craft a tool that is a silver bullet for any business scenario. And with global changes that are occurring right now, we’re starting to see some automation tools fail to perform.
After all – how does an algorithm tell the difference between a global pandemic and a really good marketing campaign for toilet paper?
Take the time to really dig into your campaign insights, to find new trends in search terms or in usage demographics. By understanding your audience, you’ll be able to react quickly when the market changes drastically. Doing so can help you avoid panic decision-making, which can result in PPC mistake #4:
4. Taking On Too Much
There’s a concept in economics called the “optimal curve” where an ideal portfolio can have many variations. Adding more of one item to your portfolio means taking away from another, if your goal is to stay on the optimal curve.
Often, reactive managers want to continually add more to the portfolio, in hopes of “doing everything” to react to a drastic market change. The only problem is that effort and resources spent on any new venture, means effort and resources are not being spent on other optimal areas.
If you’re perceptive of the market, you can avoid being reactive by knowing where you need to spend your PPC resources, but this requires consistent maintenance of your PPC campaign.
This brings us to PPC mistake #5:
5. Not Updating Consistently
Even though Connectedness is the theme of the month, PPC Consistency is still key.
In order to stay proactive, synergistic and optimal you have to be willing to work on improving every single day. Like with anything in life, PPC success doesn’t come easily. Even with the best marketing strategy in the world, your results will be limited if they aren’t being acted on consistently.
This is where marketing agencies such as Cucumber Marketing are able to help. Not only will we help you steer your brand in the right direction, but we’ll also execute on our proposed suggestions. This will help you focus on your own optimal curve – building the best business your brand can be.
Did this article add a fresh perspective to what’s going on in your organization? Let us know on LinkedIn or Instagram – we would love to hear what you think about this topic!
Connect with our marketing agency in Vancouver to set up a discovery meeting. #GrowWithCucumber