Utilizing Paid Search in a Highly Competitive Market

If you're in business and you use the Internet to advertise, you're probably familiar with paid search. Paid search - also referred to as CPC (cost-per-click) or PPC (pay-per-click) marketing - is a highly used method for reaching target markets. Although effective, it can also be quite expensive to advertise your products or services to the right buyers, as competition can be fierce. However, there are a few steps you can take to reduce cost while engaging potential customers.

1. Target consumers before they are ready to purchase.

As a businessperson, it's easy to focus on the end result - a purchase - rather than focusing on the steps it takes to get there. However, this mentality will cost you more in the long run, as the average CPC is much higher when you're targeting buyers. Additionally, you will have more competition if the consumer is not familiar with your company's products or services. To save money and also establish a relationship with potential customers, focus on targeting those who are still researching and have not yet determined what they need. For example, someone who might be interested in CPC marketing for their business could search "how does PPC marketing work," and the average CPC will be much lower than someone searching for "PPC marketing software." On top of cost reduction, your potential customers will begin to see your company as a reputable choice when they reach the buying stage.

2. Obtain important customer information without lowering your conversion rate.

In B2B marketing, your goal is to get customers to complete your form and to obtain their contact information for future sales and marketing efforts. However, the more information you request, the less likely they are to convert. Additionally, it has been found that requesting a phone number could cause a drop in conversion rate of about 30%, increasing the cost per conversion by nearly $10 per lead. Of course these numbers will fluctuate, but phone number is the most intrusive of all fields. Many customers will be reluctant to provide this data, but it is crucial to your team's marketing efforts. In order to keep costs down and conversions high, take advantage of a customer relationship management (CRM) system like those available through Salesforce. Solutions exist that can be set to automatically append information on leads without having to directly ask for it.

3. Measure offline conversions.

It's easy enough to track conversions that happen on your site, but what about the customers that visit your site without completing the process? Studies have shown that over 60% of sales from consumers that had searched online were completed offline by phone or in-store. Because of this, it's very important to determine how your money is best spent and where your conversions are coming from so you can focus on that are. There are several methods to measure offline conversions, with some being simple and less precise and others being more complicated and costly but accurate. One of the more sophisticated but useful techniques is tracking conversions through use keyword tagging. The process involves generating alphanumeric keys for each specific keyword, capturing them on your landing page and creating a list of the connection between each key and its assigned value. In order to measure results and utilize them for future paid search, you will need the right technology to integrate each of the pieces.

4. Set up a remarketing campaign for prospective conversions.

Remarketing - the Google version of retargeting - gives you the opportunity to gain conversions from customers that have visited your site but did not complete the process. In B2C marketing, your ads could be targeted at customers who abandoned their shopping cars, while in B2B marketing, your ads would target those who visited your landing page but did not fill out your form.

Setting up a remarketing campaign through Google is a fairly painless process, although you will need to develop a strategy for prioritizing different groups. By utilizing the "Audiences" tab in your "Campaigns" section, you can "Add audiences" and then "Create and manage lists." For B2B marketing, you'll likely want to tag one list of everyone that visited your page, another of those that filled out your form and a final of those that visited but did not covert. By tagging these lists, you'll be able to send out unique ads based on customer behavior. For example, those that converted and landed on your "thank you" page will receive no ads or some type of special offer for becoming a subscriber. Those that visited but did not complete the process will be shown ads specific to their product of interest.

To move forward with a remarketing campaign, you'll need to have different types of ads for different sites, methods for tracking and multiple ad campaigns in order to be successful.