Let’s assume you haven’t used paid search at your company or you know it’s being used, but that’s about it besides reading about it on the internet on a blog or forum. This article is for you!
Paid search as a concept is very simple and this is where I hear a lot of weird opinions so it’s good to start out on the same page. Paid search is buying traffic from search engines. What do people do on search engines? They search for things. So paying for search is paying to show your company depending on what people are searching for. That’s it. There’s plenty of options regarding how you do PPC and how to improve it, but let’s start with the general of what to expect when starting a PPC campaign.
What to expect when you start a paid search campaign?
Increased Traffic
The amount and quality of traffic is a function of two things: What’s your budget? How much traffic is available?
- Quality traffic takes some testing, but generally if you’re applying the right match types and negatives to your keywords then you’re starting out way ahead than most. Your ads also matter, and what you say changes everything so make sure you’re clear, concise and catch the eye of who you want coming to your site.
- The cost of the traffic you’re buying is going to vary by how many other people are buying it and how much is available. More competitive keywords are more expensive for a reason, people are making money from those keywords in the area you’re advertising and there’s not an infinite amount.
- You’re budget will be fixed to start. You have to spend enough to pay for a click on a keyword per day at minimum, I don’t advise starting this low. You need enough clicks to measure any sales, leads, calls or actions on site(like watching a video or checkout views). This is where it gets a little fuzzy because those actions are different for everyone, carry different values for everyone and should really be used as additional insight to traffic analysis. As you see revenue from paid search, improve your ROI and look for ways to scale.
Phone Calls
Websites usually have phone numbers listed. If you give people a number to call, they will call it. Quality of calls will depend on everything above.
Purchases/Leads
You will see leads and sales from this traffic if you set it up right. The efficiency of which you see them depends entirely on how well your campaigns are setup and managed IN ADDITION TO the performance of the website you’re sending them to. Sales from leads is the goal in lead gen, but leads aren’t themselves so expect to sell to people looking for your service. This means your sales team efficiency matters as much as the rest.
Emails
If you offer an email sign up and people can find it then you should see emails. This is because you either optimize for email acquisition, have a good reason and likeability for people to want to hear more, or you will be emailing your leads and customers.
If all goes to plan, which is usually does when you plan carefully, you’ll see the increase quality traffic and customer inquiries. This is the start of the process. The end of the process is what we call the backend. What do you do with these leads and traffic? You need this traffic to pay you for your services and that’s not as easy as you think. Our experience at Flywheel covers as much the frontend as the backend. We’ll help work through your process of getting leads to a CRM, tracking phone calls by where they came from, how to email your leads with the right messaging to drive revenue and what your sales scripts need to include to make sure you have a fair shot at closing a deal when this traffic calls. We always talk about the backend when getting to know you so rest assured, you’ll have a well thought plan when we start working together.Dan Sorenson
CEO/Founder, Flywheeladvertising.com
