When done correctly, pay per click (PPC) is one of the most effective and measurable marketing options available. It helps brands gain higher visibility on search engines like Bing or Google and attract visitors who are more likely to convert.

However, PPC is still a concept that eludes many marketers and business owners. If you are struggling with your PPC marketing, this guide will help you grasp PPC marketing in its entirety so you can make the most out of it. Read on!

Five PPC management tips you should know.

1.     Perform keyword research

Keyword research is critical when running a PPC campaign, particularly when running a Google AdWords campaign. Keywords refer to a set of words or phrases used when creating an ad with the search terms your desired audience is searching for.

A simple way of doing keyword research includes typing a relevant keyword on the Google or Quora search bar to see what your audience is searching for from the list of results showing at the bottom of your keyword. Additionally, you may use other effective keywords research tools such as Google keyword planner, SEMrush, and KWFinder.

2.     Track and test your PPC campaign

There is no telling if your PPC campaign is yielding its desired results unless you track its performance. Keeping track of your campaigns will help you determine how specific ads, keywords, and platforms are performing so you can plan future campaigns.

Manual tracking of your PPC campaign results can be time-consuming, resulting in increased costs of doing business. But you do not have to do it manually. Automating your PPC reporting by incorporating a software solution that provides customizable PPC report templates can be a time-saver and ensure accuracy in your reporting.

3.     Improve your content

Even with the right keywords for your PPC campaigns, your efforts may not amount to much if the content of your ad isn’t appealing. Ensure that your content addresses your audience’s pain points. When your audience gets value from your content, they will be inclined to buy from you because informative content portrays you as an authority in your field.

Make sure you follow content creation best practices. For example, you may need to avoid keyword stuffing which can make your content hard to understand. If you can’t create content on your own, you can hire a freelance copywriter to do it for you.

4.     Negative keywords

A negative keyword is a keyword targeting strategy offered by search engine advertising platforms such as google ads which allows you to filter out keywords you don’t want to be ranked for. For example, if you specialize in high-end jewelry, you may want to filter keywords like cheap jewelry. This means that your ad will not show to a person searching for cheap jewelry.

You don’t want your ad to appear to everyone because every click means more spending for you. If the wrong audience keeps clicking on your ad, your PPC campaign will cost you much but give low ROI.

5.     Fine-tune your campaign

When running a PPC campaign, you want your ads to reach a very specific audience. The best way to achieve this is by fine-tuning your PPC campaign to reach your target audience. For example, you may select your ad to appear on sites your target audience may visit or people with a certain behavior.

Some of the available targeting options include placement targeting, contextual targeting, audience targeting, and topic targeting. With these targeting options, you can be sure that your ads will be seen only by individuals most likely to buyyour product or services.

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post 5 Essential PPC Management Tips to Boost Your ROI appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

Google Analytics offers a whole wealth of important data that help understand user’s behaviour, but there are six areas which can give any business the information that they need to be able to measure, understand and improve Return on Investment (ROI) known as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

For anyone who uses the internet to run their business, there is a wealth of information available to you which can help you to better understand people’s behaviour whilst interacting with you. By understanding this behaviour and linking them to your ROI (return on investment), you can ensure that you are making your online endeavors more effective and give your business its best chance of success. To help navigate you through this process we spoke to the Digital Marketing Manager at Datadial, Matthew Sawyer, who outlines how to use your Google Analytics Data to improve your ROI.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics offers you a whole wealth of information, but there are six areas which can give you the information that you need to be able to measure, understand and improve your ROI. These areas are known as KPIs (key performance indicators) and the critical KPIs are:

· Average visitors time on-page

· Bounce rate

· Pageviews

· Pages/Visit

· Social Media Traffic Referral

· Unique Visitors

By carefully tracking and adapting and changing, you can continually improve your ROI, so let’s have a look at them each individually…

Average Visitors Time On-Page

You can get an idea of the success of a particular page or article, by seeing how long visitors spend on a particular page. If people are spending more time there, they are more likely to be enjoying it, engaging with it and not dismissing it. This is a good way to tell which pages or blogs work and which don’t. The average time spent by visitors on a page also influences your SEO, so it is worth trying to increase this as much as possible.

Bounce Rate

Your bounce rate is the percentage of visitors to your website who only click once on your website. This means that they come to your site and don’t explore anything else – which is, of course, not what you want. The higher the bounce rate is, the worse it is, so you want to try to keep this as low as possible. To lower your bounce rate, you should try to include interesting links to other articles on your website. You can also get information about the demographic of visitors to your website, linked to your bounce rate, meaning that you can adapt your content and links to bring your bounce rate down.

Pageviews

The pageviews function shows you how many people have viewed a particular page. This means that you can quickly see which pages are the most popular and help you to create better and more effective pages in the future.

Pages/Visit

This tells you the number of pages each visitor looks at on your website in one visit. If you couple this with other data, you can track where your most interested visitors are coming from, and from this you can change your efforts from other sources as well as carrying on with what works with the more successful sources.

Social Media Traffic Referral

Google Analytics gives you the details about all of your social media referrals with their levels of engagement. They can give you information about all of the most popular social media platforms in the world – as well as some of the less popular ones! From this information you can tell which social media platforms are sending the most to your website, giving you the ability to see what does and doesn’t work and tailor your social media work for more success.

Unique Visitors

The Unique Visitors section gives you information about how many unique people you have had visit your site. By using a visitors IP address, this data counts each visitor only once – regardless of the number of times that they have visited. This gives you a good understanding of many new people you are attracting to your website.

There are, of course, many  more data sets – both from Google Analytics and social media – which can help you to build up a better understanding of what is and isn’t working in your online marketing, and from this, drive your business towards success!

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post How To Use Google Analytics Data To Improve Return On Investment (ROI) appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.

As a business owner, you will understand the importance of marketing. Failure to spread the word about your business can bring about failure full stop! If people don’t know you exist, then you are hardly likely to make any profits. No wonder then that many businesses spend a small fortune on marketing. From paying for ads on and offline to hiring expensive marketing agencies to do the job for them, business leaders are seeing a sizeable chunk of their budget disappear because of their marketing efforts.

Of course, spending money on marketing isn’t a bad thing, especially if the end result is more custom and bigger profits. But mistakes can be made. Marketing to the wrong demographic, not tracking the ROI, and using outdated and irrelevant methods, are some of the ways businesses lose money in their bid to make money when pushing their brand. Their efforts are counterproductive, and this can prove frustrating, especially when those hoped-for results don’t materialise.

Thankfully, you don’t have to blow your budget on marketing. You can learn valuable lessons from some of the bigger brands operating today who have forsaken a traditional marketing budget. They still thrive because they have mastered the art of influencer marketing, gained customer trust, and have encouraged word-of-mouth marketing to further the cause of their brand. To learn more, follow the previous link and consider how these methods can apply to your business. While these companies do have established brand recognition on their side, some of the methods they use/have used can be replicated for businesses both large and small.

Marketing Your Business Cheaply

Here’s the thing. Sometimes, out of the box thinking can help you market your business cheaply. By being creative, you can spend less money than you would normally. Guerilla marketing methods such as creating publicity stunts or creating competitions for customers can be just as effective as more expensive marketing, such as renting billboard space, handing out printed material, or creating a tv ad. Again, follow the previous link for examples of free or low-budget marketing.

Don’t neglect your staff, either. Aside from your marketing team, if you have one, your staff members can do much of the marketing for you, purely by being themselves. Sending them out in a unique uniform, perhaps using the services of Patches4Less to create logo and name patches, you will soon get people talking about your brand when your staff interacts with them. Your staff members can also promote your business by handing out free branded products on their daily commute, or by casually leaving such things as branded pens in coffee shops and libraries. They can talk about your business on social media, and to the people they meet face to face. They can do all of these things as part of their daily life, though you may be in the position to offer them incentives if they do generate leads while out and about.

The same principle applies to you. Wherever you go, always have a business card or a branded item with you. Network at business meetings and conferences, and get your business card into the hands of others. Go online and contribute to niche sites and forums where your opinions are likely to be respected. Link back to your business website and social media accounts in your online efforts, and you may generate new customers for your business. You can’t be a wallflower; if you want your business to succeed, it is your voice and presence that will steer people your way, so get yourself into the world and start talking about what it is you do. Your passion for your business can inspire others to sit up and take notice, and all without you having to spend any money in the process.

Let’s not forget your current customer base. Provided you have shown excellent customer care, you will have gained their respect. They will write positive reviews about you on sites such as Yelp. They will share word of your business to their friends and family online and off. And they will return to you time and again, rather than risk using a business they are unfamiliar with. As with your staff, your customers can be your greatest marketing tool, so capitalise on it. Encourage customer referrals, offering incentives to those customers who can generate new custom for you. Actively encourage them to write positive reviews for your business, whether that’s on Yelp, or for testimonials on your website. So long as you keep them on your side, the longer they will return to you and encourage others to do so. Again, you won’t have to spend a fortune making this happen.

How else can you market your business cheaply? There are numerous ways. Promote your business on YouTube through tutorial videos. Create a podcast and share information that relates to your business. List your business on Google My Business, a free source of advertising, and an effective way to improve your SEO. Work with other businesses, and encourage them to refer customers your way, provided you do the same for them. Share your blog posts across your social media networks and encourage your employees and customers to do the same. Do all this and more, using the links we have provided in this article and through researching low-budget marketing tips online. No money, no problem, you just need to use your imagination a little, while relying on the people who are already affiliated with your business to push awareness of your brand cheaply.

Bottom line

We aren’t saying don’t spend money on your marketing. There are times when you have to open your wallet to further the cause of your business. But you don’t have to go overboard. You can still market your business at little or no cost, regardless of the income you are receiving on a monthly basis. It’s about finding what works for you. And remember this final fact. If your business is worth talking about, and if your product is up to scratch, you won’t need to work as hard on your marketing at all, as sometimes, what your business stands for will speak for itself.

Let us know what you think. Have you found ways to market your business cheaply? Have you made mistakes or found success in the methods you have used? Share your wisdom and experiences with us, for the betterment of all our businesses.

Contributed content

Hernaldo Turrillo

Hernaldo Turrillo is a writer and author specialised in innovation, AI, DLT, SMEs, trading, investing and new trends in technology and business. He has been working for ztudium group since 2017. He is the editor of openbusinesscouncil.org, tradersdna.com, hedgethink.com, and writes regularly for intelligenthq.com, socialmediacouncil.eu. Hernaldo was born in Spain and finally settled in London, United Kingdom, after a few years of personal growth. Hernaldo finished his Journalism bachelor degree in the University of Seville, Spain, and began working as reporter in the newspaper, Europa Sur, writing about Politics and Society. He also worked as community manager and marketing advisor in Los Barrios, Spain. Innovation, technology, politics and economy are his main interests, with special focus on new trends and ethical projects. He enjoys finding himself getting lost in words, explaining what he understands from the world and helping others. Besides a journalist, he is also a thinker and proactive in digital transformation strategies. Knowledge and ideas have no limits.

The post Your Marketing Efforts Don’t Have To Eat Into Your Budget appeared first on OpenBusinessCouncil Directory.