Write article, insert into your content management system, format it, upload and insert an image, hit publish and … you’re done! Right?
Well, that might be how the Wild West of the web once worked, but today, blog posts and content pieces tend not to gain a lot of traction all on their own. It’s tough to get noticed.
Sharing on social media is one way to boost exposure, but standing out in a crowded space can be a challenge.
Whether you’re frustrated with the lack of traction your content is getting, or you just want to amplify your content beyond its current reach, it’s time to explore what paid media—including pay-per-click and retargeting—can offer you.
You probably know how it works, but just in case: Pay-per-click is an advertising model in which you pay when people click on your ad. There are some other nuances that go along with it, but that’s the basic definition.
We’ll be looking specifically at Google AdWords, which is the most popular pay-per-click service.
Whether B2B or B2C, AdWords can help you gain visibility in Google’s search results and other sites.
The main benefit of AdWords is that you’re advertising based on what a person is searching for on the search engine. When AdWords first launched it was a major shift for advertisers.
When a person searches for something they’re using a word or phrase to find information. That word or those words are referred to as keywords, and when you know what people are searching for you gain insight into their intent.
And that’s an incredible benefit from an advertising perspective. You can create ads based on where the potential customer is in the buying cycle. For example, if a person is searching for “best light bulbs for the home” you might advertise or promote a guide you’ve created answering that question. If a person is searching for “buy LED light bulbs” you might promote your selection of LED light bulbs.
AdWords offers a number of other ways to target your specific audience including by location, device, language, time of day and more. You can also measure the success of your ads and continue to test and improve based on the results.
AdWords provides you with five basic options for ad types:
Campaign subtypes allow for further customization depending on the settings and options you need.
Google allows you to choose a daily budget for advertising. If you’re just starting to experiment, a budget of $5 to $50 per day is recommended.
You can also select a bidding strategy: cost per click, cost per impression and cost per acquisition. The goals of your campaign would dictate which strategy is best suited to your situation.
AdWords does some tracking on your behalf, but you can also use additional tools to measure the performance of your campaigns.
In addition, you can target your ads in the following ways:
Most visitors coming to your website for the first time will not convert into customers. But repeated exposure to your brand can warm them to the idea of purchasing your product or service offerings.
With retargeting, you can bring those who bounced off your website back and boost conversions by displaying your retargeting ads on other sites.
Now we’ll take a look at Perfect Audience and GoChime for your retargeting needs.
Perfect Audience is a Facebook and web retargeting platform that can capture lost visitors across different channels.
You will have a little bit of upfront setup work to do since you will need to install a site-tracking tag and create a conversion goal and a retargeting list.
Once done, you can choose from five campaign types: web retargeting, news feed retargeting, Facebook retargeting, dynamic retargeting and Twitter retargeting.
Perfect Audience gives you the option of geo-targeting and dayparting your audience.
You can set your revenue value per conversion by determining how much a conversion is worth to you.
Tracking can be done in Google Analytics and with the Perfect Audience dashboard.
Use GoChime if you’re looking to implement customer retention and acquisition strategies. GoChime works with Facebook to re-engage users, and can help amplify email campaigns, drive traffic to your site or increase conversions. Audiences are created by pairing email addresses with Facebook profiles.
With GoChime, your Facebook ads can show up in the news feed on desktop or mobile, or on the right-hand column. This can help drive more “likes” to your page, too.
You can set a daily budget or a lifetime budget, and GoChime’s campaign dashboard tracks percentage of audience reached, ad spend, CPC/CPM, website clicks and CTR.
Targeting works a lot like Facebook’s own ad platform, and allows you to use a variety of sources like HubSpot, Campaign Monitor or Constant Contact for your list.
Initiating a pay-per-click campaign is relatively simple and ultimately is low-maintenance. But as with any marketing initiative, you start with a theory, you test the theory and then you iterate based on metrics and performance. This same approach applies to pay-per-click, as some exposure and traffic is almost assured, but it won’t always be high-quality. You will need to assess the value of the traffic and adjust your campaign based on your findings.
Your keys to success with retargeting are audience segmentation, effective ad design and strong calls-to-action. Since your target audience will be seeing your ads off-site, make sure they aren’t overexposed. Don’t forget that some people will never return to your site, and some weren’t interested in your offerings to begin with.
Pay-per-click and retargeting campaigns are relatively inexpensive and hands-off ways to get your content more reach.
Ongoing monitoring and tweaking will be required, but once the ads are set up, they basically run all on their own. The investment definitely pays off when you’re consistently attracting new customers and capturing more prospects off-site before they are gone for good.
Quality, well-crafted content deserves to be seen by more people, and in today’s online world, you sometimes have to pay to play to get more exposure.
Want to learn more about paid media? We recommend downloading the Inbound Marketer’s Guide to Paid Media.
