Maximizing the ROI of Your Online Paid Advertising: Essential Steps for Success

This week I talked to yet another website owner that had used pay-per-click (PPC) ads but did not see any sales from the effort.

This happens at least once a week.

The reason behind buying an ad on Google or Yahoo for the first time is simple, Google and Yahoo do a great job of selling their PPC services because you see these ads everywhere. If all these other people are buying the ads, surely they are getting something from the ad, right? But, after the first ad seemingly “fails” website owners are left scratching their heads and cursing the investment.

So how do you get a good return on your PPC ad dollars? Simply put: Plan ahead!

If you want to get a return on your ad dollars you need to plan the ad process from start to finish, from what you want to promote to what you want the visitor to do after they have clicked the ad and landed on your site.

Let’s take the example of a new product, although this same principle applies to services, lead generation and etc. Let’s say your company has just taken steps to be in the new “green” movement and you want to promote your newest line of environmentally friendly products. You may be thinking that the first step is to write the ad. No, first you prepare your site!

Create a page on your site centered around the new products. This is called a landing page. This page includes plenty of photos of the products, and the details of how they are environmentally friendly. In other words, you need to meet the expectation of the person who will have clicked the PPC ad.

The most common mistake here is that the ad is set up to lead the visitor to the home page where they are inundated with your full product line or company overview leaving them lost trying to find the one product that was promoted on Google (or Yahoo). This then results in clicks you will pay for without sales to back them up.

You also need to have “one-click” ordering – that means it takes one click (or as close as you can get to that) to order the desired product from your promotional landing page. If you have multiple obstacles in the path to purchasing the product then you will have a higher bounce rate – people who start through your envisioned sales process but do not complete the transaction.

What happens if the person comes to your site but isn’t quite ready to make a purchase?

If you have a high-dollar item or highly contemplative, decision-based purchase you may find that you get clicks that don’t immediately contact you. Maybe your company has a longer sales cycle. In this case, you need to be sure that you have an option on the site that will allow the visitor to get additional information via a non-threatening e-newsletter or free white paper download. This will allow you to collect an email address for further marketing and contact regarding your product or service so your clicks are still valuable.

Now that you have a solid landing page set up you are ready to write your ad. Although I recommend writing the ad as the last step in the process, the way the ad is written is as important as the landing page because this is where the transaction starts.

Start by developing a headline that will attract visitors and stimulate interest in your product. Think about your landing page and the core message you produced then summarize the PPC ad. Don’t try to close the sale in the ad – that’s what the landing page is for! Your goal is to tell what you have and then the landing page will back your ad by meeting the expectation. Follow this format with every ad and you’ll get quality clicks.

While this article covers the overview of an effective PPC campaign there are other considerations like keyword selection, multiple ads, testing ads, etc. In the next article, I’ll have tips for keyword selection, setting bid amounts, and more.