Every marketing method out there has its own set of problems, and pay-per-click (PPC) is not any different. A lot of marketers getting started with PPC will have heard of the instant profits that can be made and then scaled up beyond one’s wildest dreams. But in reality, you are likely to hit a series of setbacks before you even get one profitable campaign. If you want to get through the PPC learning curve quicker than most then you would do well to familiarize yourself with the top problems that you may come across.
When Click-Through Rates Are Too Low
When the click-through rates drop to painfully low levels then you need to take action. You could have a great product, but without high click-through rates to match that your sales will not be as high as they could be. Remember that you are competing against other ads for those clicks, so don’t expect 50%, 20% or even 10% click-through rates. In fact the average is at around 3-4%, so if you can get within that range then you are doing as well as you can expect. A writer for Kayak Online Marketing Blog suggests ways in which you can improve your PPC campaign to get higher click-through rates:
Your best bet is to write more targeted ads (those that appeal only to specific searches and terms), raise your bid prices slightly to earn a better position, and experiment with different forms of ad copy until you find the right message.
Overcoming The Quality Score
The most popular PPC program out there is the “Adwords” program and it has a quality score that it uses to assess advertisements. The higher your quality score the better placed your advertisement will be and you’ll be able to pay lower per click rates. To begin with, getting a good quality rating can be difficult. At times it might seem as if you are producing two identical advertisements, yet one of them has a quality score which is much lower than the other. With experience you’ll be able to figure out how to create ads so that your quality score will be good enough to have a profitable PPC campaign. The key is to create ads that are targeted to what it is you are selling. Also try to tweak your landing page so that it matches your product in a more clearly defined way.
Many Clicks, But Not Enough Sales
Getting a lot of clicks without many sales in return can become very expensive really fast. The good news is that in virtually every case you can tackle this problem. To start with, you need to assess the overall message that the advertisement is conveying to see if it matches your landing page, and your product or service. There needs to be a very tight narrative between your ad, the landing page and product. A writer for Speed PPC explains that healthy conversions can lead to momentum:
Being able to increase your conversions not only means your campaign is more successful in itself, but it also gives you the power to turn up the heat a notch: Raise your bids, get a higher ad position, get more traffic, and turn that into profits as well.
Getting the conversion part of the equation right is a difficult process that can take a lot of testing. Therefore, don’t give up on it even if after a few campaigns you still don’t see the results you want. Through a process of trial and error you will begin to see what changes you need to make in order to see positive results to your conversion ratios.