How to get more out of your content and PPC campaigns
Optimizing PPC campaigns tends to focus on things like keywords, both targeted terms and negative terms, ad copy, quality score, and click-through rates. But why are we ignoring what’s beyond the ad’s impressions and clicks?
PPC campaigns should always take the site’s content into account for further optimization efforts. Many content marketing campaigns include paid media, like PPC ads on Google Ads or social media advertising, as promotion tactics but sometimes we eliminate the actual content from the analysis of the PPC campaign’s performance.
This is a mistake!
Advertising is a great way to put your content right in front of searchers looking for it and can greatly benefit your brand but it’s not going to work if the content itself isn’t working.
You can have the most awesome ad in the entire world but if the content they click-through to isn’t working, you’re just wasting your advertising budget.
Stop making these easy mistakes by combining the power of content marketing and PPC campaigns in five ways.
5 ways to combine content marketing and PPC advertising
1. Run ads to boost traffic
Releasing a new ebook or teasing a new product? Use a PPC ad to drive qualified traffic to that page! Over time you should see organic traffic coming into those landing pages, but if you want to drive immediate views of your content, PPC is one way to do it.
Not only can it give your site exposure and drive up brand awareness quickly, it can also give revenues a boost or improve another type of conversion, like a free trial.
If your campaigns are set up correctly and your content matches the promise you’re saying in your ad, you’ll get qualified traffic to the right page as soon as the content is live instead of waiting for your page to be indexed and ranked.
2. Content and copy research
Use your advertising data to help create SEO-rich content that will perform well long after you’ve turned off the specific ad for it. By looking at what keywords, ad copy, and calls-to-action work well in ads, you can replicate that success in your content.
You can even apply what’s working in ads into email campaigns, social media posts, and using this data to come up with better content campaigns on related topics your website visitors are interested in.
Ads also allow you to run some fun A/B testing with your target audience to learn what language speaks to them or what offers get them to click. This data can be great for buyer personas and writing better optimized content in the future.
3. Improve the landing page experience
If your ads have high click-through rates and good quality scores but you’re not seeing the conversions happen on your website, it’s a good indicator something is wrong with your landing page or the form.
Is the experience seamless from clicking the ad to landing on the website or does the ad say one thing but the landing page says another? Comparing your PPC performance to your landing page performance can quickly point out problems your website visitors are having. Maybe they are interested in the ad but when they get to your site they’re turned off by a pop-up or poor UX.
Make sure your landing pages are built to convert advertising audiences.
Ads and landing pages should be written the same way, as in using short headlines, concise copy, and a clear call-to-action.
4. Be everywhere
You have a lot of options when it comes to promoting your content across paid opportunities: Search ads, display ads, social media ads, sponsored content, and so on. You need to make sure your ads and content are appropriate and correctly targeted across these different mediums.
If you have a really great piece of content, you may even want to invest in retargeting or remarketing campaigns where you follow people across the web.
5. I swear it’s deja vu
While PPC ads get the top placement in search results, many searchers are used to skipping over ads and looking at the real results for their search term. Having your website listed twice can make a searcher stop as they recognize your brand name or website and it can even make your site more authoritative in their eyes.
Plus, if they click your ad or your organic listing, you still win by getting that click and that website visit!
How do you make sure your marketing gets the most out of both content and PPC? Share your tips and tricks below or on Twitter!
