There is no point in investing your budget into Pay-Per-Click advertising without a goal in mind or make that multiple goals! In this article we explore what those goals might be and how you can tackle them when considering PPC – this might even help you decide if PPC is the right tool for you to be investing in right now.
The most common goals when considering PPC are:
- Leads
- Sales
- Repeat Sales
- Brand awareness
- Research / Consideration
So, let’s explore those goals in more detail:
1. Leads
You might not be running an e-commerce business where you are directly selling your products online. Instead, you might want to collect leads or interest from potential clients for following up and engage with them in conversation. You might want them to fill in an enquiry form, request a demo, or start a free trial and these calls to action will help you when devising a plan for a PPC campaign.
2. Sales
In contrast, potential customers who are ready to buy a product are more likely to use search terms with gusto. For example, they might search for a specific cupcake flavour instead of simply ‘buy cupcakes’ and you need to consider this if your business relies on e-commerce.
3. Repeat Sales
PPC is a great way to build loyalty. Perhaps if they have bought a cupcake from you already, they have other occasions coming up where they will order your cupcakes again. It’s here that you should consider the cross-selling opportunities or occasion reminders or any factor that would motivate the customer to buy from you again.
4. Brand awareness
This is all about visibility to a relevant audience in the hope that you would be considered as part of a customer’s research later in the purchasing phase. The only downside to brand awareness focussed PPC is that you can often see higher spends with little ROI. It’s here that your keywords will play an extremely important role in devising a list of learnings for future campaigns.
5. Research / Consideration
This is when a customer might not be ready to buy, but they’re researching some options of brands they might have heard of. Competitor information is going to be of great value to you here as well as lots of persuasive techniques to encourage that consideration into a sale.
A great PPC campaign should include or look to cover as many of these goals as possible to ensure it’s well-rounded and captures potential customers at any or every phase of their buying journey. Our consultants can of course help you cover all of these bases.