- 50 minutes
- Digital Marketing
Sojern Presents: Data-Driven Strategies To Boost Your Marketing and Increase Ticket Sales
All Skill Levels
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When you purchase a product or booking a service online, where do you typically start? Chances are, you start with a search. Today, 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine (imForza). This is why SEM (search engine marketing) is so important to your business. You want potential customers to be able to find you when they’re typing in a search for the types of tours and activities you offer.
PPC (pay-per-click) marketing is an effective SEM tactic that allows you to capture potential customers at this first touchpoint. PPC is a form of digital advertising where you pay a fee each time your ad is clicked. If you’re not sure whether you need PPC marketing, here are a few of its benefits:
Think that PPC marketing is for you? This guide will walk you through setting goals for your PPC strategy, different types of PPC, and making the most of your digital ads.
Before we dive head-first into the world of PPC, let’s go over some terms (and their definitions) you’ll see throughout this guide and will encounter as you start your PPC tactics.
Ad Position: This is the order in which your ad appears on a page in relation to other ads. So an ad position of 1 means you’re at the top of the page.
Ad Rank: This is the value used behind the scenes to determine your ad position, and it’s calculated based on your quality score and bid (more on both of these later.)
Bid: This is the-predetermined maximum amount you’re willing to pay for your ad results (clicks, impressions, etc.).
Clicks: A click is registered every time someone clicks on your ad.
Click-Through Rate (CTR): In a PPC ad, this is measured by dividing the number of clicks on your ad by the number of impressions (each time someone sees your ad).
Conversion: This is the desired action you want people to take based on your ad (booking a tour, signing up for a newsletter, etc.)
Conversion Rate: Similar to CTR, conversion rate measures the rate at which your ad impressions turned into conversions.
Cost-Per-Click: This is the cost of each click on your ad that brings a visitor to your site.
Cost-Per-Lead: This is the amount you pay your ad publisher for each lead generated by your ads.
Long-tail Keywords: These are the keywords that contain more than two words and are more specific, targeting a niche audience.
PPC can be used for a variety of goals and in a variety of ways. Before deciding on your PPC budget and launching a campaign, it’s important to determine what goals you want to achieve with these initiatives. For most businesses in our industry, the goal is to drive qualified traffic to your site and increase online bookings. Other goals could include increasing brand awareness or creating leads. Before starting your campaign, make sure you have a clear, measurable goal. (Check our digital marketing strategy guide for more on setting measurable goals.)
PPC is often misclassified as just ads that pop up on the SERP (search engine results page), but it also applies to paid ads on social media networks, search networks, display networks, and more. For example, PPC could take the shape of campaigns on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. Determining which channels you want to focus your marketing efforts on usually happens when you’re creating your overall digital marketing strategy.
Google tends to be the most commonly used PPC network due to the amount of search volume that comes through it. According to Statista, Google currently owns 88% of the search market share, so let’s look at how you can make the most of PPC on Google Ads.
There are two types of PPC ads you can create on Google, search ads and display ads. What type of ad you choose depends on your marketing goal and where you want audiences to find you.
When people click on your ad, they’ll be taken to a page on your website. Most commonly, this will be your homepage. Depending on your PPC goals, you might also send people to a specific activity page, a newsletter sign-up page, etc. You might have a few different landing pages depending on the target audience of each of your ads to ensure you’re catering the content specifically to that audience.
Your landing page experience is a key factor into your Google Quality Score. It’s important that your website follows best practices and you create synergy between your ad copy and the copy on your website to give visitors a consistent experience wherever they encounter your business. The landing page should be an answer to the search intent that led visitors to your website. To achieve this:
Important factors on your landing page include headings, user experience, content, images, and more. Check out our guide that breaks down the 8 elements of a website that ranks for tips on how to make the most of your landing pages.
As we mentioned earlier, another factor taken into consideration when assessing your Quality Score is the keyword relevance. Not only will you be bidding on these keywords, but they will likely also be used on your ad copy, so it’s important to ensure your ad and the landing page match the search intent behind these keywords. (For more on search intent, keywords, and keyword research tools, check out our SEO guide to keywords.)
Equally as important as defining the keywords you do want to target is determining the words that do not describe your business, tours, or activities well. You want to ensure you identify these words so that your ads DO NOT show up on these searches. These are calld negative keywords. For example, if your Denver food tour business visits well-known restaurants, but doesn’t offer options for gluten-free guests, you could add “gluten-free” as a negative keyword for your ad so it won’t be visible to searchers looking for gluten-free Denver food tours. Negative keywords are a useful way to help reduce costs, to help ensure that search intent, ads, and services are best aligned.
Once you’ve determined what keywords you want to bid for, it’s time to start writing your ads. Google Ads give you a 30-character headline and an 80-character description, and you want to use those characters wisely. Aim to get as close to the character count as possible to ensure you include key elements in your ad.
Pro tip: When using numbers, it’s best to be exact. For example, people trust “we have 2,135 five-star reviews” more than “we have more than 2,000 five-star reviews.”
Once you have determined your goals, done your keyword research, and written your ad copy, it’s time to launch your campaign. Here are some steps to take to get ready to launch:
For more on segmentation and launching your PPC ads, check out our webinar on how to grow your business with PPC and our video on getting started with PPC Marketing.
To truly understand the impact of your campaign, you need to set KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, quantifiable goals that help you measure the success of your ad campaign. What you want to measure will depend on your goals. If you want to increase online visibility, you might set a goal related to impressions. If your goal is to increase online sales, you might set a goal related to click-through rate or conversions.
Create a schedule for checking the results of your campaigns. One of the benefits of digital marketing is that you’re getting data in real-time. Set a reminder to review performance and analytics in a timeframe that works for your campaign, whether that’s weekly, monthly, or quarterly.
For more on setting measurable goals, check out our digital marketing strategy guide.
There’s a bit of a learning curve when it comes to PPC, but it is and will continue to be a relevant tool for your business. If you’re dipping your toe in PPC marketing for the first time, start small and test out a few different ads to figure out what works best for your business, budget, and goals. If you’re ready to continue to learn more about digital marketing, check out our other guides on the topic!