A website is your business’s flagship digital asset, and leads are the fuel that makes it function. Indeed, you can have a brilliant website loaded with features and worthy of awards, but without leads it’s not an asset, it’s an albatross.
Fortunately, there are many strategies and tactics to generate leads online. In this blog post, we’ll explore one of the most effective: pay per click (PPC) ads.
What is PPC?
Simply put, PPC is an online advertising model where ads attempt to engage target customers when they’re open and receptive to starting a relationship – one that, eventually and ideally, culminates in a sale. Businesses pay each time their ad is clicked (hence the acronym).
And while there are some critically important do’s and don’ts associated with running PPC campaigns – which we’ll highlight in future blog posts – they can certainly be very effective for generating leads online. Let’s look at some of the key reasons.
5 Key Ways that PPC Ads Generate Online Leads
1. PPC Ads are Targeted
Unlike conventional display marketing – like something you’d see on a billboard, TV or the side of a bus – PPC ads are targeted towards specific customer groups, which makes them very effective.
Targeting is achieved primarily through associating keywords with specific ads (other modes of targeting can include location, device, time of day, language, and other variables). Keywords are words or short phrases that customers are searching for, and therefore, interested in learning more about.
2. PPC Ads are Inexpensive
Relative to conventional marketing – where a single TV commercial or banner on the side of a bus can cost thousands of dollars – PPC is remarkably inexpensive, which makes it ideal for small and mid-sized businesses.
That being said, it’s also common for some businesses to overspend and waste thousands of dollars on PPC because their campaigns weren’t properly created and managed. But these excess costs are not because something is inherently wrong or flawed with PPC; it’s due to campaign mismanagement.
3. PPC Ads are Versatile
Whereas conventional marketing can ask customers to make a call or visit a website, PPC ads can direct customers to specific pages on a website (a.k.a. “landing pages”). As such, entire campaigns can be built around a single PPC ad (or more likely a group of ads), landing page, and offer (e.g. eBook, Infographic, etc.). It’s also easily possible to run multiple PPC ad campaigns at the same time.
4. PPC Ads Can be Easily Tracked Changed
If you run a radio or TV ad, it can take months before you know whether it was effective; and even then, the numbers will be “fuzzy” abstractions. PPC ad results (or lack thereof) are very easy to track, and can be done in real-time from any internet-enabled computer or device. Furthermore, ads can be changed and tweaked as necessary on-the-fly.
5. PPC Ads Deliver Actionable Intelligence
Last but not least, PPC ads deliver actionable intelligence that can be used to build successful inbound marketing campaigns in the future. For example, a business may discover that a key customer is very responsive to messaging related to “excess risk” or “compliance issues”, or that an expected number of customers clicking on their ads are doing so on the weekend and from a computer vs. a mobile device. All of this information can be analyzed and leveraged accordingly.
Learn More
As mentioned, PPC helps generate leads online – but it’s not an automatic or “set it and forget it” process. The approach needs to be strategically designed and prudently managed. Otherwise, instead of generating leads, PPC can — and frankly, will — generate excess costs, missed opportunities and plenty of headaches.
To learn more about making PPC work as part of your lead generation strategy, contact us today. To help understand some of the ways Leap Clixx can improve your online marketing presence, download our eBook about why Google AdWords should be a part of your inbound marketing strategy:
