In our interview we have addressed these and other questions to Irina Nikulina - a PPC expert with 7 years of experience in digital advertising. Irina has launched hundreds of ad campaigns for restaur
In our interview we have addressed these and other questions to Irina Nikulina - a PPC expert with 7 years of experience in digital advertising. Irina has launched hundreds of ad campaigns for restaurants, beauty businesses and retail stores. If you read through and still have questions, feel free to contact Irina for a free PPC consultation.
1. What is PPC?
PPC or Pay-per-click is an advertising model where advertisers pay a fee each time their ad is clicked through. It鈥檚 one of the ways to attract traffic to your website or landing page.
2. What PPC channels can a small business owner employ to advertise online?
Pretty much every social network as well as every search engine provides users with pay per click opportunities. Since majority of people these days search in Google and hang out in Facebook, the most popular are of course Google and Facebook ads, however, Twitter, Linkedin are also well known. Last year Instagram also gave worldwide access to their ad network and since Instagram ads are powered by Facebook you can simply launch those along with Facebook ads within the same ad campaign.
3. What鈥檚 the main difference between Adwords and Facebook ads?
It鈥檚 the targeting options. Most of the people are familiar with Google Adwords search ads that appear according to the keyword you鈥檝e typed. This is called contextual advertising, so it鈥檚 based on user鈥檚 intent. We target people based on the keywords they are searching for although Google provides advertisers with many more targeting options such as geo location, language and even age and gender. Besides Google has other PPC options rather than search results such as partner websites where you can place your banners or text ads. Here you can choose from wide variety of interests, behaviours, website topics and other targeting factors.
Facebook doesn鈥檛 have contextual advertising, but it uses wide targeting options based on many factors, but the most advanced is interests. You can go very narrow with your targeting and for example show your ad to people who meet all of these criterias: work at McDonalds, drive Ford and have two kids. You have to be careful though, not everyone specifies their employment/kids or other statuses on Facebook, so you might try a few different options to cover the most of your potential audience and see which targeting combinations works better.
4. Should a small business owner run a brand ad campaign in Adwords?
Let鈥檚 say you have a restaurant that鈥檚 is called 鈥淵ummyFood鈥 and some of the loyal clients spread the word and told their friends about you. What are they going to do? Go to Google and search for 鈥淵ummyFood鈥. You want your clients to find you, not your competitors, right? Running branded Adwords ads for your brand keyword doesn鈥檛 cost much, but prevents you from situations where potential clients were searching for you, but clicked through one of your competitors websites in Google Adwords. And yes, it works the other way round - you can run your ads for the brand keywords of your competitors.
5. Do Twitter and Linkedin ads really work?
Of course Twitter and Linkedin ads aren鈥檛 that popular, but it all depends on where your potential audience hangs out. In my experience I rarely use Twitter and Linkedin as primary advertising channel, but it works fine as an additional. It would be right to say that for the same kind of audience Twitter cost per click is higher than Facebook and Linkedin is higher than Twitter. But the ultimate point is conversions. Let鈥檚 say you have Facebook cost per click $0,5 and Linkedin is $2. Facebook looks more attractive, right? However, if you receive 5 clients out of 10 clicks on Linkedin and 1 client out of 100 in Facebook, your cost per conversion from Linkedin is far more attractive.
6. Do you need a PPC expert to launch your ads?
Not every small business would afford paying for a PPC specialist to run the ads. What you can do however is to at least hire one to launch and maintain your ads for one month (especially for Adwords). The expert will be able to outline the correct structure of your ad campaigns, conduct a keyword research, create the texts of the ads and so on. In the future if you choose to maintain everything yourself, you鈥檇 have to analyze the search queries, correct the bids and stop those keywords with poor performance.
I鈥檝e seen many business owners complaining that Google Adwords or Facebook ads don鈥檛 work for their business. It turned out they were doing it on their own and it鈥檚 easy to make lots of mistakes when you are not an expert. Even though you can still run the ads yourself, you should consider that PPC expert knows about all Google/Facebook updates, trends, tips and tricks that can increase your click through rate, lower your cost per click and therefore save you money and make advertising channel profitable.
7. For a small business it鈥檚 hard to compete with large corporations in online ads. What would be your advice in this terms?
Small business is more flexible so it鈥檚 easier for you to appear at the right time and at the right place. One good advice is to use local marketing for your business. E.g. Facebook offers local targeting where you could choose to target people of specific radius around your business. So if you are a restaurant you can launch an ad campaign targeting people 1 mile around right before the lunch hours on weekdays. Or if you are a bar, you can go with cocktail ads on a Friday night. Same with other businesses. Beauty salon? Suggest a 鈥淧erfect haircut 5 minutes away鈥 to highlight that you are just around the corner.
In Adwords you can use Google Keyword Tool to find how many people are searching for a particular keyword. Try long tail and specific geo keywords, smth like 鈥渨hite bracelet Zurich鈥. Don鈥檛 go for the broad keywords like 鈥渂racelets鈥 as these keywords are not likely to bring you any conversions. And just like in Facebook, you can do the geo targeting in Adwords and bring customers nearby to visit your business.
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8. Landing page is where you usually bring visitors to with your ads. Is it important to have it professionally made?
We all know that professionally made website requires lots of money. Prototype, design, markup, implementation - you can go well over thousands of $ when doing all of that. Well, luckily we have all kind of tools around these days where you can make it yourself. It requires no coding skills whatsoever and the overall process is quite simple. I鈥檝e personally had a good experience with your Paymash.com webshop for ecommerce and Unbounce.com for a single product or service.
However, it鈥檚 more important to have the relevant and appealing content on your landing page. How do you know if your landing page doesn鈥檛 work? In Google Analytics you can check how much time people spend on your page. And if they spend less than 10 seconds it鈥檚 a sign for you that something is wrong with the landing page. Google Adwords also takes the relevancy of your landing page into account. The quality score for keywords and ads depends on this significantly. In the long run the more relevant the landing page is, the higher quality score your ads will have and the less you鈥檒l have to pay for your ad campaigns.
So if you are targeting for keyword 鈥済reen cocktail dress鈥 the page where your visitor lands should have either a green cocktail dress on it or a list of green cocktail dresses. So often when you type something like this in the search you land to an irrelevant category page of some website with the list of all of their dresses. Hello! I asked for a green cocktail one, didn鈥檛 I?
Another important thing is CTA (call to action). You should have clear, attractive and visible call to action on your landing page if you want your visitors to perform some action at your site - sign up for a newsletter, buy your product, book a table, get a special offer, book an appointment and so on. This will allow you to estimate your PPC campaign efficiency - you鈥檒l be able to see how much money have you actually spent and how many of the paid visitors converted into leads.
9. What is remarketing?
In a few words remarketing is showing ads to those people who visited your website. There were studies showing that a customer has to contact with a brand for at least 7 times (in average) before he makes a purchase decision. Of course it varies depending on a product, the more expensive the product is the more contacts you will make before the decision (e.g. buying a car). So don鈥檛 expect instant sales from someone who visited your website for the first time. Instead continue your 鈥渃ommunication鈥 by showing the ad a few more times to increase brand awareness.
10. How can a small business owner launch Facebook local ads?
This is more than one paragraph of explanation so I鈥檝e prepared a Free Facebook Local Marketing guide you can download below. It provides you with detailed step by step instructions on launching Facebook local campaign and in about 30 minutes you should be all set up and ready to show your ads to your potential clients. Hope it helps you and good luck advertising your business!
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