PPC ads can seem deceptively straightforward. You create a PPC ad on Google, Facebook, etc. and pay each time a visitor clicks on it to see your site. Google Ad Words has made the whole thing even easier by giving your ad an Ad Words score to tell you how good it is.
Creating quality PPC ads are easy, right?
The best answer is yes and no. Yes, it is relatively easy for an individual to read a few online tutorials and create PPC ads in under an hour. However, PPC advertisement can be used to do more than drive site traffic. Optimal PPC Management can do more than check a few reports and tweak a few keywords to drive more site traffic every day. Truly optimal management of PPC campaigns can find creative and unique ways to gather meaningful big data to help your business thrive. In a way, data from PPC ad campaigns can be seen as a platform to conduct market research, get unbiased customer feedback, and drive site traffic as a tertiary effect.
Evaluation of user behavior with PPC ads
Surveys and other self-report data are notoriously unreliable. When asked for feedback, customers might not be completely candid for a number of reasons. Often, customers will not want to hurt someone’s feelings; customers will not be engaged when filling out the survey; or customers might draw a blank when asked open-ended questions about what a company could do better. It is very possible that a customer had a positive experience and could not think of a better service that a company could provide. Most customers that provide less accurate data on surveys do not have malicious intent. After all, it is not the customer’s responsibility to provide better marketing tactics and fresh ideas. The responsibility of obtaining and evaluating meaningful data falls on the company. Some ways to evaluate user behavior with PPC ads are listed below:
- Split PPC ads on Google Ad Words. By splitting ads, you can see what part of your company customers are the most interested in. For example, a home décor company could have multiple ads on Google Ad Words. One ad could focus on bedroom furniture, one ad could focus on glassware, and another ad could focus on only outdoor furniture. After all comparable ads are set, the home décor company can see if one of the ads was significantly more popular than the others. This type of ad splitting can help a company determine whether promoting bedroom furniture, glassware, or patio furniture would be most effective in driving ROI.
- Look at conversion rates. How many users that click on your PPC ad actually buy something? Also, what is the price of the average sale? Conversion rates can be misleading when viewed in a conventional sense. A conversion rate of 0.05% might be amazing if the average sale is over $800,000. However, conversion rates might have to be significantly higher if the average sale is under $5.
- Troubleshoot potential issues. If you notice the average user spends 3 seconds on your landing page after clicking on a PPC ad, you have a problem. The root of the problem could be the PPC ad, the placement of the ad, or people could hate your landing page. Fixing a potential issue might be as simple as upgrading your website to be mobile-friendly.
How to get the most out of PPC advertisements
Driving relevant traffic to your site is great. However, PPC has much more to offer in the form of collecting big data. Optimal management of PPC ad campaigns can help do more than drive site traffic as PPC gives marketers the ability to analyze data that would otherwise be almost impossible to obtain. Continual data analysis can help businesses stay ahead of the curve, both online and offline.
