What’s in your marketing portfolio?
Recently I I’ve been talking with a variety of people around their marketing portfolios. It’s no surprise that PPC campaigns using Google and even Bing are everywhere. PPC is one of the ways to drive qualified leads for conversion to your site. However, like any marketing tactic, it’s one thing in a successful marketing portfolio. PPC is effective but can be expensive. Let me restate that another way – it’s not the only thing that you should be doing to successfully market your site.
Here are some of the most common reasons that I hear PPC campaigns fail:
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Marketers not researching the relevant keywords enough. This means they may buy keywords that are too broad, failing to focus on the relevant audience. Or buying too many keywords and increase the marketing cost with little return.
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Linking to irrelevant landing pages or broken URLs. Sadly this means spending money on clicks that don’t turn into conversations and increasing the cost per conversion.
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Making PPC the main marketing activity. PPC works great but in order to create growth you need to spend more money – meaning it gets expensive very quickly.
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Marketers failing to focus on the right buying stage of the customer. For example, If you consider a simple buying stage of awareness, desire and purchase. What area are you focusing on for PPC?
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Choosing a landing page that is generic, or without a call to action for the target audience.
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A/B and MVT Testing not used on landing pages.
What else can you do besides PPC campaigns? Here are a few ideas for things that you should take a look at.
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an essential part of your site. I wouldn’t include this as a campaign but an ongoing activity. PPC is only temporary if you master good SEO practices.
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Exchange links with relevant customers and partners. This doesn’t mean everyone you work with – but consider your target audience and identify some key customer and partners.
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Work on optimizing your web pages. Things like keywords in page title, using H1 and H2 headings.
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Start a newsletter.
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Get creative with Forum Marketing, guest blogging and article syndication.
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Look at similar sites and consider advertising on them. Do your homework to ensure the sites contain your target audience.
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Don’t forget Twitter, Facebook, and Linked in.
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Get some data – plenty of places to find behavioral about your target audience.
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Update site content weekly. You are what you write.
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Write whitepapers to attract people. The good news is that many whitepaper sites provide pay for performance options.