Technology Marketing by Tatum MarketingJust another WordPress weblog

If you’re doing any kind of technology marketing, you probably have some pay-per-click advertising running. And you’re right to do it. PPC is one of the most effective, efficient and fastest growing ways to reach active buyers and drive traffic to your website.

However, it’s also pretty easy to screw up. The mistakes we see most consistently fall into one of two categories:

• Failure to think beyond the click-through.
• Failure to constantly measure, test and refine the program for better results.

To improve the outcome from your pay per click campaigns, first make sure you (or your agency) are at least doing the following:

1. Testing multiple ads. No matter how good your click-through rate (CTR) may be, it can almost always be better. It’s amazing how much the smallest, seemingly irrelevant, changes can improve CTR. Companies have commonly doubled their CTR just by changing a single word or capitalizing individual words in a URL.
2. Tracking your conversion rates. CTR tells you how well people respond to your ad. Conversion rate, however, tells you how many visitors do what you want them to do after they click on your ad. Without a good conversion rate, CTR is meaningless.
3. Sending click through traffic to a customized landing page – not to your home page or product page. This will increase your conversion rate substantially.
4. Exploring the widest possible list of key words. Use key word tools – such as Google Adwords, Wordtracker or Keyword Elite - to help you generate a long list of key words. You will never (trust me on this one) ever be able to think of all the terms your prospects will use to find you – no matter how many geniuses you include in a brainstorming session.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of the actions you can take to enhance your PPC results. It’s a good place to begin, though.

And one more thing. Don’t assume just because you’ve outsourced your campaign to an agency or an individual that all of the above are being handled. Most of the mistakes I run across are being made by companies who are in the hands of so-called experts.

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