PPC ads allow you to target your potential customers for key searches or on key sites in your niche.

But, it’s not all sunshine and roses. When you’re working with a small budget, cutthroat competition, and an evolving PPC industry, running paid advertising campaigns becomes an expensive affair for small businesses.

And one that isn’t very high-converting if you make mistakes.

It becomes harder to know how you need to run your campaigns, so you don’t end up spending money on ads with little or no ROI.

If you’re planning to get into PPC advertising or want to take your PPC campaigns to the next level, here are five simple strategies you should use for your small business.

1. Refine your target audience

When you’re just getting started in PPC advertising, you need to know what products and services your target customers are looking for and the keywords they use.

Customer needs are continually evolving, meaning that the products they search for and the keywords they use also change.

Your product or service features might be appealing to a particular customer segment more than others. Besides, you might be ignoring a customer segment that needs your products, meaning that you don’t target the keywords they use in your ads.

76% of your customers expect you to catch up with their ever-changing needs and expectations, or you risk losing them to a competitor.

Look at customer data and observe how their behaviour patterns are changing over time. Alternatively, reach out to your customers to know their needs and how your product or service will help them.

Refining your audience helps you run relevant ads by writing better ad copy, which pre-qualifies the traffic you get. And it just gets better from there.

You’re going to pay less for ads and get qualified leads. Sounds too good to be true? Codeless compared the clickthrough rates and cost per click on ads to a custom audience vs. cold audience. Take a look at the results:

Don’t settle for basic targeting.

For example, if you sell SEO consulting and services, it might make sense to target SEO as an interest of your audience, right?

Yes and no.

Yes because that’s generally correct, and no because it’s far too broad.

SEO has dozens upon dozens of sub-sections from technical to link building and more.

Plus, you might not want to target people new to SEO as they aren’t ready to buy yet.

The point is: refine your audience as much as you can.

To do this, test out different observational audiences in your Google Ads audiences tab. You can view metrics like clicks, CPC, CTR, and revenue based on different audience industries and demographics.

For example, you may find that people in the financial industry provide a higher ROI than those in the hospitality industry. Or women aged 35-54 convert better than men aged 18-24.

By creating observational audiences for your small business PPC campaigns, you can refine your audience and improve your ROI.

2. Build awareness before you sell

When your product or service is still new or when you want to reach out to a new audience, it’s easy to get ignored at the expense of more established brands.

Rather than focusing instantly on a direct sale, use the value selling sales methodology where you provide the value or benefits of your brand, rather than products.

A stellar way to do this is via content.

Connecting with your customers and prospects needs you to focus on providing a great experience through content long before you ask for the sale.

My advice? Go ahead and start a blog, create shareable infographics or images with Delesign, and keep showing up providing value.

Starting a podcast and sharing unique perspectives and solutions to the problems your audience is facing is a good place to start. You will stand out from everyone else who is seeking their attention.

One of the easiest ways to launch your podcast is to provide value to your email list and always include a call to action in every email that directs readers to your Podcast.

Try encouraging them to leave reviews, too by adding incentives and giveaways which in turn will help boost its rankings.

Simply schedule out emails in advance with the latest links to your podcasts to help drive more traffic for reviews and listens.

Then, expand via paid ads on social media and Google Ads to get more listeners and expand your reach.

Besides, hosting a podcast helps you build a connection with your audience, making them more likely to buy from you.

Next, start creating valuable content to be a leader in your space. What’s valuable in content?

In-depth blog posts that cover everything you need to know about a subject.

For example, this guide on when to go to Hawaii:

Complete with custom visuals and a dozen subheadings, there’s no reason for someone to click back to Google.

That’s valuable content that leaves a lasting impression on your audience, helping you convert them down the line.

If you’re in the affiliate marketing space, you could also create a detailed comparison guide like this one on the best VPN providers from Cooltechzone

I really like this one because it is a complete guide that goes super in-depth comparing various providers and also incorporates lots of eye-catching graphics:

Remember, you want to give readers a reason to stay on your site. Make sure you give them everything they were looking for.

Yes, your PPC headlines and ad copy need to match the content of your landing pages. But better yet, your landing pages need to match the user’s stage of the buyer’s journey.

3. Drive traffic to dedicated landing pages

Getting someone to click on your ad is only half the battle. The other half is convincing them to sign up or buy from you.

To increase your conversion rates, you’ll need to create a landing page for each audience segment.

According to Hubspot, companies with 10-15 landing pages increase the number of leads they get by 55%.

Match your PPC ad headlines and copy to the headlines and copy of your landing pages.

Housecall Pro, for instance, has a dedicated landing page for each audience segment. Take a look at some of the elements in their landing page that you’ll want to include when creating yours to boost conversions:

• The copy, images, and calls to action are specific. They help in building trust by assuring the prospect that they are in the right place.

• Clear benefits that address the specific needs of the target audience. They differentiate Housecall Pro from the competition.

• Relevant customer testimonials. They help overcome objections.

Wanna know one of my top strategies for converting those warm leads? If you’re running a digital or service-based small business, it’s by hosting a webinar.

Why? Going back to point number two, it helps you to build awareness and also to get over the know, like, and trust barrier that makes the difference between a sale or losing revenue to an abandoned cart.

Ultimately, your landing pages need to match your PPC ads and provide the right type of content for your visitors.

4. Align social advertising to your PPC ads

To get more from your PPC campaigns, you shouldn’t just rely on Google alone. With 2.62 billion unique social media users, diversifying to social advertising will boost your visibility and open room for more conversions.

25% of these users get to know about a company or product through the recommendations they get on social media.

This gives you more flexibility in the type of ads you choose to run. You can either boost your visibility, generate leads, or make sales, and still get a good ROI just like these companies did.

Not sure how to measure ROI other than looking at Google or Facebook analytics?

One key way is by sending customer satisfaction surveys after a customer has received their product.

It’s one thing to convert a customer, but getting positive feedback is crucial to retaining them. Otherwise, you’re just going to blow through a lot of ad spend constantly trying to attract new hot leads 24/7.

Just don’t forget to provide some sort of referral incentive as part of your customer feedback strategy and surveys.

According to MyRoofingPal, 83% of customers are willing to provide referrals following a positive experience.

Once you understand more about your customers, match your Facebook creative with your Google ads. During the customer journey, a user may first see a Facebook prospecting ad, then get retargeted with a Google RLSA ad, and finally convert on yet another Facebook retargeting ad.

Your message and brand identity should be consistent throughout and lead users down the conversion funnel.

5. Repurpose visuals for stunning display ads

To stand out from your competition and get higher click-through rates, the ads you run need to have engaging visuals.

Since you’ll be running ads consistently, creating visuals from scratch will slow you down. Venngage conducted a survey confirming this, with 35% of online marketers admitting that one of their biggest challenges is producing visuals consistently.

Make your work easier by repurposing the visuals you already have. Your audience is already familiar with them, and you’ll save more time in the process. You’ll only need to adjust the colour palettes, fonts, and illustrations to the current trends in graphic design to make them stunning.

These display ads should match the look and feel of your website and be used for retargeting.

Conclusion

As a small business owner, running successful PPC campaigns isn’t something you’ll master overnight, whether you’re running Google ads, social media ads, or Amazon PPC campaigns. The strategies we’ve just discussed will help you get started and succeed in your initial campaign ideation. With each strategy you implement, you will get a higher ROI, which continues to build up over time.

Continue refining your ads and copy, and embrace new strategies to help you build upon the successful campaigns you’ll be running. And if you want to be more efficient, consider a PPC management software such as Adzooma that does the heavy lifting for you so you can focus on running your business.