The number one source of traffic – the absolute best way to get people to visit your site, see what you’re offering and BUY it – is SEO. SEO has 51 percent of the traffic and that probably isn’t going to change anytime soon. It needs to be a central part of your marketing armory.

So what comes second? Direct mail? Affiliate links? Social marketing? The fact is that they draw, taken in order, 13 percent, three percent and three percent of the traffic. No; second after SEO comes PPC – Pay Per Click. PPC has 21 percent of available traffic, and that tells you two things:

• If you’re not already using PPC, you have to start
• If you are using or have used PPC and you didn’t see a good ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) you weren’t doing it right and you need – not to stop using PPC, but to start using it properly

(If you doubt those figures, just do a Google search for a product – any product – and see how many PPC ads turn up right at the top of Page 1).

There are some things you need to do to get it right.

Separate AdWords from Ad Groups

AdWords is for your product categories; Ad Groups is for your individual products. Getting it the other way round has been responsible for a lot of failed campaigns.

Make Your Match Type as Tight as Possible

You want the people who are looking for your product. Not products vaguely like yours; not products in the same generic category – products just like yours. It’s not about getting the biggest amount of traffic possible; it’s about attracting people who want what you have to sell and are likely to buy it.

Negative Match Is a Must

Find every possible keyword combination that someone might search for where one of the words is one of your keywords. You don’t want them all. What you want – and we are sorry to keep repeating this, but it’s important – is the people who are searching for what you’re selling. So, having found all those unhelpful keyword combinations, use negative match to rule out all the ones whose clicks you don’t want to pay for because they’re not looking for someone like you.

A/B Testing Is Important

But so is B/C testing, C/D testing – don’t just write one piece of copy, run it up the flagpole and see who salutes. Try lots of ads in small, controlled batches. That way, you’ll know what’s working and what isn’t.

Have You Tried Google Shopping?

If not, why not? Optimize your data feeds and you should get good results. Other people are.

Okay, so not everyone knows how to optimize their data feeds – or carry out multiple tests, or check which keywords should be negatively matched. But we do. To get your PPC campaign properly on the road and bringing the results you’ve been dreaming about, contact us today. It’s a tough nut to crack on your own… let’s do it together instead.