BlogPaid Media

Startups Guide to Cost – Effective PPC

By Rajesh Jhamb
October 3, 2017

Startups face many challenges while trying to gain an initial foothold in the market and industry. They have to increase the awareness about their brand or company among their prospective customers, and also have to keep in mind their budget constraints while implementing any large-scale marketing strategy. Hence, most startups and SMEs turn to inbound marketing tactics such as SEO and social media to increase awareness about their product or company, since it is practically free and very effective. But opening a page or an account in various social media platforms won’t be enough to reach your marketing goal. While having a page on Facebook may earn you many fans and followers, all of them will not be your prospective customers. So, to have an extra edge over your competitors, you’ll need to explore more options beyond the organic optimization of your site. You’ll need to consider paid marketing methods such as PPC in media buying and Planning to increase traffic to your website in a short period of time as well. Many startups hesitate to consider paid marketing methods such as PPC since they assume it would consume a lot of their marketing funds, without any guarantee when it comes to performance. And for any startup, investing cash in any activity is a great concern. But with careful consideration, thoughtful planning, and the right hacks, PPC advertising can be a very useful investment for startups to kickstart their business in the industry.

Some useful hacks for startups for cost-effective PPC

Here, we explain some useful tips for startups to implement a cost-effective PPC campaign, and how can they make their PPC campaign worth their investment and give fruitful returns :

#1. Identify your PPC goals

It is the most logical step to identify and research about your desired goals for your PPC campaign before implementing it. It will help you determine whether your PPC efforts are going in the right direction, and how they align with your overall organizational goals. You must define your goals as specifically as possible. In order to implement a proper PPC campaign, you need to ask yourself a few questions, such as :

What is our daily/monthly budget for PPC?
How much should our customer acquisition cost be to remain profitable?
Who is our target customer?
What is our conversion goal? (lead submission, phone call, purchase, etc.)
What demographics do we need to target?
Where are our competitor's advertising?
What sets us apart from our competition?

It is very crucial for you to answer these questions before proceeding ahead with your PPC campaign.The more accurately you are able to answer these questions, the more effective your PPC campaign would be. It takes lot of time and planning to successfully run a PPC campaign.

#2. Build a comprehensive list of keywords

When it comes to startups, their main challenge is to be discovered by their customers (potential or otherwise) online. Using short-tail keywords won’t bring any results for them since they are too general and there is too much competition for them. Hence, using long-tail keywords is the best option for startups. They are highly targeted and would help to bring your targeted audience to your website. The most efficient way you will be able to do this is by understanding your target audience well and aligning your marketing goal with your business goal. Researching upon the search terms which your target market uses to seek your product or service, and incorporating them as your keywords can help you increase the number of qualified prospects to your website. To get new ideas about which long-tail keyword can best suit your purpose, and which ones have the least competition, you can use tools such as Google’s Keyword Planner, or HubSpot’s Keywords tool.

#3. Understand Your Competition

When you understand your competition and do a complete SWOT analysis of them, it allows you to identify opportunities or learn about what you are possibly missing out in your advertising strategy. If your startup has a distinct advantage over your competitors, then you need to let your target audience know about it. You need to analyze your competitors’ keywords and check if they are using any potential keywords which you might be missing out on. You must also check their ads and landing pages and analyze what is different in them, and make any improvements in yours if the need arises. While every startup has some competitors, not all are required to be taken into consideration. Keep in mind to identify and segregate the weak competitors from really strong ones. You don’t need to waste your time, money and efforts in pursuing competitors that aren’t a major threat to your business. Instead, search for the ones which have established themselves in the market, and which your target audience search for the most online.

#4. Track Your Conversion Data

One of the keys to optimizing a PPC campaign and measuring its success is implementing conversion tracking. By doing so, you can analyze which expenditure results in conversion, and which didn’t, and adjust your budget accordingly. Analyzing your conversion data lets you get a clear picture about which keywords are bringing the most traffic, and which are resulting in the most conversions. Hence, you can get a clear picture about whether your PPC campaign is working or not, and can delete the poorly performing keywords. Not only that, it would also help you to gain a fresh perspective about your target audience and their reactions to your marketing assets. This way, you can tweak your content across different marketing assets accordingly.

#5. Continue Optimizing Your Campaigns and Skills

You may have a very unique and relevant concept for your startup, but it will fail if you don’t know how to promote it online. Implementing a PPC campaign requires fine skills and experience. PPC is a highly dynamic concept, and hence – as a marketer – you must never stop learning, and always keep yourself updated with the latest trends and updates in the PPC campaigns. You can also try various tools which will help you optimize your campaign. There are various management tools available in Google AdWords which you can try to optimize your PPC campaign automatically and utilize the time you’ve saved to optimize your ads, landing pages, and other important assets.

Conclusion

The main challenges of a startup business are to create awareness about their brand or company to their prospective customers within a limited budget. Creating a page and/or account on social media platforms won’t give you the desired results and fulfill your marketing goals, since while you may get a large number of likes and fans on your page, only a small number of them may actually be your qualified customers, and thereby result in sales. Hence, if implemented with a proper plan and expertise, PPC can really be a worthwhile investment by bringing a large amount of qualified traffic to your website in a short amount of time. Hence, PPC campaigns can be really beneficial for startups and SMEs to bring quality traffic to their website, and give them an edge over their competitors. >> Know more about Media Buying and Planning.