Why Your PPC Strategy Needs to Include Content
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True story: About a year ago, I attended a digital marketing conference where I ended up sitting at a lunch table with a marketing manager for an outdoor equipment eCommerce company (they sell tents, hiking shoes, backpacks, etc.); We’ll call him Jim.
After some small talk about how fantastic our sandwiches were, he started telling me about his current PPC strategy, and how he was wondering why he wasn’t really getting an ROI for all of his efforts. Here’s what he told me:
The Backstory
Jim wanted to push three specific tents for the upcoming summer season, so he created a handful of Adwords campaigns and Facebook ads centered around those products. Each ad included action-oriented copy and a 10% discount for clicking. The ads linked back to the individual product pages for each tent.
He was getting solid ad visibility numbers, had a healthy budget to spend, and he was adding new keywords to place for on a regular basis. But, he kept running into two big problems:
1) Not a lot of clicks - he wasn’t seeing very much traffic from the ads on any of the platforms
2) Not enough conversions - the clicks he did receive spent time on the product page, but quickly left without making a purchase
The issue wasn’t necessarily that the ads were bad. No - the issue was that the ads Jim created were based on the assumption that his targeted audience would be ready to buy when they saw those ads. And they weren’t.
As I learned more about the keywords Jim’s AdWords efforts were built around, it became clear that his audience was interested enough in camping equipment and tents to make a search on Google, but wasn’t yet ready to buy. So - how do you fill that gap?
The Solution
Let’s take a step back. Having sales-oriented ads are a key piece of an effective PPC strategy. Whatever the bottom of your funnel looks like, it is typically a good decision to have at least some of your PPC budget go towards that. For example, if you sell IT services in Chicago, creating ads around your core services and keywords is a good move. The issue occurs when you stop there.
That’s because the majority of people who make up that audience aren’t quite ready to buy. They are doing their research first, and if they are still trying to learn about the best options available, they aren’t all that interested in clicking an ad to buy. Or if they do click, they are just looking into potential products (like in Jim’s case) with no intent to actually make a purchase at that time (goodbye, conversion rates).
Content helps bridge that gap by giving people something educational. In this case, we talked about the most popular questions his customer service team gets on their website chat window. He told me that people are typically unsure of what size tent they need, the best material for their climate, and if there are any additional products they should pair with the tent.
Using this information, I recommended that Jim create some form of premium content (form submission required to access) that answers those questions, and use that in his advertising. His AdWords and Facebook ads would then point people to a landing page where they can download that content and get the information they need in order to be more sales-ready.
Using the email addresses he gathers during this process, he can send emails and content to these individuals that helps them get to the point where they are ready to buy (maybe some additional FAQs, a special sale they might be interested in, etc.).
So, not only would Jim help push these people down the decision making process, but his website builds a reputation with them as an expert or helpful voice, making it more likely that they choose to buy from him when they are ready.
The Key to an Effective PPC Strategy is Content
The point of this story is that when you set out to create a PPC strategy, you need to consider ads for people in all stages of that decision making process. That includes more “salesy” ads for those ready to make a purchase decision, as well as content-driven, educational ads that help people through that journey.
Of course, this will call for content strategy (discover what information your audience wants and the best way to present it) and content creation (write and design said content) to be part of the process, but it is an investment that can take your PPC strategy to the next level.
As you consider your current (or future) PPC strategy, keep this process in mind:
1) Identify common questions being asked by your ideal audience
2) Create content around those questions (eBooks or checklists, for example)
3) Develop landing pages and forms for those content pieces
4) Promote the landing pages through your favorite online advertising channels
5) Capture data, and market to these people as you bring them through your funnel
Happy advertising!
