PPC is an ever-changing space where new techniques get developed literally every month. And not only that, but the platforms themselves return the favor and introduce new features almost just as regularly.
This forces us affiliates to constantly stay on our toes and look for new ways to optimize our campaigns and improve our CTRs just a tiny bit with every new campaign.
However, like with most things in life, the best tweaks are often the simplest ones, so let’s look at three eye-opening tactics that can potentially improve your PPC results significantly.
1. Asking for a Call Instead of the Click
(This is a PPC advice for mobile.)
First, let’s point out that mobile PPC marketing evolved from its desktop ancestor. This means that every method that worked on desktop was then tested on mobile. One of the most fundamental methods in PPC was to send people over to a website so they can take further action. Therefore, people began creating mobile landing pages and so on.
However, a type of destination that’s way more native to mobile than a website click is a direct call. Calls have a much better chance of ending up in a conversion and are much more valuable to a business than site visits.
Whenever possible, direct your mobile ads straight to calls (click-to-call).
2. Targeting People
Focusing only on keywords in your PPC marketing is one way to go about it. However, these days it’s a lot more effective to start looking into who the people behind those keywords are. For instance, if someone’s reading an article about “poker strategies,” who this person most likely is? What their goals are? And so on.
Taking the extra step in your research to find that out can have a good payoff. Solutions like Gmail Sponsored Promotions, Custom Audiences in Facebook and Twitter’s new developments make this very possible.
It’s reported that the results inside of Gmail, for example, are significantly better than those in Google Display Network on Gmail’s pages.
Also, those platforms now allow us to make the connections between people we have on our mailing lists and their social media behaviors, ultimately letting us reach out to them via more than just one medium.
3. Be the First One
Being early to a new trend or a new feature inside a given advertising platform always pays off. For instance, there’s over a thousand new features added in AdWords every year, and you can be sure that if you manage to be among the early adopters of this new stuff, you will get ahead of the competition.
For example, one of the newer developments inside YouTube’s ad platform is the TrueView ad format. With it, you can display an entire ad video before the actual video that someone is just about to watch. The best part is that you don’t pay anything if the viewer clicks on “Skip Ad.”
Another thing worth looking into as well is Google’s new “+Post Ads” on Google+. With it, your Google+ updates will be taken to the Display Network and promoted there. This won’t work in all cases, but for some niches and affiliates it can be an interesting addition to their campaigns portfolio.
PPC never sleeps. There’s always something new and there are always some PPC improvements we can make to bring more eyeballs to our ads. Keep looking for new features on the official blogs (like the AdWords blog) and jump on them early – it’s when the return will be the highest.