How to Maximize PPC Campaigns and Optimize Landing Pages with @JoannaLord [@InboundNow #13]

David Wells
David Wells

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joanna lord This week on inbound now we have a special guest from SEOMoz , Joanna Lord. Joanna is Director of Customer Acquisition over at SEOMoz, an expert in PPC campaigns, and remarketing. She shares some valuable tips for companies using Adwords and some common mistakes to avoid.

In this episode we chat about:

  • What to avoid when starting out with PPC.
  • How to make to most of your PPC Campaigns.
  • How to leverage Adwords remarketing tools to target non-converters.
  • Landing page best practices

Enter to win a Copy of SEOMoz Founder Rand Fishkin's Book "The Art of SEO"

To get the audio and the full transcript of the show, head to:  Leveraging Adwords Pay Per Click ( PPC ) & Remarketing for your Business

Recommended Google Adwords Learning Resources 

"If you go to Google AdWords, you’ll see right up there there’s a Help Desk, and they take you chapter through chapter, through every step of what is in an AdWords campaign, what formulas to use, what are you trying to do, that great stuff."

With a constantly changing platform some of the books can become outdated almost immediately but the Google Adwords help center is regularly updated.

David Szetela's Clix Marketing Blog is also a great resource to learn more about PPC.  

Joanna also recommends Brad Geddes - Advanced Google Adwords  as a great read and really helped her rethink how she does her keyword research.

Starting Out With Adwords

"The low hanging fruit does come in that keyword research part. A lot of people simply just don’t know what keywords to buy."

Just buying product specific keywords can be shortsighted. There could me other resources or content on your site that you can drive relevant traffic to.

Get in the adwords platform and get used to the different settings like geotargeting, dayparting, and Google latest Adwords feature "remarketing"

Hiring a PPC Strategist

If you are like most business owners you don't have time to live inside of your Google Adwords dashboard. Outsourcing these efforts to a professional may be the way to go.

When looking for a qualified PPC Strategist, Joanna suggests going through their case studies and checking out the conversion funnels they have set up in the past. Feel out how natural they are and, as always, ask peers and colleagues for referrals. 

Display/Content Network or Search Network?

Which is better?  "Right now, I’m all about display. The past year, I think, what Google specifically has done to help roll out tools on the display side of things is now awesome. What used to be the content network is now the display, and it’s this really awesome idea of integrated search experience."

However, if you are new to PPC, search is the best place to get the conversion data you need to move forward with PPC campaigns. Start there and make your way into the display network.

Leveraging Remarketing

"The concept is old. The concept is something that we’ve all been doing, which is if someone comes to your site and leaves and goes to another site, you want to target them."

Does Ad Positioning Matter?

Billy Mcdonald, a consultant here at HubSpot, asks "What are Joanna's thoughts on ad positioning? Does becoming #1 instead of #3 make a huge difference when buying ad space?"

Joanna "think[s] positioning carries less weight than it used to if I had to make like a ballpark general statement. But I think it’s probably because the search results are so integrated right now. With local and moving around and all the testing that Google does, very rarely is the landscape they’re reporting to us a static one."

Landing Pages - Keep it Simple Stupid!

Joanna suggest keeping your landing pages as simple as possible! Don't bog the visitor down with long copy. Make the text crisp and the offer easily understandable.

  1. Have a title that is relevant
  2. A call-to-action that is obvious
  3. Have trust signals. (for landing pages that take secure information)
  4. Have customized content, something that’s relevant to the person clicking through

A/B Test your landing pages

Joanna sees A/B testing as a critical piece of optimizing landing pages.

Using tools like Google Website optimizer can help you do quick A/B tests on a number of different elements on your landing pages. 

Post Conversion Branding

After a visitor has converted, think about what else can you get that person to do, whether it's liking your Facebook Page or tweeting out a link. Think about how you can leverage these new customers

if they aren't converting? Share on Facebook, tweet that?

Connect with Joanna Online

You can connect with Joanna online on Twitter @JoannaLord  and find her blogging regularly over on the SEOMoz Blog

Past Episodes :


Topics: Google Ads

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