Definition – Paid Search also known as PPC is the action of paying for ads to appear in front of customers on search/social platforms such as Google, Facebook, LinkedIn Instagram.
Do I really need it?
If you want to increase sales, paid search will get you there the fastest than other forms of advertising. You are paying to get your message/offer right in front of your audience at the perfect time. This is an awesome formula to start raking in sales quickly.
Is it suitable for my type of business?
At the start of your paid advertising campaign, you or the agency will set the capped budget. This means if you put in $1000 per month ad spend, your campaign will NOT go over this budget. You should be getting more than $1000 + ad management costs in return to make it suitable.
TIP – In case you didn’t know, a ‘campaign’ is the overarching marketing objective. A campaign may be ‘Real estate lead capture 2021’, then under this is a hierarchy of ad sets and eventually the ad.
Is it actually worth it, will I get a return?
It’s only worth it if you set up the campaign/s correctly at the start. Are you familiar with setting up ad campaigns? If not, hire a digital marketing professional to set it up for you. This way you won’t burn through your cash advertising to the wrong audience. Burning cash on badly structured campaigns has happened many times before. Hire a professional that builds and manages campaigns on a daily basis.
Most clients see a positive ROI when they correctly set up a campaign; for every $5 spent they get at least $8 back.
So, wouldn’t it make sense to try out Paid Search on a comfortable budget, get the campaign built professionally and wait to see if your investment has returned a profit? If it does, throw some more money into the ad spend and repeat. This is how most businesses these days are scaling in 2021.
Here’s an example of building a Google ad campaign:
Write appealing sales copy that will attract the attention of your target audience. You’ll need to research targeted keywords that the target audience is using so your ad will show up. It doesn’t stop there, you’ll need to make sure negative keywords are activated to stop your ads from showing to an irrelevant audience. For example, if you’re selling Gym Equipment you wouldn’t want your ad to show up for people searching for “DIY bench press”, so your negative keyword will be “DIY”.
Do I need Paid Search if I’ve got SEO?
Paid Search = instant visibility and a quicker way to generate sales/leads.
SEO = free organic traffic over time, and not having to spend as much on ads once successful.
If you’re objective is to generate more sales, Paid Search is the way to go. What’s better is having both! Having both means you’re generating more sales with Paid Search and will organically grow your visibility in the search results using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
This perfect match will lower your advertising costs in future, because people are finding you organically on the first page of search results. Hinton Digital offer an AutoPilot plan that manages both SEO and Paid search. We do the hard yards so you reap in high ROI and scale your business.
More on SEO can be found in our article called What is SEO – Why is it important?
Paid Search Conclusion
If you own a business and are looking for more instant results, get a paid search campaign built professionally, apply a budget that’s comfortable for your business and watch the profits flow through. If you are not seeing a positive return on investment you may need to tweak the campaign. Effective communication between you and the agency is paramount here.
Ready to dabble in Paid Search and increase sales/leads for your business? Hinton Digital have a team of strategic-minded Paid Search professionals ready to build your next campaign. Let’s chat?
What is SEO?
SEO is Search Engine Optimisation.
Simply put: SEO uses keywords and strategies to rank higher than your competitors on the Search Engine Results Page (or SERP).
SEO goes very deep and is critical for every business website to show up in a Search Engine Results Page (like Google). Search Engine Optimisation is an ongoing process due to frequent algorithmic changes.
What are keywords?
Customers searching the web tend to use similar words to find products or services like yours – these are keywords.
For example: If you were searching for “best digital marketing strategies” the primary keyword would be “marketing strategies”.
Why is SEO important?
Today I’m sure you searched for something on the internet using a keyword and a results page appeared showing all kinds of websites to give you the solution you searched for. Well, did you click on the first few results? I bet you didn’t click page 2?
Search Engine Optimisation optimises your website to appear to users when they also search using a keyword. The goal of SEO is to get your website within the first few results, or at least the first page. If your website is on the second, third or fourth page, I’m sorry to say but you’re not going to get much traffic.
To conclude, SEO is crucial to getting valuable traffic to your website which in turn will result in higher exposure, increased sales/leads and domain authority.
How will SEO help my business?
By building up your SEO over time, you will increase your Domain Authority score (DA) which is what big guys like Google use to validate your website. The higher the Domain Authority the higher you will rank in the Search Engine Results Page (SERP)
When you are ranking well for relevant keywords you’ll most likely see an increase in website traffic resulting in more inquiries, leads and sales.
Is SEO worth the time and money?
Putting in the hard yards does pay off! By link building, using keyword optimisation and technical SEO, you’ll decrease your ad spend because you’re already getting a steady flow of organic traffic. You’ll also increase lead quality.
SEO trends going into 2022 that you need to know
- AI learning is getting smarter and will affect your SEO.
Google has released an AI learning bot called RankBrain. This means your website will need more than just basic SEO. Although no one truly knows how RankBrain works, it’s important to make sure your website has all the boxes checked coming into 2022. The best way to tackle this is hiring an SEO Expert to optimize your website.
- Use long-tail keywords to trigger voice assistant searches.
More and more we are relying on voice assistants like Google, Alexa and Siri to give us information on demand. To get voice assistants to fetch your web information, your content has to be written as it would be ‘naturally spoken’. For example, we might say “What are some website tips for 2020?” when speaking to our voice assistants, but we would type “ website tips 2020 “.
- Website “Mobile-Friendliness” impacts Search Rankings.
By 2025 nearly 73% of internet users will only use their mobile. This alone is a good reason to get your website mobile optmised. In 2019, Google rolled out Mobile-First Indexing that analyses the way your website performs on mobile. If your website is mobile friendly the algorithm will favour it and rank you accordingly. With any new website build, it’s imperative that the mobile user experience is prioritised.
- Image Optimization is key for SEO.
Did you know that adding a descriptive name to an image file then uploading it to your website helps it to be found in search engines?
That’s right! Adding what’s called Alt Text helps search engines give relevant search results to users. If you wrote a blog about a delicious lemon cheesecake, take a picture and name the file ‘lemon cheese cake’ so it will appear in the image search results. Hopefully this will direct more traffic to your website
The key thing to remember is using relevant high res images in your relating content. If you need to optimise your images online, there are plenty of websites / plugins to bulk drop images and optimise them.
Another solution is to use Lazy Loading plugins. When activated the imagery will load as you scroll rather than slowing up user experience by waiting for every image to load. Most Lazy Loading software will not impact the user experience as the loading times are super quick. Using Lazy Loading will also help with page speed, another ranking factor.
Nerdy tip: If you want to take it a step further add the images to your site map for robots to crawl.
- Local SEO is evolving rapidly.
As you know, people use the internet to find local goods and services. These days when you conduct a local search on Google you’ll see a search snippet (box of info) pop up giving you all the details about a business including a phone number, its location and a website.
What you are seeing is a Google My Business listing. So if you haven’t already, go and set up Google My Business and start appearing in front of your potential customers!
Is social media worth the effort?
Social media is an opportunity for your customers to keep tabs on your business, to look in to see if you are the right fit for them, and ultimately engage with you. By putting in the effort to post on social media, you are increasing the chances of obtaining more customers through shares, likes, and referrals. In 2020 the average user spent 2 hours, 24 minutes on social media per day. Go where the audience is, start using social media effectively.
How powerful is social media?
If you paint a relatable picture to your audience, answer their pain points and provide valuable information, you’ll quickly develop a loyal customer base. In regards to paid social advertising, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn have tons of statistical data to target the right audience. Social media is a key driver for most Australian businesses heading into 2022.
What audiences are on social media?
Correct audience targeting is vital when marketing through social media. The following statistics identify the demographics of social media audiences to allow marketers to see which social media platforms provide the best marketing spend.
Here are 2021 social media statistics of the major platforms:
Active monthly users:
Facebook has 2.7 billion monthly active users.
Age of internet users who use Facebook:
86% of people ages 18-29 use Facebook.
77% of people ages 30-49 use Facebook.
51% of people ages 50-65 use Facebook.
34% of people that are 65+ years old use Facebook.
Income:
85% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use Facebook.
88% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60k use Facebook.
81% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use Facebook.
88% of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use Facebook.
86% of households with an annual income between $80k-$100k use Facebook.
86% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use Facebook.
Gender:
54% of Facebook users are female.
46% of Facebook users are male.
Time;
On average, Facebook users spend 35 minutes a day on the platform.
Active monthly users:
Instagram has 1 billion monthly active users.
Active daily users:
Instagram has 500 million active daily users.
Age:
67% of people aged 18-29 use Instagram.
47% of people aged 30-49 use Instagram.
23% of people aged 50-64 use Instagram.
8% of people that are 65+ years old use Instagram.
Income:
44% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use Instagram.
45% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60k use Instagram.
36% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use Instagram.
55% of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use Instagram.
46% of households with an annual income between $80k-$100k use Instagram.
60% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use Instagram.
Gender:
51% of Instagram users are female.
49% of Instagram users are male.
Time:
On average, Instagram users spend 53 minutes a day on the platform.
Monthly active users:
LinkedIn has 260 million monthly active users.
Age:
21% of people aged 18-24 use LinkedIn.
60% of people aged 25-34 use LinkedIn.
17% of people ages 35-54 use LinkedIn.
3% of people that are 55+ years old use LinkedIn.
Income:
27% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use LinkedIn.
3.8% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60,000 use LinkedIn.
40% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use LinkedIn.
49% of households with an annual income between $70k-$80k use LinkedIn.
50% of households with an annual income between $80k-$100k use LinkedIn.
60% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use LinkedIn.
Gender:
43% of LinkedIn users are female.
57% of LinkedIn users are male.
Time:
On average, LinkedIn users spend 6 minutes and 7 seconds per session.
Devices:
57% of LinkedIn traffic is through mobile devices.
Active monthly users:
YouTube has 2 billion monthly active users.
Age:
81% of people aged 15-25 use YouTube.
71% of people aged 26-35 use YouTube.
67% of people ages 36-45 use YouTube.
66% of people aged 46-55 use YouTube.
58% of people that are 56+ years old use YouTube.
Income:
83% of households with an annual income of less than $30,000 use YouTube.
81% of households with an annual income between $30k-$60k use YouTube.
80% of households with an annual income between $60k-$70k use YouTube.
80% of YouTube users have an annual income between $70k-$80k use YouTube.
82% of households with annual income between $80k-$100k use YouTube.
89% of households with an annual income above $100,000 use YouTube.
Gender:
Over 50% of YouTube users are female.
Time:
On average, YouTube users spend 11 minutes and 43 seconds per day on the platform.
Devices:
Over 70% of YouTube views are on mobile devices.
Source: https://khoros.com/resources/social-media-demographics-guide
How can social media convert to sales?
Gone are the days where you’d post an ad and boom, you’ve got sales and leads.
Nowadays users have so much ‘noise’ in their life with an astounding 4000-5000 ads shown to each person per day. These ads range from social media, billboards, bus ads, podcasts, email, packaging and more.
So how do you break through the noise?
You’ve got to regularly provide your audience with relevant content that solves their pain points. When you help solve problems, people will naturally gravitate towards you for advice and/or services. It’s the same when creating an ad campaign, on average a customer will need to see 7-14 touch points before taking action.
What is Google My Business?
Google My Business (also known as ‘GMB’), is a box of information Google shows in the search results to give users quick information. This info box has important information such as your phone number, directions and a website link. Your business may also appear in Google map results.
Example below:
Are reviews important?
Reviews are super important as 48% of users will not consider using a business with less than a 4 star rating. Let’s be honest, when you were sussing out a business, don’t you look at previous reviews? Reviews provide credibility to the potential customer. So go and get reviews to start growing your business.
How do I get GMB reviews?
Firstly sign up, then you should see an option called ‘Get more reviews’ in your dashboard,
Click the button and a link will appear. Copy the link and send it to a customer that is happy with your services.
TIP – Write a review template document including the Google review link so you can quickly shoot out a request. By rinsing and repeating this method, a business we worked with grew to be the most highly rated business in their industry on Google in Australia. They saw a significant increase of flow through, and when asking customers why they chose them, 70% mentioned that the reviews were a major deciding factor.
How Google My Business improves SEO
Google’s robotic algorithms constantly look for structured data, so having your GMB profile filled out with relevant information (such as contact details), selecting your business category and using GMB posts will give the robots a clear map to indirectly rank your website.
What are Landing Pages?
When you Google something and click on a website link, it takes you to the website’s Home Page. This is essentially a Landing Page.
However, landing pages are mostly referred to as a custom-made page dedicated to the user’s search intent.
For example, if you created a Google ad for your business, you want the user that clicked the ad to be sent to a page with focused information that answers their questions and provides an opportunity for them to easily contact you.
Again, a Landing Page should give them absolutely everything they want to know. This could be an FAQ that answers common questions to sell your product or service. Finally, the Landing Page should have the opportunity for the user to enter their information so you can follow them up and nurture them until they’re a customer.
Are landing pages necessary?
Landing pages are necessary if you want the viewer to engage with your content such as filling out a contact form, or calling you to book an appointment, or make a purchase.
For example, If you created an ad on Facebook for red boxing gloves, don’t send them to the Home Page. This only makes your potential customers work to find the information they originally clicked for. Instead, send them to the red boxing gloves page. They will be engaged longer and potentially purchase. If you send them to your Homepage they may say “ This is not what I wanted!” and click out and guess what… you’ve just paid for that click!
What is the difference between a Landing Page and a Website Page?
Technically every page you land on (load into) is a Landing Page. But in most cases, marketers are referring to a web page with strategically structured information to guide the viewer to an objective (sign up, purchase, call). These landing pages are mostly used in conjunction with paid ads such as Google Ads, Facebook ads etc.
What does a good Landing Page include?
A good Landing Page includes relevant information that fulfills the user’s search intent.
Here’s what your Landing Page should include:
- How it works;
- How to get in touch;
- Testimonials;
- FAQ’s;
- Multiple CTAs (Call to Action opportunities) for the lead to contact you, such as a contact form, buttons leading to contact forms, buttons to call directly; and,
- Eye catching, emotionally driven imagery.
& more
Structure your information to take them on an informative journey so they are confident in your product or services.
