How To Run A Successful Pay Per Click Campaign

Want access to instant potential clients? Nothing can be easier than working with Google Adwords, or Pay Per Click (PPC).

Google has offered its PPC service for many years. And because its been around for a long time, small time business owners think it may not be the place to start, or its too expensive for them to accomplish anything with it. That’s simply not true. PPC is still the best way to test out your offer, the easiest place to get instant results, and one of the least expensive way to advertise.

Dig Deeper: Is Google AdWords Your Solution To More Clients Dropping By Your Photography Business?

With PPC, you place money down for your ad at the time you create it. But the money you put into your account isn’t for the ad creation like it is with magazines. Instead its held in an account and will be deducted as people see your ad in Google and click on it. You have complete control over your funding – start with something low like $10 per day. When the $10 fee is reached, your ad won’t appear again until the next day.

You also have total control over what keywords you will be listed under. Appearing under a generic term such as “wedding photography” would be a big hit to your budget. But if you really niche it down, you can do pretty well. You will only be advertising to people that have thought hard about what they are looking for, and type in what they want.

So – if you know your customer and have been wanting to try PPC, lets walk through the steps necessary to create a dynamic campaign.

Identify the keywords you are selling to

Let’s say you are trying to increase your boudoir photography business, and decide to use PPC to find new customers. Start by finding out who your competition is. Head over to Google and type in your keywords and look at the ads. Head over to their sites to see what they offer, what the sites look like, and how they are approaching their customers. You can learn a lot with just a small amount of research. For example, below you can see the difference just by switching from the keyword “boudoir photography” to “boudoir photographer”.

Keyword research

When you’re writing up content for your site and SEOing your site, you are mainly concerned with keywords people would type in to find you. With PPC, you have more flexibility and have different match types – broad, phrase and exact. Broad matches are a great place to start, as this will help you figure out what people are searching for and how they are finding you. Once you are sure of what they are typing in and what is helping you find paying customers, switch to an exact match. You can also use them in combination to help eliminate phrases that provide no results at all. For example, boudoir can have a lot of connotations. By doing a broad match with “boudoir photography” you may also pull the keywords “boudoir pictures” and discover that line of thinking isn’t right for your business. So you simply add that as a negative keyword, and your ad will no longer show with that phrase.

Its not one campaign; its many

Where most people fail with PPC is they decide to run a campaign, put in a quick ad, and link it back to their home page. That’s not what people want to see. They want to see exactly what they clicked over to find. Spend the time to think about your target audience, and what they want to find.

Maybe you have two types of clients in your boudoir photography business. The first is to engaged women who want a gift for their future husbands. The second is a mom with kids who wants to surprise her husband with an anniversary gift. These are two distinct target markets that would respond in different ways. If an ad is specific “Want a gift for your husband to be?” or “Looking for the perfect anniversary gift?” it speaks directly to them and has more chance of being clicked on.

Build specific landing pages

The ad is a great start, but if you send them to your home page, you are still at risk of losing interest. Instead build separate landing pages for each ad and show them what they want. Use photos and content to show and tell all about your services. Make them feel comfortable with who they are, and how you’ll help them create the perfect gift they are looking for.

Test your ads

PPC campaigns are very detailed and offer a variety of options. Google allows you to have different ad variations and monitor them along the way. Change out words, titles and questions. Then monitor them to see which ads get clicked on more. Your goal is to increase conversion, and you can do so in a matter of days by watching and changing frequently.

Analyze along the way

Google Analytics can help you look at how well your campaigns are running. Pay attention to your bounce rates. If you have a high bounce rate – 50 percent or more – and a high click through rate – 3 percent or more – your landing pages aren’t attracting your clientele. There is a disconnect between your ad and the landing page. People aren’t seeing the correlation and are leaving without taking action. Watch this consistently and make changes – even small changes – to change your conversion numbers and get them more in line with converting people into interested parties.

Dig Deeper: How Google Analytics Can Help You Grow Your Business

Refine your campaign

Keep monitoring your campaign, change keywords, change out your ads and your landing pages, and watch what happens. If you place an ad in a magazine and get a 1 to 2 percent return on your investment, you’re considered lucky. Remember that rule with your PPC – but you should be able to get a much higher rate of return overall as you adjust.

Most people put up an ad, link it to their homepage, through a little bit of money at it, and complain that it doesn’t work. If you take these steps and give it a fair try, you are sure to have a lot more luck than the average person.


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clientexperience@todaysgrowthconsultant.com' About Virtual Photography

We're the co-founders of VirtualPhotographyStudio.com and have been writing on this blog since 2004. We started Virtual as a way to help photographers stretch beyond a part time income, and develop strategies to become a Five Figure Photographer or a Six Figure Photographer. Ultimately its all about lifestyle, and if your goal is to live as a photographer 24/7, we think you should have the knowledge and the tools to do so. Welcome!

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