Three Things I Learned About my Business from PPC
Successful business owners can always pinpoint what they feel pushed them to achieve goals and reach the heights where they stand today. Some cite expensive education and hard-earned degrees, while some business owners give credibility to working their way up through the industry. Of course, along the way, there are always more than a few unforgettable mentors who said just the right thing to influence a major decision – people we’re grateful for. We think these are fundamental to business success, but we’d like to open your eyes to life lessons your PPC campaign is trying to teach you:
Life Lesson 1: Know Your Customer Many business owners have failure stories from self-managed PPC campaigns that quickly tanked and ate up valuable advertising dollars. We hate to hear about those instances, but ten minutes in talking with our PPC Specialists can usually identify at least three areas where advertising strategies went wrong and targeting the right audience is usually first. Advertising on the Internet exposes your business to a variety of customers that traditional print advertising may have never reached. While it’s important to capture those eyes (and ring in those sales!), don’t spend your money chasing those unicorns. Your PPC campaign has invaluable demographic data and hard-hitting analytics that, when combined, will give you a no-fail glimpse at your core customer. When you know who wants your products or services, you can funnel money in the right advertising strategy and establish those fuzzy lifelong customer relationships everyone loves to brag about.
Life Lesson 2: Keep Your Friends Close, and Your Enemies Closer We’re talking about your competitors here. A part of knowing your industry through and through is being able to identify your competitors, know which ones pose the biggest threat, and how they have positioned themselves within your vertical (fancy advertising word for industry). Not only does this practice lend due diligence for businesses and PPC campaigns, but it also gives you a valuable perspective on how you’ve set up your business from an outside perspective. Take the time to examine their website – is it user friendly? Does it have compelling copy and are you able to identify offers, sales, and specials? Gauge your competitions stake in the marketplace and keep your competitors advertising actions at arm’s length. The take home message here is to ask yourself: What are your competitors doing that you can do better?
Life Lesson 3: Develop Your Website Okay, this seems a little backwards. What kind of business advice can you gain from developing your website? Well, we’re wondering if you’ve ever taken a glimpse into one of our monthly reports, or had your website graded for SEM performance. If you have and you missed the business advice train, no worries here just read on for some insight. Your website says everything about your business to customers besides the fact that you invested (or didn’t…) a lot on cool graphics. Customers know when they come to your site if they can count on new information, product demonstrations and knowledge, and where to find the contact information. PPC can teach you how to tap into the massive amounts of search data that comes from advertising online so you know what customers are expecting when they visit your site. Better still, you can direct them around your site based on their predicted behavior. You’ll know right away which type of customer you have merely by their visiting and clicking around on your site – and knowing your customer (see Life Lesson 1) means you can launch preemptive website design and development initiatives that cater just to their needs. Happy customers are customers for life; don’t miss out on your next sale because of poor website design.