True or False: Test Your PPC Know-it-All Skills Here
Following right along with our message about the next NetSearch Direct seminar: SEM 101, we thought we’d give you a little quiz so you can gauge your PPC knowledge – just in case you might be hesitant to add your name to the list of guests. Maybe you’re thinking that you’re above a 101-level seminar. Or, perhaps you don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty fundamentals of search engine marketing because it’s just too overwhelming. Friends, we promise you that a NetSearch Direct seminar is neither underwhelming, or overwhelming; we invite you to flex your PPC knowledge with us now and then decide if you should be dialing up our seminar organizer as fast as you can to save your seat.
1. Develop One Advertising Strategy to Promote Your Business. FALSE. Become familiar with the word “trend”, and you’ll see that trends exist within your own business promotions. Customers may be more inclined to purchase products or need specific services on a seasonal basis, and holidays will almost always influence your business profits. More than that, search engines all employ different tactics for managing PPC accounts, and user search behavior trends differ from search engine to search engine, and of course by demographic. Adopting only one advertising strategy, a sort of seek-and-destroy-type mission will only waste marketing dollars, drive away potential customers, and frustrate current customers.
2. Adding Flash is Devastating for Landing Pages. FALSE. Flash is a great way to add beauty and complexity to your landing page without slowing down the loading time. So long as you stay away from entire pages built in Flash with seriously long load times, that is. A few years ago having Flash on your landing page was considered a novice move, something an inexperienced SEM’er would consider. However, web developers, search engines, and companies all over began to discover that the right combination of Flash makes a page more dynamic to look at and that customers responded positively (i.e. they broke out their wallets to buy) when presented with good-looking pages.
3. Ads Are Only as Strong as the Headline. TRUE … and FALSE. While the headline of your ad is typically the attention-caller, your ad will only get a click if it’s got a strong CTA or Call to Action. Writing compelling, winning ad copy can be a daunting task. It’s tricky to demonstrate your product’s value while staying within the limited characters search engines allow for ads (and each search engine is different), and it requires a bit of creativity to spark the potential customer’s interest to click through the ad, to your site, and ultimately to make the purchase.
4. Landing Pages Should be One Clear, Concise Message. TRUE. Think of landing pages like product packaging and you may start to get the idea that landing pages are really the front of the package to the product or service that you’re offering. Add too much content here and you’ll overwhelm your audience with too much information. Skimp on important details like cost, product demos and information, and your customer will find the answers to their questions from your competitor. That’s not to say that you can’t use your landing page as bait to steer your customer onto a desired conversion path, particularly if you are seeking to direct your customers into a process requiring additional product details (think custom or per order products), signups, etc. Your best bet for landing pages is to stick to relevant content and wrap it in a nice package.
Regardless of how you scored, we hope you learned something new and we hope to see you on June 25th at the SEM: 101 seminar. Our staff will be on hand to answer any questions you have during or after the seminar, and we’re always glad to make an appointment to chat one-to-one – especially if it’s over coffee and donuts. We can assure you that when you leave you will not only have a better understanding of how we make the Internet work for your business, but you will have had a good time learning about it too.
Click Here for More Information On Our Upcoming Seminar SEM: 101