Using Pay-Per-Click to Get the Right Customers in Your Store

For most retailers, pay-per-click (PPC) is an excellent way to get started with 21st Century online marketing!

• Customers who are typing search terms into Google or other search engines are looking for products or help. They are very well qualified prospects!
• You get much more control over the process than with other web marketing techniques. This means you can quickly refine and improve your results.
• What you learn from making PPC work can be applied to other type of marketing like organic search optimization (SEO).

Here’s how PPC can get the right customers to your store:

• A prospect enters a search term in Google. Clearly they are looking for something– A product, a service, some help, information, etc.
• Their search triggers one of your Keywords. It’s very important to have a good list of the right keywords to get the right customers.
• Google shows one of your ads. The ads display on the right-hand side of the Google screen (And, on the top). A typical ad looks like:

More Retail Traffic
Get the Right Customers
PPC Marketing for Store Traffic
RetailRescueProject.org

• A good ad is specific to the prospects that you want to attract and it offers them a compelling benefit.
• The prospect clicks the ad and goes to your Landing Page. You only get charged for the people who actually click. Usually, the purpose of the Landing Page is to convince the prospect to provide their name and email address in return for something valuable like a coupon or free report. For lower-cost impulse buys, you can use the landing page to actually close and complete the sale!
• But, you’re not finished! After you have the prospects email information, you must have a consistent follow-up process. Your purpose is to use email to build a relationship with the prospect and have them want to come to your store. Typically, you’ll email them coupons, event invitations, or other valuable information.

That’s how pay-per-click marketing works. But, to get good business results, you have to get a lot of pieces lined up correctly!

• You want your Adwords account and Google Analytics setup correctly, so you can measure your results and find opportunities to make improvements. Measuring and interpreting your results is essential. You have to use the data to make good decisions.
• It’s not a one-time “set it up and forget it” system. You need to continuously monitor, tweak, and find improvements. This doesn’t have to take large amounts of time, but it’s essential that you do the work.
• You want to continuously evaluate, expand, and refine your list of keywords. Get rid of the ones that aren’t working, but keep looking for new ones you had missed.
• Make sure you limit Google to only showing your ad to prospects who are in the geographic areas you serve.  This and other setting have to be right or you will end up buying clicks for prospects who are thousands of miles away from your nearest store.
• You want to continuously test and improve your ads. Google rewards ads that are more relevant and have a higher Click Thru Rate (CTR). They’ll actually charge you less per click when you have good ads!
• You also want to make sure your landing pages are working well. Are they specific enough? Do they show the customer you can help? What percentage of people who come the the page are opting-in (providing their email address)?
• Finally, you need to make sure your follow-up is working. Are people unsubscribing? Are your communications valuable or fun?

As you can see, there are a lot of things you have to line up. But, it’s worth it. The prospects who come through search engines are very qualified. They are even telling you exactly what they want. Help them solve their problems and give them what they want. You’ll gain loyal customers you were missing before.