Why You Should Adopt PPC Advertising for Your Small Business
Many small businesses are typically wary of trying out new marketing techniques because of the belief that doing so could dig a hole in their pocket and strain their marketing budget. However, toeing the line of some of these marketing strategies could turn out to be effective at driving results.
One such strategy is known as Pay-Per-Click (PPC). According to stats, 45% of small businesses are actively investing in PPC advertising to grow their business operations. To further highlight the rate of adoption by other brands, we should note that 74% of small businesses with more than 50 employees are also investing in PPC advertising.
Some small businesses are solely dependent on SEO and organic search rankings because they feel adopting PPC advertising might be too expensive. However, they don’t understand the full scope of the benefits and advantages that PPC brings to the table. The advantages it presents outweigh cost by far. Also, it isn’t as expensive as many rumor to be.
Since your payment is limited to only those instances your ads are clicked, it shouldn’t be too challenging for your marketing budget. In fact, you can bid for less competitive keywords that still rank as one of the most searched keywords to cut on your cost-per-click.
The ultimate goal of this advertising model is generating a particular form of user action. Examples of such actions are registering on your website or buying a product from you.
Of all types of PPCs, Google Ads is the most common, and the reason is not far-fetched. Google-powered campaigns reach more than 90% of internet users globally, and the search engine owns more than 73% of the search market, including both paid and organic search results.
Owning a small business usually limits your reach to your local area and customers who become acquainted with your brand through word-of-mouth. However, thanks to the internet, this is now a thing of the past. Even if you have explored other marketing strategies with no results, using Google Ads or any other PPC strategy increases your reach and attracts new customers.
Google Ads alone reaches a network of more than two million websites and apps, which means it could help you to expand your audience significantly. But this is not the only benefit of using PPC marketing. Here’s a concise list of other advantages of using this marketing channel.
Complete Control
In the world of digital marketing, there are only a few marketing channels that can boast of complete control over their progress, and PPC is a good example of such a channel.
For example, you gain full control over your budget by setting a daily limit on your ad spending. Furthermore, PPC campaigns give you the freedom to control when your ads are displayed.
Its advanced targeting options make it easier to maximize ROI because it gives you the ability to choose your specific target audience.
It’s Measurable And Trackable
The best part of PPC advertising is perhaps the fact that you can measure the success of your campaign by utilizing data that various analytics tools provide. You could use tools like Google Analytics and Google Adwords to identify which paid ads are working best. With the results obtained from these tracking tools, you can take an iterative approach to your PPC campaigns.
The results come in the form of numerical data making it very easy for you to calculate, compare, and measure progress and failures. With the analysis of these results, you can easily monitor which components work and which lag behind. You can measure keywords and ads, clicks and impressions, visits, leads, and sales.
Since these results are measurable, you are given clear hints on whether to continue with the ads or not. It is possible to determine the underlying factor for the poor performance of your ads.
Cost-Effective
There is a growing misconception amongst small business owners that PPC advertising is expensive. If you’re one of them, you should understand that this is not the case. Running a PPC campaign is cost-effective if you design and implement it properly.
Let’s check some quick tips on how to make your PPC campaigns worth every penny.
- Lower your CPC costs. Lowering your cost-per-click could help you achieve more. You could do this by adjusting your bids based on factors like location, rotation, and devices or switching on to manual bidding.
- Perform competitor analysis. When creating a new PPC campaign, you must have a look at what your competitors are doing. Identify the audience they are targeting, the keywords they are using, and how much they are spending, among other things.
Enhances Brand Recognition
For new businesses or startups, PPC campaigns help improve brand awareness in the digital world. It could give them the spark they need and boost their online visibility so that people can establish a relationship with the brand.
Using PPC to target keywords related to your niche means that internet users who search for those keywords will most likely see your ad. Increasing your visibility can soon help you establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
Did you know that you could also improve your brand’s visibility online by targeting your competitors’ keywords?
Final Note
PPC distinguishes itself as one of the must-haves for any small business that wants to place itself on the world’s digital map. Did you know that there are more devices connected to the internet than there are people on earth? PPC advertising widens your scope.
If you are still not taking advantage that PPC advertising presents, you are missing out on opportunities to enhance your growth online.
33 Captivating Statistics That Could Change Your Marketing Strategy
Digital Marketing strategy is of utmost importance today. With the plethora of tracking tools available such as Google Analytics or even paid services, it is important to follow the success of your campaigns so you can know when to put more effort into one thing and less effort into another. No matter if you are new or even if you already have an established marketing strategy, the following statistics should help you fine tune and tweak your campaigns to take them to the next level.
Before we get to the FACTS, let’s briefly discuss what questions we need to answer.
How much time is spent on social media? How many devices are connected to the Internet? Do people understand visual data?
These numbers help you gauge why it would be a good idea to invest in digital marketing.
How much time are people on social media? What devices are they using to access it? What kind of information are they looking at? How does Social Media help spread information?
This data helps you understand Social Media trends
How much do people spend after leaving Social Media sites? How much ecommerce spending are they driving?
This data assists in knowledge of social spending
How much data is re-shared on Social Media? What type of content is it? What is the most popular content? What is the demographic?
Information to help understand where the shared data is originating
How do different platforms drive results? How many people are using it? How often? Where are they located?
Knowledge of different types of Social Media reach
The fun infographic you see here will help answer these questions and more. After going through it you will have all the information you need to either startup or help change up your marketing strategy for the better. Are you ready to take your strategy to the next level?
Why You Need A Mobile App
Staying competitive and relevant in today’s market has become crucial for just about every business to not only thrive but survive. Marketing plays a vital role for businesses to drive sales and enhance brand visibility. With the kind of success and results that online marketing provides, it became natural for most companies to design, develop, and maintain a business website. Websites showcase the company’s products and services as well as act as a virtual venue for customer engagement and service. However, the increasing usage of smartphones by people for just about everything has redefined the marketing world and compelled the businesses to not only rely on having a website but also develop an interactive and fluid mobile app.
Starting from managing finances to organizing a to-do list and from shopping your groceries to ordering food, there is a mobile app for just about everything these days. It is because the attention of the people have shifted drastically to the mobile realm in the past few years, and the trend shows that it would continue to move in this direction going ahead. Not having a dedicated mobile application today is similar to not having a business website a couple of decades back. It would make your business look outdated, give your competitors with mobile app an added advantage, and fail to connect with the end users in a medium they prefer. It all boils down to losing business and sales and failing to stay relevant and competitive. Here are the few reasons as to why your business needs mobile app development:
Provide Better Value to Customers
Customer engagement and interaction would reach a new high with the help of a mobile app. Having special offers as well as a loyalty programs for customers using the mobile app can help boost sales and revenue considerably. There are many companies, for example, Starbucks, which has an app-only loyalty program. Such loyalty programs help drive sales and boost customer awareness.
Brand Visibility
In a world where just about every person in the world has a smartphone and spends about two hours on average on it, having a dedicated mobile app would strengthen your brand visibility. Having an app would improve communication with the end users and foster trust among the customers for being easily accessible. It gives a reason for people to trust you that can eventually convert to loyalty and sales.
Customer Service
The mobile app is not only geared towards making sales, but one of its core functions is to improve customer service as well. It will make your customer service efforts more integrated, making your brand more accessible and user-friendly. Improving the customer experience is one of the driving factors why more and more companies are integrating technology with their business machinery, and having a mobile app would contribute vastly to that.
Drive Traffic to Your Website
The website plays a different role than a mobile app, and one cannot substitute the other. While the use of the mobile app is encouraged, the relevancy of a website doesn’t diminish completely. The mobile app and website can work hand in hand to complement each other, and most of the adequately optimized mobile apps help drive traffic to the parent site. Similarly, the website encourages customers and visitors to download the mobile app from the app store. Mobile apps assist with targeted lead capturing that contribute positively to the overall marketing campaign.
Customers’ Feedback and Insights
Mobile app helps in gathering valuable data from the customers and helps draw a clear picture of your growth and sales trajectory. It would identify the products that are doing good compared to the ones that are not, the regions that have emerged as the star performers, customers’ need, feedback and suggestions, and a range of other statistical data. It can help modify your marketing campaign and make it more focused for better results.
Social Media
Most of the mobile apps allow users to sign in through their Facebook or Google credentials and it automatically engages the end users to the company’s social media channels. It would help you stay connected to your target audience. As most people are active in social media, it is essential to make your brand visible on various social media platforms to stay relevant and spike loyalty among the end users.
Progressive companies are not afraid of change and embrace innovation as it is what holds the key to success in the future. With close to three billion smartphone users worldwide, it would be a mistake to rely solely on a portfolio website to drive sales and improve brand visibility. Having a mobile app for your business can contribute heavily to achieving your business goals and undermining its importance can be disastrous in the long-term.
The Importance of Website Loading Time
Have you ever attempted to open a site and it took a long time to load? I bet you weren’t pleased with the experience. A slow-loading website can be frustrating to work with. In fact, based on data from March 2016, Google revealed that as much as 53 percent of users are likely to abandon a mobile site if it takes less than three seconds to load. According to the Google Webmasters Blog, the acceptable loading time for an e-commerce site is two seconds. Therefore, if your site takes several seconds to load, you may be losing customers.
In the quest to create the most stylish site, sometimes we sacrifice on performance. But this is a wrong approach and affects your business in different ways. Did you know that Google factors in site speed into search engine ranking? Yes, the American multinational added site speed into its metrics for search engine ranking in 2010. So, those few seconds that it takes your site to load could actually be the reason why your business is slacking.
Due to the millions of sites in the virtual world, people can be finicky. It doesn’t take much to push users away from your website today. Slow loading time is one of the reasons why people shun a site. There have been many studies to show the adverse effects that a slow site can have on traffic and user experience. Apart from slipping below on search engine rankings, let us look at some effects of a slow-loading website on businesses.
The Effects of a Slow Site on Your Business
Poor User Experience
User experience is everything in the world of business. It can make or break your company. It is easy to assume that user experience only relates to the product or service you provide. Today, user experience also extends to your website and even response time on social media platforms. First impressions matter, and even more in the world of online business. Your website is usually the first point of call for people who are considering whether to patronize a company’s product or service. If you fail at providing an excellent user experience on your website, that same negative image will be extended to the products and services that your company offers.
A fast, highly responsive and easy-to-use site is an essential aspect of user experience. It adds to the overall positive image of your company. In the same way, a slow site puts users off and may prevent them from even engaging with your company to try your products and services. In fact, statistics show that one out of every four people will cancel a page if a site takes longer than four seconds to load. A fast-loading site presents an image of a professional company.
Low Conversion Rate
As indicated above, a slow-loading website can affect your conversion rate – this is especially true for e-commerce stores. No one wants to deal with a site that takes forever to load. Nearly 50 percent of Americans will give up trying to access an online store if it takes longer than three seconds to load. According to Amazon, a one second lag in the loading of its store costs the company up to $1.6 billion in sales annually. One second seems like nothing, but the effect compounds over time. Walmart was able to increase its conversion rate by two percent by increasing its loading time by just one percent.
In Akamai Technologies’ State of Online Retail Performance report in 2017, it was revealed that a 100-millisecond delay in the loading time of an e-commerce store could reduce conversion rate by up to seven percent. It is clear that a fast website is critical for success.
Negative Image
One of the most damaging aspects of having a slow-loading website is the long-term effect that it has on your company’s image. As indicated above, users are unlikely to take the time to engage with your site if it is taking a long time to load. What’s worse, this image lingers. Therefore, even if you realize the importance of rectifying the slow-loading time of your site and fix it, you would have an uphill task attracting visitors.
According to data from Akamai and Dynatrace, up to 79 percent of shoppers are unlikely to return to a site if they encounter issues like slow loading time. As many as 44 percent of shoppers will tell their friends and acquaintances about a website the bad experience they have with a site – even more disturbing they may do it on social media and reach millions of people. Also, up to 57 percent of people will not recommend a business with a website that loads slowly. But that’s not all. Your website is likely to rank low on search engine results and bloggers are unlikely to link to your content. Ultimately, this contributes to building a negative image of your business, nullifies your best marketing efforts, and keeping potential customers away.
Why is Your Website Loading Slowly?
There are many reasons why your website may be loading slowly. It may have to do with your server, the size and format of files on your site, the high volume of traffic you’re receiving, an old content management system or even too many file requests. Thankfully, there are ways to fix all of these issues. If you are not conversant with these things, consult a professional webmaster for assistance.
Conclusion
The advancements in mobile technology today means that smartphones are becoming faster. Therefore, you need a faster website to match that. The fact that your site was fast five years ago does not mean it is still fast today. You must make it a continuous effort to ensure the loading time of your website is on par with that of the top sites of the era. There are many tools to check the speed of your site including Google’s PageSpeed Insights, YSlow or WebPagetest.
