Innovative PPC Strategies for Scaling Your Startup’s Growth

The biggest misconception about digital marketing is that you can use the internet to push your business and products for free. While technically, the truth, your reach is more limited than you think, and there are too many barriers for a layman or a small business to face alone.

One of the oldest principles of the business world is that you need to spend money to make money. Why would digital marketing be any different?

So, instead of getting the cheapest deal possible, make a decent digital marketing budget and consider paid ads.

With methods like PPC, you can quickly grow your startup past anything you could have done for free. Here’s how!

1.   Pick the right ad formats

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While the content and placement of ads are essential, you can never underestimate the relevance of using the right form. Some of the best options are:

• Text ads are the standard ad form used by most advertisers. Because they’re cheaper to produce, they’re more cost-effective. They’re also highly flexible since they can be updated, edited, and repurposed in minutes. You can easily optimize them to improve targeting by using better keywords and integrating them into your headlines.
• Many people use Google Map Ads to find local businesses. About 80% of offline purchases usually come after a local mobile search. Imagine a person looking for a shoe store or a local fast-food restaurant in an unfamiliar environment. What are they likely to do? Whip out their phone and look at the map to see the icons.
• While there’s a belief that younger generations prefer text over direct calls, call-only ads are incredibly effective. Instead of just offering them a link to your landing page, you’re offering them a chance to call you directly via an icon next to your contact. Aside from giving you great conversions, this also increases your credibility.
• Product listing or shopping ads are the most direct way to promote your products. In a Google search, you present your product images, prices, and other details regarding your product. You also create a direct sale funnel.

Ideally, you want to use multiple forms for maximum reach.

2.   Boost your landing page

The ideal outcome of making an ad lies in persuading people to click on it. So, what happens next? If the ad is misleading, they’ll leave at once, ruining your SEO ranking by increasing your bounce rate. However, specialists behind a renowned PPC agency say a high bounce rate doesn’t always come from a misleading ad. Sometimes, your landing page is a problem.

So, the first objective is to make your ad match your landing page and vice-versa. Otherwise, you’ll be accused of using click-bait tactics, the last thing you need on a PPC campaign.

Second, you must understand the importance of optimizing for mobile. The majority of internet users are browsing via mobile. This is an audience that you can’t afford to miss out on.

One useful trick you can also use is to include a trust indicator. If you have a security badge, an award, or a relevant license, subtly insert it into the ad.

Quality visuals will go a long way in legitimizing your digital marketing efforts. Still, relevance is just as important as quality.

So, with a better landing page, you get a better conversion rate, higher SEO score, and an overall better user experience. This translates directly into the growth of your enterprise.

3.   Harness the power of retargeting ads

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The biggest challenge in marketing is that some people will never become paying customers. Imagine selling products that are designed to prevent hair loss. People who aren’t troubled by this issue will never purchase your product, regardless of how much effort you put toward it.

This is what makes retargeting ads so powerful. People who have already interacted with your brand or your ads are more likely to do so again in the future. Moreover, this helps you progress down the path of the customer lifecycle.

There’s one concept in marketing known as the rule of seven. According to this principle, no one will immediately become a paying customer. Instead, they need to be continuously wooed in a subtle and principled manner. The name comes from the fact that they need to encounter your brand on seven different occasions before making a conversion.

One of the best ways to get to this magical seventh interaction quickly is with the help of retargeting ads.

The biggest problem with these ads is figuring out whom to retarget. One of the ways to get that information is via cookies. Still, since we’re slowly moving towards a cookieless future, advertisers must look for other methods.

4.   More emphasis on video advertising

So far, we’ve mostly focused on text-based PPC ads. Video PPCs, however, can be just as persuasive. Two-thirds of B2C marketers use video marketing (66%), and around 86% claim it has increased site traffic.

One of the most important parts to remember is that video advertising doesn’t cost nearly as much. Namely, you can produce quality videos even with a basic script, smartphone camera, and rudimentary (free) editing tools. Sure, it’s never as good as a professional production, but it can be cost-effective and provide a decent ROI. Since investments are so low, this really shouldn’t be that hard.

Like other PPC formats, video advertising has easily measurable ROI. With simple-to-track KPIs, you can try this advertising format and give up if it doesn’t yield the desired results. As mentioned, shuffling your ad formats is crucial to your campaign’s success.

People consume many video formats, allowing you to insert your ad naturally. With high targeting capacities, you can make every second of it count.

5.   Don’t ignore the importance of local SEO

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During your PPC strategy, you should never underestimate your local SEO strategy.

We’ve briefly addressed this during Google Map Ads. The thing is that, for the majority of small businesses that don’t have a global presence, the local market is the most important. So, you want to craft your online presence to increase searches from your vicinity and your PPC campaign to primarily target the local audience.

You must combine the two, seeing as how the organic increase in visibility of SEO sometimes gets pushed aside in favor of a more hard-sell-y PPC approach. While it would be wrong to say that one is better, this is a choice you will (likely) never have to make. The truth is, you need them both.

This works well because of features like geo-targeting and interaction history with features like Google My Business. This way, advertisers and marketers have greater insight into local audiences’ habits and behavior patterns.

In your SEO approach, you want to position yourself on Google Maps and make a strong profile on Google My Business. You want to include the location in your long-tail keyword when creating content. Lastly, you may want to create a local page to help your efforts further.

Wrap up

In the end, PPC advertising is just a concept. You need to find the proper methods and turn them into an efficient strategy to get the most value out of them. Use different ad formats, retarget your audience, and invest in your landing page. These are the basis of a successful PPC campaign and will grow your startup the fastest.