Integrate PPC and Social Media
There is a bid-based form of marketing that measures your conversions, based on experiments, to ultimately drive businesses to a better ROI. This form of marketing is called Paid Search. Google offers Google Adwords PPC (Pay Per Click), in order for marketers to compete, using keywords and short ads, for their target audience’s attention. So, how can marketers really get the best bid for their bite? The main goal for paid search is to increase conversions to drive more leads and sales. Social Media however has a slightly different motive behind its strategy. Social Media is more of a way to connect through content and conversations. A PPC ad is only a few words with important key words included. Every little bit of text is greatly important to your campaign, in order for your add to succeed. This means the small amount of text needs a large amount of research. Your ad for PPC must capture the attention of the viewers in a very short amount of time and really stand out. The important thing is to figure out the proper keywords that your target audience is searching for in the search engines and this is where Social Media can come in handy.
October 2009 Case Studies
Both Social media and PPC’s strategies are aimed at an intended audience; however they both use different ways of reaching them. If you could combine the two, imagine how much more successful you could be with your Marketing campaign. In October 2009, there was a study conducted by GroupM Search, M80, and ComScore on social media. Their statistics showed that consumers were almost 3 times more likely to search a brand if they were first exposed to its social media content, making them approximately 2 times more likely to make a purchase. In the Mashable article called How To: Integrate Paid Search and Social Media for Better Marketing Results, Matt Lawsom included a few tips to help marketers optimize their social and paid search content to work together to improve the overall ROI.
The Tips include:
- Use Search Friendly Social Media
- Use Keyword Advertising on Social Media Sites
- Use Social Media-Influenced Paid Search Campaigns
Matt went on to describe in more depth for each point he included. Basically, you want to optimize every feature of social media as well as PPC. For example, on social bookmarking sites you are able to use specific tags for sites you bookmark. If you have a landing pages set for you PPC campaign then you should use similar or exact keywords to bookmark your landing page. The purpose of the integration is to allow people to not only find your social media, but to learn more about you, establishing more trust, and ultimately leading them to click on your paid ads. Each social media site may allow you to place tags and keywords in certain text and ads. You Tube and Facebook allow you to create ads and categorize them to certain lists that users may place on their profiles. Find the key words of your target audience. What key words spark conversation? What keywords generate more response and feedback? Use social media for personal research, add the keywords to your PPC, and monitor how successful they are and measure their conversion. This will take time, patience, and creativity.
Understanding Keyword Phrases
When you are setting up a pay per click campaign you are able to choose from a list of keywords provided by Google Adwords as well as the ability to type in your own desired keywords based on your research. The keywords can be included in any of these types of matches; Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match, Standard Match, and Negative Match. Here is a link to Google Adwords Keyword Matching Options.
Google Adwords Keyword Options
- Broad Match: This is a wide range of information that could be included with one keyword search. For Example, if you are a website Design Company and your keyword is Website Design, then Google’s search will pull up a large amount of options. This could include website design companies from all over the world, web design software, web design tutorials, and etc. The words for a broad match could appear in any order. So, if a sentence has design the web included this would be eligible to appear where your ad will be displayed.
- Phrase Match: This type of key word is a little more specific because the order of the words you select will stay in that order. For Adwords you must include quotations around your phrase match. If you want to use Website design as a phrase match then you would use “Website Design.”
- Exact Match: An exact match will be exclusive to the order and words that you include. This means that if you want to have website design as your keyword, then your ad would only appear when that exact phrase of [Website Design] is typed in the search. Use the Brackets around the keyword to be sure that your ad is only visible when the exact phrase is searched by the users.
- Negative Match: If you know that something would not be valuable or relevant to your ad that may appear or be searched with a certain phrase you can ensure that your ad does not appear on these searches. For example if you want use the keyword computers but you do not want to have the word “used” you would simply put Computers-used for your keyword search.
When you are able to understand your options it is important to do your research before you start typing in any keyword that comes to mind. Social media allows you to see what people are saying, which is also what they will be searching. Take time to develop a plan to integrate your social networking with your paid advertising to measure the success of each keyword, and I guarantee you will have a better understanding of who you are trying to reach and how you can reach them easier, what keywords to reach them with and within your budget.
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