Getting Started With Paid Search

Paid search ads drive users to your website to complete a desired action, so ensuring your website is set up with the best user experience means you won’t waste any money that you invest in Google or Bing Ads. You wouldn’t pay to send a customer to your storefront if it was under construction or closed, so don’t do this with your paid traffic and website either.

Get Your Brand in Front of the Right People at the Right Time

Select Relevant Keywords

Select relevant keywords to drive potential customers to your site, and begin introducing your product or service to the world. Finding the right keywords can be tricky, especially if you’re brand new to paid search. To make it easy, start with two buckets to segment your marketing efforts:

• Branded keywords (e.g. Apple, Sony, Nike) 

• Non-Branded keywords (e.g. cellphone, game console, shoes)

Keep in mind that a well-established name brand will start to receive traffic for branded terms almost immediately but a new brand being introduced to the public will take some time to establish awareness. We recommend starting by funding a non-brand campaign strategy to familiarize Google search users with your product or service more. As customers begin to identify your brand in association with its keyword category, more will begin searching for you using your brand name. 

Create Relevant Copy

With your keywords selected, it’s time to create targeted messaging to deliver to the users who will search for your terms. Be sure to tailor your copy to each of your keyword themes and highlight your competitive advantages to stand out from the crowd. Don’t forget to add a clear call to action to make sure you help your users move through their buying journey.

Optimize, Optimize, Optimize

Analyze and Optimize

Getting started with Paid Search is incredibly easy. However, optimizing your campaigns and getting the best value out of your spend is a constantly evolving skill. There are hundreds of factors that impact the performance of your campaigns including:

• The keywords themselves and their resulting search terms

• Ad copy variations and all of their extensions

• Geography and demographics

• Audiences like past visitors and purchasers

• Devices and dayparts

• Landing pages and purchase flows

• And more!

Learning to analyze the performance of all of these factors and dimensions and optimizing accordingly will be the driving force in growing your business through Paid search.

Call in Reinforcements

Great marketing stems from the collaboration of a domain expert (You!) who knows the ins and outs of your product or service and a subject matter expert (a marketing manager/channel expert). Together, they can seamlessly blend messaging, strategy, and technology to deliver successful campaigns. At REQ, we have experts in Paid search that can help you grow your business through consultation or ongoing management of your account. Send us an sales [at] req.co (email) to have an expert reach out to you. 

Stay tuned for more helpful tips as we dive deeper into each of these areas in our Paid Search 101 Series.