When it comes to marketing in the digital age, companies and businesses need to keep up with all the latest shifts and techniques. Digital marketing is still young in Kenya, but every day more businesses are moving from traditional marketing strategies and buying into digital advertising. The reason is simple – it works.
One of the best ways to make the most out of digital marketing is to drive traffic to your website using PPC (Pay Per Click advertising) ads. PPC ads are digital ads where the advertiser pays a network for every click generated from users.
PPC Marketing in Kenya
PPC marketing in Kenya has become just as huge as social media marketing. Even though social media marketing has proven to be cheaper, most businesses still prefer PPC marketing thanks to it’s higher conversion rates and ROI.
PPC campaigns allow you to target specific groups in your demographic, bringing in prospects that are actually looking for your business. This is accomplished by creating sponsored links that are strategically crafted to reach your ideal audience that will eventually give you the most business (e.g. qualified leads). This leads to immediate results and a higher return on investment than other paid outbound marketing techniques.
Five Great Tips for Dentists Using PPC Ads
To help you get started with your PPC ad campaigns, here are five powerful PPC tips to keep in mind.
Your Local Location is Key.
Let’s assume you are a dentist. When you are marketing your business, you are, obviously, not going up against all the dentists in the world. Instead, you probably just want to compete against dentists in your local area. Local advertising is critical at any point in your business, but especially so with targeted marketing campaigns such as PPC.
Since you are charged for clicks, you don’t want people outside your operating area to click on your ads. Every click needs to count and to do this, you have to target your ads to people you can actually serve. Location targetting is important in PPC marketing, especially for physical businesses that serve only specific regions
Relevance is Relevant.
In PPC advertising, you will want to do some keyword research to find out what your audience is searching for. All your ads need to be niche specific to avoid paying for non-qualified leads clicking on your ad. You only want people who are looking for your business to interact with your ads.
Again, keywords are not enough. They need to be specific enough. A good practice is to use longtail keywords. If you are offering dentistry services, using “dentist” as a keyword will probably not get you the results you are looking for. This is because there so many combinations that can be used with that word. Searches like “dentist jobs” will trigger your ads to show, which is not what you want. A user who is searching for a dentist job is not a customer and is less likely to convert. A better keyword here would be something in the lines of “dentist services in Nairobi”.
For higher conversion rates, keywords and copies you use in your PPC ads need to be as relevant as possible. Try to focus down on particular services that people in your area might be looking for. For instance, it might be beneficial to create PPC ads for your higher-revenue generating services such as surgical extractions or teeth whitening rather than something like a basic cleaning.
Usually, if your keywords are relevant, Google will also give your ad a higher quality score which leads to a better position on the search engine result pages (SERPs) as well as a lower cost-per-click rate.
Be Constantly Consistent
To add to your quality score from Google, your PPC ads, and their destinations (e.g. your landing page) need to be consistent with each other. This means right on target, delivering the same promises, services, and message as your ad. Each ad should have its own separate landing page so you can make them as specific as possible. This also helps in making performance tracking easier.
Your PPC ads should direct users to your landing page template where they can opt-in to the offer you provide them. In other words, promise something in the ad and deliver the same on the landing page. Keep it smooth and consistent so your users don’t get distracted or lose interest. A great way to do this is by keeping the same color and design scheme so the users don’t think they went to the wrong website and bounce off. Keep your fonts the same and even go so far as to use almost the exact same headline so they know they’re in the right place. Always strive to deliver a consistent message that ties into your service across all networks.
Dial-In Success
Another great tip in PPC marketing is to game the system by providing another contact option, namely, the phone call. Why pay for a click that will just give your phone number on the landing page? You don’t have to get traffic to your site to get business. You can simply have people call your office – some people actually still prefer this human “touch”.
Having your phone number directly on the ad might lower your PPC marketing costs by diverting some prospects to calls rather than converting directly on the website. Sure your ad reports will show a lower click-through rate, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, your sales will tell a different story.
Generate call-in leads by displaying your business phone number on all your PPC ads. To boost the likelihood of generating call-ins, only schedule your PPC ad to run during your business hours. If you are closed, they have no option but to click, but if you’re open, they might just give a ring.
Extend Your Ad with Ad Extensions
Generally, your standard PPC ad doesn’t allow for a wordy ad, mostly because Google wants to sell more ads so they only offer a limited amount of space. But as with any Google products, there’s always a workaround.
Google Ads allows up to six ad extensions that you can activate for your ad groups and ads, each of which gives more information about you and your business without cutting into your limited character input space.
The Local Extension provides a map and address from your Google My Business account; the Product Extension shows products (not too helpful for service businesses); the Sitelink Extension allows you to display links to your webpages in addition to the linked landing page; the Phone Number Extension gives your phone number and makes it clickable for mobile users, and the Seller Rating Extension shows your customer rating.
