How Paid Search Captures New Customers and Delivers Immediate Results
Most people never go beyond the first page of Google. In fact, 94 percent of search traffic never even makes it to page two (Chitika Insights, 2011). Sorry page two.
Page one is prime real estate, and there is a lot of competition to secure those coveted spots.
Search engine pages are made up of two types of search results--organic and paid search ads. Organic search results occur naturally in response to your search. While paid search ads also appear in response to your search, but these ads are sponsored by businesses that pay for consumer clicks.
More on that? Find information on paid media and paid search ads in our latest whitepaper.
Building an organic search presence is important, but it takes a lot of time to secure those top spots. With paid search links, you’ll start to see traffic come in right away.
Fast Action Ads
Paid search, or pay-per-click (PPC) ads, are often overlooked as an important piece of the marketing puzzle. Businesses wonder, “Is it really worth the investment? Do consumers really pay attention to those ads?”
The truth is, yes. In fact, paid search ads are the number one driver of traffic to websites, and they receive 64.6 percent of the clicks for product searches (WordStream 2012).
What’s more important is that according to Google, 89 percent of the traffic generated from these sponsored ads is new traffic.
Targeting New Buyers
You have a product that consumers want. All you have to do is help them find it, and that’s where PPC ads come in. These ads capture the attention of the most valuable searchers. Why? Because PPC ads are different from other forms of online advertisements. Your ads only appear when a potential customer searches for keywords related to your product.
Paid search ads attract consumers with the intent to buy. These ads are product specific, and they are extremely targeted. Look at what happens when ‘Leah’ decides she’s in the mood for a new pair of shoes.
Leah jumps on Google and searches for “black wedge shoes,” and more than 10 product-specific results turn up.
She’s drooling over the Fitzwell Lyra boots on Zappos.com pictured in the ad. Leah clicks on the ad for more product details, reads reviews from other customers, and shares the link to the boots on her Facebook wall to see if any of her friends have used Zappos, and of course what they think of the boots. Ultimately, Leah realizes she must have the boots, and she orders them.
This is the typical consumers’ buying cycle – search, review, share, buy. And as you can see in Leah’s case, PPC ads take up the majority of that coveted search engine real estate I mentioned before.
These types of results are instant. A business that launches an ad campaign will know right away if it’s a success or a failure by the tracking and traffic. The difference between PPC achievement or disappointment is in the approach.
Developing a successful PPC campaign takes extensive research and strategy. Find out how a paid search campaign can help you reach new customers by contacting the team at GannettLocal.