In digital marketing, it’s so easy (and tempting) to separate different sub-disciplines into their own little worlds.
Here is SEO here, the biggest one.
Then there’s social media marketing, and there’s PPC advertising.
But this is a black and white view of things.
In this case, I want to talk about the intersection of PPC and great content.
If that statement doesn’t even make sense to you, then this post is for you.
PPC content and data can complement each other in more ways than one.
From landing page copy to CPC data to improving click-through rates, there are many points where these two layers of digital marketing come together to form a stronger whole.
And if we assume you want to improve your PPC performance and content traffic, then you can get something out of it.
So read on for helpful tips on using your content and PPC campaigns together!
1. Use PPC ads to get traffic FAST
The problem with organic search strategies is that it is nearly impossible to drive traffic to your website without an established audience.
Keep in mind that more than 6 million blog posts are published every day, making it almost impossible for your blog posts to get exposure without a basic strategy.
Using PPC advertising to drive traffic to your website in the early stages of development will give your brand exposure and early revenue.
Best of all, the traffic that comes from paid clicks will represent a large portion of the target audience you’re already looking to sell your brand to.
It’s like killing two birds with one stone.
Using Google Ads and Facebook Audience Insights, you can extract more meaningful insights from your audience while, in turn, reaching them to garner brand exposure.
Slap on a piece of detailed or informative content can help further differentiate your brand from other advertisers.
Good, quality content goes more hand-in-hand with PPC than you might think, so be sure to read about the intersection of these two areas of digital marketing.
The idea is to focus on both campaigns simultaneously and target similar keywords.
Content can be used to inform, while paid advertising should be your vehicle to convert.
This strategy can help your brand become top of mind every time you appear in search results for any keyword query.
2. Use PPC ads to predispose people to your brand
Contrary to popular belief, paid ads help (indirectly) drive traffic to Google’s organic results because they increase brand awareness in users’ minds.
That’s because people who see paid ads are more likely to remember your brand when they perform a future search, even if subconsciously.
This could hypothetically make your brand seem more authoritative, too, or larger than life.
Brand affinity also dramatically increases the CTR of repeat visitors.
Research has shown that it is cheaper to keep an existing customer than to acquire a new one.
3. Provide a fantastic landing page experience
Even the most savvy paid media manager sometimes struggles with creating a landing page that satisfies their clients and their vision.
Content marketers are naturally great storytellers and creative in their own right.
Leverage your creative content to create a unique landing page experience that nurtures inbound leads through your conversion funnel.
Visitors who click on ads are likely to investigate your website before making a conversion.
Consider the buyer’s journey and how content applies to this process:
- awareness: A customer is alerted to a particular need or problem (blog posts, curated content, infographics, videos, articles).
- considerations: A customer realizes a specific need and researches it (white papers, testimonials, reviews, landing pages, e-books).
- decision: A customer decides to make a purchase or conversion (tutorials, trials, product demos).
Consider providing testimonials, user reviews, and links to related articles in addition to your landing page content for visitors to read before purchasing.
Not all visitors who click on an ad will buy during that session or even that day.
Providing relevant and quality content on your site will become a valuable touch point in your attribution path to generate conversions.
4. Find content insights from PPC keyword data
If there’s one thing your SEO and PPC campaigns already share, it’s keywords.
Use your PPC keyword data to find out which keywords drive the most traffic and revenue.
You can also analyze how well your ad copy is performing and apply it to your organic content campaign.
Consider using commercial keywords in your content to promote your services/products to customers.
Branded keywords are extremely successful and have a much higher CTR than other standard keywords.
Group your keyword strategy and transfer the success of one campaign to another.
Conduct A/B testing to decipher which keywords perform best within each campaign.
5. Steal as much SERP real estate as possible
Obviously, having two links on the same page would increase website clicks.
In addition to increasing click-through rates on both listings, having additional links increases exposure and brand authority in the eyes of searchers.
While it’s true that 53% of website traffic comes from organic results, PPC advertising continues to hold sway in today’s Google.
Now, if only you could get a rich snippet!
Actionable tactics to increase the ROI of content marketing through PPC campaigns
Now that you understand the benefits of combining PPC and content marketing, here are some ways to maximize it to the fullest.
1. Promote your great content with Facebook ads
Use Facebook Audiences to segment your audience and target ads to new audience members related to your vertical.
Promote your best performing content by boosting your Facebook post to target specific audience groups.
Boost Your Facebook Post promotes content and ads to two audiences:
- “People who like your page and their friends.”
- “The people you choose through targeting.”
Use PPC ads to build an audience for your content and then use boost posts to reach more people who might be interested in your content.
Facebook Audience Insights and Twitter’s Tailored Audiences provide unique remarketing tools for any PPC ad or promotional content.
Use your PPC spend to build an audience for your brand and target them with different ad campaigns based on your most shared and liked content.
2. Write Irresistibly Clickable Headlines
Use BuzzSumo to discover content that is currently going viral in your industry.
Use these keywords and topics to create a compelling and appropriate headline for your ad display.
This will attract users to engage with your ad display, who typically don’t engage with click ads.
Run A/B testing on different headlines targeting different keywords to see which ones produce the most clicks and conversions.
Note that clickable is not the same as clickable. It is still essential to the user experience to create titles that are relevant to the content itself.
3. Think Mobile-First
Use images, infographics, and any form of visual content to increase mobile conversion rates for paid ads.
The rules for landing page content are different for mobile. It is essential that you enable responsive design and optimize content for mobile.
Some tips:
- Write short headlines.
- Use summary paragraphs.
- Avoid pop-ups.
- Use small image sizes.
- Include a clear call to action.
4. Craft killer CTAs to convert more visitors
You should feature a clear call to action on your landing page, especially for paid promotional items.
You can achieve this with a form field on the side or a pop-up CTA. This will help transform leads into conversions for your paid promotion campaign.
People still debate whether to place a CTA at the top or bottom of content.
In terms of paid promotion, I would suggest using your content to grab the reader’s interest and then drop your CTA at the bottom of the landing page for more conversions.
Conclusion
I’ll say it again: I understand that content marketing and PPC seem like they couldn’t be more different.
They go hand in hand many times, and common areas can be hard to see.
But if you integrate the right content marketing into your PPC and PPC data into content marketing and SEO, you can learn a lot and start increasing your site’s overall performance.
More resources:
Featured Image: Dean Drobot/Shutterstock
