How To Pay Per Click For Small Businesses

Whenever I talk to a small business about pay per click, I hear the same worries repeated in almost every conversation. They’re afraid of investing their money in pay per click in case it doesn’t work. They’ve been burnt in the past by pay per click companies who took their money and wasted it on a few main keywords. They’ve been reading horror stories on the internet. They feel it’s too complicated, too expensive and they can’t compete with their larger competitors.

Many small to medium-sized companies run pay per click campaigns with great success, so what’s their secret?

Here are our top tips for small businesses:

Complications
Running a large scale, pay per click campaign across several search engines can be very time-consuming and complicated and can require software to be able to monitor them all effectively, but there’s no need why a small business should need this level of granularity.

Safety
There are several tools and safety measures available for each search engine. Those horror stories that tell of campaigns spending thousands of pounds come from those who didn’t set the safety parameters. Changes can be implemented and live within 15 minutes and you can stop or start a campaign at the click of a button. On Google, you set a daily spend to a minimum of £1, so you know the campaign will not spend more than that in a day.

Limited Budget
There are many ways to reduce the required budget, including geographical targeting, day parting strategies and keyword targeting. There is no need to target all the main, generic keywords that apply to your industry. Sometimes just a few long tail, niche keywords are all it takes to start turning a profit and then you can re-invest that money to build your campaign slowly. It’s more important to have consistency than to cover a wide range of keywords for just a few hours a day.

Knowledge
It is important to know what you’re doing before you start. You need proper keyword research, the right ad text creative and once you start a campaign, it is imperative that you monitor the campaign properly and conduct split testing to make sure not only that it works but that it is working the best it can.

Competitors
Keep an eye on your competitors. If your competitors change their ad creatives, it can ruin a successful pay per click campaign instantly. Don’t get lazy and stop monitoring your results.

Pay per click doesn’t have to be complicated, but it does take time to monitor and keep up to date. There is no reason why pay per click cannot work for small businesses.

Lianne
PPC Account Manager

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