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Should I Include PPC In My Inbound Marketing?

Matt Brady
#Digital Marketing, #Inbound Marketing
Published on January 7, 2015
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Learn how pay-per-click advertising can be a powerful part of your Inbound Marketing strategy and how to make sure you are doing it correctly.

We’ve written before about how Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising isn’t the best way to generate leads, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. Instead, it should be just one part of a complete Inbound Marketing strategy, in which you attract people to your website, demonstrate how your products or services can solve their problems, convert visitors into leads, and then convert those leads into customers. This strategy includes a wide array of tactics, including blogging, social media, landing pages, SEO, and more, while remaining aware of the wants and needs of your audience and the online community as a whole, which is constantly evolving and expanding. Keeping up with all of these areas can be a full-time job, but it’s important to regularly revisit your goals and metrics, consistently target your buyer personas, and remain aware of your existing content to see if it needs to be updated or optimized.

Where Does PPC Fit In?

PPC advertising is a great way to generate traffic to your website, especially if you're trying to reach a niche audience, but it needs to be done correctly. You might not always rank as high as you would like in searches relevant to your areas of expertise, but paying for an ad can place a link to your site right at the top of the search results pages. This is an additional benefit of keyword research; when using a tool like Google’s Keyword Planner, you can not only find the keywords that people are searching for, but you can also see what it will cost to place an ad alongside the results for those keywords.

However, you want to be sure your ads are still relevant to people’s searches. If you want people to find your site when they are searching for a specific product, make sure your ad includes text about the product that you offer and that it links to the product page rather than your home page. If you want to inform people about a service that you offer that is related to their search, include a brief description of your service in the ad copy and link to a blog or landing page that tells them more about that service. It can take a bit more work to create a variety of ads for the different keywords you want to target, but offering relevant information to people who are searching for your products or services rather than just sticking your company name at the top of their search results can mean the difference between generating quality leads and wasting time and money trying to get clicks.

Part of the Whole

Implementing an effective PPC campaign can be very complicated and time-consuming, but the effort is worth it, as long as it lines up with the rest of your online marketing strategy. You still want to make sure you are providing quality content for your audience, letting them know that you have the expertise to understand and solve their problems, and you need to continue to engage them both on your website and social platforms. When done right, PPC can fit right into these efforts, and it can even give you a bit of a leg up, generating the traffic that you need while fitting within a set budget.

Do you have any questions for us about how to get started with a PPC campaign? Do you want to know more about how to include PPC alongside your inbound marketing efforts? Please contact us to speak with a Marketing Specialist, and we can work with you to implement an effective PPC strategy. If you have any other questions you want to share, please leave a comment below.