It’s an all-too-common mistake to start a PPC campaign without defining what exactly your construction business is trying to achieve; this is a critical process which will ultimately determine whether your paid advertising will work for you.
Your goals will be used to refine your strategy, meet business objectives, and create tactics that will improve the performance of your campaigns.
When defining goals, you first need to consider what results you want from a website visitor clicking your ad and being directed to a landing page.
For Ecommerce sites, the goal may be to increase sales, increase leads, enhance brand awareness or improve traffic levels.
Consider the following…
Do you need to be driving awareness and sales for a new product?
Do you need to boost sales for an existing product type?
Are you looking to increase the number of literature downloads showcasing advantages of your product?
At what pace do you expect to see an increase in sales?
What percentage increase in sales is realistic for your business?
Whilst it is crucial at this stage to be setting clear and quantifiable goals, they must also be flexible for industry changes, seasonal changes and services offered on your Ecommerce platform.
Benchmark from previous performance
At this point, you may be wondering where to actually begin when it comes to setting accurate PPC goals; this is where you’ll need to analyse data using Google Analytics to measure the previous performance levels of certain products. This will help you to determine what quantifies as realistic goals for your individual business.
In what months did we sell the most of Product A?
In what months did we sell the least of Product B?
How many datasheets were downloaded last year?
What products had the least sales over the year?
What products are lacking online visibility?
Establish Short- & Long-Term Goals
It’s important to establish short-term as well as long-term goals for your business, in order to provide realistic stepping-stones towards achieving your desired outcome. This not only makes the long-term goal easier to achieve, but it also provides your team with the motivation to achieve it.
A short-term goal may be assigned on a weekly or monthly basis, such as increasing sales and revenue from X to Y; this short-term goal would be directly targeting people who are interested in your product and service in order to increase the chance of them buying from your Ecommerce site.
However, whilst sales could increase for a particular keyword overnight, they will naturally fluctuate depending on factors such as seasons or product launches. In particular, new accounts with little to no previous data take longer to see an increase in sales, as it takes time to optimise the campaign and review keyword performance.
This is when you need a long-term goal plan, typically aimed towards your businesses’ overall profit growth. Whilst most businesses intend to make a high profit as their long-term goal, very few actually measure how exactly they’ll get there, or what steps are needed to achieving this success.
Analyse your goal campaigns
Whilst creating a goal plan for your PPC campaign should always be the first step towards implementing an effective strategy, analysing the progression of these goals is just as important.
If your short and long-term goals aren’t being met, you need to dig into why this was and how the issue can be resolved. If they are being met, identify the tactics used to get there so that you can do more of what works and less of what isn’t.
The learning process to PPC is continuous, and as you begin to collect data for your paid keywords, the strategy may start to change. Ensure you’re flexible with the strategy required to achieving these goals as the online behaviour of your visitors changes over time.
Summary
Without setting goals, you’ll spend a significant amount of money with little results to show for it. Similarly, a misunderstanding of customer behaviour and an unwillingness to adapt to changes will result in highly expensive and unsuccessful marketing efforts.
For more information on implementing an effective PPC strategy for your construction business, download our brand new PPC eBook for Ecommerce websites here.
