What Can I Expect From a Paid Search Campaign?
So, you have heard that PPC will yield you massive ROI, but how do you know what you can really expect? Youtubers, online life coaches, MLMers, and influencers have all overpromised and undelivered on their claims that you can become wealthy and successful quickly. After being burned one too many times on the promises of the internet potential, it’s hard to trust one more paid internet resource is going to help your business thrive.
Forecasting PPC campaigns and setting realistic expectations
So, how can I set know what to expect?
This is not a simple question to answer as there are many factors, including your industry, budget, and intent.
However, understanding the influence each of these factors has on the overall ROI of a PPC Campaign can help readjust and align your expectations in a more realistic way.
Let’s dive in.
Your Industry:
Correct and accurate forecasting of a PPC campaign (and setting expectations) first starts by looking at the digital landscape of your industry and how competitive it is. Understanding how competitive your industry is can help you determine what a realistic ROI may look like, how much to invest, and what kind of results you can expect.
For example, if you’re in the insurance industry, you can expect to pay upward to $55.00 for the keyword “insurance.” Other industries that fight hard in highly competitive sectors include real estate, law, nonprofits, and educational institutions.
Knowing how competitive your industry is can help you decide how much of your budget you’re willing to allocate into digital efforts. It can spark internal conversations about how broad or niche you’re ready to go in the PPC world and help make informed decisions about targeting rather than throwing money at a campaign and waiting for calls that never come.
Your Intent
The intent of your PPC campaign can also help to realistically set expectations and forecast more accurately.
Determining which stage of marketing your company or business is in can determine what your results may be. If you’re a new business looking to reach as many people as possible for awareness, then a strategy that aims to get as many qualified people as possible may be in your best interest – and in that case, the number of impressions may be how you define success. Knowing where you are at in your marketing journey can help create healthy expectations.
Your Budget
There just isn’t a way around this one – the more you have to spend, the better results you’re going to see.
A smaller budget doesn’t necessarily doom you to low profits, however. If you’re dealing with a smaller budget being strategic about how you spend your money with a search or display campaign can mean that you’re showing your ads to smaller but more niche audiences that are more likely to convert, proving a positive ROI on how much you spend.
Using Historical Data
If you are fortunate to have historical data from previous campaigns or similar industries, you can leverage that mined information to make intelligent decisions in how you budget and set up your ad campaigns.
If you aren’t in that position, there are resources available to you to help adjust expectations, including Google’s Keyword Planner and Google Trends.
Google Trends helps users discover and visualize search behavior and trends. It can be beneficial for understanding how and what people are searching for concerning your product or services. Another value-add of Google Trends is that it takes a look over a set time which helps businesses account for seasonality if their business is particularly affected by seasons or yearly trends.
Similarly, Google’s Keyword Planner also helps in the keyword research process and can help you understand how many clicks or impressions – and the competition – you can expect from any given keyword. This information helps sharpen your campaigns and start to paint a picture of how many clicks you can expect with a set amount of budget.
So, what can I expect?
In short, I can’t answer that for you without knowing all the variables in your overall strategy, budget, intent and industry. Anyone who can, without knowing the details as mentioned above of your business, probably isn’t selling you a respectable digital marketing strategy. If you’re interested in learning about the ROI of a digital marketing campaign, reach out anytime – we love geeking out over strategy and data.
