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1. Advertise Where Your Prospects are

This seems too obvious to mention; yet many businesses advertise where the ad reps tell them to, or where it’s easy to place an ad, or where they can get a lot of vanity exposure. Make sure you build your ad campaigns in response to prospect behavior, not media convenience.

In search marketing, this is pretty easy. Choose the right keywords and by definition you’ve found your prospects.

Many keywords that seem to represent buyers may not; think about the difference between informational and transactional keywords: “I’m looking for info so I can solve this myself” vs. “I’m looking for just enough info to buy wisely.” Select keywords to target your ideal customer, the one who already agrees with your main value proposition.

2. Advertise When Your Prospects are Receptive to Your Offer

Figure out when your prospects are hungriest, and catch them then.

This also may seem obvious, but do you still get coupons on the back of your grocery store receipt offering a different brand of the thing you just bought? Can’t think of worse timing to make an offer like that.

In search marketing, timing relates to prospect readiness. Pay attention to the “readiness continuum” that goes from “I just starting thinking about this” to “When can you deliver?” Ben Hunt, in his wonderful book "Convert!", shares his ladder of awareness, which I’m pretty sure he’d let me reproduce here:

Place each of your top keywords on a rung on the ladder of awareness. Then make sure that your ad and landing page matches that level.

If your prospect is only just aware of a problem (“migraine pain”), and not familiar with potential solutions, don’t go on about how your solution is superior to the rest. If they searched for your brand name, take them straight to a “buy now” page. And so on…

3. Match Your Offer to Your Prospect’s Immediate Desire

In the AdWords display network, prospects aren’t actively searching for what you’ve got. Your ad must connect your product or service with a latent need or desire and raise the priority of that need or desire to “I gotta do something about this right away.”

4. Focus on ROI, Not Cost

By choosing to stand out in a premium location, you can get the benefit of a much higher return on investment (ROI).

We see this with our PPC clients who pay a premium for the top-rank ad locations (the ones above the organic search results, as opposed to the right column on the search results page). The difference in response is often astounding.

Within the very same campaign, the ads that appeared in the premium real estate were eight and a half times more attractive than the very same ads on the right side (2.49 percent click through rate vs 0.29 percent). Yes, they cost more per click ($7.67 vs $5.69), but they generated 22 conversions, compared to none for the side column ads.

This doesn't mean you should always pay a premium for the most visible ad space; that’s your sales rep’s job. Rather, you should experiment. Make investments that your competition is unwilling to make, then measure the results.

One way to get a premium listing is to pay for it. You may be the only local sewing machine store in your town to advertise on the Super Bowl, but that may not be a good use of funds. You can rent the biggest billboard, buy air time on the most popular morning talk show, and sponsor the biggest booth at the trade show; but that doesn’t mean you’re going to stand out and get noticed.

Ask the question, “How can we do something nobody else is doing?” and hit upon a winning strategy.

As you plan your next PPC campaign, be willing to spend for results, but start by spending your creative energy first. How can you get the right message to the right people at the right time in a way that sets you apart from your competition?