How Market Research Helps Businesses Find the Most Lucrative PPC Keywords

PPC (pay-per-click) advertising is potentially one of the most cost-effective ways for B2B, B2C and B2B2C businesses to reach prospective customers when they are actively looking for a solution. What’s more, PPC advertising can be delivered through mobile devices, integrated into either/both search engine results and content networks, and businesses pay when prospective customers click their ad vs. just see it (note that some PPC systems base pricing on 1000 impressions/CPMs instead of clicks, but this is still very cost effective compared to other types of online and especially offline advertising).

However, as you may have noticed, we use the word “potentially” in the paragraph above. This is not to lower expectations or dampen enthusiasm, especially because nobody should need convincing at this point that PPC advertising has the capacity to be extraordinarily profitable. Just ask Google, which reaps in north of $100 million in revenue per day (yes, you read that correctly: per day) from its PPC platform AdWords. While competitors like Facebook, Yahoo and LinkedIn have not yet reached such massive sales numbers, they are still enormously profitable — not because they are hyped-up or buzzworthy, but simply because they work.  Or that is, they work for some businesses. Not all of them.

As you might expect, there are many pieces of a successful PPC strategy. One of the most important — if not the most important — is keyword selection. This is because keywords are the words or phrases that trigger an ad to display at a certain time, and thanks to fairly recent advancements in geolocation technology, at a certain place as well. Indeed, in the past, business could push PPC ads to specific states or countries. Now, they can micro-target zip codes and even streets, as well as prospective customers using certain devices (e.g. smartphones instead of desktops).

Naturally, to be reap maximum ROI, businesses need to choose the right keywords to trigger their ads. That is where market research enters the picture and makes a major difference. Here are the 3 key reasons why:  

• Market research identifies all of the buyer personas that businesses should be targeting with their PPC campaigns — and not just customers who are have traditionally been on the roster. This opens up many new and profitable keyword possibilities.  

• Market research significantly improves PPC keyword hygiene, by identifying keywords that should not be part of campaigns. These are keywords that may have high search volume overall, but do not resonate with qualified leads — and should therefore be cut from the list.

• Market research helps businesses understand why prospective customers are using certain search terms (qualitative), and not just what they searching for (quantitative). This not only translates into better keyword selection, but the insights can be used to craft more compelling ads, and create hyper-relevant content (e.g. web pages, eBooks, etc.).

Learn More

To learn more about exploiting market research to find the most lucrative PPC keywords, contact the Communications for Research team today. Our co-CEO Colson Steber can take your business goals and help you find the right questions to ask in order to reach them. If market research is the best way to proceed, he can tell you more about CFR and present you with a timeline and budget for your project.