Entrepreneurs looking to push traffic to their websites often use pay-per-click marketing. It is an effective and relatively inexpensive advertising method, and many business owners appreciate its success. If you’re interested in trying pay-per-click marketing, here are five tips to get the most out of your advertising efforts.

1. Determine Your Advertising Goals

What specific action do you want customers to take when they click on your ad? The answer to that question determines how you approach your campaign. You may direct buyers to:

• Purchase a product
• Visit a page on your website
• Complete an online form
• Learn more about your product or services

Knowing your goals ahead of time allows you to determine if the campaign was successful.

2. Consider Targeting

Geo-targeting your ad puts it in front of people in specific geographic locations. If you plan to use managed Kubernetes to run microservices in certain countries, create ad groups for each country. You can also target only U.S. customers.

Using a micro-geographic focus in your account, you can create ads in specific ZIP codes by using local business keywords such as “plastic surgeons in San Francisco.”

You can also target campaigns to run at selected times. If you know most of your customers shop during business hours, you can choose your ads to run then. Running your ads in the middle of the night would have less effectiveness.

Your targeting tool can also factor in:

• Link structure
• Text
• Language
• Page structure

This feature helps you determine your webpage themes and create advertising based on your chosen topics.

3. Ensure Your Ads Match Landing Pages

Your customers are busy and don’t want to waste their time landing on a page with little relevance to their search. When your advertising and landing pages don’t correspond, it results in lower-quality ad scores for you and increases your cost per click. It also decreases your chances of visibility — higher-quality ads will be ahead of yours.

You can choose from four match types when you put together your campaign:

• Broad match: The search engine determines relevant search queries for your keywords
• Broad match modifier: A hybrid of phrase match and broad match
• Phrase match: Your ad appears as long as the keywords are in order
• Exact match: Your keyword is specific

At first, it may seem like a good idea to select a broad match type — after all, you can reach a wider audience and be less specific. However, broad matches can result in wasted clicks that you end up paying for. People searching for entirely unrelated topics will be led to your page.

4. Use Negative Keywords

To avoid unrelated search matches, you can add keywords that should not appear in a search. If you are an architect who specializes in single-family homes, for example, you can add “nursing” to your negative keyword list. Then your ad won’t appear on a search for nursing homes.

5. Try a Few Ad Versions

Many pay-per-click companies give you the option to test ad copy. You can use different ads for each of your keywords. Set them to rotate randomly to see which version generates the most clicks. This technique is especially helpful for those new to pay-per-click ad campaigns or who aren’t familiar with writing compelling ad copy — it teaches you what works and what doesn’t to get the highest return on your campaign investment.

Many companies find that pay-per-click ad campaigns are worth the investment and time. In an age when consumers increasingly turn to their smartphones or laptops to shop for products, it helps your company get exposure in the right places.