We've seen it repeatedly with clients: top position in critical terms but traffic less than the month before on the website. The ugly truth is that keywords will only carry so much monthly search volume. The volume might be 100 in May and 20 in June; from that, you get a piece of that pie percentage-wise by having the top position. So, instead of having an oscillating wave of users on our site in GA4, how can we have a more consistent traffic volume?
Building up your brand is a great way to create a nearly flat line of traffic month over month. Your brand should fill in the gaps that non-branded keywords won't on a monthly basis. Certainly, you've all read an article or ten about using social platforms like Instagram or Facebook to organically grow your brand, and you should do that, but today, we're going to discuss how you can grow your brand through paid efforts.
Utilizing Meta to Grow Your Brand
We should start with Facebook and Instagram also known today as Meta. You will do paid advertising on both platforms when you work in Meta Business Suite. We suggest choosing a Brand Awareness Goal for your campaign type. Choose to spend a minimum of $5/day, though the more you put in, the more significant and faster your brand will grow. Within the ad set, you should adjust location and demographics, but we would steer clear of adding interests and behavior as this will give Facebook and Instagram the best opportunity to reach people you would like to target. Also, make the Maximum Reach of Ads your Performance Goal.
When it comes to ads, the more, the merrier. For this campaign, one ad set should be sufficient, but a minimum of 3-5 ads is recommended. Within the ads, use the available headlines and descriptions. Use a mix of original content and AI suggested; don't create one original and 4 AI. Regarding imagery, we'd stick with a single image or video. Carousels are available, but we have not found much luck with them, so your mileage may vary. For every image or video, that will be a new ad with your headlines and descriptions remaining the same. Also, don't forget to add UTM parameters to your URL. Facebook makes it very easy to use, so don't skip it.
Brand Campaigns with Google Ads
Now that we have the ball rolling on how to increase our traffic consistently, the next step is to take this to Google. Facebook tends to be very passive, with people simply looking at ads with little action taken. So, an individual who wants to learn more about your company will probably Google you next. In a previous blog, we discussed how to determine if you should run a branded campaign. Let's get more granular on setting up the brand campaign.
As discussed, you'll want a campaign named Brand Campaign, preferably with whatever goal you wish, leads, sales, etc. You'll want to choose a Search campaign and add the necessary goals. Regarding keywords simply use phase and exact match of your brand name so "RAB Consulting" and [RAB Consulting] would be ours. Write a copy mentioning your brand name, so it has to have a high Quality Score, simply a score out of 10 stating how closely your keyword aligns with your copy in the ad and on the landing page. The higher the score the more likely you'll rank high for the keyword and payless than others because your company makes the most sense to be at the top, this will be key later.
Since your website represents your brand and you're only targeting your brand name and using it within the ad copy, you will want to change one key thing after setup is complete. Click the gear icon next to the name of the campaign and look for Bidding. Google pretty much forces you to use automated bidding of some sort, from Max Clicks to Max ROAS. You can't even set a campaign up now without choosing to do one of these. We suggest changing your Bidding type to Manual CPC and unclicking Enhanced CPC. This will allow you to run your brand ads at a much lower cost because you will most likely have a 9/10 or 10/10 in Quality Score so the CPC should remain very low. We would suggest starting at $0.51 and making adjustments as needed. This should help keep your CPCs low, which now get inflated over time.
Bonus: Video
Video is becoming very popular and is another great way to increase traffic consistently. We understand that this can be tough for individuals, but we do feel like it will certainly give you an edge over your competition because no one wants to do it. So, how do we use video in the paid arena, and what's the right mix?
We discussed using video on Facebook and Instagram earlier, but it can also be very useful on YouTube. The key is what you produce. So we suggest creating two videos one portrait and one landscape. The portrait can be used on Meta, and both can be used on YouTube. You can set up a campaign within Google Ads, focusing simply on reaching for the videos with a Cost Per View as low as $0.01. Make sure the videos are evergreen, meaning they can run all year and don't have to be refreshed if they're working. Certainly, if you've reached capacity, meaning people are seeing the ad 5-6 times, change it out; otherwise, we'd keep them going.
We hope these suggestions help you generate creative ideas for paid ways to increase traffic consistently. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about anything we have discussed.
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