A Complete Guide on Testing Voice Search Through PPC

The market for voice search is getting hotter every single day. Today, we don’t just talk through the mobiles, instead, we can talk ‘to’ them. With the rise in the use of voice assistants like the Google Assistant, Alexa and Siri for the mobile phones, and Cortana for the desktops, we can now have a conversation directly with our devices. We can ask the smartphones to make phone calls, send text messages, set reminders, and do much more. Research suggests that over 20% of the Google searches made through Android phones are now voice searches.

This is the perfect time to start leveraging the voice search with PPC since it is not monetized yet. With the voice search rates growing exponentially, we can safely say that it is time for us to latch on to this opportunity.

Benefits of PPC Test for Voice Search

The PPC test for voice searches can help you in the following ways:

• Easy-to-start: You can start the voice search for PPC and get a detailed reporting for the search results. With this test, you can measure the results across various levels easily.
• Affordable: You don’t need to invest heavily in the PPC testing for voice search. Instead, you can start with a budget as low as 40$.

Steps to Start the Voice Search Testing through PPC

Step 1: Keyword Research

The first step will lay the foundation of your overall success/failure of the process. This research will help you identify the keywords linked directly to your business, product or service. It is not necessary that people will definitely search for your particular offering via voice search. For example, if you are into the business of selling horses, there will be rare (if any) voice searches pertaining to your business.

You need to think in a different manner while performing keyword research for the voice search. Here, the keywords are more natural language oriented. Therefore, the keywords will have a format that suggests a question instead of a phrase. While doing this research you might want to shift your focus to look for questions that seem obvious. Instead of looking for hard-coded keywords, write questions naturally.

Let’s take a small example here.

You are selling giraffe toys on the internet. Conventionally your keywords will look like:

• Yellow giraffe toy
• Plastic giraffe toy
• Affordable giraffe toy
• Large giraffe toy

On the other hand, when you are designing the campaign for the voice search your keywords will shift to something like the following:

• Where can I find the best giraffe toys?
• Find me the best giraffe toys.
• I need affordable giraffe toys for my kid.

This is a very small and basic example. When you are selling a high-level product or service, you need to think in numerous ways by stepping into the shoes of the customers.

You can complete the research by downloading a search term report from your Bing Ads or Google AdWords account. You can also use the Google search console or the Bing webmaster tools in case you do not have a dedicated PPC account yet.

Step 2: Keyword Design

Once you have downloaded the report, you are ready to design your own keywords. For this step, you can use Microsoft Excel. Put all your keywords into the Excel sheet and sort them into different columns that contain the important key elements of the search phrase. You can segregate the entire length of the key phrase into 3 different elements. These include campaign name, ad group and search term. The search term is the most important element of the phrase here.

Once you have successfully segregated the phrase, you can replace the campaign name and ad group with the customized approach. You can put your own company’s credentials at these places to build a good online reputation.

Step 3: Organize the Keywords

Once you have designed the keywords, it is time to organize them into a theme. Organization at an early stage will help you target the different sectors of the audience base with a different set of keywords each time. Remember, no set recipe works for all audience. You need to identify and target the right audience set from the beginning of the campaign to reap the best results out of the PPC efforts.

Add More Keywords

The list of keywords that you extracted from the Google/Bing is not enough right now. You need to increase your library by using a dedicated keyword research tool. Some of the best tools that can help you look for the most popular and effective keywords include Keyword Explorer and Answer the Public.

The best part about using the dedicated tools is that you get a better insight into the customer’s psyche with the tool. You can segregate your audience effectively even before establishing the first point of contact with them. Is the customer looking for information or truly interested in buying the product? The keyword research using these tools can give you a good insight into questions like this.

Use Intelligent Tools

You can also use research tools like the Bing Ads Intelligence to perform a demographic research for the keywords. This is truly helpful in the case of a demographically challenged business. For example, if you own a restaurant in Chicago, you want the audience in Chicago and not Paris to see the ads. The demographic research will help you build a strong local SEO portfolio for a sustainable growth in a challenging market.

Step 4: Optimization

Optimization is the main key to sustainability in the volatile digital marketing space. During this process, you will perform the competitive analysis to look for the strengths and weaknesses of your competition. After the optimization stage, you can compete head-on with some of the biggest players in the market.

The optimization stage requires you to use the voice assistant on your phone. It is a good idea to perform voice searches on all the available voice search engines. Try performing the search on Google Assistant, Alexa as well as Siri. This way, you will get a better idea of the digital landscape. For desktops, you can use Cortana to perform the voice search.

Couple All the Knowledge from Previous Steps

Try all the keywords that you listed in the initial stages one by one and put in a twist of your own natural language. For example, talk to the voice assistant in a question-answer format by asking it a question. You can also ask the voice assistant for a tip based on the keyword.

NAP Credentials

The NAP credentials for your business play a major role in the voice-related searches. Try and keep your company’s name, address and phone number credentials same on all different social media pages and websites. By doing this, you will effectively ensure that the search engine can place its trust in your business.

You can classify the potentially harmful keywords as the negative keywords. Harmful keywords are the ones that have a potential to bring visitors onto your website that have no intent to purchase your service or product. Someone who searches for something like “How are the plastic toy giraffes made?” will most likely not buy your product. Instead, the visitor is just looking for information.

Step 5: Adjust for Dynamicity

Once you have finished the first 4 steps, it is time to get a little creative. Add a small creative twist to all your ads and make them aesthetically appealing so that more and more customers end up purchasing the product. A customer service driven mindset helps in such scenarios. By balancing the informative and promotional parts of the content, you can easily make sure that the people who really wish to purchase the product click on the ad.

With PPC your click to conversion ratio plays a major role in the return on investment. If you have a huge audience base but a smaller customer base, you are constantly losing money. Someone who has a million visitors on the website through the PPC ad might fail miserably compared to the one who has just a thousand visitors. Keep a track of conversion analytics and add more keywords to the negative side of the spectrum to see desirable results.

Revision: Tips for Optimized PPC Tests

Here are a few tips that can help you with voice search via PPC.

• Have a PPC Account
• Use Tools
• Test on Multiple Engines
• Have Uniform NAP Credentials
• Add More Keywords
• Segregate Keywords into Positive and Negative
• Adjust for Dynamicity
• Use Creativity (But up to a limit)
• Have a Good Balance of Promotional and Informative Content
• Check Reports and Conversion Analytics Often
• Use Pictorial Representation of Ads
• Use SEO to Your Advantage
• Perform A/B Testing

Your PPC campaigns will produce the desired results only when you back them up with a strong sales plan and an appealing landing page result. Make sure that you follow all these tips and steps to optimize your voice search through PPC today!