For experienced PPC marketers like Phoenix SEO agency, creating new accounts on Bing, AdWords or yahoo is both a skill and an art. The process involves a careful choice of keywords, settings, and a cleverly written ad copy. All this is to ensure that you have a successful run with a greater conversion that will meet all the clients’ milestones and metrics.
Typically PPC marketing requires continual tweaking if you are to maintain the success. As part of digital advertising, PPC marketing is an evolving world and the competitors are always working to outsmart and outperform you. There are a number of ways of ensuring that your PPC is working for you.
Never Run PPC campaign Before Understanding a Clients Goals
This is the primary thrust of PPC optimization. You need to have a thorough and functional understanding of the client’s product or services. If you don’t get this right, you’ll target wrong keywords and create ad copies that can’t sell.
You will also attract wrong people/sites and end up losing $$$$ in the process. Make sure you have clear goals on conversion, branding, and leads for your PPC campaigns.
This will mean that if you are running a conversions campaign then you run a CPA campaign and if you run a brand building campaign then you run CPM campaigns.
Always Set Your Max CPA Targets
The max conversion is simply the highest possible amount you are willing to pay per conversion without running into loss-making territory. If the product costs $40 then you can only spend up to that amount on marketing costs.
If you spend more than $40 then you’ll be running at a loss. Obviously, to make a profit you’ll need to keep the CPA much lower than the product price. This is one of the most costly mistakes that marketers make resulting to losses.
Carefully Setup Your Adwords Account
A well set-up AdWords account can effectively help you reach critical clients with minimal effort. On the other hand, a poorly set up AdWords account often results in multiple campaigns targeting a single product category or even multiple ads geared towards a single product.
The issue is that Google only highlights one ad per advertiser which renders the other duplicate ads useless. A well-structured account is also easy to manage and monitor. An ad group shouldn’t have more than four words. Lastly, use descriptive names for your ad groups as well as the campaigns.
Run Campaigns with Conversion Tracking
Running PPC accounts based on gut feeling or Google analytics are not the most effective means of running them. You need to have a conversion tracking setup as a means of monitoring the performance of your PPC campaigns.
Conversion tracking will help you understand what happens after a user clicks on the ad. You need to be able to figure whether they purchased the product. You also need to figure out which ad, keyword, campaign or ad group triggered the conversion.
This will inform your future keyword, placement or ad group decisions.
Figure out What Sells
One of the critical skills that a PPC pro must possess is the reinvestment skill. You need to be able to figure out what sells and be able to sell more of it. Keep in mind that your key priority is maximizing revenue for your clients.
This could mean transferring part of your budget from low performing ads to high performing ads/campaigns especially during peak sales times. Conversely, if something isn’t selling despite tweaks, retesting, and tricks then discontinue it. There’s no use trying to flog it.
Optimize the Campaign Settings
You stand to lose a lot of money and time if your campaign settings and your business goals are not aligned. If you have a localized search target then make sure it only covers the specified geographical area.
You have to avoid running ads on mobile devices if your site isn’t mobile optimized. Thirdly, make sure your PPC campaign targets specific locations, devices, languages and networks.
You have to ensure that the campaign uses the right ad scheduling, bidding option and budget. Lastly, rely on the ad extension features because they significantly improve CTR of your ads.
Never Ignore Negative Keywords
Reputable internet marketing firms often advise PPC marketers that you have to hone in on your ads to make sure that they don’t pop up for irrelevant keywords. That’s because the irrelevant keywords can outnumber the relevant keyword which lowers the effectiveness of your ads.
To do this you need to be able to identify them individually and restrain them using the AdWords system. Take a greater care and time in managing the list of negative keywords than in handing the list of relevant keywords.
This process of managing negative keyword ought to be a daily practice.
Don’t Manage/Monitor Everything Manually
One of the biggest risks of managing your PPC campaign manually is that it’s possible to go over your budget and ruin the whole campaign leading it into loss-making territory. This is even harder if you are monitoring half a dozen PPC accounts simultaneously.
There are two ways of equipping the system to help you monitor the PPC ads. First, you have to set up customized alerts that help you keep abreast of all happenings in each account. Secondly, you can set up automated rules that allow the account to manage itself.
Continuously Landing Pages & Optimize Ad Copies
An ad copy must have a very clear Call-to-Action for it to generate clicks and conversions. Similarly, your landing page should load quickly on all the selected devices. This is why you need to continuously test them.
Try and optimize your landing pages. While you can also experiment with different Call to Actions and figure out which one will best drive conversion for the client’s product or service.
The optimization of landing pages and Call to Actions is a process that might change daily, twice daily or even weekly. Keep in mind that there is always room for improvement.
Choose The Right Ad Extensions
This is the most critical feature that you can rely on for your PPC campaign. If you aren’t using them then you just might want to fix them soonest. The extensions provide searchers with additional information, improves CTR, and increase the means for brand interaction.
The ad extensions also have to be regularly tested and tweaked just like ads and landing pages. For example, site links, are very effective at sending users to the exact page they are searching for.
Some of the best widgets could be Callout extensions, ‘Shop Widgets’ or Structured Snippets.
Optimize Mobile Bids
One of the key insights of PPC campaign is that search behavior varies by device. The increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet means most people will run into your ad on their mobile devices.
Even then it’s not automatic that optimizing mobile bids will increase conversion. You may simply have higher clicks but lower conversion.
The most important issue is to ensure that you have more targeted ads towards mobile and tablet devices as opposed to desktop. Typically, no matter how well your desktop conversions are, you still need to optimize for mobile, because mobile devices offer more opportunities for conversion.
Utilize Remarketing Lists
PPC remarketing is an effective means of attracting users back to your site and expanding your brand reach. Remarketing can enhance your PPC performance and help to sieve out irrelevant traffic on search engines like Google.
One of the best ways of remarketing is increasing the search bids for past conversions and purchasers. The trick is to redirect the site traffic back to your site for repeat purchases.
However, if your product is a one-time purchase item then you can exclude past conversions when they search for the keyword. The other major form of remarketing is targeting site visitors who added items to their cart but didn’t convert.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day the PPCs performance insights and feedback on conversions, and CTR should always guide your every move. When you have done proper research and are armed with the right keywords, settings and ad copies then you’ll be ready to run a successful campaign.
A typical PPC campaign might need daily or even hourly tweaking. Successful PPC campaigns are about finding new ways to improve your already well-performing ads while leveraging PPC campaigns to stay ahead of your competitors.