Online marketing has become the lifeline of businesses today because the internet is where the customers are. Unless you promote your brand, products, and services over this channel, you cannot imagine sustenance and growth. A successful online marketing strategy is a mix of tactics, all of which aim to bring traffic to your website and drive conversions from the visitors. The idea is to arrive at a mix that facilitates both. Before ideating the right set, you need to understand the various techniques and know how these work. Let us understand the technique called PPC in detail.
Over the years, Pay Per Click (PPC) has emerged as one of the most effective online marketing strategies for businesses. Compared to the strategies like Search Engine Optimization and content marketing, it yields tangible results within a much smaller time frame. Not only does it get qualified traffic for your website but it also serves unmatched scalability and consistency. However, since it is a paid form of advertising, you need to do it the right way to get optimal results with minimum spending. Here are some tips that you can follow to create a winning PPC campaign for your business.
Establish a goal
To start with, a PPC campaign must have a clear, well-established goal to yield successful results. Moreover, the goal gives a direction to your campaign. Unless there is a measurable one at the start, you will not be able to optimize the campaign. The goal may vary depending on the nature of the business; it may be the maximization of leads, downloads, subscriptions or sales.
Once you establish the objective of the campaign, you can create a roadmap to take your campaign ahead and get optimal results from it with minimal investment and time. Only after having a goal will you be able to monitor, measure and compare the campaign with the targets and see whether it reaches them or not.
Focus on performing keywords
Like SEO, PPC too is a keyword-focused strategy. Therefore, you need to identify the performing keywords because these will be the building blocks of the campaign. Start by preparing the keyword performance reports so that you can see the ones that are performing the best and getting you results. At the same time, this does not mean that you can rest on your laurels.
Remember that you should keep an eye on the performing keywords on an ongoing basis and change the bidding strategies from time to time. These small tweaks will enable you to trace the optimal bids for the keywords. Also, you should track the quality scores of the keywords to find the ones that are the top performers on a consistent basis.
Filter the low-performing keywords
While you must keep track of the performing keywords, it is equally crucial to know the low-performing ones because they can actually have a negative impact on the campaign. Essentially, the non-performing keywords are the ones that do not get you any traffic or conversions but rather waste your ad spends. Once you filter such keywords on the basis of impressions, clicks, and conversions they generate, pause the spending on them completely. Basically, the non-performing keywords are of three types that you need to identify and address.
Firstly, the ones that have no impressions are the worst because they are primarily responsible for wasting your spend as the users are not searching for them at all. The best way to address them is by deleting them. Secondly, there are ones with impressions but no clicks, which happen when the keywords lack relevance. The solution is to make them more targeted and also work on the ad copy to make it more relevant to search queries. The third type of non-performing keywords gets you clicks but no conversions. They indicate that you need to optimize the campaign and enhance your website as well. Other reasons could be the low search volume and low bid for the keywords that are failing.
Make a list of negative keywords
Identifying the performing and non-performing keywords is crucial to fine-tuning your PPC campaign but you cannot ignore the negative keywords at any cost. This approach can considerably save your ad budget by disallowing the ads being triggered by irrelevant queries. This means that only qualified users will be able to see the ads. In this way, you can avoid irrelevant clicks and save some dollars on them.
Once you add negative keywords, the ad will be displayed only for a search query which is correlated directly with the targeted keywords. Besides saving on the ad spends, these keywords also increase the quality scores, click-through rate, and conversions. Overall, the ads become more targeted and the clicks that they fetch are conversion-oriented. In this way, they play a key role in taking your PPC campaign towards success.
Optimize the keyword bids
After the performing, non-performing and negative keywords are sorted out, the next step would be to optimize the keyword bids for making your campaign a success. Bid optimization is not a one-size-fits-all thing and varies from campaign to campaign. You can use one of the following bidding options depending on your needs.
- Manual bidding: As the name suggests, the bids are adjusted manually. This means that you can have granular control over them and can change them quickly when needed. Agility is extremely important in the dynamic online landscape and this can be assured through manual bidding.
- Target cost-per-acquisition bidding: With this option, bids are automatically optimized according to a target CPA with the aim to maximize conversions. The historical information of the campaign is used to find an optimal CPC bid that will trigger the ad.
- Target return-on-a-spend (ROAS) bidding: This method optimizes the bid on the basis of return on ad spend and fetches you more conversion value with the campaign.
Create compelling ad copies
The next and perhaps the most important tip for driving success for your PPC campaign is to create a compelling ad copy. After all the work done with keywords and bid optimization, this is where your potential customer comes in contact with your brand. Unless you have something impressive enough, you will not be able to engage them to move further with their buying journey. A distinctive, relevant and compelling ad copy is needed to attract the customers.
Staying true to your niche matters a lot; for example, managing a campaign for an IT business differs from managing the one for real estate business, as this site shows. Being niche-specific can make your ads more targeted and entice the users to convert. The idea is to have a hard-hitting headline and concise copy that straightaway gets to the point. Also, highlighting your USP and including a strong Call-To-Action can make your ad more compelling.
Make impactful, ad-specific landing pages
Although an impressive ad copy can go a long way in making your PPC campaign a winning one, you need to invest in impactful landing pages as well. An ad copy alone will not get your desired results unless it has a complementary landing page because this is where the potential customer will reach after clicking the ad. The idea is to ensure that the content in the ad blends seamlessly with the offering showcased on the landing page.
A common mistake that marketers make is to save time and effort on creating specific landing pages for individual ads; instead, they make the users land on a generic landing page that runs for all ads in their campaign or even on the homepage of the website. This is a wrong approach because the visitors will probably not get what they expect when they land on such pages and will probably not go ahead with the conversion. Tailored landing pages, on the other hand, ensure consistency and boost the chances of conversion.
Conduct A/B testing of PPC elements
Another crucial element of a successful PPC campaign is A/B testing, which needs to be done on every level of the campaign. From the keywords to the ad copy, and landing page, every element needs to be tested to ensure its relevance. The ad components that you need to test include its headline, description, keywords, ad extensions, and link. Testing of the landing pages includes the assessment of elements such as the design, images, features and benefits and CTA.
A/B testing is not a one-time process but an ongoing one because the PPC landscape is forever changing and so are the customer expectations. So you need to evaluate your keywords, bids, and ad groups constantly for ensuring that they are always on track. Also, test only one element at a time as this approach gives you reliable results and helps you to optimize the overall campaign for assured performance improvement.
Finally, never take a set-and-forget approach for your PPC campaign if you want it to deliver optimal results. Keep a close eye on the PPC data and results and be quick to take action whenever there is a need. Standing apart and winning over the customers is not a day's work and requires consistent efforts and improvements. Following these tips can take your PPC campaign a long way and make it a success.
