Get the Most From Your Money – Optimizing your PPC

As marketing success continues to grow dependent on a digital track, truly understanding pay-per-click (PPC) makes a big difference in your business’s ad profits. When correctly managed, almost any company reaps the benefits from PPC optimization. To get the most from your PPC campaign, consider these optimization strategies:

Keyword Bidding

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Using broad batch matching in a campaign tends to trigger ads for unwanted search queries. To uncover what exact search words or queries bring up your ad, whether by time period, by campaign, or by group, go to the Search Terms under Dimensions (in Google AdWords). Since exact match bidding presents large limitations, instead opt for exact match with modified batch bidding which adds a “+” in front of the keywords. This allows you to detach from phrases that deliver the wrong message in connection to your brand, but still enables longer search entries to pop the ad. Furthermore, this method facilitates negative keyword research.

Auction Insights Report

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Never jump into a PPC campaign without knowledge of your competition. To get a feel for your competitors’ strategies and your own campaign’s worth, use the auction insights report. With this tool, companies compare and test keywords, groups of keywords, singular or multiple ad groups, and singular or multiple campaigns through impression shares. The tool also shows if a campaign’s ads show up for branded keywords.

Landing Page

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Landing pages, while not part of a PPC campaign, correlate directly to average cost per click and conversion rates. An effective landing page considers the searcher’s intent in what it offers on the page: a product, a sign-up platform, or some other invitation to action. For full landing page optimization, keywords must match a company’s campaign goals to inform ad copy while the landing page must match the ad. If these factors do not all connect, the negative outcome of increased cost per conversion and decreased click-through-rates (CTR) defeats the marketing strategy.

Ad Extensions

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Headline selection, description copy, URL choice, and images all come into play when creating a successful ad. However, to up CTR, ad extensions prove most effective (and cost-effective since they’re free). Ad extensions include location extensions, call extensions, sitelink extensions, product extensions, social extensions, dynamic search ad extensions, and mobile app extensions. To pick the most beneficial extension to your conversion goals, test each one with your PPC campaigns. In particular, sitelinks takes searchers directly to specific landing pages to meet their needs, which accelerates conversion rate optimization (CRO). Plus, they expand an ad’s real estate in paid listings and search results.

However, before applying an ad extension, consider that they affect all ad groups within a campaign. As such, your campaign might require more segmentation in order for ad extensions to truly boost CTR. In addition, some ad extensions only trigger an ad if it’s in the premium, or top three listed, results. For this reason, make sure you’re bidding high enough. These work particularly well for popular products or for promotions of sales.

Don’t use your profits to lose them. With the right approach and these strategies, PPC marketing ensures that your money stretches to its fullest potential. Keep your company expanding.

By Jon Correll