What is PPC? 

PPC, also known as pay-per-click or Paid Search, is a form of online advertising that allows you to target potential customers when they’re searching online.

Objectives for PPC campaigns might include driving highly qualified leads, inbound phone calls, sales or increasing ROI. 

The most popular PPC channel is Google Ads which allow you to target your ads using specific keywords to ensure that your ads show when potential customers are in the market for your product or service. PPC makes it easier to get in front of your ideal customer when they are specifically searching for your product or service. 

PPC best practices 

To make sure you get the most from your PPC campaigns and to make sure they’re as effective as possible, you should follow the following best practice tips when planning, setting up and monitoring your PPC strategy. 

Plan your keyword strategy 

Choosing the keywords you’re going to target with your PPC strategy is key to success. Your keywords will form the foundation of your PPC campaigns and will influence the success of your strategy. To make sure you get the best ROI, you will need to target relevant keywords and phrases that most accurately represent the products or services you provide. 

Depending on the products or services you provide, you might find that some keywords have extremely high competition and are expensive to bid on. We recommend looking for longer keyword phrases that are less competitive but still generate a good amount of search engine traffic, that are likely to drive customers to your website and do not attract a huge number of bids from other advertisers. 

Types of keyword that you will need to include in your campaigns include: 

• Brand keywords 
• Product specific keywords 
• Generic keywords 
• Long tail keywords 
• Misspellings 
• Negative keywords 

Optimise your ads 

If you want searchers to click on your ads and land on your website, you will need to entice them with your ads. Write your title and ad copy carefully so that it’s targeted and will appeal to the people who are ready to buy from you. 

Ads that are not properly optimised might generate clicks but, if they don’t provide conversions, you will be paying without gaining anything back. 

Optimise your landing pages 

Once you have managed to generate clicks, you will need these visitors to turn into paying customers. The conversion rate will determine the success of your PPC campaigns so it’s important to make sure the pages you send customers to are relevant and reflect the content of your ad. 

Don’t just drive ad traffic to your homepage as this is unlikely to lead to conversions. Make sure you link your ads to product pages or a page directly related to the text of the ad they have just clicked on. Specific landing pages that are specifically tailored to your PPC campaigns are most effective if you want to drive as many conversions as possible. 

When optimising landing pages, follow the same on-page SEO practices you would on any other webpage. This means including the keywords in the title and meta description of the page and using relevant keywords in the main content of the page. 

Alongside the content, make sure your landing page is also well-designed. This means the way the page looks, as well as loading speed and user experience too. These factors will be crucial to the success of your campaigns. 

Landing page best practices include: 

• Create a visually appealing ad 
• Use the same keywords on the page as you use in your ad 
• The landing page offer should match your ad 
• Clearly display the CTA 
• Limit form fields to only what is necessary 
• Make sure the landing page design is responsive and easy to use on desktop and mobile 
• Display your company logo and contact information prominently 
• Make sure the page loads within three seconds 

Use negative keywords 

This strategy is often overlooked but it’s extremely effective. Negative keywords are keywords that you can add to your campaigns so that they are not targeted by your ads. Added these lets Google know not to show your campaigns in searches that include these words. This will ensure that your budget is not wasted by displaying your ads for irrelevant searches and for customers who are unlikely to buy. 

Target bottom of the funnel keywords 

If you’re finding that your ads are driving plenty of traffic to your website but those visits are not resulting in the amount of conversions you expect, you may be targeting customers who are not yet ready to buy. If you’re using too many top of the funnel keywords, you may be targeting consumers before they reach the decision phase of their customer journey and they’re unlikely to convert. 

Consumers who are in the early stages of researching a product or solution will use general keywords in the search engines and they’re not ready to buy because they’re not educated enough about what exactly they’re looking for. 

Similar to adding negative keywords, bottom of the funnel keywords can help you to avoid reaching people who are unlikely to convert and will help you to drive traffic that is more qualified. 

Consider high converting ad formats 

Whilst PPC ads are effective, there are several ad formats that are better at converting so it’s important to be aware of them to make sure you get as many conversions from your ads as possible. 

Use Shopping Ads to market your products 

If you have an Ecommerce business, Shopping Ads are the most effective way to get your products in front of the right people, at the right time. 

Consumers use Google every day to find the products they need and want. Google Shopping campaigns pull product information such as the product image, price, your brand name and your Merchant Center data feed and will display them to searchers. They will also drive customers to the relevant product page so this will help to streamline the user experience and help to boost your conversion rates. 

Ad customisers 

Ad customisers allow you to dynamically ad specific details from a feed into your ads. This can provide a range of benefits including the ability to create a sense of urgency and drive clicks. The biggest benefit is improving the relevance of your ads which will improve the quality score of your ads. 

Video ads 

YouTube provides you with an engaged audience that you can show your video ad to. TrueView ads are one of the most popular YouTube ad formats and will play before other videos on the site, with the option for users to skip them after five seconds. 

There is much less competition on YouTube in comparison to other search engines so this provides you with a huge opportunity to reach and convert customers across a range of different demographics. 

Retargeting 

Retargeting campaigns use cookies to track visitors to your site so you can continue to market to them once they leave. While they browse the internet, you ads will be shown to them to help entice them back and help to convert window shoppers into customers. Research shows that customers who are retargeted with display ads are 70% more likely to convert. 

This is one of the most effective methods of closing sales that you might miss out on otherwise. You can use retargeting across Google Ads as well as social media networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn. 

Measure and test campaigns

The best way to learn more about what does and doesn’t work for your business in terms of paid search is to keep an eye on how your campaigns are performing and how the results measure up against your goals and targets. 

It’s easy to set your ads running and forget about them but this isn’t going to help you get the most from them. Look at how much you’re spending and the results you’re getting on a regular basis to adjust your budget based on what is and isn’t working and keep an eye on campaigns so you can stop wasting budget on ads that aren’t generating conversions. 

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