So let’s say that you’re tracking your pay-per-click campaign’s performance. After all the hard work, and the long hours spent on strategizing, what’s the status of your traffic? Are you impressed with the overall results?
If you aren’t, there is still hope.
In this post, we’ll walk you through the eight effective tips on how you can significantly improve your PPC campaign performance.
Develop a strong account structure
If your account isn’t perfectly tailored to fit your business, then you’ll probably have some issues with the overall results.
Some accounts are structured on the type of products and services that they offer. While others based on the type of audience that they cater to, or on the specific problem that they wish to solve.
Don’t create a single campaign that markets your products and services all at once. If you can, break them down into smaller segments, and create separate campaigns and ad groups. That way, it’s easier to customize users’ need and intent.
It also lets you allocate your budget with those campaigns that are performing well, rather than funding those that underperform.
Employ negative keywords in your campaign
At its core, negative keywords instruct search engines to not show ads for particular search terms.
Let’s say you’re only selling high-end wooden furniture. Some searches lead to unsatisfactory results. There are terms like old, restored, free, and so on that will show up. These are irrelevant to your business. So, your best option is to add a negative keyword list.
There are a lot of advantages when using this tactic. One, it steers prospects in the right direction. Two, it weeds out unnecessary traffic, helping you save more time and resources. Finally, if you have multiple PPC campaigns simultaneously going on, utilizing negative keywords, keep you away from cross-promotional matches.
Without a doubt, continuously building out and monitoring your negative keyword lists drastically reduces costs and boosts results.
This is especially true when utilizing broader match types. Sometimes, you’re not aware that you’re wasting a lot of money with searches that are hardly related to your business. Especially if the negatives are not properly set up.
Optimize keyword quality score
A quality score is estimated based on the overall quality of your landing pages, ads, and keywords. If all of these are highly relevant, then it gives a better user experience.
If you’re giving your audience a quality user experience, Google will reward you with a better quality score.
According to Google, the quality score is based on three factors:
- Ad Relevance
- Click-Through Rate (CTR)
- Landing Page Relevance
To be able to enhance your quality score, you should strive to improve on those three factors.
Perform competitor analysis
According to a top New York PPC company, “Competitor analysis is crucial for PPC campaign because it gives you a lot of information about your competitors. This information not only allows you to upgrade your PPC campaigns but also boost your conversions.”
To be able to conduct an effective competitor analysis, you must first need to know:
- Your competition
- The products and services they offer
- The strategies they employ
- Their strengths and weaknesses
- The threat that you have with your competitors.
Once you collect all the important information, base your strategy according to the following items above.
Consider remarketing
Remarketing lets you show your ads to people who have previously visited your site.
It’s a great way to improve the overall conversions of your campaigns. Through it, you can create ads that are highly targeted. You only have to target people who have previously visited your site and what they’re searching for.
You can even segment your audience by making different ads based on the pages users have visited.
Overall, remarketing is a strategy that generates higher conversion rates because it reminds users of a specific product or service when they’re actively searching for it.
Create compelling PPC ads
Your ad copy should be compelling and engaging so that it attracts more prospective customers.
Focus on crafting headlines that easily grabs your audience’s attention. Make your ads relevant and specific. Don’t beat around the bush. Make it as concise and on-point as possible.
Also, get rid of unnecessary words and use words that only gives value to a product or service. Make a solid call-to-action and highlight your unique selling proposition.
Execute split test on PPC ad elements
Digital Marketing strategies are continuously changing. PPC ads are not an exception.
In PPC, A/B testing variants are more straightforward and a lot simpler. Testing gives you a clear idea of what’s working well, and what are the things that you need to get rid of. But you shouldn’t take this task lightly, either.
Ideally, there are four main areas that you should test your copy:
- Headline
- Link
- Body
- Keywords on display
When running these tests, look out for patterns on how specific keywords are more effective when it comes to raising awareness, CTR, conversions, and so on.
You’ll notice that some are great in a single component, but doing poorly in some areas. It doesn’t mean, though, that one has more value than the other. It’s just that it’s serving an entirely different function.
Put the right ad extension
The main function of ad extensions is that it gives your audience more information about your business so that it’s easier for them to come up with a decision. Example of extensions is phone numbers, address, links to landing pages, and so on.
Extensions improve your visibility on SERPS, which eventually creates more value.
These have to be manually set up, but sometimes AdWords show them automatically if it thinks that your ad performance can benefit from it.
Note that just placing an extension doesn’t guarantee that it will show up on the ad. The ad rank must meet specific criteria, and the extension must give value.
Over to You
Hopefully, you’ll apply these tips in your PPC campaign. Keep in mind that not all of these may be right in your current strategy. So it’s best to assess first and knows what works best for you before you decide to jump straight right in. Good luck and have fun, optimizing!