Pay-per-click (PPC) can be one of the fastest ways to grow a business. But if you don’t know what you’re doing it can also be one of the fastest ways to lose a lot of money.
With the help of some tried and tested tips, though, you should be able to create a winning PPC campaign.
Keep reading and I’ll share 5 PPC hacks that’ll help you become a PPC expert. Use what you learn and it won’t be long before PPC is one of the best marketing channels for your business.
1. Define Your Audience to Prevent Wasted Ad Spend
If you direct your PPC campaigns at anyone and everyone, you’re never going to experience any form of PPC success.
Relevance is hugely important. If your campaigns are not relevant, the people being exposed to them will not be interested in them. This will lead to them ignoring your marketing. This, of course, will lead to an incredibly low return on investment (ROI).
PPC marketing works best when you have spent some time defining your ideal audience. You can then use this information to create campaigns that will only be shown to a relevant audience.
We will discuss this in more detail later, but the way you go about defining your target audience is going to depend on the PPC platform you’re using.
In simple terms, there are generally two kinds of PPC platforms – search engine and social media platforms.
If you’re going to run social media campaigns you generally need to think about defining demographic data. You also need to think about the goals and fears of your ideal audience.
If you need help with this, think about using a Persona to help you craft an outline of your target audience. You can then use this information when inputting the targeting settings within your chosen PPC platform.
If you’re going to run search engine campaigns, though, you need to consider the above but also some extra details. This mainly includes the kinds of keywords your target market will type into Google when they’re looking to spend money with your kind of company. In the next section, we will discuss how you can identify the best keywords.
2. Understand How to Select Worthwhile Keywords
If you’re going to run a PPC search campaign, it’s essential you know how to pick the right keywords. For the most part, there are two platforms you can use if you’re going to run a search campaign. AdWords and Bing.
For many, AdWords is best, simply because Google is the more popular search engine. This means that there is generally a wider range of keywords you can target. With that in mind, we’re going to take a look at how you should go about selecting keywords if you’re using AdWords to market your company.
If you want to find keywords for your search ad campaign, you should think about using a tool known as the Google Keyword Planner.
This tool is free to use and gives you the chance to discover a wide range of relevant keywords. It’ll also show you how much it costs to ‘bid’ on a certain keyword.
To get the best results with this tool, consider adding something relatively basic, that is related to your industry. If you own a cleaning company, you might type in ‘cleaning.’
If your business is local, you’ll also want to select the appropriate location. Or, you can include the location when you’re typing in the keyword. For instance, if you provide cleaning services in New York, you’d type in ‘cleaning services New York.’
When you do this, you’ll then be shown a list of keywords. The keywords that are the most expensive often drive traffic that will produce the best return on investment. If this were not the case, other businesses would not be willing to bid so highly.
3. Experiment with Different Ad Platforms
To begin with, you’ll want to focus on just using one ad platform to promote your business. But over time you will want to try other platforms too.
For instance, you may start out only using Search Ads to promote your business. Eventually, you may get to the point where Search Ads are delivering results and your marketing is ROI positive. In a situation like this, it can be a good idea to test the waters with other platforms like YouTube.
You don’t have to stop advertising on Search Ads. You just want to see if you can achieve results on another platform.
The good thing about using other platforms is that it gives you the chance to market your business in different methods. You may find that these other methods are able to deliver better results, without costing you as much money.
For example, YouTube is often less competitive than Search Ads. This means that you may end up paying less per acquisition if you use YouTube Ads. You may even find that your target audience is more receptive to video ads.
4. Don’t Forget About Split Testing
No matter how good you are at PPC advertising, creating a winning campaign is not easy. The best PPC campaigns in the world are often the product of many rounds of split testing. Following this, you shouldn’t expect to create a winning PPC campaign on your first attempt.
There are many aspects of a PPC campaign you can test and what you test will depend on the kind of campaign you’re running.
Mainly you’ll want to think about testing the creative of your ad (otherwise known as the overall design of your ad). This might mean you run creatives that have varying headlines, descriptions, and calls to action.
It is important you only change one thing, per round of testing. In doing so, it will be a lot easier to work out what is driving the downturn or an improvement in results. It also makes it a lot harder to decide what should make it to the next round of testing.
For instance, if you adjust both the headline and descriptions, you won’t know which aspect delivered the change. You, therefore, won’t know what you should improve upon in the next round of tests.
You’ll also want to think about running each variation of an ad, in its own separate ‘ad group.’
This is because ad platforms tend to run their own tests. You’ll find that ad platforms will run all the ads that can be found in a single ad group. Over time, the ad that delivers the best results in the short term will be published the most. This isn’t ideal if you’re running split tests.
5. Take Advantage of New Features
Ad platforms are constantly trying to compete with one another. Due to this, you’ll find that ad platforms are always releasing new features that can help you better reach your target audience. An example of this might include Responsive Search Ads from Google.
Whenever there is a new ad product released, it is important you allocate a part of your budget towards experimenting with it. There’s no telling whether this new ad product will help you achieve better results. You will only know if you use it.
Plus some ad products can help you create campaigns that will help you stand out amongst your competitors. If you were to run a standard Search Ad, you’d only be able to use one headline within your ad.
But if you’re going to run some Responsive Search Ads, you’d be able to use three headlines. This means that your ads are now going to take up a lot more space within the search listings. In a situation like this, you generally don’t have to pay for the extra space, which makes the potential ROI improvements worth the effort.
If you find that a new feature is delivering great results, it’s important that you double down. You never know how things might change as more and more competitors start to make use of the new features.
Can You Call Yourself a PPC Expert?
Achieving results with PPC marketing isn’t simple. But with the right approach, you should be able to get results that’ll make your competitors green with envy. Learn more about PPC Campaign Management here.
In this post, we’ve covered 5 PPC hacks you can use to help improve the odds of your PPC campaigns succeeding. You need to think about who your target audience is. You should also spend some time experimenting with different PPC platforms. It also helps to consider how you can any of the new features released by a PPC platform.
Ultimately, though, if you want to be a PPC expert, it’s important you focus on testing. Only then will you be able to find the best PPC methods in the shortest period of time.
This can take a lot of discipline and sometimes a lot of time. Yet if you remain focused and go about things in a consistent manner, your business will soon experience explosive growth, thanks to PPC.
Need some personal branding tips? Check out this post for some helpful advice!
