When it comes to paid advertising, there’s always room for improvement. So, what exactly does it take to have a winning PPC campaign?
Pay-Per-Click is one of the most effective forms of online advertising because it allows businesses to reach their target audience quickly and effectively. Whether you’re running a small business with just a few employees or a large corporation with thousands of employees, using PPC ads to promote your company’s services and products can generate massive results.
If you’re interested in learning how to launch a successful PPC campaign, then check out this quick step by step tutorial for creating successful campaigns.
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Landing pages are the cornerstone of any digital marketing campaign, and especially so if you're running on Google Ads network. They are the gateway to success — if visitors land on your site and click something, then you have a conversion. If they don’t convert, then you have wasted time and money.
You can’t afford to waste either. That’s why landing page optimization is so important. Landing page optimization includes everything from writing compelling copy, to creating engaging visuals, to testing different layouts, colors, fonts, and images.
A good landing page should leave a lasting impression and generate leads. You can do this by including relevant calls-to-action in your design and by providing useful information that makes users feel valued.
For example, a landing page for a service that creates custom WordPress themes might include advice on how to choose between free and paid themes, along with a download button and call-to-action buttons.
Other than the ads you create, a landing page will be one of the key drivers to a high conversion rate on display and search campaigns.
While it may seem obvious that you should have analytics installed on every site, it is actually quite important and will help you understand how well campaigns are working.
Analytics tracks things such as where visitors came from, what keywords were searched, and how much time spent on each page etc.
It may sound boring, but this data can help you tweak pages and optimize content so you get better results.
Some common issues include incorrectly setting up conversion goals or having them set too low.
Also, if you’re running multiple sites, make sure you only track one per property. This is because when you visit another website within the same domain, the cookies won’t transfer across.
The most effective way of generating traffic from paid advertising is by targeting highly relevant keywords. However, if you’re new to PPC, it can be difficult to know what keywords you should target.
A good starting point is to identify terms that are similar to the ones your site already ranks for organically. These could be related products or services, industry terms, local business names, etc.
Once you’ve identified keywords, then look up how much competition each term receives organically. If there’s little or no competition, you may be able to purchase the exact same keyword phrase.
However, if you find yourself competing with multiple brands for a specific keyword, it might be worth finding a different keyword phrase. Keyword stuffing can hurt your brand, so aim for phrases that are long enough to be natural yet short enough to be memorable.
While most people think negative keywords mean blocking certain words from appearing in your ad copy, this is only part of the story. Negative keywords help prevent your ads from showing up when someone searches for a specific word.
Negative keywords aren’t just useful for preventing irrelevant ads from shwing up. They’re also great tools for boosting the CTR (Click Through Rate) of your ads.
How? Let’s say you’ve written an awesome blog post about how to improve conversions. To boost its visibility, you could include a few related keywords in your ad text so your potential customers know what they’re looking for.
Using negative keywords to boost your CTR is a low-risk method of increasing your ROI (Return On Investment). If an ad shows up and no one clicks through, it means your ad wasn’t relevant enough. However, if an ad shows up and many click through, you’ll know you picked good keywords.
You should know exactly who your target audience is before you start any kind of paid advertising campaign. There’s no point spending money if you aren’t sure what you’re paying for.
To do this, you need to find out where your potential customers hang out online. If you’re selling a product, this could be anywhere from Twitter to Pinterest to Instagram to YouTube.
Once you’ve identified your target audience, you need to research their demographics. This means knowing where they live, work, go to school, play sports, etc.
There are times where you'll need to target custom audiences, and this can be a complicated process, so I won't dive too far into it. Some platforms will also let you create lookalike audiences based on information you might have about your audience.
Finally, you need to find similar audiences and see how they interact with each other. This gives you insight into how your audience thinks and behaves, which helps you to tailor your message to appeal to them better.
Bidding strategies fall into two categories: cost per click and cost per impression. Cost per impression (CPM) means paying each time someone visits your ad. CPM is often used for text ads. Cost per click (CPC) means paying only when someone clicks on your ad. CPC works better for display ads.
You can choose between these two types of advertising based on your budget. If you’ve got a limited budget, CPC may be the best option. However, if you’d rather spend less money than more, then CPM might be the way to go.
Adwords budgets aren’t something you should spend frivolously. As much as you might think you know how to do PPC, you may actually be spending money where you shouldn’t.
You see, if you set your Adwords budget based on what you think you can afford, then you could end up blowing your whole budget before you realize it.
So instead, try setting your budget based on what you want to achieve. If you want to generate $10k/mo in revenue, your budget should probably be around $5k/mo.
That said, you still need to find a balance between spending enough to get results, but not so much that you’re wasting money.
Your goal should always be to beat your competition, so if you know what they are doing, then you can do better. If you see them using techniques that work, then you can replicate them.
You can identify your competitors by looking at their backlinks, domain authority, and most importantly, keywords.
Once you’ve identified your competitors, you can look at their landing pages, blog posts, articles, and anything else they might be using to generate traffic.
From here you can determine how they did it, and then use that information to improve upon it.
This is where the fun happens and all your research into your audience, daily budget, and diving into a keyword tool will pay off. Hopefully.
You'll need great ad copy (good with the words, and catchy headline for search campaigns) and creatives (pretty pictures, videos for video ads, or fancy GIF you made) to draw in your audience. This is where it all culminates to start knocking down a campaign objective or two.
Platforms like Facebook will allow you to single image or carousel ads if you're selling retail products.
Advertising is an important part of any business; if done well, it can generate huge revenue. But if done poorly, it could destroy a company.
Getting paid for advertising is tough enough, so why would you try to do it yourself? Because when you do, you might miss out on opportunities to improve your conversions and sales.
A good ad agency knows how to target a specific audience, choose the best medium, and optimize everything down to the last pixel. They understand what works and what doesn’t and can adjust accordingly.
They know your campaign objective and will do everything in their power to make it succeed on Google Ads or any other platform.
An expert ad campaign design lets you focus on running your own business instead of wasting time trying to figure out where to spend your money.
Remember, PPC campaigns are meant to generate sales; not just traffic. Search engines and social networks want you to spend money to make money.
The great thing about PPC advertising is that it gives you immediate feedback on your results. That means you can tweak your campaign and improve your performance over time. Google Ads gives you tons of tools to track and analyze campaigns.
When done correctly, PPC ads are extremely effective. This is why it's become a staple for many websites and companies.
