Creating the Best PPC Campaign

Creating the Best PPC Ad Campaign can be overwhelming for some people and their businesses. This article will explain many of the best practices to use in order to run the most successful PPC campaigns.

PPC campaigns can be daunting to begin with. 34% of marketers believe PPC is the most effective marketing tactic, but nearly as many believe it is the most difficult. The key to PPC strategy is setting up your account structure properly. Successful PPC advertising has some common characteristics – organized account structure, keyword research, and ongoing management. This article will give some guidelines to creating the best PPC campaign for your company.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns

PPC Campaign

PPC campaigns require that advertisers pay a fee each time one of their ads are clicked. Essentially, you are buying a visit to your website instead of hoping it comes organically from a search engine results page. Ads are placed in an auction to bid on keywords to decide which one will be most relevant for a particular search.

Your bid strategy cannot be to simply pay the most money and therefore be the top result for a search. PPC campaigns have become increasingly popular as they tend to drive traffic much quicker than an organic SEO campaign.

Google Ads

Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords) is by far the most popular platform for PPC campaigns. With over 3.5 billion searches happening every day, you are bound to find people in your target audience. There are different formats, including display ads, video, and search ads.

Paid ads will be shown in a variety of places on Google to maximize the amount of exposure. Most people are familiar with the ads placement at the top of the search queries. However, ads are also shown at the bottom of each search page and within Google Maps. The most important thing that determines whether your ad gets shown is your Quality Score.

Quality Score

Google Quality Score

Which ads get chosen to appear for a search depends on the bid and the Quality Score associated with the ad. The CPC bid is the highest amount of money an advertiser is willing to spend for that ad. The Quality Score is like a grade Google gives your ad.

A higher quality score will earn you more clicks at lower costs and better ad positions. A number of factors go into your Quality Score and ad rank. These should always be kept in mind when creating your advertising campaign.

This includes the expected click through rate (CTR) calculated by Google. The relevance of each keyword to the ad group and the relevance of your ad text to the search queries are also included. Your historical Google Ads account performance also factors in. Lastly, the landing page quality and experience is included in your score. PPC agencies can help ensure that you have a high Quality Score which will help you maximize your return on investment.

Account Structure

When talking about PPC advertising, your account structure is extremely important. This refers to the way the following five elements are arranged: campaigns, ad groups, keywords, ad text, and landing pages. Many people spend the most time focusing on their keywords and neglect the other parts of account structure.

However, the keywords alone do not determine how successful your PPC strategy will be. Taking the time to create a logical, organized structure lets ad platforms like Google decide how relevant your campaign is. In addition, disorganized structures will be more difficult to correct after you have launched your PPC campaign.

Campaigns

AdWords campaign

Campaigns are the foundation that the rest of your account structure will rely on. Most online advertising campaigns will be created based on a certain objective you are trying to achieve. For example, a clothing store’s objective might be to increase sales during their end of summer closeout. Campaigns can also be created based on location and language.

If the clothing store has locations in two different cities, they may want to create a different campaign for each city. This can be done even though the objective for both campaigns is the same. Separating the campaigns will make updating and improving them much easier later on. You can also choose different types of campaigns. Some of the most popular options include video, search, or display advertising.

Ad Groups

Ad groups can be thought of as the different ways you are going to fulfill the objectives you decided on. For each campaign, there could be one, two, or as many ad groups as you feel necessary. However, the more ad groups you have, the more difficult your account becomes to manage.

Depending on your budget, it can also mean no one ad group is getting enough funding. Using the clothing store example, their end of summer campaign might have two different ad groups – women’s clothing and men’s clothing.

Keywords, Ad Text, and Landing Pages

Each ad group is then made up of keywords, ad text (or ad copy), and landing pages. Keywords need to be relevant to the specific ad group they are under. This is generally where advertisers spend most of their time. A good approach to keyword research will be described below.

Your ad text should be unique to each ad and include some of the keywords you identified as relevant. The more personalized the ad text is, the more successful the ad will be. It is a good idea to include your unique value proposition in your ad text. This will set yours apart from the competition. Adding a call to action in the ad text will also make it more successful.

The webpage a customer will be taken to after clicking your ad is the landing page. Content on the landing pages should be consistent with the keywords used in the ad text and its overall messaging. Making your website’s homepage the landing page is not a good idea. You want the landing page to be something that helps the customer find exactly what they are looking for.

Again using the clothing store example, the homepage will not give customers what they were looking for. It would be a better idea to use a page on your website featuring the women’s (or men’s) end of summer sale items.

You also want to ensure the landing page has a high speed. The longer people need to wait for it to load, the lower your conversions will be. Remember, the quality of the landing page will also improve your Quality Score. PPC agencies like SEO Design Chicago can also help you create the right landing page.

Keyword Research

Keyword research

No PPC campaign will be successful unless the most relevant keywords are chosen. To begin brainstorming keywords, try to think like your ideal customer. What is your target customer looking for in their search results? How will they search for it? At this stage of keyword research, there are no bad ideas.

Then, you will want to research which of those words will be most successful. Many PPC advertising platforms have tools that you can use for your keyword research. Google’s Keyword Planner is one tool that can help you choose the best keywords for your campaign.

It will give you an idea of the search volume for each keyword, so you can choose the ones with the most potential for traffic. If some keywords do not receive a lot of search volume, it will suggest more popular ones. It will also suggest keywords to improve upon your most successful choices.

The tool can also be used to help determine your ad’s budget by showing how much it might cost to bid on certain keywords. You can further refine your results by location. Just because lots of people in the United States search for your keywords doesn’t mean people in your target market do. You can use this filter to see the most relevant results for you.

Using Specific Keywords

Using the most relevant and specific keywords will ensure that you get the best leads from it. This will also improve your return on investment. The more specific your choices, the less competition and the lower cost for the ad. For example, a search for “women’s clothing” is a lot less specific than “women’s sale bikini tops.” Likely, the first option will have more competition and be more expensive.

The types of keywords mentioned above are “positive” keywords. These are words you believe people will be searching for when they find your ad. However, adding negative keywords can also improve your campaign’s relevance.

These are terms that are similar to your positive keywords, but you don’t want included. For example, for a luxury clothing store, “cheap women’s clothing” should be a negative keyword. This will stop traffic that is not likely to turn into a conversion, lowering your cost.

Ongoing Management

Once you’ve started your PPC campaign, you want to make sure it continues to be successful. New competitors start making waves and keywords become less valuable. For this reason, you cannot simply set up your campaign and forget about it.

For many small businesses, this is one of the biggest challenges with PPC advertising. Ongoing management of your campaigns will help you identify improvements that may need to be made and opportunities for growth. This may include removing keywords that are expensive, but under-performing. This is where PPC agencies can help.

Using PPC agencies like SEO Design Chicago can give you the peace of mind that your PPC campaigns are successful. A higher quality score will earn you more clicks at lower costs and better ad positions. Reach out today to SEO Design Chicago to find out how we can help your PPC campaign!

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