Paid search or pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can yield substantial
returns on investment, but also needs careful control to keep budgets in
check.
To make sure you maximize your ROI but minimize your risk, consider the following.
The Basics
Here are a few things to bear in mind from the outset - and to make sure your campaign is built on a firm base.
1. Know Your Sector
If
this is a client, make sure you understand their business as much as
possible. Maybe even suggest going through a company training or
induction program to quickly get you up to speed.
Check what your
competitors, partners, suppliers and customers are doing, and adjust
your bids accordingly. Keep a watchful eye on competitors bidding on
your brand name and avoid losing potential customers.
2. Start Small, Scale Up
Identify
a number of target keyword areas and bid across these. But don’t spread
you budget too thin, start off slowly with a restricted campaign and
then scale it up.
This helps to test the water across a variety of
brand names, descriptive terms and competitive keywords to see which
perform best.
3. Measure, Measure, Measure
It’s amazing how many campaigns I’ve seen which have failed to setup basic conversion tracking.
Make
sure you put effort into getting this correct from the start. That way
you can have a long-term approach, where you can learn average
conversion rates and revenues, allowing you to estimate the performance
of future keyword bids.
4. Include Plurals
Your PPC
platform of choice may automatically account for differing singular and
plural forms of keywords, but double-check this.
If not, test which performs better - singulars or plurals - and adjust your bids and ad copy accordingly.
5. Be Logical
The more logical you are in your approach to your campaign, the easier it will be to see what's working.
Give
your bids time to come good, as early poor performance may average out
over time - but don't send good money after bad. Make sure you use a
logical campaign naming structure and organization too, that way it
makes it easier if someone else has to help out with managing the
campaign.
Managing Your Bids
Keep your campaign in close check and you can make sure it is up to date and giving you the ROI you need.
6. Know Your Target CPA
Depending on your PPC platform, budgets may be set as maximums, averages or some other target figure.
Know
how to set yours at a level that suits your overall budget, and make
sure you are achieving your target ROI. If you know your average
customer value and target CPA’s you can then find the optimum budget to
maximize revenue and profit from your campaign.
7. Be Pragmatic
It is easy to expect a massive ROI when you appear up top on a competitive search term, but be realistic.
Not
everyone will click your ad, and not everyone who does will make a
purchase. As long as your ROI remains positive, that's the main thing.
Just make sure you learn from your mistakes and keep things improving.
8. Use Google’s Tools
Google’s
tools have improved greatly over the last couple of years. And bidding
tools such as Conversion Optimiser can be a great way of ensuring you
maximize the performance of a campaign by focusing on bidding for
high-quality, converting clicks – as opposed to traffic volume.
9. Use the Search Query Report
Most
PPC platforms will offer in-built data reporting, but be sure you can
segment paid search traffic in your website's analytics to show the
exact keywords which are sending you traffic.
You can then measure
keyword performance and by using the AdWords search query report you
can find converting long-tail keyword variations to add to your campaign
– and likewise, non-converting keywords to add as negative matches.
10. Learn to Adapt and Keep Testing
There are countless other PPC marketers out there with their own campaigns.
If
somebody starts fiercely bidding on your preferred keywords to the
point that it’s not profitable, refocus your attention and avoid a
bidding war. And with all campaigns, keep testing. Small increases to
CTR, quality scores and conversion rates can have a huge impact to a
campaigns overall performance.
Optimize Your Ad Copy
Keep
your message clear and compelling, and your ad revenues should rise
accordingly. PPC ads are brief, so avoid confusion as much as possible.
11. Tweak Your Titles
Just like on-page headlines, the titles of your ads are the most eye-catching elements.
Marketers will tell you to "make them pop", so be concise but highlight your unique selling point or special offer.
12. Your Body is a Temple
Ensure your body text is concise, relevant to the terms you are bidding on, and highlights your USP or special offer.
Avoid clichéd advertising phrases and focus on clear descriptions - words are at a premium, so make them count.
13. Be the Strongest Link
Links
matter. The URL of your ad is likely to appear in the results, so avoid
meaningless numerical page addresses and get those keywords highlighted
in bold.
A keyword-optimized URL helps to demonstrate relevancy and could secure more traffic as a result.
14. Identify Your MVPs
The five or ten best performing keywords or ads in your campaign are your most valuable players.
Keep
them at the center of your plan of attack, and arrange your broader
paid search activities around them. The 80/20 rule is often very true in
search campaigns, so find out where your converting traffic comes and
ensure you get everything you can out of those keywords and ad
variations.
15. Discover the Niches
In the most crowded of PPC markets, there are effective key terms that have been overlooked.
Be original in your bids and you may manage to stumble upon one of these neglected goldmines.
Target Your Ads
Targeting
ads is different from optimizing the ad copy itself. Optimization is
about driving click-through rates whatever your audience; targeting is
about knowing who your customers are, and writing with them in mind.
16. Write for an Age Group
Age and gender are classics of demographic targeting, and are as relevant as ever.
Write for your chosen target demographic and you raise the perceived relevance of your product for those individuals.
17. Judge Your Prestige Level
In advertising copywriting, there's a world of difference between 'value for money' and 'cheap'.
Know which description suits the prestige level of your product, and stick to it for on-message ad copy.
18. Mind Your Surroundings
Knowing your local customer base is important even on the World Wide Web.
Tweak your ad copy for geographical markets, and target those regions in your campaign settings.
19. Vary Your Calls to Action
Just as you target different key phrases, be sure to vary your ad copy accordingly.
A selection of different ad texts gives you the opportunity to see what works for a given bid term.
20. Research the PPC Markets
Targeting does not have to take place within a single campaign.
Different PPC platforms may reach different or specialized audiences; place ads on the most appropriate ad network.
The Next Level
Once
you've mastered the basics, it's time to get serious. Here are five of
the things that professional paid search campaign managers deal with on a
daily basis.
21. Improve Your Landing Page Tests
Learn how to conduct detailed A/B and MANOVA tests, allowing you to tweak two or more variables in your landing pages ad copy.
Quantifiable
results will help you to make more informed decisions about campaign
changes, so use Website Optimiser and measure every small change to
improve performance. Make sure you produce relevant landing pages to
support your ads. This way, you can define funnels that guide
individuals from being searchers, to prospects, to converting customers.
22. Find Negative Keywords Via Social Media Monitoring
Set
up a social media monitoring service, Google Alerts is fine, and track
which keywords are listed alongside your top keywords and brand terms.
This
way, you can make sure that anything irrelevant, which you may not have
thought of previously, can be blocked using negative matches.
23. Go Global
Target the same keywords in your PPC campaigns as in your on-page optimization and inbound link-building efforts.
This builds on the tip above to help demonstrate to your prospects that the page is tailored to their needs.
24. Schedule Your Campaigns
Schedule
new ads for specific dates to make the most of seasonal opportunities
and consider budget changes to reflect an increase in search demand and
buying intent.
This can also help to keep your campaigns moving when you are out of the office yourself.
25. Keep Things Moving
However well your campaign is performing, there are new audiences to reach and better keywords to bid on.
Be a leader, not a follower, and drive your campaign to the next level.
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