7 Most Important Elements in a Successful PPC Campaign

Struggling to boost your business’s visibility and reach your target customers?

Falling behind your competitors in the SERPs can be frustrating and, frankly, exhausting. You invest time, blood, sweat and the proverbial tears into making an impact in your sector. But you still can’t quite reach the top.

That’s where an effective PPC campaign comes in.

But you still need to put the right pieces into place before you can expect to see real results. What does that mean?

Let’s explore the 7 most important elements in any successful PPC campaign.

1. Getting Your Budget Right

Just because you may not be able to afford the same large-scale PPC options as bigger brands doesn’t mean you can’t make an impact. .Any reliable digital marketing team offering PPC serviceswill make a bespoke PPC campaign work with your budget.

But you should finalize your budget before you get started. Understand how much you can afford to spend on paid ads each day and what you should realistically expect in return for your investment.

This will help you maximize the money available to you.

2. Proper Keyword Research

Effective keyword research means defining the search terms your audience will use when looking for relevant products/services.

It’s not about cramming so many keywords into your ad copy it becomes hard to read. It’s about matching your ad to the phrases your ideal customers enter into search engines.

You need to take the time to consider the most popular keywords and phrases for your business. Don’t rush into the most competitive ones until you know exactly how to use them to your advantage. Often, it’s best to start small and experiment until you find your PPC feet.

3. Engaging Ad Copy

Words matter. It’s that simple.

Creating PPC ads with poor text reduces the potential to catch prospects’ eye as they scour results pages. Your ad may get lost among so many well-written alternatives.

Every word counts. Use numbers to break the text up (‘50% off’, ‘save $100’) and add sitelinks to promote key sections of your site. Make it easier for potential customers to see why your business is the smartest choice to solve their problem.

4. Relevant Landing Pages that Deliver on Promises

When a user clicks on your ad, they want to learn more about the advertised products or services. Any items or sales promoted must be covered in the landing page to hold their interest. 

But focus each page on one offer only — too many can decrease your conversion rate by over 200 percent.

Imagine how frustrated you’d feel if you clicked on an ad and found it had essentially lied to you. Would you forgive the brand and stay on its site? Or would you click back and try one of the other ads instead?

That’s why any landing pages attached to your ads must deliver. Taking customers’ trust for granted is one of the biggest PPC mistakesyou can make.

Make sure they’re well-written, clean and show the visitor what’s expected of them. Should they provide their email address to download their free ebook? Can they go directly to the relevant product page by clicking a button?

Remember: your landing page should lead the prospect to the next step of their customer journey with effortless fluidity.

5. Testing Different Ads

A/B testing is a tried-and-true method for creating the most effective PPC ads.

What does that mean? It’s simple. Create two ads with slight differences in the following features:

• ad text

• call to action (CTA)

• sitelinks

• headlines

You may want to try different voices or offers. You might vary your layout or vocabulary. Run both ads for a set period (two weeks, say) and analyze their performance to identify the most successful option.

You can learn a lot about your target audience’s preferences and search habits with split testing. Over time, your Click-Through-Rates should improve as you hone your ads and boost their relevance.

6. Defining Target Locations

You can’t afford to waste time and money targeting customers in areas beyond your reach.

Perhaps you run a small restaurant with a loyal local following. Maybe you operate a growing enterprise from your home and ship goods to buyers within Canada only.

Whatever your business, whatever your limitations, be realistic about your reach. Your PPC campaign should be tailored to target buyers within the most relevant locations only. You can narrow your focus and invest in doing more with less.

And don’t think you can’t take advantage of great options as a company catering to local customers exclusively. 97 percent of userssearch online to find local companies, after all.

You can include your locations on Google Maps, add a click-to-call button to encourage interaction and showcase customer reviews to inspire confidence.

7. Performance Measurement and Adaptation

You can’t just create PPC ads and leave them out there unchanged.

You need to monitor their activity, analyze performance and determine how effective they are. The following metrics are fundamental to any successful PPC campaign:

• Quality Score (the higher yours is, the lower your costs)

• Cost Per Click

• Conversion Rate

• Average position

• Click-Through-Rate

Using these metrics to assess your PPC ads’ performance will help you refine them in years to come. You need to keep adapting your ads to maximize your reach and boost your ROI consistently.

Otherwise, you could be missing out on valuable opportunities to convert users into loyal customers. You might find that certain ideas you had about engaging your audience at the start of your campaign turn out to be inaccurate. You may end up taking a different path than you expected with your PPC ads but discover exciting new benefits as a result.

Conclusion

Launching and maintaining a successful PPC campaign is a challenge for any business, even if you think you know how paid ads work.

Working with a professional digital marketing team ensures your ads are tailored to your business and your target audience.

Reputation Mart’s experts have helped an extensive list of businesses achieve outstanding results through bespoke PPC campaigns, so just get in touch todayto learn what we can do for you!

Already working with a PPC expert? No problem. Call now and we will analyse your campaign’s performance, will identify waste and will provide actionable plan to address the issue, fast.

8 Common PPC Mistakes You Might Be Making

Launching a PPC campaign is a critical marketing step for every business, no matter how big or small it may be.

But there’s a world of difference between running a PPC campaign and running one well. There are plenty of mistakes to make if you don’t have the knowledge, training or experience to guide you in the right direction. Even minor errors can cost you money and prospects over time.

To help you get ahead, Reputation Mart’s experts explore the 8 common PPC mistakes you might be making below.

#1. A Disconnect Between Ads and Landing Pages

You’ve created an ad that packs a punch and makes prospects an offer they can’t refuse. Let’s say you promise customers a 50 percent discount on their first purchase with you, or claim you have hundreds of products on sale at a 70 percent reduction.

Both are pretty impressive deals, but you have to make sure to showcase these on your landing page. Any prospects who click on your ad and realize the deals they were promised are nowhere to be seen when they reach the page may feel cheated.

And you could lose them for good.

The lesson: always make sure your ads and landing pages are relevant to each other.

#2. Neglecting Your Ads

Daily monitoring is essential to maintain a successful PPC campaign. While it’s tempting to spend hours creating an irresistible ad and assuming you can just leave it for months without any further attention, that’s not the case at all.

Monitoring your PPC ads daily gives you valuable insights into their performance and reach. You could be completely unaware of important changes if you leave your ads to run on their own, such as a major reduction in clicks or increased traffic.

This is just one reason why trusting a professional PPC team to run your campaign is a smart choice, for businesses of all scales.

#3. Not Specific Enough with Keywords

Your keywords must be the best possible match for your products and services. Every ad you put out there to attract customers has to be accurate and tailored to your target audience.

If you use broad or inaccurate keywords, you could be throwing money away as prospects may not find what they’re looking for after clicking on your ad. You’ll still be charged but without securing any valuable customer engagement.

#4. Overlooking Negative Keywords

Staying on the subject of keywords, don’t make the mistake of ignoring or overlooking negative keywords.

These are a vital part of any successful PPC campaign: as the name suggests, negative keywords are those search terms you DON’T want to trigger your ads. Take advantage of negative keywords to save yourself from the risk of paying for clicks that go nowhere.

Coming up with a list of negative keywords takes a little extra time when launching a PPC campaign, but it’s well worth doing in the long run. You should keep adding to said list as you continue to find new search terms you want to avoid.

#5. Weak Ad Copy

The text in your ads has to be of the highest quality. The right words have the power to attract new visitors to your business and convert them into customers, even if bigger companies have ads close to your own on the SERPs.

But getting the copy in your ads right is easier said than done, unless you have strong writing skills and years of experience managing PPC campaigns. One effective way to find inspiration is to look at your competitors’ ads, especially those with the highest authority. What language do they use? How do they structure their headlines? What about their ad extensions?

Absorb what you see and read and use this to inform your own ad copy.

#6. Not Testing Variations

You should be testing multiple variations of ads at any one time. This is a fantastic way to determine which techniques work best and which should be dropped in the future, so you can keep getting maximum bang for your buck.

Experiment with different extensions, tones and approaches. Use a sale as the basis for one ad and brand new products for another. Try a mix of short and long-tail keywords. After a set period, check out the analytics to see which gained the most traction.

This process streamlines decision making in the future a little, as you know what works and what doesn’t.

#7. Not Paying Attention to Locations

The freedom to target specific areas with your ads is ideal for local businesses or those shipping to various locations.

But make sure your ads aren’t appearing for users in areas you don’t cater to, as you’ll end up paying for clicks that have no real chance of leading to conversions. Users will become frustrated when they browse your product catalog — and possibly try to place orders — only to discover they’re out of your range.

It’s possible to bid higher or lower based on target users’ location, which is (again) a major advantage for local businesses trying to attract nearby prospects.

#8. Not Tracking Conversions

Conversion Tracking is a terrific feature well worth taking advantage of. This does exactly what it appears to: tracking your conversions to ensure you know how effectively your ads are securing sales from newcomers.

Google’s tool shows what customers do after interacting with your ad. Perhaps they went on to buy one or more of your products. Maybe they registered for your newsletters, or downloaded that free eBook you offer.

Conversion Tracking reveals which keywords and ads make the biggest impact, and help you make effective bidding decisions for the best ROI.

Conclusion

Starting a PPC campaign for your business can be daunting if you’ve never done it before. But as long as you avoid these eight mistakes, you could go on to drive more traffic to your site, boost conversions and get a better return on your investment.

Reputation Mart’s expert team has the training, experience and tools to create a bespoke PPC campaign for your company. We’ll perform a free PPC Account Evaluationfor your Google Ads or Facebook Ads account, to reveal how you perform compared to your competitors.

Want to know more? Please don’t hesitate to get in touch!