Marketing only works when the campaign being run is effective.
For businesses running an online marketing campaign, that means making sure that you gain the most from your investment.
One of the best ways to do that is with a Google AdWords PPC campaign. But how does PPC work, and how can you build a strategy that brings you the best ROI using it?
To help you out, here are 8 tips for perfecting your AdWords PPC strategy to boost your investment return.
Research Your Keywords
At the base of any PPC campaign is your keyword research. They help users find the things they want, and these will be the users you want to target, depending on the relevance of the keywords you choose.
With effective keyword research, you can help pick out the right words to help find those users, but it’s not as simple as it sounds.
Some keywords are extremely competitive, and some won’t be relevant for your niche. That’s where your research comes in.
Your brand name is an obvious keyword to start with. If you’re selling products, use commercially targeted keywords like ‘buy now’ or ‘cheapest’ to help expand your list.
Use free keyword research tools to help you find the right keywords for your campaign.
Know How to Target Your Audience
The most important part of any marketing campaign is knowing how to target your audience. Knowing who belongs to your audience plays a significant part in this. You’ll target your audience differently depending on age and demographics.
Your entire ad will be crafted to help attract your target audience into clicking it. It can alter the way you write your ad copy, the keywords you need to use, as well as the landing page you might have.
You can find out more about how to target your audience with this helpful guide.
Not sure if a PPC campaign is right for your business niche? Here are 4 ways you can decide for sure.
Time Your Ads Carefully
Timing is important for any ad strategy because you’ll want to maximize the number of potential visitors who may get to see your ads.
More potential visitors, more potential clicks, and a potential increase in your ROI.
You’ll be able to find this out once you run your campaign in your PPC account. You can view performance based on each hour of the day, determining the best conversion rates per hour.
This kind of hour by hour data analysis can help you understand your audience better. With a better understanding of your audience, you can spend more money attracting ads at the times your users will be around to see them.
Use Landing Pages
Your ad is only the first stage in converting your visitor into a paying customer or potential client. It’s the landing page they end up on that can also have an impact on your campaign’s performance.
This is where you can create specialist landing pages to have an impact, using videos and images to draw attention. You can also use localized landing pages, targeting by location or by specific audiences, for better effect.
Quick landing pages with simple and clear messages that match up to the message your ad is trying to offer are the most effective pages to offer your visitors.
Improve Your Ad Copy
It’s important to make your ad copy stand out and attract visitors, as it’s the first thing they’ll see. First impressions count!
Encouraging visitors to click is dependant on your ad copy being effective. Your message needs to be simple, clear and powerful enough to work.
Simple messages work best because they don’t need much time to read. If you can grab your user’s attention with emotive language, you’re one step closer to achieving a click forward.
Including simple calls to action, too, can encourage the user to ‘do something.’ Words like ‘buy,’ ‘browse,’ or ‘sign up’ are all great examples to try.
A/B Testing
The only way you can be sure your campaign is working is by continuously monitoring the performance of your ads. A good way to be sure your ad works is by testing two or more variations of the same ad across your audience, and seeing which one works best.
You can vary your ad in different ways.
Your headline, your landing pages and the ad copy you use could all be altered to see if one works better over any others, although you would probably want to use the same keywords to be sure you target the same customers.
This is just one way you can track and improve the performance of your campaign. Here are some tips from Google on how to improve your ad quality even further.
Ads by Location
If you’re a plumber in North Carolina, you’re unlikely to want ads targeting electricians in New York.
Targeting your ads by location can mean limiting the total number of users who could see your ad, but doing so can increase your ROI. This is because the number of useful users your ad can reach increases.
In our plumbing example, you’d only want potential users from NC to see your ad, as they’re the only useful customers.
You can target your ad by large areas, such as entire countries or areas within a country like a state. You can also target much smaller communities, like towns or within a search radius of a specific location.
Check Your Quality Score
Google helps to determine the overall quality of your ads by giving it a score. This quality score can help you make an overall judgment on your ad’s current performance.
Your CTR (click through rate), the quality of your ad text, your keywords, and your previous ad campaign performances are all involved in determining your quality score.
Your quality score isn’t everything, but it can help you decide whether you’re targeting your audience as effectively as you could, which why it’s important to check it.
To improve your score, you need to do everything possible to refine your ad by following some of our suggestions above, which should help you generate a greater ROI overall on your ad campaign investment.
You can also help change a low AdWords quality score by avoiding these top 10 PPC advertising mistakes.
Benefits of an Effective PPC Strategy
The benefits of your PPC strategy can only become realized if you have effective PPC campaign management to match.
You need to be sure your ad copy is up to scratch, and you’ve optimized your campaign through proper A/B testing. Don’t forget to target your audience effectively with good landing pages and through localized advertisements.
Need help with your online marketing strategy? Don’t worry, we can help.
Get in touch to schedule a meeting to discuss your requirements.
