If you're new to pay per click (PPC) advertising platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, they can come across as a little daunting. One wrong keyword or keyword slip, and you could end up spending your entire monthly budget in the space of one day!
However, PPC platforms don't have to be scary. Here are our top five tips for navigating PPC and ensuring your advertising efforts bring you a healthy return on investment! And if you want to learn more about how PPC works, check out this article published by IgniteVisibility.com.
1. Know your keyword types
Did you know there are four different keyword types you can use in your campaigns? These include:
Exact match types are good for ensuring only people searching for specific terms come to your website, but they can result in limited traffic.
Broad match keywords will result in more traffic, but you can end up spending more money bringing visitors to the website that may not be interested in your product or service. However, you can implement 'negative' keywords which mean if visitors search for a specific keyword, they won't see your ad. We'd recommend using a mix of different keyword types to see what works best for you.
2. Work on your ad copy
Your adverts are what encourage people to visit your website, so you need to make sure the content is as enticing as possible.
Think about the benefits your product or service will bring to your prospective customer and how it will solve their problems. You don't have a lot of characters, so make every word count! We recommend having at least three ads for every ad group. Review your ads regularly, pause the least effective ads and introduce brand new ad copy until you have the perfect ad!
3. Keep your ad groups small
It's easy to put all f your search terms in one big ad group, but this can result in a low click-through rate. If you have smaller ad groups with fewer keywords, you can target your ad copy and landing pages much better! Even better, look at Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAG). This is where you have one keyword in an ad group, and it can boost your ad's click-through rate by an incredible 28%!
4. Don't forget your website
When visitors come to your website, you need to make sure they stay there. If people click on your website, can't find what they are after and click straight out, this is known as 'pogo sticking', and it can potentially mean you pay more for your ads. Make sure your pages load quickly, the content is straightforward and easy to understand, and you have lots of internal links.
5. Check your campaigns at least once a week
Imagine you have planted lots of beautiful flowers in a garden. If you don't prune and water them regularly, then your garden won't stay beautiful for long. Your PPC ad campaign is the same!
Once you have set up your campaigns, you need to revisit them as often as possible. If you don't, your competitors could outrank you, and you could slowly see your ads slip down the search engine rankings.
Check in to tweak your ad copy and keywords every once in a while to maximize your conversions.
If you use Google Ads, there is a tool you might not know about. You can use it to discover how your competitors are using Google Ads and how they are using it.
Join us as we take a look at the Auction Insights tool, and how you can increase your return on investment (ROI) by learning more about your rivals.
How to find the Auction Insights tool
You can find the Auction Insights tool by logging into your Google Ads account and clicking on the Campaigns, Ad Group or Keywords menu.
The report is available for search and shopping campaigns, and if you utilize both campaigns, it measures metrics separately.
What is available in the Auction Insights tool
When you access the Auction Insights tool, you can discover the following information about the customers who participate in the same Google Ads auctions as you.
You can drill down by campaign, ad group or keyword depending on which report you are in and you can also segment the data by time and device to provide more granular reporting.
How can you use the Auction Insights data?
This information is extremely valuable in helping you make decisions about bidding and budgeting.
For example, if you delve into the keyword report, you can see which competitors are bidding on your brand terms. You can then look at increasing your bids on your own branded keywords to force your competitors out of the bidding process.
If you are keen to improve your presence on mobile, you can drill down by device to see how your competitors fare on mobile. You can then decide if you want to implement a bid adjustment on mobile to outbid your competition.
If you are looking to reduce your budget, you can see which keywords you are dominating search for in comparison to your competitors. If you are a clear frontrunner in search, you can look at reducing your cost per click on specific keywords. Although Google will not tell you specifically how much money your competitors are spending on Ads, you can get a vague idea through impression share. For example, if your share is 50% and theirs is 100%, they are roughly spending twice as much as you. You can use this information to your advantage.
We hope this article has given you an excellent introduction to Auction Insights, how it works and how you can use the tool to boost your own return on investment.
If you have a budget for promoting your business online, you may be torn between advertising on social media and advertising on search engines like Google and Bing.
Both are good options depending on your goals and the product and services you want to sell. You can also use both in tandem to reach out to your customers wherever they are on the web, using something called 'remarketing' to encourage people who have visited your site to commit to a purchase.
This article will explain in more detail how you can combine paid search and paid social media advertising to supercharge your profits and boost your brand awareness.
Remarketing is a form of advertising that allows businesses to show ads to users who have already visited their website.
By using remarketing, you can target customers wherever they are on the web, from watching YouTube videos and looking at other websites, all the way through to social media sites.
According to Adroll, only 2% of customers convert on their first visit to a website, meaning that you can use remarketing to appeal to the other 98%!
If you want to implement remarketing on Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising, both platforms will add a small piece of code to your website so that visitors will be added to a remarketing list. You can set up several remarketing lists at a time, for example, if you want to set up remarketing for different types of products that you sell.
You can then display ads on other websites, including YouTube and LinkedIn.
With both Bing Advertising and Google Ads, you can look at an ads attribution so you can specifically see which ad was responsible for getting your customer to convert. There are different attribution models available, with pros and cons available for each.
You will not be able to advertise across all social media networks using PPC. For example, Facebook and Instagram have their own remarketing and advertising systems.
However, the premise is exactly the same; you use a remarketing pixel on your website and create a remarketing list.
Consistency is the key when it comes to combining search ads and social media in the same campaign.
Use the same advertising copy and imagery to reaffirm your brand to potential customers, and make sure that you link to the same page on your website. According to Hubspot, prospects make eight 'touchpoints' before buying your product or service, so it may be the case that they click on one of your ads several times before committing.
No matter which PPC platform and which social media network you advertise on, you will be guaranteed to reach your prospective customers no matter where they are.