1. Define The Goal of Your PPC Campaign
In order to properly optimize your PPC campaign, you need to define a measurable PPC campaign goals. These goals will be foundation of your optimization process.
Goals can include: drive more traffic to your site, maximize leads, sales, downloads or subscriptions. After defining your goals, you will be able to compare your campaigns and see if you have reached the desired level or not.
2. Identify Your High Performing Keywords
Examine your performance report and identify which keywords are performing the best. Keywords are the building blocks of your PPC campaign, and the top performing keywords are the ones that bring you the most business, so it is essential to focus on them.
Once you have identified your top performing keywords, experiment with different bid strategies to figure out the optimal bid for each keyword. Monitoring the quality score of our keywords will tell you which ones are consistently top performers.
3. Eliminate Non-Performing Keywords
Keywords to do not drive traffic or conversions hurt the performance of the entire campaign and waste your advertising spend. Once you have identified which keywords are not performing, pause them an identify what the problem is.
There are a few types on non-performing keywords.
- Keywords that have no impressions
- Keywords that have impressions and no clicks
- Keywords that have clicks but no conversions
To figure why keywords are not performing, ask these questions:
- Are the keywords relevant?
- Does your website or landing page lack the proper conversion tools?
4. Create a Negative Keyword List
Negative keywords are words related to your keywords, but words that are not relevant to what your company offers. Having a negative keyword list helps you filter out unwanted traffic and save PPC dollars that could be used on relevant clicks.
Examples of negative keywords:
- Chiropractor creates an ad that uses the keywords “back pain relief”, but the ad may get displayed when people search for “back pain relief pills”. In this case, the term “pills” would be added to the negative keyword list.
- Health club creates an ad that uses the keywords “group fitness” but the ad may get displayed when people search for “group fitness jobs”. In this case, the term “jobs” would be added to the negative keyword list.
- Automotive repair center creates an ad that uses the keywords “engine repair” but the ad may get displayed when people search for “engine repair manuals”. In this case, the term “manuals” would be added to the negative keyword list.
5. Bid Optimization: Adjust Your Keyword Bids
Depending on your marketing strategy, you will now need to adjust your keyword bids across you campaigns to make sure you stay in the competition.
To stay on top of the bidding changes, a “manual bidding” strategy is recommended to give you maximum control over your bids as well as the ability to make quick changes as needed.
The 3 types of bidding to consider are:
- Manual bidding
- Target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) Bidding
- Target ROAS Bidding
6. Create Relevant, Eye Catching PPC Ads
With so much competition in he PPC ad space, having engaging, compelling ads that make a good first impression is essential. Make sure to include attention grabbing headlines that cut through the clutter and describe your services in a positive, enticing fashion.
Make sure that the content of your ad is relevant to your services and gets right to the point. Being vague or not clear will cause indecision which will cause your ad to be passed over.
Stick to highlighting your unique selling proposition and be sure to include a powerful call-to-action. (CTA).
It is also important to include ad extensions. Ad Extensions are the ad formats that show additional information about your services.Ad Extensions also improve your visibility, increase the CTR and improve the overall ROI. The include: Sitelinks, Call extensions, location extensions, and review extensions.
7. Create Relevant Landing Pages
High converting landing pages are an essential piece of your digital marketing or direct mail marketing campaigns. The landing page that you drive clicks to should contain content that is complimentary to that of the PPC ad. Make sure you highlight the benefits, features and the USP in your landing page that you mentioned in your ad copy to ensure consistency.
Do not drive PPC ad clicks to a generic home page. Home pages often cover information that is not directly relevant to PPC ad which was clicked.
