How to Improve Your PPC Campaigns
Picture this scenario: You have created a marketing plan to get more online leads for each quarter. You started a PPC campaign and despite all the hard work and strategizing, your campaigns don’t seem to improve. Rather, the graph of success seems to be heading south!
Even though the results don’t look good, with a little attention and care, you can get your campaigns back on track. Here are a few tips on how it can be done.
1. Which platform to choose for the PPC campaign?
The first basic step would be to determine which platform the PPC campaigns should run on. There are a few platforms to choose from but the most popular one would be the Google Ads. Some of the other popular ads are Facebook Ads and Twitter Ads.
Facebook Ads allow you to place ads or ‘sponsored’ posts in news feeds of your target audience. The advertiser can select and define the characteristics of their intended consumers. Some of the other options available for the ad’s goal (store visits, website traffic, brand awareness) include budget and ad format. You will be charged every time the ad is clicked.
Twitter’s PPC and platform have eight different ad objectives like new followers, tweet engagement, website traffic, target audience, etc. Twitter Ads work just like Facebook ads and charge every time that they are clicked.
2. Different Types of Ads
Each platform has different types of ads that you could choose from. On Facebook, the choices include a single image, a slideshow or a single video. There are three types of Twitter ads and they are Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Trends. On Google, you have four options: Display Ads, Search Ads, App Ads, and Video Ads.
3. PPC Budget and Bidding
The budget allocation begins with identifying the right ‘mixture’ of keywords (short tail, longtail, medium keywords, etc) based on search volume in targeted locations. Once a rough cost is estimated, you can decide how much money you need to set aside for the daily budget.
Many platforms including Google has daily budget options and the auction method. The auction system will help you decide the cost based on audience criteria. The different bidding strategies provided will give you cost-effective campaigns. The bidding strategies in Google are Cost-per-Click(CPC) bidding, Cost-per-thousand impressions or viewable( CPM or vCPM) bidding, Cost-per-Acquisition (CPA) bidding, Cost-per-view (CPV) bidding.
4. Customize criteria for the target audience
You need ads to reach the right audience and so ensure a good amount of your time to create custom audiences with their preferences or ‘intent’. Add in specific search terms and be careful with keywords for each ad. Organize your campaign into ad groups and create landing pages that match the search term.
5. Track your PPC campaign performance
It is essential to keep track of your PPC campaigns to understand the flow of the traffic on the ad’s landing page or website, the money spent, and the number of are leads and conversions. Ensure to utilize the analytics dashboard that every platform provides to the full.
Daily optimizing and tracking of the ads and the campaigns will give you the result that you wish for – solid leads. PPC requires time, patience and you should know what you are doing. If not, you would end up busting your budget in a very short time and losing a lot of money in the process. For queries on PPC campaigns or budgeting, give us a call!