Pay-per-click (PPC) is one of the single most powerful marketing tools in any business’ arsenal. When a campaign is well-managed, it can result in a huge increase in business and fantastic return on investment. However, when an Adwords campaign is mismanaged, or set up without any knowledge of best practice, then it is likely to provide very little in terms of business generation while racking up ongoing expenses from wasted clicks. Additionally, successful campaigns rely on daily analysis and maintenance. In this article, we give you some PPC tips on how to set up and manage your Adwords campaign for maximum impact.
ACTIVATE ‘CONVERSION TRACKING’
Conversion tracking allows you to see which of your keywords are actually generating sales or enquiries. This means that you can concentrate your budget on the profitable parts of your campaigns, instead of wasting it on non-converting keywords and adverts.
CREATE SMALL, CLOSELY-TARGETED AD GROUPS
By grouping similar keywords into small ad groups you can ensure your adverts are relevant and direct the user to the page on your website specific to those keywords.
USE A SHARED BUDGET
How do you know how much each of your campaigns is going to spend each day? If you have a budget of £50/day and 5 campaigns, it’s no good setting a £10 budget for each campaign, as they will each spend their budget at a different rate. Using a Shared Budget allows you to share it out where needed automatically.
USE LABELS!
Within your Adwords account you can create customized labels for keywords, ads, adgroups, etc, making it easier to identify them. For example, you might want to add a label to explain why you chose to pause a keyword, such as “High cost, No Conversions”, or to label an advert as “Good Converter”. You can then use the “Filter by Label” option to instantly find anything with any given label.
USE NEGATIVE KEYWORDS
You don’t want people seeing your ads if they are looking for something that’s not relevant. Even if they don’t click on your ad (thereby not costing you any money), the Impression count will increase, resulting in poor click through rate (CTR). For example, if you are a company selling Golf Equipment, you’d definitely want to make “Volkswagen” a negative keyword!
CHECK YOUR KEYWORD MATCHES
You need to monitor what specific searches have been used to trigger your keywords, so that you can identify new keywords to add to your campaign and negative keywords to prevent clicks on irrelevant searches. You can do this either in Adwords using “Details” in the keyword tab, or in Analytics via the Acquisition>AdWords>Search Queries option.
LEARN ABOUT KEYWORD MATCH TYPES…
…and make sure you use the appropriate one(s) for each keyword. Generally you should be using mainly Phrase and Exact matched keywords, but there may be instances where you want to use a Broad match or a Modified Broad match
USE PPC DYNAMIC ADS
Using a dynamic ad to automatically insert the Keyword as your Title makes your ad stand out from the crowd, and also gives it more relevance, significantly improving CTR.
USE SITELINK EXTENSIONS
Sitelinks give you more “real estate” on the user’s screen, and also allow you to direct visitors directly to the area of your website they are most interested in.
USE CALLOUT EXTENSIONS
Callout Extensions allow you to create an additional line of text to your ad, with a specific Call to Action or an enticing Special Offer.
By managing your Adwords campaign with the above information in mind, you’re sure to see an increase in traffic from your campaigns, and a greater conversion rate in terms of leads and sales.
Steve Nezianya
Host Media