Are you spending too much on PPC management and advertising? Many businesses employ PPC advertising platforms such as AdWords, Bing Ads, Facebook, and LinkedIn to bring new business online. Yet, left unmonitored, PPC advertising can yield lofty costs without positive ROI.
To help businesses employ successful PPC, AIS Media CEO and Business Radio X co-host of the Digital Marketing Series, Thomas Harpointner, has 5 PPC tips for your business to reduce your cost per acquisition and maximize your ROI.
AdWords PPC Management Tips for Positive ROI
- Keyword research – Work with a PPC management expert to find keywords that will drive conversions on your website. Not all keywords are alike, and there are many factors that should go into this formulation. AdWords Keyword Planner is a popular tool for keyword research, but working with a human analyst will help you choose which keywords will bring ROI. Calibrating your PPC campaign with the right match type, bid amount, location, language and device are all considerations during this step. And, keyword research doesn’t end after day 1, in order to be successful, it requires frequent adjustment and discovery.
- Ad copy and quality – Writing catchy ad copy isn’t a new practice, but with PPC, advertisers have less time than ever to capture their audience’s attention. Matching the ad copy to the keywords selected is crucial in order to increase click-through-rates (CTR). Since keyword-to-ad copy matching has such an impact on CTR, Google rewards advertisers for doing so by integrating ad relevance into their quality score algorithm. Higher quality scores allow advertisers to underbid than their competitors and pay a minimal CPC.
- Landing page relevance – One common mistake PPC advertisers make is driving targeted keywords and ad copy to a website’s home page. In order to give users the most relevant, seamless online experience, send users to a targeted landing page detailing your product/service that matches their search. Like ad relevance, Google also factors landing page experience into its quality score system. Improving landing page relevance requires data to understand user behavior, detailed below.
- A/B split testing – We recommend testing ad copy, landing pages in 30 day periods. This way, you’ll gather data on peak performance and determine what works best for your business. Within 30 days, you will gather enough data to make informed decisions without having to make costly errors. On Adwords, use the Experiments feature to implement A/B split testing on your ads and landing pages.
- Measure results, frequently – Two impactful tools for measuring PPC success are Google Analytics and heatmaps. Google Analytics shows granular data about your PPC audience metrics such as demographics, geography, devices and engagement metrics such as bounce rate, session duration and pages per session. Heatmaps can be layered onto most websites to show where users hover their mouse on desktop, or tap on mobile. 90% of the time, where a user’s mouse sits is where the user’s eye is, making this technology effective at determining user behavior trends. Google Analytics and heatmap data combined, advertisers can assess how to tweak ads, landing pages and bids in order to maximize ROI.
AdWords PPC vs. Paid Social (Facebook/LinkedIn)
Are you using the right PPC channel to produce the greatest ROI? AdWords and Bing Ads are both set up to serve your ad at the exact moment a user is searching for your product/service. In fact, PPC advertising is how both Google and Bing make money. Of the $90 billion Google made last year, nearly 90% of this revenue came from PPC advertising (source: Investopedia). This supports the effectiveness of PPC advertising, to see just how much money businesses invest in this medium every year.
Paid advertising is also a major revenue generator for Facebook and LinkedIn. However, advertisers have a different opportunity on each of these channels. Unlike AdWords or Bing Ads, your ad does not show at the moment a user is searching for your product/service. Rather, here you can target your intended audience and “join the cocktail party”. Paid Facebook advertising is most effective when it reaches the right audience with the right messaging, several times over. For this reason, conversion rates are lower on paid Facebook advertising compared to AdWords. And yet, the same basic principles of AdWords advertising still apply for positive Facebook advertising ROI: create relevant ad copy, drive to a relevant landing page and measure your results.
“The buyer intent on Google is much higher than on Facebook.” – Thomas Harpointner
LinkedIn is also a popular way to reach your audience, but this channel does not support all business goals. Today, the two primary uses of LinkedIn for job searching or job offering. If connecting with either of these audiences serve your business goals, than LinkedIn would be an ideal PPC channel for you. Advertising on LinkedIn is a little more like direct mail advertising, wherein your objective is to build a list of candidates, create the ad that caters to them and send out your messaging. Google accomplishes this objective in a different way, where the audience for your product/service already exist, the advertiser only needs to determine the appropriate keywords to bid on.
The Case for SEO
If PPC is so costly, can’t I just be found on the search engines organically? Digital marketing agencies that specialize in search engine marketing know how to deliver the peak ROI on PPC while also creating an effective SEO campaign. Depending on what stage your business or website is in, your digital marketing team should be able to determine the appropriate balance of PPC and SEO in order to deliver cost-effective results and positive ROI. Lower your cost per acquisition by employing the most effective marketing channels, while assessing performance frequently. For further reading on this topic, check out our SEO & PPC: Better Together blog.
Hear what our client, Maid Simple, had to say about our PPC & SEO services
What are your costs on PPC? If you’re not seeing the ROI you need, consider hiring a digital marketing agency certified with Google Partners and accredited with Bing Ads. AIS Media specializes in PPC management, and we’ll see you through the steps required for business success. Our team will assess your costly keywords, create compelling ad copy, leverage your landing pages, experiment with A/B tests, and measure and report on results! And, if you don’t currently use PPC but are looking to start, our team will craft your campaign to get the best results. Get started today by chatting with one of our digital marketing experts.
