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As a digital marketer, you have a ton on your plate. Aside from meetings, communication and other typical office duties, you have to manage a multi-channel strategy with hundreds of moving parts.
You’re always looking for methods to prioritize your time and ensure the best possible results.
Yet, there are some duties that you absolutely can’t ignore, like ad campaign optimization in PPC.
These types of responsibilities are ongoing and require a lot of effort, but the rewards are tremendous!
This discussion looks at the advantages of marketing optimization and how to make the process less time-consuming so that you can dedicate more attention to other tasks and projects. This is only possible if you will adopt some tool in your routine, which you will also learn in this blog.
Let’s get started.
Before getting into the advantages, let’s look at what’s involved in managing and optimizing your advertising campaigns.
This is a three-stage process that includes:
Optimization is the process of improving existing processes and strategies through the use of data and technology.
Marketing campaigns produce mountains of data; every campaign or strategy you publish creates more and more of it. Within this ocean of information is everything you need to know to optimize your campaigns.
However, before you can tap into this information, you need to collect and analyze the raw data.
It’s not as easy as it sounds. Despite having a mountain of data, not all of it is actually useful or relevant. You may end up spending more time removing unhelpful data than managing the parts that matter.
It becomes a bit like the needle and the haystack scenario.
Once you do have the right data, the analysis phase is not any easier. Marketing data is complex and involves many metrics, dimensions, channels and more.
Many companies even hire marketers with data science proficiency, to help make sense of all of this raw information.
The goal of collecting and analyzing your data is to determine how and what you need to optimize.
By optimizing your campaigns, you streamline your marketing processes and ensure everything is running smoothly.
You’ll detect and remove roadblocks and hiccups, while simultaneously discovering new ways to improve and increase campaign performance. Ultimately, you learn the ins and outs of your own marketing.
Ideally, you want to focus your efforts on the parts of your marketing funnel that matter most, such as:
Remember, refining your marketing process should always be backed by data, not gut-feelings or assumptions. You want to be sure about the optimization decisions you make!
If this process seems tedious, it’s because it is. Data collection and analysis alone will account for hours of work.
This is why many businesses struggle to stay consistent with marketing optimization. The answer to the problem is automation.
When you automate tedious steps in any process, it makes a huge difference. You’ll free up time and resources that you can put towards other priorities.
As you navigate ad campaign optimization, think about the most tedious parts and then look for automation tools that remove these obstacles.
By implementing automation strategically, you can optimize your time right alongside your ad campaigns!
The optimization process is tedious because it is full of challenges. If you want to understand your PPC campaigns to optimize properly, you need to keep these items in mind and plan to overcome each.
Here’s what you need to prepare for.
Ad campaign optimization requires you to track several marketing metrics at once. However, obsessing over small changes in your key metrics is not going to help you.
You have to see the much larger picture.
For instance, if your clicks jump by 100, the information isn’t useful unless you know the impact of this spike and how to apply this change to improve future results.
You don’t want to know how many conversions you’re creating each month. You want to see where those conversions are coming from, the individuals behind these actions, etc.
This is a significant difference and it’s something that marketers struggle with because there are so many moving parts involved in marketing optimization.
To see the whole picture, you need two things:
The first item is pretty straightforward. You can gain a pretty complete view of your data through dashboards, spreadsheets, charts and other tools.
Data storytelling in marketing, on the other hand, is an art and a science that takes substantial time to master.
If you recall, the very first step in the optimization process involves the collection of data. Sadly, there’s no Data R Us that you can shop at for all the information you need.
Your marketing data is scattered and disjointed. This creates several smaller challenges. The first of which is knowing where to get your data.
You need to know where data is kept and how to extract it. Bear in mind, you want to collect data from verified sources. Otherwise, your analysis results may not be accurate.
The second hurdle is combining data from different sources. When you try to blend them into one data set for analysis, you may have to make some adjustments to get the data to “talk.”
For example, you may have one account that measures click costs by dollars and another using euros. If you want to analyze this data, you have to normalize these measures when merging the data.
You also want to review all of your data and check for any errors or missing inputs.
Every business and every advertiser defines success differently.
If you work for a marketing or ad agency, you already know this pretty well because you have multiple clients, each demanding different things from their campaigns.
This means there is no one-size-fits-all solution to ad campaign optimization. You have to try different strategies and methods until you find the best results for your unique marketing objectives.
The first question you need to ask is how you define success. Do you want to be the best-selling brand? The most popular? Most innovative?
Next, you have to consider how you measure that success. If your only goal is to drive revenue and have the fattest bottom line possible, it’s fairly easy.
The problem is that businesses can’t survive with just one objective. You can’t be the best-selling brand, without also being one of the most popular.
Most companies have various campaigns dedicated to different marketing objectives. You may have one campaign with the purpose of driving brand awareness and beginning of the funnel activity, with another driving conversions and revenue.
The challenge when optimizing your advertising campaigns is knowing what to focus on first and when.
Ad campaign optimization is an ongoing process that is never truly over. One could argue that there is no such thing as a 100% optimized campaign.
There is always room for improvement because so many external and internal factors influence your campaigns.
Thus, marketing optimization never ends and requires constant attention. It’s a bit like having a new puppy. You have to keep an eye on it at all times or it’ll cause chaos.
When your accounts grow to include many campaigns, you’re adding more and more puppies to the mix, which means the chance of chaos increases exponentially.
The time-consuming, tedious nature of ad campaign optimization means it’s easy to become overwhelmed.
This is especially true if you’re manually collecting, cleaning and analyzing your data. You could easily spend over 20 hours every week trying to stay on top of all of your data and optimization duties.
Marketing automation prevents you from drowning in your data and driving yourself mad from daily optimization challenges.
So far, we’ve talked at length about the challenges and tedious process of ad campaign optimization.
You may be wondering, “Is it even worth it?”
Absolutely!
Let’s look at the benefits of ad campaign optimization and what you can expect from this process.
Each business has its own goals, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a modern company that doesn’t use its website as a critical platform for achieving these objectives.
Thus, driving more traffic to your website is something that any business can benefit from.
Since the purpose of an ad campaign is ultimately to bring users to your landing pages, a direct result of marketing optimization is increasing your site traffic.
The more optimized your campaigns are, the more likely you are to receive top ad ranks, which means attracting more clicks (and visitors) from relevant searches. Securing the top ad rank will have a significant boost to your ad traffic.
It’s also worth mentioning that ad traffic can be more valuable than organic traffic. When someone clicks an ad, it’s because they are interested in the offer and seriously debating purchasing or otherwise converting.
So, you aren’t just increasing your site traffic; you’re producing more qualified visitors.
PPC ROI is a crucial measure that lets you gauge how efficiently you’re spending your ad budget. It’s a measure of how much you’re generating based on what you’ve invested.
By increasing your ROI, you’re essentially getting more results with the same budget. That’s something any business benefits from!
A crucial component in marketing optimization is reducing wasted spending and improving performance, which is a great recipe for securing higher ROI.
Thus, navigating the marketing optimization process will help you create more profitable ads overall.
Ad campaign optimization also helps you track this crucial measure more closely. When you make optimization changes, you can track the results and see each adjustment’s impact on your ROI.
Over time, you’ll acquire a deep understanding of what campaigns, keywords and other components produce the best ROI.
In your pursuit to improve and track your ROI, you’ll produce more cost-effective strategies.
It’s common for marketers to be blinded by high clicks or vanity metrics that they fail to measure how cost-effective the campaign is and whether it’s a wise investment.
For example, consider the following scenario. You have two campaigns; we’ll call them Campaign A and Campaign B.
Campaign A receives 100 clicks this month, with an average cost of $1.00 per click. Of these 100 clicks, 5 turn into conversions, with an average conversion value of roughly $21.
To simplify, you’re spending $100, for 100 clicks and 5 conversions, which produce approximately $105 in returns, or a net profit of $5.
Campaign B receives only 25 clicks this month, with an average cost of $0.10 per clicks. The campaign creates one conversion with the same $21 value.
This means that you’re paying only $2.50 for the clicks and generating $21 in returns, for a net profit of $18.50.
On the surface, Campaign A may look “better” because it generates more clicks and conversions. In reality, it has lower profits and is less cost-effective compared to Campaign B.
Through marketing optimization, you see the bigger picture and detect these cost-effective strategies to invest in.
The advantages of having a well-optimized ad campaign speak for themselves, but it’s hardly worth it if you’re ragged and fatigued from the process itself.
The question becomes, “How do we minimize the challenges of marketing optimization, so that we can reap the rewards?”
Again, automation plays a substantial role in this. As data becomes larger and more complex, automation stops being a luxury and starts being a necessity.
The truth is, without automated solutions, data analysis techniques for optimization are too time-consuming, tedious and expensive.
So, what is the best PPC optimization tool to ensure your campaigns are running smoothly and you aren’t banging your head on your desk every week?
The answer is PPC Signal.
PPC Signal is a marketing optimization tool that harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and sophisticated machine learning algorithms.
This AI system automatically monitors your Google Ads account(s) and tracks any notable performance changes.
When PPC Signal determines a significant change is occurring, it packs the information into a digestible alert and presents it on the tool’s main dashboard.
There, you can unpack the information and understand what’s changing and how to act to optimize your strategies.
Essentially, PPC Signal automatically delivers a steady supply of optimization suggestions that you can use to improve your advertising campaigns continuously.
Without boring you with the inner workings of the system’s AI algorithms, let’s quickly take a look at how PPC Signal works.
When you access the tool, you’re shown your primary signal dashboard. It looks something like this:
Here, you can find every active performance change occurring in your account that the system has designated as significant.
Each signal presents a complete, verified insight that you can use to optimize your advertising campaigns. There’s no tedious collection or analysis involved because the system does it for you.
Signals are labeled as either an opportunity or a risk.
An opportunity is a positive trend or shift. By acting on this alert, you’ll optimize your account by increasing performance.
A risk is a negative change happening in your campaigns. By acting on this alert, you’ll optimize your account by preventing a decrease in performance.
Each opportunity you capitalize on, or risk you mitigate, is a step towards optimizing your advertising campaigns.
This system makes it far less tedious and overwhelming to improve and optimize your marketing efforts.
As we mentioned earlier, every business is different, which means you have goals and objectives unique to your organization.
How you approach optimization will change depending on your goals, so PPC Signal has several filtering options.
These settings will help you cycle through your active signals to focus on those that matter most to you and your business.
You can filter by:
With these options, you can perform marketing optimization the way you see fit. For instance, you could use the campaign filter and select your top one to optimize first.
Alternatively, you may use the signal type filter to focus on risks, before you engage in opportunities.
With so many filtering options, you can interact with your data any way you see fit.
PPC Signal is not the only AI-powered optimization tool. However, it sets itself apart from all the other solutions on the market by delivering complete insights right to your inbox.
Another AI solution may automatically detect and alert you of changes, but they don’t go the extra steps, as PPC Signal does.
In other words, other tools give you half-insights that require you to analyze further before you can act. That means you still have to spend your time making optimization changes.
PPC Signal handles this for you. Every alert tells you what’s changing, when the change started, how significant the difference is, what’s affected and much more.
Take this sample signal, for example:
You don’t have to go hunting for this information yourself; it’s all available in the signal.
PPC Signal will even give you advice on how to resolve alerts. When you click the option to Explore the signal, you’ll see a new menu:
Notice the Take Action button. This feature gives you a suggested action for how to resolve the alert. This means your entire optimization process is now complete in just a few clicks.
What you are waiting for let’s try this tool and explore your campaign signals which may bring big changes in your campaign performance.
Optimization strategies focus on improving your campaign results as best as possible. It isn’t just about maximizing your key performance indicators (KPIs), but ensuring that you’re producing the most valuable results for your budget. Optimization strategies include adjusting bids, pausing poorly performing keywords, testing new landing page experiences and ad messages and more.
Optimization is crucial for your business because it helps you put your best foot forward in your strategies. Not only will marketing optimization improve your ROI, but it also ensures that you provide only the best and most relevant experiences for your customers. Simply put, if you want your business to be the best, you have to optimize your strategies.
Marketing optimization is the process of analyzing your data and strategies to find opportunities to improve performance. The goal of marketing optimization is to produce the most progress towards achieving your primary and secondary objectives, within the constraints of the resources and budget you have.
The marketing optimization process, while necessary for success, is not an easy one to navigate. It has many challenges that you must resolve.
Luckily, ad campaign optimization doesn’t have to be tedious, time-consuming and expensive.
With help from an automated solution, like PPC Signal, you can turn one of your biggest headaches into a simple, efficient system.
You’ll never miss an opportunity or allow a risk to go undetected, thanks to PPC Signal’s sophisticated artificial intelligence technology.
Through a steady supply of optimization insights, you’ll be able to increase your site traffic, improve your ROI and produce the most cost-effective marketing strategies possible!
That’s the PPC Signal advantage.
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