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As a pay-per-click (PPC) advertiser, you want to know how to optimize PPC campaign. After all, you want to get the maximum return on investment (ROI) from your advertising efforts. Otherwise, you risk wasting a lot of time, money, and effort on advertising campaigns that earn you little in brand awareness, leads, or sales.
If you want to avoid that disaster, PPC optimization can help you.
PPC optimization helps sustain or improve the performance of your paid search ad campaigns so that you can boost your conversions and profits. However, learning how to optimize your PPC campaigns can be overwhelming, especially if you don’t know where to start.
In this article, you’ll learn how to optimize PPC campaign as we explore the key aspects of your advertising campaign. This gives you actionable knowledge you can easily implement right away to get the most out of your PPC campaigns.
Here’s how you can take the full advantage of Google Ads:
To optimize your keywords, consider following these steps:
Perform Keyword Research
Research the most beneficial keywords for your brand. This will also help you better understand your target audience and how they’re looking for your content, services, or products.
For example, “blue jeans” is a generic keyword with a much higher search volume as compared to “blue skinny jeans for men.” However, the latter is more relevant if you do sell blue skinny jeans that are designed for male customers.
It is challenging to determine the best-performing keywords when you have a huge list of keywords. That’s why many marketers use the Pareto Principle to identify the most significant keywords in their campaigns. They do so by considering several key metrics such as Impressions, Clicks, Cost, Conversion, Conversion Value, and Wasted Spend.
Pause the Low-Performing Keywords
Sometimes a single keyword can hurt the performance of your entire PPC campaign. That’s why it is crucial to pay close attention to keyword performance on a weekly, if not daily, basis. A handful of low-performing keywords can make you lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
It is recommended to pause all keywords that aren’t getting any results. However, if your keywords are somewhat performing but not at the level you want, it’s best to look at the following things before pausing.
For instance, say you’re creating a campaign about “boys’ jeans,” and you use the keyword “boys’ jeans” as a broad match type in your campaign. However, you see that the terms like “skinny jeans for boys,” “blue jeans for boys,” and “striped jeans for boys” are performing better than your original keyword. In such a scenario, you should pause the keyword “boys’ jeans” as it is underperforming.
Create a List of Negative Keywords
The search terms report helps you identify which keywords to add as negative keywords. It shows the actual terms that users searched for, which both triggered your ad and resulted in a click.
This report is primarily divided into three categories: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion.
Identify irrelevant keywords in all these sections, and add them to your negative keywords lists as they only generate impressions and wasted clicks – but no conversions.
For instance, you have a broad match keyword “men’s jeans,” and the search queries that trigger your ad include “skinny men’s jeans,” “blue jeans for men,” “skinny jeans for women” and “jeans for women.” Now your ad is related to men’s jeans, but some irrelevant search queries like “skinny jeans for women” and “jeans for women” are triggering it. Add those keywords to your negative keyword list, as this will save your ad from being triggered for the irrelevant search terms.
Similarly, look for themes around products or services that you don’t offer, and the names of your competitors.
Choose the Correct Match Types
Broad match keywords are the default choice, but they don’t get the best clickthrough rates (CTRs) to your website. Plus, it’s not even recommended to bid on phrase match keywords.
Restricting your keywords too much might limit traffic, so try to keep your keywords as broad as possible and layer them with Smart Bidding. A broader keyword can help machine learning technology prioritize the best performing keywords regardless of their match type.
Your ad copy must build around the brand. Write a clear description so that the customer knows more about you just by looking at your listed services.
Here’s an example of a very effective Google Ads:
In this ad, you can replace the headline with your brand and an attention-grabbing keyword. It also mentions the address of the site. The description of the ad is also very catchy, and just the first few words explain what the company sells.
The description also highlights features of shopping, such as free shipping, which is an excellent incentive to win over customers. Lastly, the ad includes call-to-action (CTA) links, which take users directly to different product categories.
Proper use of ad extensions can also improve the overall performance of your ad. Use data-driven copy to personalize your creatives’ look and feel for different customer segments. For instance, you can show one creative message to people in the UK, and a different message to people in the US. You can swap any element in a dynamic creative, including CTA text, exit URLs, images, and more.
Programmatic buying, along with data-driven creatives, can deliver more effective digital ad campaigns. However, connecting the dots between the data and the creative can be challenging.
Here are four key considerations to help you do so successfully.
Understand all the available data before selecting the right data signals.
As a marketer, you may already be using data from CRM tools or market research to power your campaigns. However, you may also find a wealth of additional data signals from first-party analytics on company sites, third-party audience data, contextual inputs about device, location, or media type.
Explore in-depth Display & Video 360 and the other products of Google Marketing Platform to ensure you know what’s accessible.
Work with creative agencies to develop data-driven strategies.
Consider working with agencies to develop creative strategies that are grounded on data from the start of the project.
When creating a programmatic campaign, bring all teams together to build the digital brief, taking media, creative, and brand input into account. Use this input to plan a strategy that involves everybody in the process from the beginning.
Drive a collaborative, agile campaign process that involves all vendors and agencies from start to finish.
In a campaign creation process, each party finishes its part and hands it to the next with little feedback. This restricts communication and transparency between media and creative. For greater success, consider involving all agencies throughout the campaign process.
Use Ad Customizers.
As a PPC advertiser, you have to spend a lot of time creating ads that highlight your offerings. You also have to manage sales and plan timings for your promotions.
Ad Customizers are a feature of Google Ads that allow you to change details in your PPC ads dynamically. By using Ad Customizer, you can easily reach your customers through highly relevant text ads in real-time.
Suppose your brand is hosting conferences across New York. If you were to use the countdown option, somebody in Chicago would see that they’ve got two days left to attend the conference, while somebody in New York could see an “early bird” discount ad for the conference.
A landing page is where users arrive when they click on your PPC ad. It helps decide whether or not a user makes a purchase. So, your landing page should be persuasive enough to convince them to purchase your product. You can use dynamic keyword insertion in your landing page to meet the exact user intent by showing relevant content.
How do you know your landing page is effective? That’s where Google Analytics can help you. It’s a powerful tool that allows you to assess the performance of your site. You can get a clearer picture of how users interact with your website.
Using Google Analytics, you can see the following insights about your landing page:
Navigation
You can identify the pages that your audience is most likely to land on when they visit your site. Plus, it also helps you find out any website navigation problems.
For example, if users are most likely to land on your blog page, you should show them quickly and clearly what else your website has to offer. Ensure your website is easy to navigate from every single point of entry. Even your static content pages, such as blog pages, should include a clear CTA and intuitive direction to the rest of the website.
The bounce rate shows the percentage of users that leave your website immediately upon landing, without taking any action. If you have a high bounce rate, you need to ask yourself the following four questions:
Customize Your Statistics
To get the lowdown on your landing pages, you can configure custom reports in Google Analytics to see which routes through your website generate the most conversions. Use this info to improve your landing page.
Suppose you own an eCommerce business that sells socks. You are actively running PPC ads on Google and are also promoting your products on Pinterest. If you’re bidding on the keyword “warm socks,” you should create a landing page experience aligned with the user’s search intent. For instance, it should describe the temperatures your socks are suitable for and how the user might feel in different locations.
On the other hand, a prospective buyer from Pinterest might be more interested in how they’ll look in the socks. A high-performing landing page experience for this traffic source could include an image of a model wearing those socks and influencer social proof.
Consider your landing page as the ultimate step in a buyer’s journey. It’s the last chance you have to wow them with your product. That’s why you should include a detailed product description that specifies dimensions, materials used, care instructions, available colors, and available sizes.
When you include this info, it gives purchasers everything they need to make an informed buying decision. Lack of this info could cause them to second guess your product as they don’t know if you have the color or size they want. Make sure your headline and sub-headline aren’t just about selling your products or services to prospects. Instead, they should establish a connection with them and convince them to take the desired action.
However, keep in mind that unnecessary detail and content will not make your landing page effective. Concentrate on the benefits and key features of your offering. Include high-quality images that are responsive on different devices. Choose the appropriate color and theme of your website. Your site aesthetics should be appealing and shouldn’t camouflage your offering. Plus, the color of your CTA button should be distinct.
Google recommends a page load speed under three seconds. So, make sure your web page is rendered within this time. Consider minifying your JavaScript, removing unused tags, and using compressed images.
Your landing page can follow two patterns for better visual appeal.
F-Pattern
The F-pattern specifies that users first read your page in a horizontal direction, mostly along the upper part of the content area. Next, they move down the page and read across a second horizontal line. Finally, they scan the left side of the page in a vertical movement.
Here’s an example to better explain this idea:
As you can see, the headline has the largest font, so it is likely to be seen first. Next, there’s a subheading across to the image, and the main copy in bullet points. As the user scans left to right, they can see both CTA buttons.
Organizing your page elements into this particular visual order guarantees that users go through your landing page and click the CTA button. This F-pattern usually works for pages that have more content. However, you can also apply it to pages with less content.
The Z-Pattern
The Z-pattern is typically used on pages that do not have much content. Its layout mimics the route the human eye travels when it reads left to right, forming an imaginary horizontal line. Next, you scan down and to the left, creating an imaginary diagonal line. Lastly, you look back across to the right again, which forms a second horizontal line.
The homepage of Facebook is a brilliant example of this pattern.
The user first looks at the logo and “Login” button on the top horizontal line. Next, they proceed down the diagonal line and scan the form’s headline. Lastly, they look at the bottom horizontal line, which has the “Create an account” CTA button.The Z-Pattern doesn’t just end with a single “Z.” It can be further extended to create a series of Z’s called ZigZag.
Place the most critical landing page elements along with the user’s natural eye movement, whether in an F- or Z-pattern, to create an engaging landing page experience. Using the power of visual hierarchy on your page, you can ensure users understand your message and take the desired action.
A huge PPC optimization opportunity involves tweaking the geo-targeting settings based upon campaign performance. For instance, many ad campaigns are set to target only the US with a 0% bid modifier. On the other hand, many PPC advertisers bid at the state level with apparently random bid modifiers based on the perception of performance or need, rather than the actual performance.
In the competitive ad marketplace today, such a strategy shortchanges your business performance.
Here are some geo-targeting strategies to optimize across multiple locations:
Single Campaign Using Geographic Bid Adjustments
Create a single campaign in your account. Within the geo-targeting settings, select the specific areas where the conversion rate is perhaps highest and increase your bids in those areas.
You can also choose areas where performance isn’t the best, but it is still important for your ads to display as these users are within your serviceable area.
For instance, you may target New York, California, and the US all within the same campaign. However, you can adjust your bids 25% higher for NY and CA as you’= have identified them as the best performers.
Two Campaigns, Each Targeting Multiple Areas
Create two separate campaigns targeting similar keywords. As each campaign targets different areas, there’s no “internal competition” within the account.
The first campaign can focus on the geographic areas where conversion rates, total goal completions, or revenue have shown to be the highest. The second campaign can focus on the areas where the conversion rate is not quite as high but where you’re attempting to generate demand with an emphasis on brand awareness.
For instance, you may target NY and CA (which are identified as the best performers) in the first campaign and the rest of the US in the second campaign.
Multiple Campaigns, Each Targeting a Single Area
You can also target only one region within every campaign, while you can have multiple campaigns. You can choose three or four of your best performing geographical areas while grouping the others according to the previous strategies.
For instance, you may target NY and CA in two separate campaigns while targeting the rest of the US in a third campaign.
Multiple Campaigns, Each Targeting Multiple Regions with Bid Adjustments
Divide your campaigns into very specific geo-segments. Next, segment again within the campaign to even more granular levels based on the most specific data.
For instance, you may target NY at large then adjust bids on specific zip codes within NY. Then, create campaigns for your other top geographic areas.
As an internet marketer, you can produce more revenue by driving more traffic to your website, eventually increasing sales. Alternatively, you can enhance the effectiveness of your website to increase sales with the same amount of traffic you’re currently driving. Conversion rate optimization (CRO) focuses on the latter approach.
Consider a scenario where you’re the owner of an online business. Before optimizing your site, you convince 3% of people to sign up for your service which costs $30 per month. That works out to 30 new customers per 1,000 visitors and $900 in monthly revenue. Now, suppose you optimize your site and raise your conversion rate from 3% to 6%. At this rate, 1,000 visitors turn into 60 customers and $1800 in monthly sales.
Without changing anything else about your brand, you doubled your sales -for the same number of visitors and with the same pricing – just by making your conversion funnel more effective. When your sales funnel becomes more effective, it can help you make more money.
As a rule of thumb, when you double your conversion rate, you reduce your cost per acquisition (CPA) by almost 50%. So if you’re currently spending $5 to get one new customer, after site optimization and doubling your conversion rate, your CPA will go down to $2.5. Now, you can afford to invest in more ads or simply benefit from the increased profit.
There you have it: Five tried-and-trusted steps on how to optimize PPC campaign?
Remember, PPC optimization isn’t a one-and-done thing. It involves several stages, and you need to improve your campaign in every stage continuously.
No matter how attractive your ad is, it will fail to reach its maximum potential if it’s not perfectly designed for search. That’s why optimization is so vital to the success of any PPC campaign strategy.
To take the lessons here to the next level, read our Google Ads Optimization Checklist.
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