By now, you probably know that pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is anything but easy. There is a lot to consider, and if you’re going to run a successful campaign, you need to make PPC optimization a top priority.
It’s easy to get started with PPC. With a few clicks, you can have a campaign up and running, and it’s highly likely that you’ll lose money.
However, to be successful with PPC, it takes a lot of hard work and constant monitoring. While the workload can be reduced with smart data-driven analytics, you must remember that competition is fierce, and mistakes are not forgiven.
It’s time to find out all about the big problems you’ll face in paid advertising. Better yet, we’re going to explore PPC optimization tips and tricks that will light a fire under your campaign.
Without understanding the ins and outs of PPC optimization, you’ll struggle to get anywhere, and soon enough your budget may disappear with your patience.
Let’s look at the six biggest challenges you may encounter.
In PPC, Impression Share (IS) is the percentage of total impressions your ad receives compared to the total number of impressions it is eligible to receive. The remaining percentage is known as Lost Impression Share (Lost IS).
So, why does Lost IS happen?
There are a few reasons, including:
In any case, low impression share indicates that while your keywords may be aligned with user intent, there are other factors that are preventing you from earning impressions.
When you are considering PPC optimization, you must realize that impressions are the first stage of the PPC life cycle. Therefore, if your ads aren’t getting enough impressions, it’s a poor start, which is unlikely to yield many conversions at the end.
Here’s what to do:
You can use placement targeting to select the placements where you want your ad to appear. Google Ads automatically sets your bids to show your ad, based on your placement settings:
Absolute top position (1)
Top of the page (1, 2, 3, 4)
Anywhere on the page (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)
By considering how your ad performs in different positions, such as the absolute top position compared to the top of the page, you can determine the best position for your ad – and for your return on investment (ROI).
These insights enable you to optimize campaigns to attract more clicks and conversions. With some tinkering, you can get a better understanding of where your brand terms are triggering your ads the most.
Also, consider these two metrics that are crucial for measuring Lost IS:
The next logical step in your PPC optimization strategy should be to consider how many clicks you are getting. More specifically, we can consider your ad’s clickthrough rate (CTR).
After impressions, CTR is the first step towards lead generation; therefore, we can understand a high CTR to be a good sign of relevant targeting and well-optimized ad copy. On the other hand, if your ads are generating a low CTR, you need to find the problem.
It could be:
With those potential causes in mind, let’s look at some PPC optimization remedies to tackle your low CTR issue.
It’s never good if you can’t rank in the top spot for your own brand keywords. When it comes to creating brand awareness, establishing your company as the go-to solution for specific keywords is crucial.
Sometimes, upcoming brands will use a similar name of a better-known brand to hijack organic traffic, and effectively get their brand into the public consciousness in a shorter space of time. There are plenty of examples of that in recent years, such as the many companies that use the “Insta-“ prefix to piggyback on Instagram’s fame.
The problem here is that competitors can siphon off a lot of clicks your ads could be receiving, which slashes your organic traffic.
Paid advertising is great, but you don’t want to be relying on it for everything, including ranking on your branded keywords. Here are a few tips to conquer the issue:
This is a frustrating problem to deal with in Google Ads. Getting lots of clicks is great, but it’s not much good if those clicks are all from irrelevant users who will never become leads.
Lead generation is the stage of your sales funnel where you persuade people in the consideration phase of the customer journey to become your customer. It is a crucial stage, and it’s a massive step in making your PPC campaign profitable.
Unfortunately, many PPC advertisers fail to generate leads, effectively getting stuck at the brand awareness stage.
This could happen because:
Perhaps you’ll notice that the reasons above all point the finger at you. That’s what is important to realize about PPC optimization – it’s down to you. The problems can usually be traced back to something in your control, which means the solutions are also in your hands.
Here’s what you can do to improve lead generation:
When you work on your keywords, headline, and CTA, you will have much more compelling PPC ads. Therefore, you’ll have no need to bombard people with ads, which only deters them. In the end, quality is much more effective than quantity.
This is a similar issue to the previous one, as you find yourself dealing with lots of clicks, but relatively few of them are actually bearing fruit. If your campaign is focused on brand awareness, you may be satisfied with the click traffic. However, conversions are the ultimate goal of many campaigns, and so the time will come when you’ll need to fix this problem.
It may be happening because of one of the following reasons:
Let’s take a look at some PPC optimization tips that will help you turn more of those ad clicks into conversions.
Your PPC budget is one of the most important aspects you will set in any advertising campaign. Unless you have incredible resources, it will be a worry to see your wasted spend growing. Nobody wants to throw money away, and while PPC advertising involves a high degree of trial and error, you should look to find a balance sooner rather than later.
Your wasted spend may increase because of:
So, what can you do to reduce your wasted spend? Here are some tips to take control of your PPC budget.
Just like your PPC goals, you must figure out your target audience before you start paid advertising. It doesn’t make sense to start marketing and paying for ads if you don’t understand who you are trying to reach.
So, before you get into advertising, you must do some research on your market. The best idea is to create detailed customer profiles, also known as audience personas.
Start off by:
You can add to these personas over time as you learn more about demographics, like age, gender, and income, or psychographics, such as their favorite brands, websites, and interests.
Ultimately, you must develop a clear picture of your target audience before you start your advertising campaign. That way, you will have more success in engaging them. This ensures you don’t incur a lot of wasted spend, and it also guides your ad creation, which is crucial when it comes to creating and publishing relevant ads.
So, in effect, audience personas can help improve your impressions, clicks, lead generation, and conversion rates.
Knowing your audience is a fundamental cornerstone of PPC optimization, and you can do it all before spending a cent on paid advertising.
Here are a few tips to make sure you nail it:
Don’t target a broad audience. It may be tempting because you think more people equals more traffic and more profits. However, that’s rarely the case. When you want more than brand awareness, it’s better to target smaller, focused groups of people. Also, it’s better to experiment on a smaller number of people and learn before you make the big push.
Match types play an important role in maximizing your return on advertising spend (ROAS). When you set your campaign up with a balance of Exact Match types and Broad Match modifiers, you will attract decent traffic, and also filter out a lot of irrelevant clicks. This is a good way to optimize your budget.
Don’t pick keywords because you like them or because they have a high search volume. You want to capitalize on opportunities that your competitors are overlooking. Seek out keywords that have decent search traffic and low competition. These will be easier to rank for, and clicks and conversions will come cheaper. In the end, just remember relevance more important than reach.
There are innumerable things to learn in paid advertising. You could work with Google Ads for years, and you’ll still struggle to master it all, especially considering the constant changes in the platform.
In a nutshell, PPC optimization is all about reducing your costs and maximizing your ROAS. It’s easier said than done, but when you adhere to proven practices and commit the time, you will soon learn what works for your brand, your products, and your audience.
Testing and monitoring is the name of the game, and you can learn as much from your competitors and their keywords as you can by studying your own data.
Over time, you’ll become familiar with the key metrics and core aspects of Google Ads, and the methods for fixing common issues will seem straightforward.
But the only way to get there is through time, practice, patience, and persistence.
We will help your ad reach the right person, at the right time
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