6 Common PPC Optimization Issues (and the Solutions)

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.

The Ultimate PPC Optimization Guide for Common Advertising Problems

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.

1. You’re Not Getting Enough Impression Share

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:

• Low keyword bids – You are bidding too low on keywords in auctions, which means your competition can easily outbid you.
• Budget restrictions – your maximum budget limit is set at a very low price.
• Poor Ad Rank — This makes your ads less likely to appear near the top of search engine results pages (SERPs).

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.

Solution:

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:

• Adjust your budget to the maximum limit: With a low budget, you’ll struggle to make waves among the competitors. On the other hand, setting your budget too high could rapidly drain your finances. Look for a balance that is on the higher end of what you can afford.
• Assess Keyword Match types: A heavy focus on Exact Match Type Keywords will attract qualified users — but not a lot of them. You should avoid broad match types if possible, and aim for a mix of the other match types to spread brand awareness and generate more clicks.
• Use Placement Targeting: Bidding on target impression share may help you to boost your impression share. Your ad may appear in one of several possible placements.

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.

• Geo-Targeting: Your ad may be displayed more if it is relevant to local searches in a specific area. By knowing where your audience is, you can use geo-targeting to hone in on a certain region. This can generate more impressions from a very relevant sub-sect of users.
• Time-Targeting: Not everyone will be online at the same time, nor will every online shopper be ready to buy at the same time. Once again, knowing your audience at a deeper level will allow you to optimize your ad scheduling. Let’s say your ad isn’t getting a lot of impressions at 9 am, but a flurry of clicks is costing you a lot of money. It may be a wise move to use day-parting (exclude/pause) on your campaign at that time. You can adjust the display time to show your ads whenever they are more likely to attract clicks from qualified users.
• Device Bidding: Device bidding allows you to choose which devices to show your ads on. You can do this by setting a -100% bid on devices you do not want to show your ads on, or by setting a blanket bid increase or decrease on the keywords in your campaign based on device type. These can be set at the campaign or ad group level, and you may have bid adjustments set for Computers, Tablets, or Mobile. They are highly useful to campaign organization and optimizing spend across devices. Make sure you don’t set the bid adjustment to -100% if you want to show ads on that device. When setting up incorrectly, your ads will not generate impressions.

Also, consider these two metrics that are crucial for measuring Lost IS:

• Lost IS due to Ad Rank — This is the share of impressions your ad lost due to a poor Ad Rank position in SERPs. When Google ranks ads, it considers bid prices and Quality Score. Look for keywords that have a similar search volume but less competition.
• Lost IS due to budget — This is the share of impressions your ad lost due to budget restrictions. When your budget is set too low, Google Ads will automatically lower bidding prices, which causes lower impressions as you aren’t on par with your competitors’ bids.

 

2. Lower Clickthrough Rate (CTR)

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:

• Low impression share.
• Irrelevant audience targeting.
• A side-effect of poor Ad Rank.

 

Solution:

With those potential causes in mind, let’s look at some PPC optimization remedies to tackle your low CTR issue.

• Low impression share: This is a common cause of low CTR. Naturally, a higher impression share will drive more traffic to your website, which in turn, increases your CTR. So, to boost CTR, first, you must overcome the low impression share malady we explored above.
• Irrelevant Audience targeting: If you are bidding on the wrong keywords, you’ll attract the wrong audience. Thankfully, this issue can be corrected by updating your negative keyword list with search terms that attract irrelevant users. You can use keyword research tools to discover search queries that your target audience is using. Align your content, your ads, and your landing pages with these relevant keywords, and soon enough, you’ll attract more relevant qualified traffic.
• Ad Rank: This is highly dependent on Quality Score. You should endeavor to craft ad copy text that is engaging and relevant for users. Google will give a higher Quality Score to more relevant ads, and that will lead to a better Ad Rank. Also, make sure your ads link to the most relevant landing page or area on your website.
• Time scheduling: Your audience will likely be more active during certain times of the day, or on certain days of the week. To maximize your CTR, schedule your ads for these peak times. You can discover these golden periods by analyzing your impressions and clicks data in the Google Ads dashboard.

 

3. Your Competitors are Targeting your Brand Keyword

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.

Solution:

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:

• Boost your bids: By increasing bids on your own brand keywords, you can outrank your competitors. This works well if there are just a few bids on the keyword, as you should be able to get it for cheap.
• Ask them to stop: The quickest and cheapest way may be to politely ask your competitors to drop your branded terms from their keyword strategy. They may agree, however, if the keyword is earning them lots of leads, they probably won’t. It doesn’t hurt to ask, but just remember that all is fair in love and advertising.
• Google Trademark Policy: If you’re serious about owning that keyword, you could get Google on the case to make your competitors abstain from bidding on your brand keyword. This isn’t a guaranteed fix, but if your competitors are bending the rules to use your keyword in an unfair way, you may have a case.

 

4. Most of your Clicks Fail to Generate Leads

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:

• Your ad is triggered by irrelevant search queries.
• You are bombarding prospects with ads.
• Your ad copy lacks a strong call to action (CTA).
• You have the wrong targeting approach.
• Your landing page has problems.

 

Solution:

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:

• Target domain-specific keywords: It’s not a good practice to bid on the maximum number of keywords. Instead, you should focus on ones related to your products or services. Use keyword research tools to target keywords that are closely related to your business. This will make it easy for prospects to find you.
• Optimize your headline: A great headline has the power to sway your prospects. Review yours and ask yourself if it is persuasive enough. It should include essential information like your brand name, the target keyword, and your business location. Also, make sure you include anything that will encourage people to click, such as pricing and discounts.
• Use a strong CTA: Your call-to-action is the key aspect that elicits a response or inspires customers to take action. In lead generation, you may consider CTAs like, “Sign up here,” “Call us now,” “Get a quote today,” etc. It may be obvious that they should click the ad, but a strong CTA can trigger that impulse in viewers, and it gives them a preview of what to expect by clicking your ad.

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.

5. Lower Conversion Rate to Clickthrough Rate Ratio

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:

• Irrelevancy between your audience and content.
• Poor landing page experience.
• High bounce rate.
• Your landing page is not cross-platform optimized.
• Bidding on Low potential keywords
• Your offer may not be compelling.

 

Solution:

Let’s take a look at some PPC optimization tips that will help you turn more of those ad clicks into conversions.

• Improve ad relevance: This is a big factor that impacts your Quality Score, and your conversion rate. Use keyword research tools to identify keywords that your target audience is using. Bid on those, and craft ad copy around these terms to increase your ad relevance, which will then improve your Quality Score. You can also:
  • Use negative keywords to filter out unqualified traffic: These users click on ads but then get to the landing page and realize it’s not for them. Then they just bounce, which is bad news for Quality Score.
  • Use time and geo-targeting options: Exclude times and locations that aren’t relevant for your business, and schedule your ads to show at peak hours, in the locations your audience is active.

 

• Optimize your Landing Page: If your landing page is cluttered or contains complex information that is unrelated to the ad, people may be confused. It should be finely-tuned to deliver a smooth customer journey. Think of it as a bridge between an ad click and a conversion — it should be a direct line to the end goal that users are looking for, and it must be streamlined for great user experience. If it takes too long to load or contains too many hurdles, people will just leave again.
• Reduce your bounce rate: A high bounce rate is a side-effect of a poor landing page or irrelevant offer. Consider it a red flag that something else is awry, which requires PPC optimization. By using the advice above, you should see a reduction in your bounce rate, and in turn, your conversion rate will improve.

 

• Use Google Ads reports for campaign performance analysis: This will help you identify the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in your PPC ads. When you use these KPIs as guidelines, you can optimize your marketing funnel, and ultimately, maximize your conversion rate.

 

6. Your Wasted Spend is Increasing

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:

• Poor ad targeting
• No exposure to the marketplace.
• No set goals for the advertising campaign.
• No proper performance analysis.
• Lack of testing and review.

 

Solution:

So, what can you do to reduce your wasted spend? Here are some tips to take control of your PPC budget.

• Define your goals: This is a vital early step in any PPC campaign. It should be established before you even launch an ad or start spending! If you haven’t done it yet, then plug the hole in your budget by getting specific with your campaign. Decide what it is you are trying to achieve. It may be boosting website traffic, generating leads for a new product, growing your email list or driving purchases. Once you set the goal, your campaign will have more focus.
• Conduct a competitor analysis: Take a close look at your competitors to see what strategies they use for PPC advertising. See what you can learn from their keywords, bidding types, and audience targeting. A good competitor analysis will help you understand more about your market and your audience. You can identify new opportunities that your competitors aren’t yet exploring, which gives you the edge.
• Set your maximum budget limit: In many advertising channels, including Google Ads, you may exceed the budget limit. This is to maximize ad clicks. Your overall monthly limit should not exceed the figure you set it at. This allows you to safeguard against excessive wasted spend.

 

The Importance of Knowing Your Audience

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:

1. Researching market trends.
2. Identifying the specific needs of an audience you think will buy your products.
3. Engagement patterns of the audience in relation to your competitors’ businesses.

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:

1. Go Niche

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.

2. Use Keyword Match Types as Filters

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.

3. Choose Your Keywords Wisely

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.

PPC Optimization is a Perpetual Task

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.