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Every year there are new changes to the Google Ads platform and the pay-per-click (PPC) industry as a whole. These updates affect how marketers need to approach PPC campaign management.
Thus, the answer to “what is campaign management” is slightly different every year. Old strategies become dated, while new ones evolve and become the best methods.
Similarly, Google Ads is continuously updating its ad platform with new features and technology. These emerging solutions impact the entire PPC management process.
When marketers fail to adapt to these updated best practices, they begin to lag behind the competition.
To avoid this potential risk, it’s crucial that you know and adapt to the best PPC campaign management strategies of 2023.
This discussion will look at what these latest methods are and how you can begin using them in your campaigns. In particular, we’ll look at why automated solutions are the future of PPC campaign management. Let’s get started.
If you’re new to Google Ads and SEM, understanding the basics of PPC management is the first priority.
There is a reason that PPC marketers are often referred to as PPC managers. It’s because most of your time is spent on campaign management.
PPC management is the process of overseeing and, well, managing a company’s ad spend for Google Ads.
Your ultimate goal as a PPC manager is to achieve the optimal return on investment (ROI) from your campaigns. This means minimizing your costs while simultaneously maximizing your results.
This is an ongoing effort. Campaigns are never set in stone. Instead, they are constantly changing, which requires constant attention. You need to detect and analyze each change to know how to adjust accordingly.
With all of the changes happening, you can look at PPC management as an always-evolving art. Perfect optimization is the pursuit, but never a reality.
Many tasks fall under the realm of PPC management:
That’s a long list of responsibilities, right? The constant pressure of managing changes to your PPC accounts is why automation is becoming a must-have.
It’s impossible to keep an eye on every change happening in your Google Ads account and manage all of the above-listed responsibilities.
This is where an automated management tool becomes not just an asset, but a necessity.
Automating your campaign management is not a matter of handing over your PPC responsibilities to an artificial intelligence (AI) brain. It’s about optimizing your time and energy.
Through the power of machine learning and automation, you can commit all of your time towards tasks that matter, instead of wasting hours on tedious, low-priority tasks.
In other words, AI should not be applied to your entire account. Ideally, you want to use it in areas that take a lot of time, but are necessary for the PPC process.
Automation shines the most when it comes to campaign monitoring. Again, your data is always changing, but you can’t be there 24/7 to watch for these shifts.
An automated campaign management tool is like an always-on alarm system for any significant change requiring more attention. Then, you can apply your experience and know-how as a PPC marketer to decide how to best approach this trend or shift.
Essentially, it’s a means of complementing your skills and knowledge as a PPC manager with the power of AI. This enables you to become a more productive manager. You can use AI to focus on the right tasks in the correct order.
Even with a team of dedicated marketers, managing all of the moving parts of a medium-sized or large Google Ads account can be overwhelming.
Given the importance of automation in the modern advertising era, you must choose the right PPC management solution.
This is becoming as vital as selecting the right keywords and developing the proper messaging to reach audiences!
Here are some things to keep in mind.
There are plenty of AI-enabled PPC management tools. Not all of them are worth your time or investment. Some solutions are overly complex and equally as expensive.
Before you hit the open market, assess what AI tools you already have available to you. Google Ads has several “Smart” features that can already make your life as a PPC manager much easier.
Smart Campaigns: This is now the default setup when making a new Google Ads campaign. It’s ideal for newcomers to PPC because it eliminates a lot of the effort traditionally required when managing a campaign.
Smart campaigns have a simpler dashboard and fewer controls. They automate certain tasks, such as bidding and some targeting options.
Expert PPC managers scoff at this because they want complete freedom to manage their campaigns. However, if you’re new to PPC or don’t have the time or resources to manage your campaigns fully, this is an excellent AI tool.
Dynamic Search Ads: Remember the aforementioned list of PPC management responsibilities? One of those management tasks was A/B testing new versions of ad messages.
A/B testing means creating two nearly identical ad messages. The only difference between the two may be a single word or phrase.
For instance, you may want to test between two different calls to action (CTA). In your “A” ad message, your CTA is “Call now.” The “B” ad is identical, but says “Shop now.” Running A/B tests enables you to see which CTA works best.
Dynamic search ads allow you to submit several different ad headlines and descriptions at once. Then, Google Ads mixes and matches the various components to find the best combinations for each audience segment.
This is an automated method for finding the best ad messages.
Smart Bidding: Smart bidding is one of the earliest AI-driven features that Google Ads rolled out. This approach to bidding allows you to set an overarching campaign goal, like maximizing conversions, clicks, conversions, conversion value, etc.
Once you have your goal set, the Smart Bidding AI automatically optimizes your bids to produce the best results possible. If your goal is to maximize clicks, Google’s system will automatically increase bids when it determines that a click is very likely.
This saves lots of time that would be spent manually managing these bid amounts.
No matter what AI solution you choose for your campaign management, you need data. AI and machine learning cannot function without sufficient supplies of data.
Luckily, PPC campaigns create a lot of data.
If you already have an existing campaign that’s been running for several weeks, you should have more than enough data. However, fresh campaigns may need some startup time to acquire enough data for the AI to use.
It’s worth noting that automation tools can only work as well as your campaigns are set up. AI looks at your campaign configurations and details to try and make sense of your goals.
Then, it makes optimization decisions based on these settings. When your campaign setup is flawed, the AI may not make the best decisions.
This is an area where you just need to rely on your expertise and skills as a PPC manager.
It’s easy to become swayed by shiny features and bright bells. Companies that develop automated campaign management tools are adept at convincing you that you need their software.
As a PPC manager, you need to use your better judgment to decide what type of solution you need.
One way to approach this is to think critically about what parts of your campaign you want to automate. Where are the hang-ups that seem to be wasting your time and not providing much value in return?
Then, look for solutions that fill this need. Otherwise, you may invest in a tool that automates tasks you’d prefer to manage yourself.
Also, consider your budget when shopping for automation tools. AI tools. Artificial intelligence is usually accompanied by words like “sophisticated,” “revolutionary” and “cutting-edge.” These are all buzzwords that can indicate a high price tag.
While automation offers many advantages and can certainly improve the ROI of your PPC campaigns, you don’t want to break the bank on this technology.
Your Google Ads campaigns are likely connected to your Google Analytics account (if they aren’t, they absolutely should be, to enable conversion tracking). You may also have other third-party tools connected to your PPC strategy.
When choosing an automated management solution, you want to choose one that will integrate effortlessly with the rest of your platforms and networks.
Remember, AI requires lots of data. Ideally, you want a solution that will be able to “talk” to all of your platforms to obtain this data automatically. If not, you’ll spend a lot of time manually gathering and entering this data.
If the tool can’t automatically compile reports, you should avoid it.
Most PPC tools offer a demo or free trial version. This enables you to test the tool in your campaigns to see the possible results for yourself.
You absolutely want to take advantage of this opportunity! Try out each tool one at a time and see what makes the most sense for your needs.
As you’re testing various tools, understand that AI is not perfect. Some people rely on automated tools with a closed eye. They assume that a machine can’t be wrong.
Unfortunately, this is a highly misguided approach. Automation tools instantly analyze mountains of data. Errors, bugs and mistakes can definitely happen!
AI is especially error-prone in the beginning because it’s still learning the intricacies of your account. So, avoid jumping at the first insights you receive and use your better judgment.
Once you are convinced of the results, then you can relax a little and trust the tool.
Google Ads always boasts that it’s a profitable platform for reaching customers. You can create strong returns with a successful PPC strategy, but it takes work.
A guaranteed method for improving the ROI of your PPC strategy is to reduce wasted spending in your campaigns.
When you limit wasted spending in your account, you have more money to put towards PPC opportunities that are actually profitable.
Of course, like every part of your PPC campaigns, areas of wasted spending are also ever-changing. Even a profitable keyword this month may be wasting your budget tomorrow.
Tracking and identifying parts of your campaigns that are hurting your budget optimization is a full-time job. PPC Signal takes the responsibility off your hands.
PPC Signal offers Google Ads advertisers a streamlined workflow that reduces the complexities of PPC management and makes taking necessary action easy.
Here’s how it works.
PPC Signal’s AI technology monitors your campaigns 24/7. It tracks every metric, keyword, dimension, campaign, etc., across your entire account.
The system decides what’s normal for your PPC campaigns using your account’s past performance.
If the data deviates from this norm significantly, whether positively or negatively, PPC Signal alerts you. It presents the change as a signal. You can find each active signal in the tool’s dashboard.
In the above example, there are 33 active signals. That’s 33 noteworthy changes that need your attention across your account.
If that seems a bit overwhelming, you can filter your active signals by account, campaign, ad group, keyword, device type, location, time, metric, quality, etc.
Example: Megan is a PPC manager that wants to improve her Quality Scores. She knows that CTR is one of the primary factors in raising these ratings. She filters her active signals only to include alerts that involve CTR. This enables Megan to get right to the changes that matter most to her current objectives.
Every signal is packed with valuable information regarding what’s happening:
You can find out what’s happening, when it started, how substantial the change is, which areas of your account are affected and more. You’re even given a sparkline chart. You see the data yourself!
Clicking the Explore button zooms in even further.
You can add other metrics to this chart to see how the change is affecting, or being affected by, other parts of your campaign.
You can also see the data as a table.
When you’re done viewing the data in PPC Signal’s interface, you can export it to Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel.
Whenever you’re choosing to invest in new marketing software, you must consider the cost versus the value. This is the same with any product or service you buy.
To understand all of the value that PPC Signal offers, here are all of the benefits of PPC Signal that make it the future of paid search advertising.
Marketers rely on KPIs, or key performance indicators, to measure the success of their efforts. Common KPIs for PPC include clicks, conversions, CTR, CPC and conversion rate.
These metrics help you understand where your money is going and what areas of your account perform the best. Which keywords are gaining traffic and conversions and which are wasting your time and ad budget?
KPIs can even show you the route that users take to make a purchase. Do they go straight to the product offering? Or, do they visit multiple pages on your site before converting?
PPC Signal can help you measure all of your necessary metrics. You always know how to improve your best performance-related metrics.
By definition, efficiency is about doing more work in the same amount of time. Automation will always improve your efficiency because it takes tedious tasks off your to-do list and does them for you.
This is the real power of PPC management automation. PPC managers are overloaded with responsibilities. Wrangling your always-changing campaigns is like trying to manage a daycare full of sugar-laden children.
It’s impossible without help.
PPC Signal takes many of the most time-consuming responsibilities off of your plate and returns completed insights. You can dedicate all of your time and effort towards following through with positive changes for your Google Ads account.
Whereas efficiency is about doing more in the time you have, efficacy is the ability to produce a desired result. Essentially, it’s another word for optimization.
PPC Signal helps you make more precise and accurate campaign decisions. It uncovers valuable connections and shifts in your account that can lead to better overall performance for your Google Ads account.
Not only does the tool tell you what’s happening now, but also what’s going to happen in the future. This automated forecasting allows you to project how your different tactics will impact performance down the road.
With this level of optimization, you can make smarter decisions regarding the future success of your campaigns.
As mentioned, PPC Signal is adept at identifying areas in your campaign where your budget is not being properly utilized.
By pausing or removing these parts of your account, you can free up budget for other opportunities.
Budget optimization is a critical part of a successful PPC strategy, whether you have little or lots of money available.
When you’re managing a Google Ads account with thousands of keywords, it’s easy to become overloaded and stressed. Trying to manage all of these keywords on your own isn’t just a challenge; it’s an impossibility.
If you try and manage all of your responsibilities as a PPC manager on your own, chaos quickly ensues. You become fatigued, disorganized and make rash marketing decisions that rarely lead to positive results.
By automating one of the most tiresome parts of PPC management, you’re able to eliminate mountains of stress.
Monitoring those constant PPC changes in your account is a continuous pressure. PPC Signal removes this stress and allows you to have more fun managing your Google Ads account.
Starting PPC Signal is incredibly easy. Once you sign in with your Google Ads account, the AI system begins analyzing your campaigns to learn about your data trends.
In just a short amount of time, it accrues enough data to begin offering fully-vetted insights into how to improve your campaigns.
Any signal can be quickly exported to your spreadsheets for further analysis and easy integration into your existing spreadsheets.
If you don’t know what to do about a given signal, the tool even recommends a next-step action to take. This streamlines your decision-making in a way that no other automated PPC campaign management tool offers.
What is PPC campaign management in 2023? Automated.
Even with a whole team of data scientists and PPC managers working on your Google Ads account, it’s still not enough to offset the power and convenience of an automated tool like PPC Signal.
Thus, taking advantage of AI-powered PPC management tools will soon be necessary to stay competitive. If you aren’t already invested in automated solutions, you need to start.
To recap, a tool like PPC Signal…
That’s an ocean of advantages for just a drop of investment.
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