Pay-per-click advertising (or PPC ads) can be a very cost-effective tool to drive website visits, conversions, or purchases. But optimising your PPC marketing can be littered with easy to make mistakes, especially on Google digital marketing platforms. Those impressive ROIs can remain out of reach, unless you know how to use the advert algorithm in your favour.
To help you make the most of it, we’ve collated 20 tips your PPC marketing strategy needs to create effective ads. Why 20? This month, InSynch celebrates 20 years of being in business to drive online success. Read on to see what tips our Aberystwyth, Shrewsbury and Bristol PPC agency experts have collaborated to create.
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1 – Have Google Analytics Set Up
All Google digital marketing platforms integrate into each other. To define what you want to achieve with the ads, ensure that your Google Analytics is set to track successful conversions in relation to your goals. This is important for Google Ads, as they use these goals to refine their algorithm.
2 – Have a Meta Pixel
Meta advertising doesn’t refine its algorithm through Google digital marketing platforms. They use their own analytics tool called the Meta Pixel. Ensure this is set to track successful conversions in relation to your goals, and you will see the Meta Ads algorithm improve. It can also gather data on your audience for use in remarketing ads.
3 – Know Your Audience
Research your target audience’s demographics, interests, and online behaviour to create highly targeted ads. Select search engine and social media platforms that your audience is most active on.
4 – Know Your Competitors
Analyse your competitors’ pay-per-click advertising and keywords to identify opportunities and gaps to take advantage of in your own ads. You can even create Google Ads using their name as a keyword, as long as you do not attempt to impersonate them.
5 – Research Keywords
Don’t just use words you think you would use for pay-per-click advertising. Use Google Keyword Planner to find out what keywords users are engaging with, and the cost of using them in your campaign. You want to start off with a mix of highly searched keywords, and keywords with a lower cost-per-click.
6 – Use Negative Keywords
Did you know that on Google Ads you can exclude irrelevant search terms to avoid wasting budget on users who don’t want your services? Now you do.
7 – Use Geo-Targeting
Don’t show your ads in countries or areas you don’t serve! Focus your ads around specific locations where your audience is instead. Consider targeting nearby areas as well, as your audience may travel to those areas as well.
8 – Start With a Modest Budget
Ads take time to learn and refine themselves to achieve results, high spend on the outset doesn’t guarantee results. Set a modest budget with new PPC marketing ads, you can always increase it later on campaigns that show promising results.
9 – Write Compelling Ads
Focus on benefits and unique sales points that align with your target audience. Don’t forget to include sitelinks where you have the option too, and include a strong call to action.
10 – Use Ad Extensions
On Google, this is site links, callouts, lead forms, and call extensions. On Meta and LinkedIn, they offer lead forms. These can simplify the process of attracting leads, and helping users find the content they want.
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11 – Point Users to the Right Page
People will click off your pay-per-click advertising if they have to jump through more hoops to get to the content or service that was advertised to them, or land on a broken page. That’s why you should set the landing page for that service, and provide them a user-friendly experience to get what they want.
12 – Try Remarketing Campaigns
Not all marketing efforts will guarantee a conversion on the offset, but they aren’t lost causes yet. Using Google Ads or Meta Pixel, you can create ads that only target people who have visited or interacted with you before.
13 – Leave Your Ads Alone During its Learning Period
In 20 years of business, we always see cases where businesses have changed an ad during its learning period, which prevents it from learning the correct data and having a chance to achieve. The ad should be left alone for at least a month. Naturally, the next tip is:
14 – Tweak Your Ads After its Learning Period
Go into your ads after they have been running for a while and analyse what is working and what isn’t. Are some graphics less appealing than others? Are some keywords resulting in a lot of clicks but no conversions? Cutting out the poor performers can help keep your cost-per-conversions down.
15 – Avoid “Smart” Automated Ads
For the reason we’ve stated above, we don’t recommend smart ads. You can’t go into them and do this level of customisation on them after their learning period. While they’re easy to manage, they’re difficult to change.
16 – Trial Different Ad Types to Align With Your Goals
Selling products? A Google Shopping ad may be beneficial. Need leads for your business? A Meta Lead ad could be the one to drive them. These specialised ads may be able to perform better than standard search ads.
17 – Avoid Relying on AI for Content Generation
Generative AI can be useful for helping you think of ideas for calls-to-action or headlines, but when it comes to images and spreading brand awareness, think again. Customers may feel an ad with generated images and generic text as a sign of a fake business, or one that doesn’t care for its company values.
18 – Choose the Right Bidding Strategy
Google digital marketing allows you to choose the bidding strategy of your ads, and doing so dramatically alters how the ad performs financially. This is an advanced optimisation technique and can be left alone, but if you have found promising results in your Google Ads, changing the strategy to “maximise conversions” to further drive results.
19 – Experiment With Split testing
Once your ads have been running for a long time, optimised to their fullest potential, it can be difficult to branch out and develop your PPC marketing strategy further. It is at this stage where you should create different variations of ad copy or assets, and branching out with audiences to bring a new lease of life to your ads.
20 – Know When Your Campaigns Aren’t Working
Sometimes, a pay-per-click advertising campaign doesn’t achieve the results you are looking for. Conversions are low, costs are high, and optimisations have not made a significant difference to the ads prospects. Take this time to reflect what went wrong, whether it was a problem with the advert itself, or with external factors, then turn the ad off. That budget can be redistributed to the ads that are working, or towards a more appropriate strategy for your audience.
Choose Our 20-Year-Old PPC Marketing Agency
Starting out with PPC ads for the first time? Struggling to find success in this area? Our Aberystwyth, Shrewsbury and Bristol PPC agency experts are here to help. Talk to us in an online consultation and learn what we can do for you today.
