8 Tips for Running Effective PPC Campaigns.

Running PPC campaigns is difficult, especially if you’re new at it. Once you’ve made your ads and sent them live, it can be difficult to know what to do next. So, how do you make your ads better and get more clicks for your buck?

To help out, we’ve made a list of our top tips for Google Search Ad success:

1. Map keywords to funnel.

Most advertisers focus on highly relevant long-tail keywords. This is a solid strategy, provided you can find longtail keywords with decent traffic within your niche that have low competition – a tall order. Instead, start advertising closer to the top of the funnel and get in front of your potential customers well before your competitors, while they are still in the investigation phase of the buyer journey.

2. Ad extensions are your best friend.

Ad extensions aren’t negotiable; they are a must for any successful search ad. Not only do they make your ads more noticeable, but they also increase relevance of ads, and the search page space that your ads take up. The data speaks for itself — ads with at least 4 extensions set up will increase CTR by a couple of percent. In fact, adding one new extension improves CTR by up to 15%.

3. Match landing pages to keywords and ads.

Imagine clicking from an ad about a couch and finding yourself on a landing page about a laptop — you’d click away, right? That’s the last thing you want your customers to do, so make sure your landing pages match your ad copy.

4. Negative keywords will make your PPC campaigns sing.

We’ve covered negative keywords before — that’s how important they are! Keep an eye on your search terms and any terms that are chewing up a lot of budget, but are not relevant or getting any sales — then, ‘negative’ them straight on out.

5. Optimise!

You can’t turn on your ads and then just leave them. Well, you can, but you’d be getting it wrong. Optimising ads and keeping an eye on them is one of the most important things you can do.

6. Look at SEO results.

A lot of marketers treat SEM and SEO in a silo. However, many elements of SEO will tie closely into SEM. Especially keywords and the content that converts most. The content can indicate great opportunities for ad copy and landing pages and the keywords can indicate where to target your ads.

7. Turn off search partners – just do it.

Maybe check the stats of search partners first but, in general, we see worse results from search partners — what’s more, you can never see which search partners your ads are showing for.

8. If you have a phone, always include the phone extension.

Phone extensions are great! If someone clicks on your phone extension, then it only counts as one click and then they have called you and you have the opportunity to sell to them over the phone. If you have skilled phone salespeople, it can be a huge profit driver.

Use these eight tips to optimise your performance. Or, of course, talk to Edison!