How to Build a Successful PPC Campaign That Gets Results? To succeed in Pay Per Click campaigns (PPC), a solid strategy is needed. A PPC strategy is essential to executing, optimizing, and planning paid advertising campaigns. In addition, creating a strong PPC strategy can boost growth, increase profits, or even drive conversions for channels other than search engines. However, how do you choose which goal to pursue first within a PPC campaign? In this post, you will learn how to build a successful PPC campaign that gets results. 

How Does PPC Work?

As a marketing channel, PPC uses a variety of ad platforms, such as Google Adwords and Bing Ads being the most common. Within each of these platforms there are several formats to choose from, which includes:

• Search Ads
• Shopping Ads
• Display Ads
• Videos Ads
• Gmail Ads

As a small business, Google Ads is the best platform to start a PPC marketing campaign. Because, it provides you access to the largest audience of potential customers. As well as a range of customized ways to set up your campaigns.

Setting Up Your PPC Campaign

A Google Adwords account consists of two components: campaign and an ad group. Both of these elements form the basis of your account and are straightforward.

PPC Campaign

A PPC ad campaign consists of multiple ad groups, each containing ads and keywords. Campaigns are often determined by how you wish to allocate your budget and goals. For instance, let’s say you are a beauty consultant. You can set up separate campaigns for ‘skin care’ and ‘hair care,’ so that you can keep your budget, targeting, and other adjustments separate. 

Ad Groups

In contrast, ad groups are specific groups of ads triggered by keywords. Thus, within a PPC campaign, the number of ad groups you set up depends on your business and the number of keyword groups you will be bidding on.

Your PPC campaign should align with your digital marketing strategy. For example, if you’re trying to increase traffic to your website, your marketing strategy should be to achieve a high click-through rate. Once you have set goals, the activities that will help you achieve them become apparent.

Selecting Keywords For Your PPC Campaign

Keywords enable you to communicate with your customers in the same digital language. That way, your customers can easily find you. To run an effective PPC campaign, you need to know what industry-related terms consumers are searching for, and which terms are likely to bring you paying clients. Ideally, your keywords should be long tail keywords. Those long tail keywords should reflect your audience’s intent to become customers.

For instance, if you sell beauty products, the term “beauty products” won’t get you many qualified customers. Typically, people searching for this keyword are looking for information about general beauty products.

Rather than using broad, generic keywords, try long, more specific ones, like “anti wrinkles moisturizer” for sale in {your area}. The keyword might have fewer users, but the people who use them are likely to become potential paying customers.

If you have an established website, the second step is to ensure your paid search goals do not conflict with your existing organic marketing efforts. Share Voice is a great tool to use to offset the conflict.  Share Voice enables you to measure and reveal how much of a market’s organic search traffic or impressions are directed to your site.

You could estimate your brand’s Share of Voice using the following formula: Your brand’s traffic / the total market traffic*100 = Your brand’s share of voice. By performing the previous calculation, allow you to benchmark your organic keyword share against your competition and create a marketing strategy to overtake your competitors.

PPC Keyword Match Types

To show ads when a user searches for a query, the keywords in an ad account are matched. The keyword match types are as follows:

Broad Match

The broad match option allows ads to show for searches that include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other related variations. For example, typing in the word beauty products will trigger an ad for ‘makeup,’ ‘skincare,’ or ‘haircare’. This option gives the least control over the terms that trigger the ad.

+Broad +Match +Modifier

The +Broad +Match +Modifier is a similar feature to broad match, except it only triggers when the search terms include words marked with + signs.

Phrase Match

The phrase match option displays ads based on terms that contain other words either before or after the keyword. 

Exact Match

Using this option, you only display ads for the exact keyword and very close variations. You have complete control over the terms that trigger your ad.

Negative Keywords

Combining negative keywords with search terms reports allows you to take full control of your ads. This means that similar, but not relevant, or non-converting terms will not display.

Writing for PPC Campaign

Writing engaging ad content requires skill and consideration of the sales message. A great ad headline works like displays you see in store windows. The display stops you in your tracks, thus, gets you to imagine yourself owning it. As a result, your mentally forces you to go into the store and purchase it.

Therefore, don’t leave it to your potential customers to guess what products or services you are offering. Insead, make your headline clear, using the most relevant content and keywords for your product or service.

To create a successful PPC ad, consider two main parts: the headline and the call to action. 

The PPC Ad headline

In your headline, you should use the keyword you are targeting, as well as information about your company, such as brand name or recent accolades.

Call to Action

After catching the users attention, you can now convince them to become new customers by offering a call to action. Such as, “Call now,” “Buy now,” and “sign up now,” which  are strong calls to action that clearly state what to do.

Determining the Right Bid Strategy for Your Small Business

With Google Ads, you can select from different bid strategies tailored specifically for different types of campaigns. Whether you are aiming for impressions, clicks, conversions or views, you can determine which strategy fits your campaign target. The following are five types of goals you should consider when bidding.

Smart Bid

The best way to focus on conversions on your site is to use Smart Bidding, which lets you track conversions while allowing potential customers to take direct action.

Cost-Per-Click

A cost-per-click (CPC) bid strategy may be right for your campaign if your goal is to generate traffic to your website.

Cost-Per-Thousand Viewable

Focusing on impressions is a great way to boost brand awareness. You can use cost-per-view and cost-per-thousand impression bidding. Likewise, if you run video ads and want to increase views and interactions, you can use cost-per-thousand views bidding.

Local Ad Targeting

Location targeting can be used by local businesses that serve clients located within specific regions of the country. You can target multiple locations (with different bid adjustments) with an ad group by selecting a city or region or setting a radius. 

Tracking your PPC Campaign Results

Wrapping It Up

Tracking your PPC Campaign Results

A big reason for the value of a PPC campaign is that it is trackable. The tool allows you to discover how many times your ads appear, how many times users click on it, and even who made the clicks. 

The three most important metrics in PPC are impressions, click-through-rate (CTR). and bounce rate. Impressions are the number of times your ad appears in searches, and CTR is the percentage of people who click on it. Lastly, a high bounce rate is related to poorly designed pages, Google ads or user experiences. 

The bounce rate is most important, because it calculates the percentage of people on your ad, then bouncing without doing anything else. Let’s face it, the more people click on your ad without buying, the more of a negative impact it has on your budget.

A big reason for the value of a PPC campaign is that it is trackable. The Google Ad tool allows you to discover how many times your ads appear, how many times users click on it, and even who made the clicks.