There are countless perks for PPC ad campaigns. They’re targeted, measurable and can be fine-tuned to assure that your spending money in just the right ways. The question is, can you execute a lucrative campaign as a novice? If you’re thinking of dipping your toe in the PPC waters, we crowdsourced advice from a panel of professionals to get you started. Read on to get some key advice before you spend on PPC.
Bruce Hogan
Bruce Hogan is CEO of SoftwarePundit, a technology research firm that provides advice, information, and tools to help businesses successfully use technology.
Campaigns will perform differently than usual
Business owners who are just getting started with PPC campaigns should be aware that during COVID-19, many campaigns will perform differently than usual. Businesses should expect to see some campaigns perform better due to cheaper CPCs, and some perform worse from a drop in customer demand or product supply.
As a result, during this time, it’s critical that businesses implement accurate and timely ROI measurement at the campaign and ad group level. Businesses that do have these ROI calculations in place can operate nimbly and adjust each campaign and ad group as needed to optimize the profitability of their paid search program. Extra budget can be shifted to campaigns with above-average ROI, and shifted away from campaigns with below-average ROI.
Important tips to take note
GoogleAds almost seems like it was built to get you to spend too much money by accident, so here are some important tips:
First, adjust your location targeting settings in Google Ads. Click into your campaigns, then click Settings > Locations > Location Options > check “People In Or Regularly In Your Location.” Believe it or not, this is not a default setting, so even if your targeting is set to Chicago, for instance, your ads can still get clicks from people in other states or cities. This is a critical step for local service providers.
Secondly, if you are running display campaigns or retargeting on Google, you need to exclude mobile apps from your campaign. Click into a display campaign, then click Placements > Exclusions .> Exclude Placements, then check the box next to each app category.
If you allow your ads to show in mobile apps, Google will use up your entire budget forcing ads on app users who don’t want to see your ads – and you’ll get tons of accidental clicks from people playing games and things (including clicks from children).
You also want to click into Placements > Where Ads Showed if you’re running display ads because you can manually block spammy websites that are eating up your ad budget. If a website is showing a click-through rate of greater than 10% in a display campaign, those clicks are probably accidental.
Adam Gingery
Adam Gingery is a partner at Majux Marketing and the founder of the Philadelphia Piano Institute. He leads paid media and SEO strategy for clients across the United States.
Rob Delory
Rob Delory is a digital marketer and owner of Quicksilver Agency in Raleigh, NC.
Start with a small budget
Be cautious of just winging it. Google will spend your money very quickly with few results. Do a little bit of research and start with a small budget. Some basics can help beginners:
• Be sure to add an attractive offer in the ad.
• Do not send people to your home page. Use an existing internal page or create a new one that fits the ad campaign well.
• Get to know how negative keywords work so you do not pay for clicks that have no chance of success.
Regularly monitor the search terms
The best PPC advice for a business owner managing their PPC with no prior experience is to regularly monitor their search terms. Search terms are the queries users actually searched, and they’re different from keywords. There are typically many irrelevant searches found here, and adding negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for these irrelevant searches can help eliminate a lot of wasted spending. This is also a good way to start learning PPC, as it gives great insight into how keyword matching works.
John McGhee
John McGhee, Owner of Webconsuls.
Hannah Martin
Hannah Martin, Owner of Harvestonlinemarketing.com.
Remember the keyword and location targeting
Business owners who want to DIY their PPC advertising need to be mindful of letting bad keyword targeting and location targeting accidentally eat away at their budget. Failing to add negative keywords (keywords that don’t match your ad’s intent) can quickly spend your budget with irrelevant clicks. So can targeting incorrect locations if you’re a local business. Always stay on top of those two things, and track your results with conversion tracking, and you’ll have a much better view of what works and doesn’t work for getting you conversions and sales with your PPC campaigns.
This is a crowdsourced article. Contributors are not necessarily affiliated with this website and their statements do not necessarily reflect the opinion of this website, other people, businesses, or other contributors.