10 Tips to Create an Effective PPC Campaign

Creating an effective PPC campaign is challenging but rewarding. But, it is a continuous learning process. Not surprising, since you need to keep up with the updates rolled out by Google and other search engine platforms.

So, whether you are just starting out or eager to learn more, then you are in the right spot. In this article, we will help you step up your marketing game with our tried-and-true tips on how to run a successful PPC campaign. 

What is PPC?

PPC, short for pay-per-click, is a digital advertising model where you have to pay a certain fee every time someone clicks on your ads. 

The ads you put up can appear in different places on the internet, such as: 

• Search results
• Websites
• Social Media

The aim is to encourage and lead people to visit your website, landing page, or app with your PPC campaign. Naturally, this means your ads have to appeal and inform people using a combination of the following formats: 

• Text 
• Images
• Videos

When you create an effective PPC campaign, your ads essentially pay for themselves. Basically, with each click and effective conversion, your PPC campaign generates more profit that is greater than the cost of running it.

What is PPC campaign management?

PPC campaign management refers to the handling and monitoring of ongoing ads which falls under the care of PPC specialists. More importantly, they apply strategies and make ad purchases to make sure to maximise campaigns and reduce overall costs. 

With that said, PPC management can be handled by any competent digital marketer. However, PPC is ever-evolving. So, to achieve the best results, it is best to hire a PPC specialist instead.

Why is PPC important for business?

The purpose of PPC is to help your business grow. This can be getting the word out about your brand, increasing visits to your website, encouraging people to download an app, or reminding them that they might miss out on good products.

Regardless of your goals, there is no denying that the benefits of PPC campaigns can make a great impact on your business.

Contributes to Business Goals

Having an effective PPC campaign enables you to achieve your business and marketing goals. These can be boosting your brand’s exposure, establishing thought leadership, generating hot leads, or increasing your sales.

It is versatile enough for it to support various parts of the sales funnel, from helping people on their journey from initial awareness to becoming satisfied customers. 

Measurable & Trackable

The best part about an effective PPC campaign is that you can get specific with your objectives and get it done thanks to granular goal setting, precise targeting, and comprehensive data reporting.

Moreover, unlike other marketing channels, where tracking how your budget is being used can be vague, PPC provides you with a crystal-clear picture. You can precisely see how much of your budget was used and the outcomes your ads achieved 

Plus, PPC enables you to do more with call tracking, where you can isolate the specifics and evaluate your PPC efforts to get better insight into what aspects you need to improve.

Quick Entry

If you are just starting out or worried that you are lagging behind your competitors—do not worry! You can still catch up and potentially get ahead with an effective PPC campaign.

Unlike search engine optimisation (SEO), where you need to put in upfront time-consuming effort first before seeing results down the line, PPC offers rapid positioning and traffic within minutes of launching. 

It also gives you the advantage of targeting potential customers beyond those already familiar with your brand. This means you are not confined to your existing followers or customers and can cast a wider net to reach new prospects effortlessly.

Control

With PPC, you have significant control over a lot of aspects to reach your potential customers. It starts with the keywords or placements you choose to target and how restrictive you want to be.

You also have budget flexibility, which means you can start small, set your ad budget and bids, and choose what you are willing to spend. Moreover, you can quickly scale up if you see positive results, or take a break by pausing and stopping your ad spending immediately.

Another big plus is that you can make quick edits, optimise your ads while running, and even conduct new tests daily. There is no long cycle from editing to deployment. So, when an ad is not performing well, you can pull it out immediately.

Works with Other Marketing Channels

Content marketing and PPC works well together. You invest in creating original, informative, and unique content to journey your potential customer through the buying cycle or establish your brand as a thought leader. Then PPC can help drive more people to see your content quickly.

PPC and SEO is also a great team since they target the same audience. The synergy between these two enables you to get better impressions and increase traffic opportunities. Moreover, performance data of impressions, clicks, and conversions from PPC can be used to get valuable insights to prioritise SEO efforts on a keyword-by-keyword basis.

Whichever marketing channels you decide to pair it with, you can use PPC to get valuable data or serve as an alternative to traditional direct marketing activities. It is a cost-efficient avenue providing you with real-time data and better tracking capabilities.

Incredible Targeting

One of the biggest boons of PPC is its targeting capabilities. With it, you can connect with both new and existing audiences which enables you to expand your reach significantly.

You can adopt a multi-layered approach to make sure you have comprehensive coverage across various networks. Moreover, you can target keywords with text ads, employ strategies based on users' past behaviours, and focus on specific audience demographics within the display network. You can also experiment with different combinations to fully leverage the potential of PPC and maximise your impressions.

Marketing Data

As mentioned earlier, PPC gives you a wealth of data and information that includes your campaigns’ performance and your targets’ behaviour. This gives you valuable insights that can be leveraged to enhance your marketing strategy and boost your efforts.

Moreover, the platforms with built-in PPC tools, like Google and Facebook, you can maximise features like keyword planner and display planner to better pinpoint the touchpoints of your potential customers.

You also have the option to use third-party tools such as SpyFu, KeywordSpy, and iSpionage. These provide you with an additional source of information about your competition and a clearer picture of your audience.

How To Create An Effective PPC Campaign

Without a doubt, PPC provides you with plenty of benefits that can boost your business in a lot of ways. But, the question is, what can be the ideal approach for effective PPC campaigns? 

You can choose to check out successful PPC campaign examples to give you an idea of where to start. But, keep in mind, what may work with one brand does not necessarily guarantee your success. 

Instead, we listed below our tried-and-tested tips that you can use as a guide. 

Update Your Keywords Regularly

Keywords are not static. These can change over time for a lot of reasons, it can be due to user behaviour, market trends, algorithm updates, and even just search intent. So, even if have an effective PPC campaign now, it might not be later on. 

That is why, to make sure it stays effective, you need to update your keywords regularly. Here is how: 

1. Assess your current keyword performance. Use the data from your tools to review each keyword’s click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per conversion, and overall return on investment (ROI) you have received. Make sure to pinpoint the ones that are underperforming.
2. Research for new keywords and trends. Here, you need to search to identify new keyword opportunities. You can use tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ubersuggest, or SEMrush. Find relevant keywords with decent search volume with low competition. Make sure to also add long-tail keywords to be more specific and tailored to your target audience.
3. Refine your keyword match types. Make sure to check the current match types of your keywords. Keep in mind, this can differ from platform to platform. Once you are done checking, make the necessary adjustment to ensure that your ads show up on the correct and relevant queries. 
4. Negative keyword optimisation. This step is crucial to make sure you filter out everything irrelevant. Like in step one, carefully review your reports to see if there are still some irrelevant and low-performing keywords. You may want to check twice since these can be a waste to your budget, regardless if it is big or small.
5. Monitor, analyse, then rinse and repeat. After you finished updating your keywords, you need to make sure to continuously monitor and analyse everything. This is one of the surefire ways to maintain an effective PPC campaign.

Improve Website Performance

A fast and user-friendly website is not just for SEO, it is also important for PPC. Even if you successfully lead people to your site, if it is not good then you will still see low engagement, short visit duration, and low conversion. 

Naturally, if you notice your website is not performing at its best then you need to improve it:

1. Measure your website’s current performance. You can use tools like Google Analytics and PageSpeed Insights to do this. The aim is to get a base measurement of your current page load time, bounce rate, and conversion rate so you have an idea of the areas that need improvement.
2. Optimise page load time. There are a couple of ways to do this: One, you can identify the performance bottlenecks and make the necessary adjustments. Two, you can compress all your visual assets and convert them to JPEG or PNG formats. Three, trim your website for unnecessary code. Four, leverage browser caching to improve the pages’ load times. 
3. Continuously monitor and optimise. Lastly, just like the other tip before this, always make sure to keep an eye on your website’s performance. This is the best way to ensure you have an optimised site and that your effort does not go to waste. 

Optimise Landing Pages

Landing page optimisation is different from improving your website’s performance. The former just involves improving the elements within specific web pages with a single purpose—to encourage your web visitors to shop, subscribe, make a call, or any other action you want. 

On the other hand, the latter requires you to look into the technical aspects of your website. Plus, the result you are looking for is how your overall website performs.

With that said, landing page optimisation has a more direct and significant influence on creating an effective PPC campaign. Here are a couple of ways to do it:

• Align the messaging of your PPC campaigns to the purpose of your landing pages. Make sure your headlines and copy connect with your campaign keywords and ads. Plus, also check if copies are concise and compelling to effectively communicate what you are offering and encourage people to take action.
• Design to build trust and engagement. You need to make sure that your landing pages look clean and attractive—but still, align with your brand identity. Your landing pages have to be user-friendly, easy to navigate, have an intuitive layout, and call-to-action buttons should be visible and well-placed.

Use Ad Extensions

Ad extensions are an important aspect of creating an effective PPC campaign. They can expand the real estate of your ads which can give you more space to share more information with your potential customers. Naturally, they also provide you with a couple of benefits: 

• Maximise space for ad text
• Increase real estate on search engine results page (SERP) 
• Provide more qualified leads
• Boost ad quality
• Lower costs

There are a lot of ad extensions that you can choose from:

• Sitelinks
• Callout extensions
• Structured snippets
• Call extensions
• Lead form extensions
• Location extensions
• Affiliate location extensions
• Price extensions
• App extensions
• Promotion extensions

When selecting which ad extensions to use, just select the ones relevant to your goal and what you want your target audience to know. Moreover, remember to optimise your ads to make them mobile-friendly since a large chunk of people use mobile devices.

Identify Negative Keywords

Positive keywords and negative keywords are both important to creating an effective PPC campaign. The former helps people find your product and services while the latter makes sure your ads show up only on relevant queries.

To be more specific, negative keywords can help you in a lot of ways:

• Reduce irrelevant clicks
• Improve CTR
• Increase conversion rates
• Enhance ad relevance and quality score
• Maximise ROI

There are different negative keyword match types: 

• Broad Match - This helps you exclude your ad from showing up when the entire keyword phrase is used in a search query. However, since it is broad, 
• Phrase Match - This one enables you to exclude your ads from searches that include the exact keyword phrase in the same order. This means if the words are in a different order or there are additional words in the search will not trigger your ad to show up.
• Exact Match - This method allows you to exclude your ads from searches that exactly match the keyword phrase in the same order. Much like a phrase match, if there are additional words then your ads will not show up either.

Here is a quick guide to help you get started on your search:

1. Start with similar search terms. Here, you need to look for search terms that are similar to your target keywords. You want to find similar search terms that may offer completely different products or services that are not related to your offerings.
2. Analyse search term reports. For this step, you will need to use tools to identify specific terms that trigger your ads to show up. In the report, you will see unrelated search terms that people are using as well.
3. Identify irrelevant search terms. Going back to the report, pick out all the search terms that are unrelated to your product and service offerings. In this step, you already have your negative keyword list to stop attracting irrelevant traffic.
4. Consider keyword match types. Here, you need to keep in mind that Google defaults on broad matches. So, if you want to be more specific and have more control, consider using other match types instead. 
5. Apply negative keywords. The last step is to apply your list of negative keywords whether in your campaign only or ad group level. If you have different ad groups, then you can apply a different set for each one. Just keep in mind that the lowest-level negative keywords come first.

Create Compelling Ads

If you want an effective PPC campaign, then a compelling ad copy is your cornerstone to achieve that. It is the part where you share important information about what you are offering and convince people to take action. 

When you have a compelling ad copy, you can achieve the following:

• Higher CTR
• Improved quality score
• Increased conversion rates
• Enhanced ad ranking
• Lower cost-per-click (CPC)
• Improved ad performance metrics

With that said, there is no fixed formula for compelling ad copies. However, there are a few things to keep in mind when you create your ads:

• Understand your audience right down to what they need, what are their pain points, and what appeals to them.
• Search for high-traffic relevant keywords that your audience usually uses. 
• Create attention-grabbing copies that speak your audience’s language and provide them with a solution to their search query.
• Make sure to highlight the benefits of what you offer or what are the pain points that your product or service solves.
• Create a simple call-to-action that only requires your audience to do one action—simplicity is the key for CTAs.
• Make multiple versions of your ad copy to test which combination works best.

Localise Webpages 

Resonating with your target audience is one of the hallmarks of an effective PPC campaign. Like how you create your ad copy to appeal to your potential customers, your web pages should also mirror that. 

This means you adapt your target audience’s linguistic and cultural preferences. This makes it feel more personalised and relatable—ultimately making you more likeable. This not only increases your chances of conversion but also makes it more like for them to stick with your brand in the long run.

So, here are a couple of things to keep in mind when you localise the content on your web pages: 

• Conduct a deep dive so you can better understand your customer. Learn how they speak, the nuances of their culture, their buying behaviour, their problems, and what are their present go-to solutions.
• Translate your existing ad copies and web content by people who understand the culture, language, and slang to match how your customers speak.
• Develop your landing pages to cater to the language of your customer. Also, make sure to update visual elements and CTAs to match.
• Use language-specific uniform resource locators (URLs) instead of a string of random numbers and letters. Making your web pages more recognisable increases the chances of your web visitors trusting you more.

Redefine Client Persona

A client persona is your guide to understanding your customer. Through careful and continuous research, you better understand who they are and what they need.

There is no denying that a comprehensive client persona of your customers will help you create an effective PPC campaign. However, it may fall short if it is not up to date. Instead of going back to square one, here are a couple of tips for improving your existing client personas:

• Collect the most recent customer data to reflect the current climate of the market and consumer behaviour.
• Reanlyse your customers’ online behavioural patterns to get the latest set of keywords they use, websites they frequently visit, and their overall interaction points online.
• Create negative buyer personas to avoid wasting resources and maximise your budget to get better leads.
• Reassess your current client personas and resegment them based on their stage of the purchasing journey.

A/B Test Everything

There is no set way but there is an ideal approach for effective PPC campaigns. This is particularly true since A/B testing is essentially a systemic approach that tests so many combinations of your ad elements, including headlines, visuals, and CTAs, to find the best version that can get you the most impact.

In fact, A/B testing can help achieve the following:

• Improve conversion rates
• Refine messaging
• Enhance CTR
• Reduce cost-per-acquisition (CPA)
• Adapt to dynamic market changes
• Make informed decisions
• Ouonerform competitors

With that said, here is a quick guide to a successful A/B test: 

1. Define the issue you want to address. This can issues like your low conversion rate or the abandonment rate of your potential customer’s cart. This part will be your guide for the entire testing process.
2. Set specific and measurable goals. You do not have to start big. It can be small, so long as it shows there is improvement. Of course, this also includes noting the data from your current PPC campaign to get a baseline as well.
3. Create solutions to test. This step is where you develop multiple variations of your ads. This is where you test whether A or B is better, or whether a certain combination from both sets will yield better results.
4. Gather feedback. Conduct your A/B test by presenting each variant to real people—your audience. Just make sure your sample properly represents your target audience and is diverse enough to give you meaningful insight
5. Analyse the data. Keep in mind, when collecting data from tests A and B,  both sample sizes should be equal to avoid biased results. From there, use the key performance indicators that are relevant to your goals to compare and pinpoint which one performs the best.
6. Apply the better version to your PPC campaign. Here, you implement the new standard based on your A/B test results. You apply insights you gained from the test to optimise your ads.

Hire PPC Specialist

Our last tip is to get help from the experts. This is especially handy if you have a small marketing team, you are not that familiar with PPC yet, or you are just starting. Whichever your situation may be, having an expert PPC specialist on your side will surely make a big difference.

Given their experience and knowledge, PPC specialists already have an ideal approach for effective PPC campaigns. They can help you create an effective PPC campaign, and help achieve your business goals.

In addition, you have the option to either hire in-house or outsource your PPC specialist. Either way works fine, but, keep in mind, they also have their respect pros and cons:

If you choose to hire an in-house PPC specialist:

Pros

• You have a dedicated expert on your team.
• They are available during your regular working hours.
• You have control over your PPC specialist’s activities and campaigns.
• You and your in-house specialist will have better communication since you are both in the same team.

Cons

• You might hire the wrong specialist if you are not familiar with PPC.
• They require continuous training and professional development to get better.
• You will shoulder all the costs, time, and effort in searching for the right PPC specialist for your in-house. 
• You might not have the budget to hire an in-house specialist right now.
• You might need more than one specialist but it will take a while for you to hire more.
• They can only do so much based on your current resources and budget.

On the other hand, if you choose to outsource a dedicated PPC specialist instead: 

Pros

• You have a PPC specialist that has extensive experience and knowledge to easily help you with your concerns.
• They can fulfil the same tasks as an in-house specialist but they cost less.
• You do not have to put in so much upfront effort to find a specialist since the agency you partner with will do that for you.
• You can save a lot of time to focus on other things since they know what they are doing.
• They are equipped with better tools and apply up-to-date strategies.
• You can easily scale your PPC efforts according to your business’s needs without having to hire or fire in-house staff.

Cons

• You might have communication challenges if you have different time zones.
• You might not have full control of your PPC campaigns since it is handled by an external party.
• They might not understand your business well, including your needs, goals, and vision.

With that said, having a dedicated PPC specialist can really help your business grow. If you think about it, they can help you apply all the other tips we shared here to make sure you do have an effective PPC campaign that will get you the results you want.

Already set to make the most of your PPC campaign? Hire your PPC specialists with Flexi Digital Marketing! Get in touch with us today to get started.